an oldie but a goodie

the blueberries were just a start

(Eat your heart out Martha Stewart.)  I haven’t had a weekend this domestic in a long while.

In addition to trying my hand at a brand new recipe (i.e. Double-Berry Butter Cake with Vanilla Rum Custard or [the second option] Lemon Whip), I finally made a start at commemorating last summer’s beach trip (via photo-album).

I’ve only completed a fourth of the book, but I’m loving the album already!  Here are a few of my favorite pics:

props to my buddy, josh

So … my all-time favorite album commemorating unrequited love is a little-known freshman project entitled About A Boy.  It just so happens I was suffering through my own season of prolonged & traumatic heartbreak when introduced to classmate/song-writer, Josh Bales (who told me such raw materials had been the inspiration for his first album).  Of course, I prefer to forget the fact that he was wrestling with (and writing songs about) such themes at age 16, while I was merely sulking in the company of his reflections … at age 28.  But catharsis, thank you very much, was had by all.  And yes (take this, ex-loves-of-our-lives), we’re the better for it!

Now, though, it seems we’ve both turned a happier-corner.  Just today, I uncovered Josh’s latest project –which (though-country) showcases his style & finesse in a way that’s distinct and (let’s go ahead & say it) more accomplished than his other stuff.  (Though my favorite song may still be a number from his album just prior: Hymn for All the World, a ditty Josh performed on graduation day in the company of a few hundred church leaders … commissioned to serve across the globe.  I cried.)  

In any case, I’m giddy to think I get to enjoy this old companionship (and now) in some brighter (more countrified) spaces!

celebrating mamma’s homecoming (six years ago today)

But missing her deeply (still).

With my mother’s death, all settled happiness, all that was tranquil and reliable, disappeared from my life. There was to be much fun, many pleasures, many stabs of Joy; but no more of the old security. It was sea and islands, now; the great continent had sunk like Atlantis …

–CS Lewis, Surprised by Joy

bo diddley on songwriting

But Diddley said that while rhythm was important, the secret to good songwriting lay in something else.

“A story with some funny lyrics, or some serious lyrics, or some love-type lyrics,” Diddley said. “But you gotta think in terms of what people’s lives is based on.”

–NPR, All Things Considered

 

from my (long-lost) friend

great fortunes i seek
so far away draw distant against my horizon
my back to you as my hope falls through
and further away
to imagine
by the time i get back
the efforts you have put to the edges
of all we own
how the grass has grown and faded
i will have never known
except by the eyes of you
the dew that slipped gently to the soil
and your lips having sipped the rains
–all passing
left to mist the clouded skies
–to taunt
the memories of all i’ve missed
forgive the abandon
should the leaves turn
darken, dampen and ache
falling only to nurture the foot of their making
returned green at the point of rebirth

–jlk

how cool is this place?

Browsing through some old trip pics; loving Venice all over again …

it’s holy week and i see bones, but i believe and minister (no matter what) by telling the basic story

“…There may be times when we come to you as a committee or delegation and demand that you tell us something else than what we are telling you now. Promise right now that you won’t give in to what we demand of you. You are not the minister of our changing desires, or our time conditioned understanding of our needs, or our secularized hopes for something better. With these vows of ordination we are lashing you fast to the mast of word and sacrament so that you will be unable to respond to the siren voices. There are a lot of other things to be done in this wrecked world and we are going to be doing at least some of them, but if we don’t know the basic terms with which we are working, the foundational realities with which we are dealing—God, kingdom, gospel—we are going to end up living futile, fantasy lives. Your task is to keep telling the basic story, representing the presence of the Spirit, insisting on the priority of God, speaking the biblical words of command and promise and invitation.” 

That, or something very much like that, is what I understand the church to say to the people whom it ordains to be its pastors.

–Eugene Peterson, Working the Angles

it’s holy week and i see bones, but i believe and minister (no matter what)

“…One more thing: we are going to ordain you to this ministry and we want you to vow that you will stick to it. This is not a temporary job assignment but a way of life that we need lived out in our community. We know that you are launched on the same difficult belief venture in the same dangerous world as we are. We know that your emotions are as fickle as ours, and that your mind can play the same tricks on you as ours. That is why we are going to ordain you and why we are going to exact a vow from you. We know that there are going to be days and months, maybe even years, when we won’t feel like we are believing anything and won’t want to hear it from you. And we know that there will be days and weeks and maybe even years when you won’t feel like saying it. It doesn’t matter. Do it. You are ordained to this ministry, vowed to it …”

–Eugene Peterson, Working the Angles

hosanna

I used to think this popular holy-week-word meant something like “praise God.”  It’s actually a Hebrew expression that means, literally, “save now.”  Psalm 118:25 in one word.

Kind of makes the palm branches seem a little more militant (than celebrative), huh?  God’s approach to His Kingdom coming here and now seems so diametrically opposed to our propensity to force the same. 

Another time, tears came to Jesus when he looked out over Jerusalem and realized the fate awaiting that fabled city.  He let out a cry … “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you, how often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing.”  I sense in that spasm of emotional pain something akin to what a parent feels when a son or daughter goes astray, flaunting freedom, rejecting everything he or she was brought up to believe.  Or the pain of a man or woman who has just learned a spouse has left — the pain of a jilted lover.  It is a helpless, crushing pain of futility, and it staggers me to realize that the Son of God himself emitted a cry of helplessness in the face of human freedom. 

–Philip Yancey, The Jesus I Never Knew