News from the Great Beyond

A Quote

Sometimes I feel as though I were born in a circus, come out of my mother's womb like a man from a cannon, pitched toward the ceiling of the tent, all the doctors and nurses clapping in delight from the grandstands, the band going great guns in trombones and drums.  I unfold and find flight hundreds of feet above the center ring, the smell of popcorn in the air, the clowns gather below amazed at my grace, and all the people chanting my name as my arms come out like wings, and I move swan-like toward the apex, where I draw my arms in, collapse my torso to my legs, roll over in perfection, then slowly give in to gravity.  My body falls back toward earth, the ground coming up quick, the center ring growing enormous beneath my falling weight.  And this is precisely when it occurs to me that there is no net.

And I wonder,What is the use of a circus? and Why should a man bother to be shot out of a cannon? and Why is the crowd's applause so fleeting? and ....Who is going to rescue me? 

 -the opening Author's Note from Searching for God Knows What  by Donald Miller

Your Not-Even-Close-to-Daily Dose of Adorable!

Oh my goodness CUUUUUUUTE!

For those I've promised it to, the poem I wrote over Christmas break will follow soon.  :)

Much love, and thanks for checking in!

YouTube Strikes Again!

During my most recent trip to see my family, my mom was reminiscing about an old Spike Jones song that my dad used to sing quite frequently - I learned it from him as a child, and I'm not sure if she was amused or embarrassed that we'd hang out in our backyard swimming pool on weekends singing it loudly enough to be heard down the street.

Anyway, here's the really fun thing - Disney made a cartoon of it back in the 1940's.  Here for your viewing pleasure:  Der Fuhrer's Face!

Twenty Thousand Feet above New Mexico

From this height, through layers of clear, hard plastic,
the world below passes at an alarming rate
The clouds like sheets of cotton batting,
stretched thin and picked into shreds by the hands of some giant child,
skitter below along an invisible glass tabletop
A translucent fillet, herring bones visible, insubstantial as smoke,
slides above the others, driven by a different current
Gaps in the tattered lace below show glimpses of civilization
Perfect circles of olive, emerald, kelly green,
rust and tan, superimposed on a grid below
Patterned by an unknown mind, given stripes of varying shades
Blocks of beauty, order imposed which,
from the surface, would not be seen

Soon enough the signs of human intervention give way
to an unrelenting gray-green-brown, cracked and ridged, with
pale scratches angling in broken segments – roads thin and meandering
as a child's watercolors urged across the landscape by puffs
of breath through a red-striped straw.

Even still that wilderness roiling below these wings
harbors the life that beats within us all
The glory of God's creation
Indeed, we are fearfully
and wonderfully made

den 17 sep 2007
for Cherry, with thanks
for the inspiration to put words to my flights of fancy once again.

A Quote

Madeleine L'Engle 1918-2007
"Remember the cherubim from "A Wind in the Door"? How he insisted on being called a cherubim (instead of a cherub) because he was "nearly plural"? Remember all his many eyes and wings? That was L'Engle -- all eyes and wings, constantly moving. Different things to different people, at different stages of understanding. A million surfaces, all of them true." -Laurel Synder

Madeleine L'engle was truly a living mystery.   Read the context of this quote at http://www.salon.com/books/feature/2007/09/10/lengle/index.html

A Quote

"To be a witness does not consist in engaging in propaganda, not even in stirring people up, but in being a living mystery.  It means to live in such a way that one's life would not make sense if God did not exist."  -Cardinal Suhard

Good Grief...

EVERYTHING is on YouTube.

I was just thinking of this old Gilligan's Island episode the other day... and here it is:

Are my old tap dancing recitals online too?  *scared*

A Quote

Low-sunk life imagines itself weary of life, but it is death, not life it is weary of. -George MacDonald

A Quote

"What is normal? Normal is the reality of living with precariousness, of never knowing what is around the corner, when accident or death are going to strike.  Normal is cooking dinner for friends in the midst of the precariousness, lighting the candles, laughing, being together.  Normal is trusting that God will make meaning out of everything that happens." -Madeleine L'engle from Sold into Egypt

A Quote (well, actually a short poem)

There's a communion wafer moon
Dissolving on the blue tongue of the sky

Sometimes the whole world is nothing
So much
As an altar inviting us
To kneel

Copyright 2007, Linford Detweiler

More Adorableness!

Seriously folks, how cute is this?

On Dirt

I have a confession to make.  I haven't washed my car in... well, years. 

I'm just not a car person.  As long as it's in good repair and it gets me from point A to point B, I really don't care all that much what it looks like.  Hubby-head, however, takes his truck in for a wash at least every time he gets the oil changed, but the last several times I've gotten an oil change I've taken it to Wal-Mart's tire and lube center, and haven't bothered to find a separate car wash.  It just doesn't bother me that much.

I read a novel once, I forget which one, but one of the private detective types in the story said he intentionally didn't wash his car - ever - to build up what he called a "protective coating of dust".  I think he lived in Phoenix, which (at least at the time) sported the title of car theft capital of the U.S.A.   Even though I park in our one-car garage, I figure the "protective coating of dust" idea works as an excuse... but mostly, it's because I'm just not bothered by appearances.

In fact, someone once wrote "Wash Me" in the dust on the back of my car while in the church parking lot... and it's still readable, even after a couple of years and several times driving in the rain.  It's amazing what you can do with a dirty car and how long it will stay.  In fact, there's an artist in Texas who's turned it into an art form.

Amazing.  Really.  Check out some of my favorites in the extended post.

Freely Associating: Of Heavy Equipment, Heath Bars, and Big Hair

That's right!  It's Unconscious Mutterings time again, for Week 213.

I say ... and you think ... ?

1. Nude :: Naked (lol, it's safe for work, i promise)!  Followed by... pantyhose.
2. Support :: Pantyhose?
3. Rachel :: Foster - except she's remarried now and has a different last name.  But for some reason I still think of her first husband's name first.  Hmm. :P
4. Crane :: Construction.  Couldn't be because I've worked in construction management for 9 years, no sirree bob.
5. Candy bar :: Heath.  That's not even my favorite, it's Hubby-head's.  Still, it's what I thought of first.
6. Material :: Girl  (ack!  Attack of the 80's pop music!  Oh wait, that's not all bad...)
7. Mind games :: Manipulation.  Followed by... Free association!
8. Eviction :: Homeless.  :(
9. Produce :: Fruit and vegetables.  I need to go grocery shopping, yay me.
10. Joke :: The Joker.

What do YOU think?  Check out my Meme-licious archives for past Mutterings, or see what other people have to say here.

Anyone remember this?

Having fun with YouTube... Just remembering how much I loved Schoolhouse Rock as a kid.  For your viewing pleasure...

Worst fortune cookie fortune. EVER.

Today, Songstress and I decided to have lunch at one of the local all-you-can-eat Chinese buffets near our home (there's a bunch!).  As usual, most of the food was pretty decent, but I had no idea what lameness was lurking just beyond that helping of General Tso's Chicken.

When our fortune cookies arrived, Songstress opened hers to show me some nifty saying about how everything good in life stems from having determination, yadda yadda yadda.  I opened my cookie to find this saying staring back at me:

DO OR DO NOT.  THERE IS NO TRY.

Some of our faithful readers (hi Moms!) may recognize that quote.  For those of you who don't, read the rest of the post after the jump.