solomon, a kindred spirit

For with much wisdom comes much sorrow;

the more knowledge, the more grief.

ecclesiastes 1:18

i think that in heaven, solomon and i will be great friends. i feel him when he writes these words. so often i will read something or hear something and immediately think, “i wish i didn’t know about that…” because of the sorrow it causes, the grief it brings. but i almost as quickly recount that thought, knowing that just because i don’t know about something doesn’t take away the pain someone feels, it simply reduces my discomfort. but heaven knows, my own discomfort is quickly reduced as the closeness of the article on the sudan or the hearsay of someone’s tragic circumstance fades away from my immediate consciousness. my heavy heart is quickly salved by my own self-absorbed life wonderings or by something good to eat.

still, i want to know. i want “much wisdom” and more knowledge,” even if it brings sadness. i don’t want to absolve myself from my part in the suffering of the world with ignorance. and i don’t believe that we are absolved from responsibility with ignorance anyway. i think i will have to account for how the life i live here and now causes there to be less for others somewhere else. i also want the depth that comes with “much wisdom.” solomon said that wisdom is more precious than gold, that it leads to life well-lived, that it protects you and exalts you, that it is the beginning of a fear of the Lord. so i want wisdom, with my whole heart, and i want the change that wisdom painfully squeezes from my stubborn, selfish existence.

because change doesn’t come naturally for us humans, i think i have to continually put myself in the path of knowledge of suffering. this is why i read the newspaper, watch sad movies, read devastating memoirs and listen to people tell their stories. these acts, coupled with my bible and the holy spirit, effect change in my heart, which eventually (but oh so slowly) leads to change in my life. growth. compassion. however small it may seem from the outside. somehow there is a connection between someone telling me today a sad story about a mom in texas and how i treat another mom i see tomorrow at the grocery store. because now i want to be the mom who is willing to say, “everyone feels that way sometimes. you’re not alone.” or something…something.

there is a connection between reading and doing. between praying and acting. between knowing and changing. it is far too easy in north america to shut out those connections. there are so many distractions and desires. but i want to keep all of those connections flowing in my life. even if i am a little depressed now and then…or more pertinent, depressing to be around. if i have to be depressed sometimes in order to bring hope and joy to a difficult moment at others, so be it.

…wisdom will enter your heart,

and knowledge will be pleasant to your soul.

discretion will protect you

and understanding will guard you.

proverbs 2:10-11

no science fairs in the summertime

oh my goodness i’m so glad we’re out of school.  have i mentioned that i am glad to be done with school?  phew!  i have always loved summer.  we are having a pool break today because it’s rainy and my kids are slightly sunburned, but we have had several glorious days of pretty much changing from our pajamas to our swimsuits and then back to pajamas.  i love that.  the rest of our town is still in school one more week so my kids feel like they are extra privileged for getting to be out this week, a feeling they don’t often express.  not because they aren’t because they are, extremely privileged.  they have no idea…in spite of the fact that i remind them daily.  but whatever.

