Right Now

Listening to: U2's No Line on the Horizon. Favorites: Moment of Surrender, Unknown Caller, White as Snow.
Cleaning: under my bed. I don't know if I've ever seen anything quite so disgusting and dusty! Finally taking down my Christmas decorations from my bedroom. They were so pretty and peaceful, I just didn't want to do it until it was officially Spring.
Thinking: about grace, compassion, justice, truth, wisdom.
Dreaming: of a worry-free vacation. Probably won't happen this side of heaven!
Worrying about: money, provision, though I know I shouldn't. I do what I can and the rest is in God's hands.
Remembering: when money really, really was a problem. Repossessed car, threat of losing our home, young children, no groceries. I have so very much and need to remember how many have so little.
Talking: to my daughter on the cell phone. The school year is almost over, and end of the year stuff is due. The opening night of the play she's in, God's Favorite, is Friday night.
Processing: complicated events from the weekend.

What's new with you? What are you doing right now?

In Which God Smiles on My Garden

I'm so amazed by this incredible weather! And what are the chances that I get this weather AND a spot of energy to go along with it? It's, like, amazazing!

And can you believe that I got all of my red onions planted this morning? So, get this. My flower beds are cleaned out, my manure is spread, my asparagus is coming up, I will finally have RHUBARB this year, after years of failed attempts, my garlic is sprouting, the chives are up, my fall bulbs are coming up, the lilac and hydrangea lived, AND I planted three rows of red onions! I'm almost afraid to believe it all. It's like the heavens opened up and God said, "I love you, Thicket Dweller." It's incredible, I tell ya. Just incredible.

I hope to scatter some lettuce seeds today. Maybe some arugula, some romaine, maybe even some parsley and cilantro so I can stop buying it when I make ranch dressing.

I know that it's pitiful that things like this get me so excited, but what can I say? These are the very reasons I moved to the country! And after eight years of struggling with garden and livestock issues, it's incredibly refreshing to actually have something go right.

Hallelujah!

A Day Hijacked

My day was hijacked. I boarded it this morning with a plan, a destination, and before I knew it, it was changing course and there was nothing I could do about it.

It wasn't a bad thing. Actually, it was quite a wonderful day, but it just wasn't what I had planned. I had intended to take Sweetheart for a walk before her piano lesson, but it turned out that I had to hit the pharmacy for my dad's prescriptions instead. That was okay. While we were there, we realized that it was St. Patty's day, and, being woefully without any wearin' of the green, we bought a pair of obnoxious green light-up rings, and Sweetheart bought the fabulous wig you see our lovely models Rejoice, Sweetheart, Bo and me wearing. Sweetheart sported her new do for piano lessons, giving her piano teacher a chuckle.

Rejoice is taking piano lessons, too, for the first time in his life. When I went to pick him up, the thrift store manager told me that the volunteer who was supposed to run the register that morning was sick and asked if I'd be willing to work. While we didn't get to take our walk after the lesson, either, Sweetheart and I enjoyed our time working at our favorite thrift store.

We left there and headed for home where my dad and Monet were waiting to go for a bike ride. Ohioans, can you believe how absolutely GORGEOUS it was today? I spent the rest of the afternoon working in my gardens. It was such a thrill to see little green shoots on the lilac I planted last year, and the hydrangea, and the bulbs that are coming up (my first bulbs, planted in the fall!). I spent a good amount of time clearing the dead stuff out of the perennial garden, where I found columbine leaves, fragrant catmint, the beginnings of lilies and irises, some brave lupine shoots, a tidy line of salvia, and little clumps of lamb's ear. The herb garden so generously cared for my chives, but also a clump of hyssop and some other green piles of something or other. We'll know them when we see them. Bard's garden is so full of good stuff it's almost hard to believe. And when I ventured into my veggie garden to check on the garlic and clear away last year's dead asparagus stalks, I found this year's shoots poking out of the ground. Asparagus! Soon!!! The line of garlic marching along beside the asparagus is reaching up even higher into the upper world than it was last I checked. Houdin spread the manure that was deposited there over the winter by a dear man from church who generously brought me a truckload of the black, strawy gold. I was surprised by how far across the garden the manure reached once it was spread. This garden is going to be the bestest ever yet, I tell you. The very bestest ever yet.

