Coffee and Soul Food

I am at this moment sitting in Tully’s Coffee, which is at a quaint intersection on the top of Queen Anne Hill. In addition to Tully’s, the small intersection is circled by Starbucks, Pete’s Coffee, Café Ladro, and a tea-shop. This is madness. Five coffee/tea shops at one little intersection. Pete’s is actually in its grand opening. Who knew 30 square feet of earth with 4 coffee shops was needing a 5th? Either way, I am very happy, because each of these places makes me uniquely happy.

Tully’s has the fire, Starbucks has good food, Pete’s has the best coffee, Ladro has the most beautiful light fixtures and warm ambience.

I happen to currently own very nicely loaded gift cards to both Tully’s and Starbucks (teachers get gift cards around Christmas time). So, while I just finished an eggnog latte at Tully’s, I had to venture across the intersection to get my lunch at Starbucks (to return to my prime fireside seat at Tully’s).

While I was there, my heart got tugged out, and before I get back to my studies, I have to write about the tug.

One of the Starbuck’s employees (a young woman) was cleaning the glass cases. Another woman was helping her by staying close beside her, holding her up when she began to lose her tentative balance, as the muscles in her legs were weak. The young woman doing the cleaning appeared to be deaf, and it was also fairly clear by her movements that her vision was limited too. She was cleaning the case that housed my lunch, and the other was helping her do her job.

Something about the moment was so beautiful, but it was the kind of beauty that is married to sorrow and breaks my heart.

I feel so convicted in those kinds of moments. I am so terribly caught up in myself and my pursuits; I am so easily discontented when my dreams have not been realized today. And here are others who are just trying to stand; whose courage to work and live into their potential just humbles my ego. If I can say this without sounding like a complete narcissist, sometimes I feel like my abilities and talents become my own curse. I can’t seem to be happy with myself unless I am doing, striving, taking on a broken world and trying to fix it.

And here I am, ordering my lunch, and the courage of this one woman has just asked me to pause and consider again who I am and what I am about and why. I have these lofty ideas to write words that will matter in very large ways, and here this woman's being has spoken more than my words ever could.

This Just In...

I am about to start a new blog (which does not mean the end of this one!) but I am just needing a place to centralize my thoughts as I work on my book project. My new blog is at faithandgender.blogspot.com.

This new blog will be a place for me to sort through my ideas and invite dialogue on matters of faith, gender, and social justice. I hope to have posts up by this coming weekend.

Time to Place the Order

Tonight, I would like a husband, or maybe just a very committed boyfriend.

The reason I would like such a man is because, once again, it is time to clean out my shower drain.

Cleaning the shower drain is my single most un-favorite domestic duty. I have to get out my special tweezers, send them down the little holes in my drain, so I can pluck out the soapy rat that is clogging things up. It is very, very disgusting, and every time I have to clean out my drain, I think, “Maybe one day there will be a special someone who would do this for me as an act of total love.”

(I, of course, would do very nice things for him, too. Perhaps bake cinnamon rolls in the morning or possibly even do his ironing. I dislike ironing quite intensely, but that seems like a fair trade for cleaning out my soapy-rat-that-used-to-be-my-beautiful-hair, which is now making me take a shower with 6 inches of water at my feet.)

Now, just in case I get misquoted, I don’t want a man just for the purpose of cleaning out my shower drain. There are several others reasons for wanting a man. They include, but are not limited to:

1. Staying up late and reading aloud C.S. Lewis. (Perhaps followed by pillow-talk.)
2. Traveling across Canada by train until we get to P.E.I. (Home of Anne Shirley, of course.)
3. Waltzing in the rain, or the sun or the snow for that matter. Any climate works. Just a man who generally enjoys twirling in the outdoors.
4. This one is not a necessity, but I would also like to request a significant other who knows how to emotionally invest in football games. I want to stay up late on Sunday nights watching the Mike Holmgren Show (or Sports Center if we are rich enough to afford ESPN) while we obsess about the highlight reel.
5. Someone to fly with. I really hate flying, particularly because right now I always fly alone. Since I usually fly Southwest, I can manage my anxiety by picking a seat next to the most peaceful looking people I can find. Because I have an overactive, paranoid imagination, I reason to myself, “If the plane went down, who seems like they would have a calming presence in catastrophe?” Once I find the right person to fly with on a regular basis, I won’t have to go through this mental rigmarole.

Well, I think those are five very good reasons for me to get married. So, for those of you out there (you know who you are) who are supposed to be praying for the Gilbert Blythe of my life, I think my 27th year is a good year to start ordering. ☺

Thursday musings....

I am sitting on a velvet body pillow, sprawled on my floor, as I enjoy the warmth of my new electric fireplace (recently purchased from Home Depot). Thursday afternoons are quite possibly my favorite afternoons, but my opinion changes on this depending upon which day you ask me. I feel like all my days have their own endearing personalities. Thursday afternoons are lovely stretches of un-commitment. After teaching in the a.m., my day is a wide-open space to study, write, and get lost in my book of choice….