we’ve acquired several new children’s books for summer and one of them is the magic school bus science fair expedition.  my kids love these books.  the pages are very busy and slightly cumbersome to read, plus it is information overload for my small brain.  but somehow they just work for kids.  ben can read one over and over again.  so i picked this one up at the scholastic book sale a few weeks ago…i can’t even tell you how much it was because your child will probably be receiving one for his or her birthday from me and then you will know how little i spend on children’s birthday party presents.  ok, it was a dollar…don’t tell anyone.  anyway, even though it is a great book, reading it kind of gives me flashbacks of science fairs, which tends to give me hives.  i have a long-standing hatred of the science fair.  if i could translate into energy the amount of anxiety i expended on the total number of science fairs in which i was required to participate in school, i could power a small country with it.  really.  my first science fair year was the fourth grade.  i think i was absent when the science teacher gave the directions for the fair and being painfully shy, i didn’t ask for more clarification from this teacher, who, p.s., only liked boys.  as the dreaded event approached, i tried to gather information from my fellow students about what i was supposed to be doing.  no one could give me any insight, because of course all of their parents were doing their experiments.  my parents would not be doing my experiment, not now and not ever.  no way.  my parents were not even the sort to be willing to write on the posterboard so it wouldn’t look like, you know, like a fourth grader had written it.  when i whined about my science fair’s imminent arrival, my dad would recount stories from his school days about science classes in which he was required to do something, but never did anything and still somehow miraculously came out with an “A,” because he was  (and is) funny and brilliant.  i was neither funny, nor brilliant, so these stories, though helpful for lightening the mood, did nothing towards actually accomplishing a project.  and mother, well…she would be glad to answer any questions except for this one, “what should i do for my science fair project?!?!”  “honey, i don’t know.  you’ll just have to figure it out.  i am not going to do your homework for you.”  thanks.  the day just kept getting closer.  those last couple of weeks were brutal.  every day a teacher would say something like, “i hope you are working very hard on your science fair projects.  you should be finishing soon and bringing them to school…”  at this point, my stomach would just sort of churn and i would try to push the teacher’s comments to furthest recesses of my mind.  i think they are still there, haunting me, causing my aforementioned hatred of science fairs.  soon, people were bringing their erupting volcanoes and  light bulb set ups to school.  these things were elaborate.  i’m telling you NO fourth grader put these things together.  sooo…what did i do for my fourth grade science project???  i’ll tell you.  someone brought an  invention to school, you know, something that had a bunch of pulleys and buttons and probably a rolling marble that eventually cracked an egg or something.  i realized that we could also do inventions.  through a stroke of genius i realized that ACTUALLY, a book is an invention.  it is the invention of a story.  i wrote and illustrated a book the night before they were due.  i made a poster that said INVENTION:  A STORY ABOUT ME.  or something like that.  and i swear to you, i turned it in.  i think i might have actually gotten a passing grade.  maybe it was at the very least obvious that i had done it all by myself.  so someone (not that science teacher, someone ELSE) took pity on me.

that was the beginning of a lot of sweat and tears shed over science fairs. i’m not sure how i survived.  in the ninth grade i begged my parents for one of those tri-fold things so i could upgrade from a propped up posterboard.  did they take me to hobby lobby and pay $10 for the science fair set up?  of course not.  not when you can BUILD one out of old plywood left over from some castle bluff project.  the great thing about my tri-fold board was that if you set it next to the sure-to-win project and gave it a little tap, you could knock out the competition in one swoop.  the thing was so heavy that i could barely carry it into the gym!  and though it was my last year to have to participate in a science fair, we held on to that baby for anna and peter to use over and over again.  sorry guys.

it occurs to me that maybe subconsciously, i am homeschooling my children just so we won’t have to participate in science fairs.  maybe if i read this book to them over and over, by the time they have to do a project, it won’t seem like such a big deal.  they’ll whip it out just like that.  which will be good, because i certainly won’t be doing it.  i have used up all my science fair anxiety.  although, maybe now that i’m 33 instead of 9, i could actually win one of those shiny ribbons.

on my nightstand

summer is the best for reading and i definitely have a pile of things i want to read this summer. for the first few weeks i will not be reading about homeschooling or even parenting. the first books in line are…

i am almost done with this, but i want to go back through it. it is really challenging. there’s this whole chapter on work that is rocking my brain. i feel like there are so many different ideas i want to implement that i may have to do one or two at a time and then go back and read again.

i love barbara kingsolver. her novels are so much fun. she does, however, sometimes take an otherwise perfect novel to a strange place with her political undertones. i’m all about some nonfiction political history (a recent favorite being a problem from hell, by samantha power). i just like to keep my genres separate, which is very UNpostmodern of me, i know. anyway, this will be different because it’s nonfiction…her family’s story about sustainable living. i’m excited to see how they did it.

i read that this is haven kimmel’s favorite novel, so how could i not love it?

my book club is reading this for june. i don’t know much about it, but i always enjoy a memoir…someone’s story.

a friend just passed this along to me today…i always love a recommendation from a fellow reader.

happy reading and happy summer…

last day

today is our last day of homeschooling. i am so happy about it. we are having a celebration, complete with cheesy little award certificates that i filled out last night. of course, the real awards are books, always books, for summer reading. we are having a celebration meal: pasta with puttanesca sauce (in honor of the baudelaires, who have moved in with us this spring), blueberry izzes, and brownies. we just have a little work to finish up this morning and then we can celebrate.