The Baby had ballet class, and I hoofed it over to a church lady's house to deposit Houdin, who spent several hours there raking fallen pine cones. He's trying to earn money to go to Honduras in TWELVE DAYS! It will be his first major trip, and he's very excited about it, but isn't anywhere near his financial goal. He and a group of men from the community are going for a little less than two weeks to build a home for a poor single homeless mom there. The land has been purchased and the money for the home is being donated. These nine or ten guys will go and do the rough work and then locals will finish the interior. Houdin is pretty stoked about the opportunity but still needs to come up with about $1000 to pay the group leader back for the ticket. The passport is in processing. Pray that it gets here in time! His plane ticket is already purchased!

After a great St. Patty's day dinner of reubens and potato chips, I read aloud at the dinner table from Sailing Acts, a book by Linford Stutzman about taking his sabbatical to sail the routes of the Apostle Paul. The kids don't know it yet, but Stutzman is going to be a guest speaker at our church soon. When I was finished with the chapter, Rejoice and I had a very good discussion about his family's history, the difficulty he had in making the decision and arrangements to come to the United States for this learning opportunity, his hopes for the future, and his plans for the remainder of his stay. He shared with me how difficult it is to get books in Swaziland, how the library is hot and inadequate, and how getting a library card is not an easy task, and I started cooking up a plan for him to be able to start his own personal library that he'll be able to share with others in his community. So many of the young men are having a struggle with depression due to idleness that comes from the very high unemployment rate and so many other battles. Rejoice really wants to be a leader, wants to make a difference in these young men's lives. I so wish I could do much more. Rejoice is such a giving and tender person, and I can see that he could truly make a difference in his community. Please pray for him as he thinks about his return to his home in just a few short months that he can be the change he really hopes to be.

And now, here I am, practically falling asleep at the keyboard, but I wanted to write about today, even if it was in snippets. While it didn't help my laundry situation, or my cluttered bedroom, I'm glad that today didn't go according to plan.

Not my plan, anyway.

Farenheit 451

Of course I read fabulous classics when I was younger. My literature teachers were my favorite teachers of all. Mrs. Wise read A Wrinkle in Time aloud to the class and I was forever smitten. Mrs. Berry was in love with Natty Bumpo, so I was, too. Mrs. Hunt introduced me to Chaucer and Beowulf. My American Humor professor showed me Dorothy Parker, Langston Hughes, James Thurber and Ring Lardner. As an English major and wannabe writer, I immersed myself in a Vonnegut phase, passing that same obsession on to my daughter, who is now an English major herself. As an adult, I've read Jane Austen, Charles Dickens, E.M. Forster and C.S. Lewis.

Even so, I've missed a lot of great books and am just now beginning to discover writers I should have discovered years ago. Where has Thomas Hardy been all my life? Why didn't I know about Wordsworth? And for the love of Pete, why am I just now discovering Ray Bradbury?!?

I picked up a copy of The Illustrated Man at my favorite thrift store and read it nonstop with increasing fascination. The Veldt was eerily creepy and too terribly close to the truth. The Man was about how we miss Jesus even when we're really looking for him. The Rocket was heartbreaking and touching. Bradbury's irony and spot-on assessment of the direction in which we're heading is eye-opening. Why did it take me so long to read this stuff?

I've just finished Farenheit 451, a book written in the 50's but set in the 90's, telling the tale of an America where books are illegal and firemen start fires instead of putting them out. I found myself nodding and even agreeing aloud as I listened to the passages about Montag's wife's disconnect from personal relationships which had been replaced by her seashells (think earbuds), and her family (think plasma televisions on all the walls of your living room and reality t.v. that can interact with you). Only two people that Montag meets seems to understand what real experiences are; Clarisse, a young girl who describes herself as "seventeen and crazy," and Professor Faber. In one passage, Professor Faber tells why certain books, in this case The Bible which Montag, a fireman, has stolen from a house he was about to help burn, are so irreplaceable.

