Mercy Me

When I went to Kenya, it was for such a smattering of different reasons, but I didn't realize that I was going to meet my heart there. For years it had dripped and ached with the desire to help. It'd gotten mad, fighting mad, plenty of times over how hard it is to reconcile ourselves with this world.

When I found my heart in the sky and laughter of that gorgeous country of God's, two things happened that made me positive of God's existence on earth.

1. Encoring my unsolicited solo performance of "Amazing Grace" with an entry in a Kenyan prayer book of "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For."

2. Meeting Mercy. I don't know how you can not give birth a child and still feel that you own some part of her, but it is possible. I want her to be provided for, appreciated, thriving in a way that even feels different than desiring that for a sibling. I have woken up in the middle of the night with an inkling that she was thinking of me.

For those of you who know me well, you know that Mercy has become part and parcel of that time. She reminds me of my heart, of my humanity, of how very little we have to do to change the world.

Josie recently sent me this picture from her July trip and it appears that she's becoming a confident little leader.

Glory and praise to God. If this is the only prayer he answers for awhile,

keep it up, ok?

New Year, More Of

As someone who struggles with absolutes, I’m not really a fan of resolutions. A few years ago I heard someone mention that they just wanted to do more in the next year of what they were already loved or were good at.

Keep on doing what you already like? I can get behind that.

With that in mind, I hope that in 2008 I’ll:

- Love my job even more and start believing that I’ll be successful in June
- Keep learning how to love my boyfriend better
- Continue growing and cultivating my mind and passions
- Get more and more used to being settled in my skin
- Give time and energy to Soulfari Kenya
- Experience new music and culture
- Let God be God
- Keep on loving myself

T-minus 10 days...

A month ago I started toying with the idea of canceling my cable. I hemmed and hawed, even came up with a list:

1. This could be bad for my career.
PR folk are supposed to know lots of stuff about lots of stuff ("or a little bit about a lot," for all you Moore family members out there). But really, this isn't a valid reason with all the newspaper and online coverage I see. So really, #1 is just a b.s. excuse for "I should probably know the latest E! news gossip straight from Ryan Seacrest's lip-glossed lips." (You just know he uses gloss.)

2. But what about educational TV?
Right. Because I'm watching a lot of that at 10 a.m. on a Saturday morning. (In case you're wondering, that's re-runs of 90210 on Soap Net.)

3. But I don't get sucked in to all the crap!
Despite the fact that I've just referenced E! News (and that I know to use the ! after the "E"), I spent 3 hours last Sunday watching America's Next Top Model. I felt really sh*tty about my body after that. Just like I've stopped reading high fashion magazines because I know how they make me feel, TV is full of really thin, really shallow people. What goes in feeds how we feel.

4 through....yeah. I got nothing. There's no time like the present, and whatnot.

So, I've decided that after The Sopranos finale, I'm gonna pull the cord. (A smoker picks a quit date, after all.)

As far as how long I'll hold out - I'm shooting for the duration of the summer. There are fields to roam through and friends to visit and neighborhoods to be explored. If there's an easy season to to do it, I figure this is it.

Just to be clear: this isn't some sort of soapboxy plea for all people to give up their TVs.

I've simply realized that this is a good deal for me right now. The TV has been too much of a companion. Hopefully this will lead me to grow more comfortable with silence, to rediscover old music when I can't take it anymore, and to get some fresh air when I'm claustrophobic.

Today's Album: Kicking Television - Wilco

A time for whittling down

I'm told that when the you have nothing to write about, the trick is to just write. I'm curious if that works the same way for blogging, because it would seem that I've had very little to blog about.

This used to be a place of great creative output. Some of the things I wrote were turbulent outbursts from a passionate place deep inside of me. A year ago I had all sorts of public thoughts. Diatribes, even. But it would seem that those days are long gone and I feel bad about that. I mean, there isn't much that's new for the few of you who faithfully check this site.

The funny thing is, though this place has been oddly quiet, I'm actually wrestling with my writing more than I've ever done before. I've been sharing very little of it with anyone and producing even less, but I've been tending to the fruit of my sowing - lovingly trimming branches, watering sections, seeing what good blossoms might be plucked.

Yesterday afternoon, I had a rather serendipitous meeting with a group of aspiring writers. I was sitting in the patio's catbird seat at Broadway Cafe when a nearby group caught my attention. I just happened to be reading the same instructional writing book as one of them (Anne Lamott's - Bird by Bird). This happy little coincidence led one of the members to invite me over to join their discussion group and ultimately, their writing club.

One of the guys asked each of us what we're looking for from the group. Some people want to be published (strangely, not me) or learn to create compelling characters (also, not me). When he asked me, without hesitation I said that I wanted focus my thoughts. I need to see if these abstract ideas make sense to someone else. I want to edit them down to something beautiful and tight and understandable.

I want to reap what I've sown wildly into the wind.

It should be no surprise that I lovelovelove the message in chapter 3 of Ecclesiastes (or the Byrd's "Turn, Turn,Turn" for the music fans in the crowd). There is a season for everything and that's beautiful for people like me who like to go 90 to nothing. I need separate times for reaping or sowing. For creativity or rest. For birth or death.

This is the beginning of my season of whittling, reaping, picking and cultivating.

Though this space may suffer for it, there is "a time to scatter stones and a time to gather them" and my pockets are full of pretty little rocks.

nib·ble

1 a : to bite gently b : to eat or chew in small bits
2 : to take away bit by bit

I haven't had the will to finish a book in quite some time (a result of last month's quest to take the pressure off). In the interim I haven't stopped reading, but I've been enjoying various papers, essays, poetry and short articles.

There’s a particular pleasure in this sort of literary nibbling that I forgot about. Wandering through 10 pages here and there feels like a quiet oasis in the middle of my over-thought days. It’s made me realize how easy it is to break our lives up into novel-sized proportions – each book a goal or project - all or nothing.

My actions have written many novels by:
-running an entire 5K
-going to Kenya
-working to change certain habits
-dating, not-dating, stepping into the gray-area, not-dating

With each completed manuscript, amazing things have become part of my story. Things are completed, direction is gained, and ink has dried.

But this sort of lengthy, focused existence with beginning, middle and end is not my life’s natural proclivity.

Like these poems and essays of varying length and substance, I’m made to be broken up into chunks. My existence is that of a born nibbler.

I like to know small parts of things. We even joke about it in my family - as my brother would say, “we know a little bit about a lot.”

It’s frustrating because there’s this unspoken societal taboo in America with regards to nibbling. We see potential in a child, foster it, and encourage them to excel. With time, they must choose between scat-singing and pirouetting.

Maybe it’s a bit of mid-twenties rebellion, but I think that choosing just sucks.

See, I like Nebraska Cornhusker football, Common, Kenyan skies, Red Zinfandel, talking to strangers, watching an opera, reading the paper, Wendell Berry, ballet dancing, making coffee in a French press, Newcastle, praying while in my car, black sharpies, crime and detective books, being frustrated while running, writing in my journal, buying shoes, eating cheese and bread for dinner, talking about God, putting on lip gloss, dancing around my apartment, hugging just about anyone, Aqua Teen Hunger Force, and peanut butter.

(And that’s just off the top of my head.)

These are all things I know about to varying degrees. I have nibbled and chomped down on them, sinking my teeth into all that makes up this special life. The list reads like that of a schizophrenic, but it is entirely me, through and through.

(chomp.)