i have been asked a lot lately if i am going to continue to homeschool. this spring has been my first season as a homeschooler and we have had a lot of ups and downs. i feel unsure about a lot of things. i can’t even articulate exactly why i love it and why i hate it, but there are definitely reasons for both. overall, i think that it has been a good decision, but i need a little distance from it to think clearly about it. that is why i will not be deciding today or even tomorrow what we are doing next year. today we celebrate and tomorrrow we swim, sleep and read. blessed summer! bring it on.

i know there are more than seven

i’ve been paralyzed by trying to think of seven clever weird things about me for two days now. i know the “tag” doesn’t actually say clever, but it just seems like they are better to read when they are clever, you know? my friend took the last two people that we both know in cyberspace who were not already participating in the tag thing, so i guess i’m totally breaking the rule about tagging the next people, and while i’m breaking rules, i’ll go ahead and say that one of my seven things isn’t even true. ha. ha.

1. i got a tattoo when i was 18 of the national japanese flower because i knew then that i wanted to marry my super intelligent, witty, UN-gushy, extremely attractive and well-adjusted husband, who is in fact, half-japanese. the other guy should have known he was in trouble when he said that we would just have to think of something else for that tattoo to “mean” now, and i said, “oh no…it will always mean what it means!” so after a slight case of insanity during which i somehow became engaged to said other guy, i married taido, who will always be mine, mine, mine.

2. the image of children enjoying clean water makes me cry. we went to rural china for six weeks when we had a 3 yr old and a 1 yr old. i experienced the lack of clean water in a way that has stayed with me. i love water, and i actually think about how many people can’t do what i’m doing when i get a glass of water out of my sink and drink it, or wash dishes at my sink without boiling the water first. i cried when i got home from china and i turned on the tap for the first time. a year later, i had the amazing privilege of welcoming a missionary from china into my home who was bringing her baby back to the states because he had been sick because of consuming unclean water too many times. when she came in my house and she turned on my sink, i understood a little bit of how she felt. at the end of the movie, millions, which is such a great movie, kids are playing in clean, running water from a new well in africa and it makes me cry every time i see it.

3. i homeschool. it’s not that weird anymore. but people still look at me funny when i say that i homeschool. there is one person that i see every so often that cannot fail to say every time she sees me that she just cannot believe that i am homeschooling…i just can’t imagine how you can stand doing that…you are so crazy…blah blah blah. she sort of says it all in one breath. it makes me tired. i can’t even begin to explain to her why i homeschool. she reminds me that lots of people still think it is crazy.

4. i really like children. i wanted to have like 15 children, but i got really tired after three and then God snuck one more in. i love my four and i love other peoples’ children. i love my nieces and nephews, and i love it when a child talks to me like i am their friend, like they are really giving me their story just as though i were their age. “and that got me really mad!” there are days i would much rather be with children than adults. i read somewhere when i was trying to decide if i could handle homeschooling that if you could picture yourself as wendy with the lost boys, then you can do it. and i can. i like that picture, actually.

5. also, i could be a hermit. i really like to be alone. i can feel myself going kind of jumpy when i haven’t been alone in a while. if it weren’t for the gospel and Jesus and the whole be salt and light bit, i think i would pretty much have no contact with anyone. actually, if it weren’t for Jesus, i wouldn’t even be here because i would have cashed in my chips a long time ago.

6. i am obsessed with blogs, other peoples’ and my own, proved by the fact that i have 11 other blogs that you don’t even know about. i might have blog schizophrenia.