"Do you know why books such as this are so important? Because they have quality. And what does the word quality mean? To me, it means texture. This book has pores. It has features. This book can go under the microscope. You'd find life under the glass, streaming past in infinite profusion. The more pores, the more truthfully recorded details of life per square inch you can get on a sheet of paper, the more 'literary' you are. That's my definition anyway. Telling detail. Fresh detail. The good writers touch life often. The mediocre ones run a quick hand over her. The bad ones rape her and leave her for the flies.

"So now do you see why books are hated and feared? They show the pores in the faces of life. The comfortable people want only wax moon faces, poreless, hairless, expressionless. We are living in a time when flowers are trying to live on flowers, instead of growing on good rain and black loam. Even fireworks, for all their prettiness, come from the chemistry of the earth. Yet somehow we think we can grow, feeding on flowers, and fireworks, without completing the cycle back to reality."

If you haven't read anything by Ray Bradbury, now is the time. Our country is beginning to make choices about how our children communicate with the world, what has real meaning, and it seems that we're heading down the wrong path. We're in danger of losing quality, of replacing real experiences with very sorry placebos in the forms of mediocre television shows, meaningless or, worse, harmful, violent video games, chatspeak and text messaging, movies that speak pseudo-wisdom in hushed, reverent tones. With our cell phones and blackberries and iPods and laptops, we're always available, yet always wanting to be somewhere else, talking to someone else, listening to something else. And even though we're entertained every day, almost the whole day long, we're still not satisfied. As Montag says to Faber, "We have everything we need to be happy, but we aren't happy. Something's missing." What's missing? God created us to have fellowship with him and with his people, and we're trying to replace that desire with any quick fix we can find.

It's time to get back to quality, don't you think? To real experiences. To real relationships. To actual communication, conversation, faith, art, music, literature.

To the pores in the faces of life.

::: music from the masses :::

Last night there was a lot of musical goings-on in the Today's Lessons household. It carries on today with Bard teaching Monet some chords on his new electric guitar, Sweetheart playing piano and The Baby singing silly-voiced opera amidst the scent of the eight cheesecakes Houdin is baking for a wedding shower on Sunday. While the busyness is going on downstairs, I thought I'd sneak away for a quick blog post to show you what makes this mama's heart sing. When I'm done here, it's down for a quick rest while listening to Fahrenheit 451 read by Ray Bradbury. Can you believe I've never read it? Quite thought provoking.

Anyway, enjoy the show, folks.

Would ya take a look at that!

When that March wind blows strong, and the temperature climbs out of the winter depths, and the buds of the silver maples appear, I pull on my mud boots and venture out into the gardens for a peek on their progress. I don't dare even breath the word "Spring" until I see this:

That, my friends, is the reality of Spring. That is the promise of baked potatoes, fresh summer salads, creamy soups and sour-cream scrambled eggs. There is a truth in chives that's unarguable, unmistakable, and when I see them thrusting their green lives into the first sign of warmth, I know that what they're saying is a fact; winter is almost over, my love. Asparagus, arugula, romaine and sweet peas are not far behind. And then comes nasturtiums, hollyhocks, marigolds and leeks. And THEN, you KNOW it's not long before eggplants and summer squash and tomatoes and watermelons!

And this year? Because I chose very deliberately not to be a lazy bum last Fall, I happily discovered a beautiful, neat row of this in my veggie garden today:

Do you know what that is? Do ya? Do ya? It's GARLIC! My very first crop of garlic ever, after several unsuccessful and half-hearted attempts at planting the fabulously delicious and absolutely necessary bulbs, I've finally got garlic!

How could life possibly get any better than that?

Dear March

Dear March -- Come in --
How glad I am --
I hoped for you before --

Put down your Hat --
You must have walked --
How out of Breath you are --
Dear March, Come right up the stairs with me --
I have so much to tell --

I got your Letter, and the Birds --
The Maples never knew that you were coming -- till I called
I declare -- how Red their Faces grew --
But March, forgive me -- and
All those Hills you left for me to Hue --
There was no Purple suitable --
You took it all with you --

Who knocks? That April.
Lock the Door --
I will not be pursued --
He stayed away a Year to call
When I am occupied --
But trifles look so trivial
As soon as you have come

