I haven't been very good at writing, so on the spur of the moment, I have decided to at least list books I am currently reading (or have recently read).  This will give a good idea of my activities at any given snapshot in time and maybe I'll be inspired to write more about those activities.

My recent reads:
Isaac's Storm by Erik Larsen
The Cookbook Collector by Allegra Goodman
The Naturally Clean Home by Karyn Siegel-Maier
Clean House Clean Planet by Karen Logan (only people with the name Karen can write about green cleaning)

I enjoyed all of these books.  Allegra Goodman is a good writer.  I also enjoyed Isaac's Storm for making the Galveston Hurricane very real.  The books on green cleaning is one of those areas of interest that I spoke of.  I am making my own all-natural, great-smelling, and economical cleaning products and loving the results.  More on this to come, no doubt.

Current books:
Born to Run by Christopher McDougall
Forest Lover by Susan Vreeland
God is not One by Stephen Prothero
The Athlete's Pocket Guide to Yoga by Sage Rountree

I just finished running my first Half Marathon, so I am really pumped about running.  I keep hearing what a great book Born to Run is, so I picked it up and keep trying to start reading it!  Forest Lover just speaks to my inner independent woman artist wanting so much to come out of the shadows!  I am reading God is not One for a book group that I belong to.  And I love Yoga but haven't been able to get to a class in a long time.  So I picked up this book with great illustrations to help me with my own Yoga practice here at home as cross-training for my running.  I'm planning to do some swimming this winter too.

Books recently started and ditched:
Labyrinth by Kate Mosse
The Secret of Lost Things by Sheridan Hay

This is not to say these books are bad, or that I won't decide to read them later.  For now, they have taken a backseat to these others.  I was a bit put off by Labyrinth.  The writing is just not very good.

Just writing about something....anything, is my point to jumping off with what I am reading (because I am always reading something!)  I'll try to write some about the books and what I'm doing with the information in coming posts.

Well, its been more than 8 months since I last wrote in this blog...more like 3 years. But as I read my previous entries, they struck a chord with me (probably because its my life I was talking about!) and pulled me back in again. I have been on a journey since last I wrote, but not one that I traveled with my body, but one that I am on mentally.

I am still in the midst of a gazillion distractions and while many of them involve my now 10 and 4 year olds, most of them are completely self-inflicted. I don't seem to want to focus on one thing at a time and that has left things here in a bit of disarray (thats a nice way of saying that I cannot reach my sink in my bathroom because when we got the carpets stretched a week ago I moved all of the cr*p off the floor in the bedroom into the middle of my bathroom. Ugh!)

Today I did laundry, cleaned the kitchen, made dinner which left the kitchen a mess which is how it currently appears, spent a few minutes in the car learning french, spent way too much time on the internet (my biggest time waster and distractor extraordinaire), searched houses on the internet because we are hoping to buy one and move in the next few months, made 3 corn bags (all-natural heating pads), made dinner, helped my youngster get a shower, went grocery shopping and bought a trash can for the kitchen from a specialty store across town. Now I am writing a boring blog about it all.

But what I really want to do is to keep a few things in mind that I have learned recently. So I'll just put them down here to keep a record of them.

#1 - To be at peace and to be happy, stop trying to figure everything out. Let God do it.

#2 - Let this moment be the end of me and the beginning of God. Said by Bishop Benke in a wonderful article here.

#3 - Live this Bible passage daily: "Speak Lord, for your servant is listening."

#4 - Realize that right where I am, regardless of how well I do it, "I am able to impart truth, health and happiness, and this is my rock of salvation and my reason for existing." (Written by Mary Baker Eddy.)

#5 - And gosh darnit--be Mary not Martha! (A Bible story found in Luke. Jesus visited his friends' home and Martha was very burdened with the serving while her sister Mary sat with Jesus and was taught by him. Martha thought that Mary should get up and help her! Who wouldn't?! But Jesus told Martha that she was too consumed by all that and that Mary had put God first and that was the best thing to do. Perhaps if Martha had put learning more about God first too, they all would have pitched in together and had a simple meal without all the fuss.)

So at this moment I am open to Love's divine adventure! What has God got in store for me next? I'm looking forward to finding out.

Our River


The past few weeks and months I have been engaged in a life and death struggle. It has brought with it much reflection, intense spiritual surgery, loss and gain. I learned so much that I don't even know where to begin, and it doesn't come to me all at once as I write, but in pieces. I should have kept a journal as I traveled that road. I didn't. So I will have to piece it together as I go.

Not long ago, River, my faithful canine companion of the last 12 years, passed on quietly at home. He had stopped eating some time before that despite all of my efforts to change his mind. I wondered even after his passing, did I do the right thing? Should I have taken him to the vet to have him "put down"? Everyone has their opinion about that, and to the best of my understanding, it wouldn't have changed how I feel--or how River feels.

Either way, I would have experienced guilt for whatever decision I made--that seems to be the nature of this mortal existence.

Either way, River understood the forever-embracing love I have for him--this is the grace of divine Love.