7. i have a strong aversion to the telephone. i always have. my sister and i sound exactly the same on the phone and she made many phone calls pretending to be me, because i physically couldn’t do it. i actually tried to stop talking on the phone altogether when i was in college. i was reading jane austen and i tried to single-handedly bring back house calls (visits) instead of phone calls. i had some calling cards printed and i would leave them on doorsteps. i think i still have some. anyway, i would always rather see someone or write someone a letter than talk to them on the phone. i just can’t answer it a lot of the time. i keep my home phone unplugged unless i want to use it and my cell phone has been under my pillow for two days because i am trying to finish school and it kept ringing yesterday. i know i could turn it off, but it feels good to me to like punish it for ringing by cramming it under the pillow. and it makes those calls i should be making seem very far away.

i’m a sucker for a good adoption story

adoption and foster care are a theme at our church right now. we are all in the learning stages, but i can feel how God is opening my mind and heart just a crack here and a sliver there. reading this story is just one more note in the song i’m hearing.

really?

i had to admit to taido when he got home from work today that i had accidentally flushed a pencil down the toilet. it fell from behind my ear and was gone before i knew it. even though you can’t see it, that pencil is causing some mischief down there. well, taido went about figuring out what to do like he does for everything. he researched it on the internet. this is what he came up with. so the pencil is still there. ergh…

to market, to market

i love the river market in the spring, early in the morning. it is vibrant right now. where else can you get such a great combination of fresh things? just picked? i know i’ve said it before, but i just cannot tell you how good this food is. i spent right around $20 for everything in the picture. amazing, really. there are things i left there…wheat grass, cantelope, more lettuces (now is the peak time for river market lettuces), loads of potted herbs and flowers. but here are some photos of what i brought home. the little bag is organic brown lentil sprouts. i am very excited about these. i will be making this salad again today, only i am substituting lentils and sugar snap peas for barley and haricot vert. i know you can hardly wait.

while i was buying my strawberries from jody hardin, he informed me that the may basket will actually be coming out may 31, june1 and june 2, because of memorial day and riverfest. and he said that it will definitely be the star basket of the year…blueberries, blackberries, raspberries, strawberries AND….peaches! i thought all the peaches in arkansas were lost in the freeze, a terribly sad loss! but no, apparently in el dorado, the peaches did not freeze and so we will be having them after all. so sign up now for your basket! do not miss such a glorious experience friend! it just makes me so happy that we have such a wonderful venue in central arkansas for supporting local farmers and getting such wonderful food at the same time. plus you can even get clothes…i got a skirt today from sadie for summer…bright and funky.

seniors

last night we honored the graduating senior class at our wednesday night church service. we do this at church every may and i always look forward to it. the students lead the service with their own brand of worship, which is a taste of the world they inhabit…a world that despite being married to a student pastor, i tend to know almost nothing about. i love to watch their faces. what are they thinking? feeling? i can remember when some of these students were born, which kind of freaks me out. i prayed for them as we worshiped. so much promise and talent and life to live. what will happen to each of them? 9 out of 10 “churched” students leave their faith within two years of leaving home. will these students buck those odds? after the worship, a group of students performed a hysterical retrospective on their days in the student ministry at our church. then we saw pictures of the students. most of the kids had a baby picture, an elementary aged picture and then a current photo, which always strikes me as exactly how fast life really goes. click, click, click and they’re gone. i know i will feel that one day when my own kids graduate. three of them are already on the second click. i can feel it moving faster, and yet it is hard to remain aware of how precious and short the time is in the day to day. watching these kids’ pictures is a vivid reminder every year to me to be grateful for today.

after the pictures, taido gave a message that was specifically directed towards the seniors. he told them to remember that jesus will dwell with them always. every moment. no matter where they go. as he spoke, i remembered my own moment as a senior in this church. i can get back pretty easily to that moment in my life. high school was rough for me, and so unfortunately, i remember it more vividly than the happier moments of my life. my senior year was especially rocky. the schools in our town changed between 11th and 12th grade, and change does not come easily for me. not now, but especially not then. our church home actually moved from meeting at the ymca to our current church building during my senior year, so as the seniors gathered on stage after taido finished speaking to them, i thought about how i felt at that stage in my life. an almost eighteen year old, with my whole life ahead of me. i was busting at the seams to move on to the next chapter of my life. i remember feeling like i was going to explode onto the world with…well, i’m not sure with what, but i knew that the world had great things in store for me. i was optimistic that as soon as i could escape the oppression of high school, that life was really going to begin. real life…life to the full. here i come. i was heading to a school where no one knew me. completely starting over. i was ready.