That Blame is just as dear as Praise
And Praise as mere as Blame

Emily Dickinson

Name Meanings

This evening as we were sitting around the dinner table, Rejoice mentioned that he'd heard that The Baby had an interesting story behind her name. Sweetheart volunteered to share the story; The Baby was named after a relative, and her name is actually that relative's name spelled backwards. She also has two middle names, one for her great grandmother. The other is Joy. The reason is because I had waited so long for her to be born and was very frustrated by the waiting. She was coming later than we had planned, it had been a long and difficult pregnancy to begin with, and now the labor itself was drawn-out and painful. Soon after she was born, I spoke to my mother-in-law who said, "Weeping endures for the night, but joy comes in the morning," Psalm 30:5, and so, since The Baby was born at 6:00 a.m., Joy came in the morning.

Monet was named after an artist friend of ours who passed just days before Monet's birth. He also has two middle names which both have meanings. Each of our children were named very carefully and deliberately. Some appreciate their names. Others do not. But they can never say that we didn't care when we named them.

Rejoice went on to tell us about his name. When he was born, his mom was only into her seventh month of pregnancy. His father was working in the southern part of Swaziland and had to travel a long distance to get to the hospital and was quite worried about this fragile little premature baby of his. When he arrived at the hospital, he found that his son had been born and, while he was very tiny, he was healthy and without defect. He called his family and announced that everyone should be happy that the baby was born healthy! Rejoice! And that's where he got his name.

What does your name mean? How did you go about naming your own children? Did you settle on a name before your child was born or did you wait until you met the new little person? How do you feel about your own name?

Five in a Row Meme

From Ms Booshay at Quiet Life:

Five in a Row

1. Name one thing you do everyday.

Prepare some kind of food.

2. Name two things you wish you could learn.

French and guitar.

3. Name three things that remind you of your childhood.

Flooded front yards that you can actually swim in and that smell like Sea World; homemade french fries and meat loaf with ketchup that has been baked onto the top; A Noun is a Person, Place or Thing.

4. Name four things you love to eat but rarely do.

Fresh strawberries; homemade pasta with alfredo sauce; good steak; a very well-made salad with all the fixins;

5. Name five things that make you feel good.

When someone compliments me for work I enjoyed doing; when the little bell on my inbox dings; when I've finished reading aloud to my kiddoes; when my daughter's home from college on Spring break; when I discover that I can still roller skate without falling down.

@ 6:13 march morning

Early each morning, I rise with the sun, prepare breakfast for Rejoice and I, and then we brace ourselves for the late winter cold before heading to the van. I blast the heat (Rejoice isn't used to this weather. The coldest it gets in his part of Swaziland is fifty degrees), set the van to barrel up the rutted, bumpy lane and down the other side, emptying out onto our country road as the sun pinks the sky and the frost clings desperately to the hills and valleys. We have some of our best talks then, as I'm driving Rejoice to his daily job at the local thrift store, sometimes getting so involved in our conversations that I forget to respect the potholes. Lately, we've been watching in amazement the progress of an Amish neighbor's building, a shop for crafting end tables and coffee tables. In just a matter of days, the project has gone from moving some earth to a building under roof. Rejoice is intrigued with the building process. In his homeland, houses are made from cement blocks, often hand-made, and either steel, tile or thatched roofs. Seeing stick frame construction is new for him.

Along our drive, we see animals that dart hither and yon--a squirrel who isn't sure whether he's crossing the road or not, a herd of deer staring curiously at our passing vehicle, a groundhog waddling quickly into a hole in the bank. Sometimes we see large turkey vultures or crows on the road devouring a squirrel or groundhog that wasn't so lucky. Often, we'll begin our conversation, about Swazi government, or strange American customs, or rodeos or county fairs or polygamy or genetically modified foods, and find it difficult to stop talking when we reach our destination.

This poem, which I read for the first time today, reminded me of our morning drives.