I have questions to ask and answers to find. What is healing? Why isn’t it something we always experience here on earth but sometimes later? And what does that look like? What is life if it isn’t book-ended by birth and death? Why do there seem to be limits to what we can do in this life? How do my thoughts relate to my experience and more importantly, to the experience of those in my care--my children, my pets? How do those thoughts relate to healing? Is healing the only evidence of spiritual intuition and spiritual growth? Which brings me back to “what is healing?” Is this even the right question? Or should I be asking, “what is being?”

I know what River’s being consisted of--that part he showed to us. Faithfulness, watchfulness, sincerity, joy, gratitude, gentleness, unconditional love, patience. It seems so much more than we gave back. I guess thats how he got to be a dog, because he expressed complete humility. River, I hope I can follow in your paw prints and learn what you taught me by how you lived your life. Thank you for everything, Buddy.

Harry Potter and the Slacker Mom


[From April 6, 2007] OK. So a mere 8 months later, I am writing my second blog. Not a good record so far, but at least I am writing again. I think I was intimidated by the idea of this blog being "published" for others to read--even though publication in this case is somewhat obscure. I never felt like I had the time (and frankly, haven't even remembered this blog often) to write and edit and create a complete "work." But I have decided to write stream of consciousness about what I am doing - regardless of whether it is uplifting spiritually or not. The editor behind my eyes is looking down on this with dismay, but I am trudging on undaunted. Otherwise where will I get my writing legs back? Writing email is not exactly a creative endeavor.

So the topic of today's blog is "Harry Potter and the Slacker Mom" Somewhat belatedly, I have begun reading the Harry Potter series in earnest. After four movies (all of which I have seen) and six books (none of which I had read) I decided it was indeed time to do just that--read the Harry Potter books. I came to this decision due to the fact that the last movie was thoroughly chopped up -- I knew it must be missing more than a few fragments --, and because I love to read good books.

A friend who not only has read all of the books but owns them too, suggested that I read them all--"start at the beginning" she pronounced without so much as a slight hesitation. So I did. Now what may be almost 4 weeks later, I have read through book 5. No small feat I might add, as book 5 "Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix" was over 800 pages and read in 5 days. (My family is thoroughly ready for my return to real life and keeping up with all of the things that slide when I am engrossed in a book--much less a whole series!) I picked up book 6 at the library today, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince.

[June 15, 2007] I wrote the previous (and more which I deleted due to space and interest) more than 2 months ago. I did read HP and the Half-Blood Prince and am eagerly awaiting the arrival of the last book in the series in July (which my mom-in-law ordered for me as a Mother’s Day gift!)

I have avoided all extracurricular reading since that series. But it hasn’t had a profound impact on my ability to keep house. I continue to be a slacker mom--just not one with a mission like reading through a series in 5 weeks. I don’t understand my inability---

oh...wait...maybe I do understand something of the nature of why....even as I type I am being asked to help with a video game which I dutifully try and fail to do (my son is much better at those things than I), the laundry is beeping, my 2 year old is crying so I pour a glass of juice for him, and my boys spill their cereal on the floor three times which I must vacuum up and while doing so find chocolate sauce in the carpet from sometime since last night when I made it--I clean that up too while keeping the puppy (yes, PUPPY!) from licking it along with the cleaner I just used to clean it, and the laundry is still beeping like every 20 seconds, and my 7 year old is calling to ask for my help again, and now my 2 year old is sitting in my lap and trying to get me to drink his juice (and I can’t figure out how to make this sentence flow any better, so it’ll just have to do as is.)

The idea of writing without distraction is as foreign to me as living on the moon at the moment. Fortunately, my husband doesn’t complain about the house or the fact that I haven’t been able to make meals regularly for some time, or that he runs out of clean underwear occasionally. And he wants me to write more (I think he hopes there is money in it someday--but I wouldn’t be too sure about that.) So I am writing again--distractions and all. I know some of you can relate. And if you stick with me long enough, someday, I will say, “I am writing from the pleasant distraction free zone of my local Starbuck’s patio with a warm breeze licking my earlobes and cool mocha filling my belly.” Or something like that.

Across the table from me is a dear friend I haven't seen in more than a year. She fires off her first question without hesitation, "so, what are you doing? Are you writing?" "Uh, no" is my reply. "Why not?" Two reasons, one is 6 years old, the other - the main reason I am not writing - is one. She nodded knowingly (mother of 3). But she wanted to know why I wasn't blogging...."the original blogger" she called me. I wrote a series of "blogs" a few years ago for publication on the website spirituality.com. Why indeed. So here I am a week later, starting a blog. I have just spent 5 weeks with my feet in cold mountain river water and am having trouble dragging them back to the dust of a hot, dry Texas summer. So I am taking the river with me in this blog--the river that carries my heart on its breast--sometimes drifting aimlessly, sometimes raging and swollen dragging everything along with it, and sometimes for what seems like only short seasons, running swiftly as if toward a goal. Perhaps these posts will serve as waymarks as I journey on this river of life.