still, i shed tears about leaving my church. this church. i didn’t even flinch on graduation day, but at the church service similar to the one we experienced last night, i cried like a baby. we all received bibles. (last night, the seniors received camelback water bottles. because you know, taido was in charge of the gift. he is a gearhead.) my parents both had written in mine, and if i got that bible out today and read the inscriptions, i would still cry. maybe even more because i can understand as a parent how they felt about sending me off into the world. the church was a place of refuge for me. i was and am very at home there. the relationships from church (mostly with people much older than me) have endured far longer than the ones i had at school. with only a couple of exceptions, i did not remain friends with anyone from school. it is so unfathomable when you are a senior to think that these people standing around you, with whom you spend hours and hours, might not really be your dearest friends for life. we cling to each other in the war zone that is north american adolescence, i suppose. in some ways, we are tighter than we will ever be with a group of people again. we share clothes. we fix each other’s hair. we drama together through boyfriends and girlfriends. we stand against teachers and parents and other adults who don’t understand us. we breathe together. in his book, hurt, chap clark talks about how students do this. he explains how students create these small cells of people in order to get through high school, and these cells are practically indestructible, impenetrable.

after the students received their water bottles last night, their parents and all the student ministry volunteers (read: saints) gathered around them and prayed for them. then these same volunteers, these people who give up their lives to break into those impenetrable cells, served communion. the body and the blood of christ sacrificed to give you life. you. and you. as these leaders, these people who love these students, served each one communion, i thought, can they communicate with their eyes and their simple words, “the body of christ, broken for you,” “the blood of jesus, shed for you,” all that is in their hearts for these graduating seniors…hold on to jesus, take him with you to school, make him your own, not a hand me down from your parents or pastors, but your own. use the next few years to grow that mustard seed of faith that you have right now into a mountain that will carry you and those you love through a lifetime and an eternity. don’t waste them. don’t squander these next precious years in a way you will hardly remember 20 years from now. live them fully in christ. go to the ends of the earth while you can and search for what jesus is doing there and join him.

at least, that’s what is in my heart. there are only two or three of these seniors that i feel connected to personally, but i know their names and parts of their stories through taido and the other volunteers. i have prayed for many of them by name during their time at our church. my favorite gift to give for graduation is a book (shocker) by john piper. it’s called don’t waste your life. it is a call to students to live for something more than themselves. to commit more fully to jesus before they are too entangled in the all the enticements of this world. before they are bogged down. i meet so many adults who wish they could go back to 18 and change some of the decisions they made. i don’t wish i could go back. i made a lot of mistakes. i fumbled through some hard things in college…oh how i loved to put myself at the center of a big drama. but in those four years after high school, by the grace of God, i made jesus my own…or rather, he made me his own. he took what i had, my penny’s worth of faith and helped me learn to cling to him. i am so grateful for that. really, i couldn’t ask for anything better for these sweet graduating seniors.

you never loved barley so much

my mother-in-law introduced me to barley the year my daughter was born. she stayed with us for a long time and kind of took over my kitchen as i was out of commission with a newborn and a toddler. we had this vegetable barley soup almost every day for breakfast while she was there and several different barley salads. barley is sort of an obsession of hers. in fact, after she left and i was trying to get back into the swing of cooking, i opened my sugar cannister to find it filled with…not sugar, but barley! that is really funny to me now, but it wasn’t then. i was postpartum trying to bake some cookies or something. you know…i did not want any more barley. anyway, over the years my mother-in-law has introduced me to a lot of great foods. i first ate salmon at her house, and now i cannot imagine how i existed so many years without it. she was the first truly healthy cook i knew, and for the most part, i have loved learning from her. anyway, since her stay with me in seattle 8 years ago, i have gone up and down with barley. but truly this salad from the smitten kitchen has renewed my own love for a healthy grain.

read this post. make this salad. you won’t be sorry.

i made it for lunch today and taido called just i was finishing it to say he was going out for lunch. too bad…more for me. soooooo good.

millie, i’m not bringing any on sunday. you’ll just have to come by…probably today some time. it will be gone soon.