@ 6:13 march morning
by Denis Dunn

driving toward the
morning sky

I must be attentive; the spring potholes
punish the wandering mind

crow gently rises
from carrion breakfast
to allow me to pass

the pine bough
of crow’s chosen perch
barely bends;
tho the bird looms large

the greens, the orange
the gleaming black death eater

what have these to do
with this shattered passageway

today this dark ice will melt
as orange brightens to yellow
& tonight it will freeze again

An Obsessive Interest in Swaziland

It's amazing how quickly one's interest is engaged in a thing when there's some personal element involved. For instance, if you would have asked me a year ago to tell you everything I knew about Swaziland, I'd have said, "Um...I've heard the name before." Other than that, I could not have told you anything. I'm being embarrassingly honest here when I say that I would not have been able to tell you what continent it's on. And I'm also being embarrassingly honest when I tell you that I wouldn't really have cared all that much.

After having been introduced to our Swazi guest, who I am calling Rejoice here on this blog, I became interested in Swaziland. Almost obsessively interested, you might say.

Rejoice is here as part of a voluntary exchange program where he is both learning about our culture and teaching us about his culture. He spends his days working at the local thrift store which is run by the organization that organizes the cross-cultural program. There, he is learning skills that he can take back to Swaziland so that he can better use his existing university education to secure a job, start a business and serve his country.

When I began grabbing snippets of time talking to Rejoice here and there before he came to stay with us, I became more fascinated with his culture, the struggles and challenges of his country, the uniqueness of the Swazi government and tradition, and the desperation they are dealing with as a result of the highest prevalence of HIV and AIDS in the world.

There are many things about Swaziland and its people that make it unique and captivating. Swaziland, a landlocked country that is surrounded by Mozambique and South Africa, is the only absolute monarchy left in sub-Saharan Africa. It's about the size of New Jersey and is home to 1.1 million people, 80,000 of whom are children orphaned by AIDS. It's estimated that over 100 children per month are stolen from Swaziland and Mozambique. There are reports, like this one from BBC News, of young girls being stolen and stockpiled for prostituion during South Africa's World Cup in 2010. The average life expectancy in Swaziland is 32, the lowest life expectancy in the world which is not surprising, since 42% of pregnant Swazi women are HIV positive, in addition to the prevalence of malaria, polio, yellow fever, cholera and more. The average Swazi lives on .63 cents a day and many of the people survive thanks to the World Food Programme. Because of these hunger and disease issues, there's much controversy about the fact that the ruler of Swaziland, soft-spoken King Mswati III, lives with his fourteen wives in relative luxury, his eldest daughter, Princess Sikhanyiso, attending a Christian university in California. While the people of his nation were starving and dying of AIDS, his attempt to use government money to purchase a private jet for more than double the annual health budget for all of Swaziland was thwarted.

And yet, there is so much about the Swazi culture that's appealing and admirable. Beauty, tradition and culture struggle against the push for democracy and technology. They're one of the only African nations to avoid civil war over the last thirty years. Rejoice, who had to endure many disappointments in life, specifically in his effort to secure a University education (Swaziland has only one university, and it's extremely difficult to get into), is so intelligent, well-spoken, Godly and respectful. His English is amazing, his grammar and handwriting impressive, to the extent that his mastery of the English language is superior to most of the American teens I know. He is grateful and conscientious, kind and thoughtful, has a wonderful sense of humor and a strong desire to improve himself through reading, listening, studying and gaining wisdom. He is mature yet childlike, knowledgable yet not opinionated. He has a firm grasp on the realities of his country, yet he's able to remain analytical about what he sees here in the U.S.

So here I am, an American woman approaching forty, who is learning about this amazing, controversial, heartbreaking culture for the first time in my life, and, in the process, learning much about myself, seeing American culture through the eyes of my new friend and short-term son. The questions he asks, like "Why are rabbits associated with Easter in the U.S.?" and "Why do children say 'yeah,' or 'what' when a parent calls them?" (which would be considered rude in Swaziland) or "Why do churches speak against gluttony as a sin yet have their outings at large buffets where so much food is present, eaten, and wasted?" are questions that lead me into a new or sharper perspective of who we are, what we have, what we take for granted.

On one hand, I feel that I should be ashamed of taking so long to care so much about Africa, especially, as a child of the 80's and a big-time teenage fan of U2, I heard so much about the plight of the African nations, but I also feel that this is the right time for me to learn. God is doing some incredible things in my mind right now, and I certainly welcome Rejoice as an instrument of that process.