But then Wednesdays are especially nice, too, because they start at 7am when eight people stream into my house and end at 12 midnight when eight people stream out of my house. Not the same people of course. In the morning, an odd gathering of us have “Bible Fest,” which consists of freshly brewed coffee and 1 hour oral reading of the Old Testament. We have journeyed through Genesis, Exodus, and Leviticus and now we are in the bog of Numbers. Revelation is now only 1400 pages away. You probably won’t believe me, but it is so fun. We do our best to hold most of our comments and gasping until our 1 hour of reading is up, then we have the most fascinating conversations. Last week in Numbers, the Israelites offered God lots of goats; we decided we wanted to give God goats too, so we are planning on buying goats out of the World Vision Holiday catalogue. (This is a side note, but you can buy all kinds of income-producing animals to give to families in need. Check out: http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_pwwi/is_200312/ai_mark2935503076).

Let’s see, back to the days of the week (which reminds me of the underwear I had when I was a little girl. Did anyone else sport that underwear series?) To finish up Wednesdays, which post-Bible Fest are primarily spent in class and teaching, I host a weekly tea-time at my house at 9 p.m. My apartment mates bring their own mugs and gather to tell their weekly stories. Last night, I laughed very hard for 2-hours and I think my stomach is still sore.

Fridays are also a highlight, because I join up with my writing group for half the day. We meet at Pete’s Coffee, as we have been doing for about a year now on a weekly basis. Two of us are working on book projects, one of us is a teacher/writer, and the other of us is a teacher/editor/writer/therapist. In fact, last weekend we all escaped to a little condo near the beach on the Olympic Peninsula to feed our creative souls. It was our first Writers’ Retreat together, and I hope for many more.

Ok, this is all you get for now. I want to get back to my book, but perhaps I will report back later to describe the joys of Saturday-Tuesday.

Gifts, Hopes, and Fine Men

Tonight I am sitting by my new fireplace and taking in the view of Seattle out my living room window. Really, I am thinking to myself? I get to enjoy this every day? How did I get such a gift?

The leaves are falling off the trees, and my winter view of the Space Needle is here. I love my summer view (where the Needle peeks out from behind the foliage), but I think I am going to enjoy the direct gaze for the next several months. I always sensed its presence, but it is good to be face to face with it, too.

Which brings me to the ruminations of my heart tonight….

I have learned this week, that I have an amazing presence of men in my life. They listen to my voice, value my mind and heart, and are curious about the way I see the world. They challenge me, and let me call them out, too. They share their questions and their hopes; they have the character to share their convictions and their wounds. There is a respect and a mutuality in our way of being together that I have come to take for granted.

But, this week, I came face to face with it, once more, which has caused me to pause and consider the richness of their gifts in my life. I sense tears wanting to accompany my words, because something about the grace of each of you touches me at a deep, visceral level. I would not be able to write what I do or hope for what I do without the community of men that surrounds me. For each of you, I am grateful.

Urgent West Wing Party

Sunday night my commune called an urgent meeting. We needed late night Chinese food, Mr. Sketch markers, paper scotch taped to the walls, and flow charts to plan our lives. Apparently, Jeremy says that in West Wing they call such urgent meetings (with boxes of Chow Mein late into the night) where people band together to solve global crisis and change the world.

We were all experiencing- sort of a collective conscious moment- that we needed to talk about our passions and life dreams and our daily steps to take them seriously. The meeting ran 4 hours and it was one of the most efficient meetings I have been at. We all came away with assignments, based on our creative brainstorming with one another. I am currently focusing on:

1. My book project and making it happen.
2. Caring for my body better, which means attending to healthy meals and 7-8 hours of sleep at night.

We broke it down into specific steps. For instance, if I am up past midnight, I have to give account for why. If I have a rush of creative energy at 2 am, I can justify being up late writing. If I am tempted to scrub my toilet at 2 am, then I need to be asleep.

We have a meeting on Sunday to check in with our assignments. I will report back.

P.S Just a quick note on my use of "androgyny" in the last posting. I was using it in the Virginia Woolf sense, not the literal sense. I don't think I look too much like a man. If you want to know more about the Virginia Woolf sense, feel free to ask. It makes a good conversation.

Football and High-Tea

I am feeling very inspired to do things that I love to do. I think you should do the same. What if you put 3 activities on your calendar next week that fit in the "I would love to do but I never do them category?"

To kick things off, I am going to a a high school football game tomorrow night, just for the heck of it. Ben, Cabe, and have decided to support Ballard High, a team picked at random. We all have a great deal of excitement going into this game.

Then, I am going to start planning my princess high-tea party, because I just found a great princess dress at the thrift store down the street. Jane runs the store and she picked out all kinds of lovely items for me. This dress is a green, strapless, Jessica McClintock, and it goes well with my elbow-high, ivory lace gloves that I keep stored in my sock drawer for such a time as this.

Between football and high-tea, I think my activities are quite androgenous.