20 of 52

This book - or booklet? it's pretty short - was a re-read. My brother John got this book for me at Christmas, because although I had read it before, it is the kind of book to own. The kind of book that I fairly regularly feel a need to re-read.

"I have come to believe that the true mystics of the quotidian are not those who contemplate holiness in isolation, reaching godlike illumination in serene silence, but those who manage to find God in a life filled with noise, the demands of other people and relentless daily duties that can consume the self...
If they are wise, they treasure the rare moments of solitude and silence that come their way, and sue them not to escape, to distract themselves with television and the like. Instead, they listen for a sign of God's presence and they open their hearts towards prayer."

19 of 52

I heard about this book on NPR a while ago, but then forgot about it until Katie reminded me. It goes on the shelf between The Giver by Lois Lowry and The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood (or it would, if I had bought it instead of borrowing it from the library). I can't wait to read the sequel!

18 of 52

This was a book I discovered through Nancy Pearl's book lust blog. It was a fairly gripping, suspenseful novel about memory, identity, language, family secrets, and the reasons we stay and the reasons we leave.

"He was quiet for a second and then said, "It isn't enough to just go ice-skating. Lilia's metaphor, not mine -- she was talking about how she lived. About how you can skate over the surface of the world for your entire life, visiting, leaving, without ever really falling through. But you can't do that, it isn't good enough. You have to be able to fall through. You have to be able to sink, to immerse yourself. You can't just skate over the surface and visit and leave."

John Solomon

My little nephew was born early this morning in Georgia. It broke my heart that I wasn't there! He was two weeks early, and labor moved very quickly. I'm so proud and happy for Aunt Pants and Luke. We love their little family.

17 of 52

I didn't love this book until about halfway through it. Up until then, I just kept thinking, "This is so....French." (What did I mean? Who knows. That it was gently satirical, overly philosophical, wordy, obsessed with social class; that it was about things with capital letters: Art, Beauty, Meaning, Futility...maybe. (And in that slow-moving, meditative way, it reminded me of Gilead. But a French Gilead, laced with existentialism instead of American Protestant theology.))

But halfway through I started to love precocious, suicidal 12 year old Paloma and the ugly widowed concierge Renee, and their little essays on such topics as beauty and time and culture. I started to identify with and like them more as characters, and then I was hooked.

The writing was gorgeous and so skillful.

"Thinking back on it, this evening, with my heart and my stomach all like jelly, I have finally concluded, maybe that's what life is about: there's a lot of despair, but also the odd moment of beauty, where time is no longer the same. It's as if those strains of music created a sort of interlude in time, something suspended, an elsewhere that had come to us, an always within a never."

celebrating summer

I like to put Rosie in dresses to celebrate summer. This one was worn by Aunt Katie approximately 24 years ago.
We played outside


Ate cupcakes



And hung out with Jenn at Redmond Town Center

16 of 52

I can highly recommend this book. I read it slowly, but still too fast - I need to go back and do some of the meditation exercises it suggests.

"The conversion of the heart that lies at the core of Christian spiritual transformation begins at the cross. It involves meeting God's love in the cross, not simply encountering some judicial solution for the problem of human sin. It must also involve surrender to that love, not simply being warmed by it as a comforting spiritual truth. It must, therefore, involve genuinely experiencing God's love. For only if I have met he heart of God in love can I ever hope that his heart of love might become mine."

jimmy lepine

My brother Jim has a tender heart and a sharp mind. He's a great writer, musician, and reporter. I think he understands the love and grace of God better than I do. I was seven when he was born, and he became my "bubba". Some of the books that I used to read to him every day when he was a toddler, I can still recite word for word.

Today he graduated from college! Wish I could have been there, bubba.

A couple of classic shots, for my readers who don't know Jim :-)

another short video in which not much happens

sunny day

Cheers!
Gee, we're cute.
See ya!

blogs

Remember when blogs looked like this?

food, glorious food

We've been eating a lot of low calorie meals lately.

Hehe. Just kidding.

Chicken with Mushrooms, Prosciutto, and Cream Sauce
Steamed artichokes with lemon dijon butter

Cinnamon Swirl Buns
These were good, but I'd go really light on the icing, or maybe use a cream cheese icing with less sugar and more cream cheese flavor.

15 of 52

Ok. Let's face it. I'm a couple of weeks behind. Chalk that up to currently reading two very dense books. So this weekend I took a break from them and read the very quick Hear No Evil, a memoir about growing up fundamentalist and working in the Christian music industry.

I checked out this book after reading a pretty compelling excerpt on Patrol.

By the end of the first chapter, I knew that it wasn't going to be a great book, but I knew that it would be a funny and compelling read. I knew it wouldn't be great because there were lines like, "A young man pushes through the front door, appearing lost, or perhaps hoping to be found." Ok. Cheesy sentence that you could probably find in my sophomore journal. But the very next sentence was enough to buy back my curiosity: "His expression is common here in Nashville, a nervous passion that tends to make talented people look socially misplaced."

I laughed out loud a few times, and I identified with a lot of Turner's experiences. I grew up conservative, but not Independent Baptist, but I also grew up pretty intimate with the Christian music industry (the other day a housemate was listening to a Christian radio station playing the top songs of the week. The announcer said, "Up next, the number one song from this week in 1997..." and I was able to predict what it was. Thanks, Dad.)

All that to say, since it's about music, writing, Jesus, and Nashville: Jimmy, you should check it out.