Ironically, Memorial Day

Our son's birthday was Monday, which was Memorial Day. Every year takes me farther from him. What would he have been like as a 32-year-old? Forgive me for being selfish. Many, many families marked this holiday by mourning their equally precious children lost or changed forever because somebody else started wars. Jeremy wanted to join the military when he was a boy and would have been good at it (if he'd survived being told what to do). But of course his accident prevented that. He was, however, a different kind of hero, and just as brave.

My deepest gratitude to everyone who made a way for us to enjoy our freedom and the years we had with such a son as Jeremy.

Mini-Review: Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town

Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town by Cory Doctorow

My review

rating: 1 of 5 stars
Review it? I couldn't even get through it. Not one character interested me enough to endure the alternately mind-throbbing and mind-numbing geekspeak parts--and they were the most normal critters in the tale. Perhaps I'll give the author another try--I was told I started with his weirdest, most difficult one--but I want my brain back first. Life's too short and there are too many books I really do want to read, such as Les Miz.


View all my reviews.

Friendship Bread, Pt. 1

Irish came home from the church council meeting tonight bearing a Ziplock bag with an attached instruction sheet, a gift from the wife of one of the council members. The moment I saw it, my heart did a lead balloon.

I knew what this was: the dreaded starter mix for Friendship Bread.

My intense dislike for Friendship Bread goes way back and through various church families. I have crossed the street, feigned sleep, missed women's fellowship meetings, and refused to answer the phone in my quest to avoid it. I have spent too much valuable time in my life attempting to explain to well-meaning friends why I had to decline their kind offer to join in the Friendship Bread fun. For almost two decades, I have successfully dodged the stuff--until tonight.

Hate Friendship Bread? What's with that? Who in the world could possibly be so cold?

In theory, it's a good idea. You receive a bag of starter mix, knead it once a day for some days, then add ingredients. Depending on the mix, you a) then split it up so you can pass on to others the Unspeakable Gift, and bake the rest into a tasty loaf for the delight of your beloved family; or b) you return to the kneading process for a few more days and then finish a) above. Three or four lucky recipients get to start their own batches of Friendship Bread mix with what you saved back, and so forth and so on, world without end, amen. At least, that's what happens in Perfect Land.

Here's what actually comes down: The bag must be out where you can see and care for it properly for the 10-14 days of its gestation. You can't put it away. It sits on your countertop for days in its clear plastic wrapper, looking like a cross between turkey gravy and something the elementary school janitor had to clean up after Joey Kazinsky brought bad tuna fish for lunch.

You are required to tend babysit it daily. You must tally off the days of kneading/squeezing the bag (the feel alone makes me shiver) and make darn sure that on the appointed date--not a day sooner or later--you add the precise measures of flour, sugar, and milk. Meanwhile, your mix is fermenting, bubbling and gross beyond belief. But hey, remember the tasty loaf that will bring cheer to the family unit! Buck up and count and squeeze and mix and tally, and try real hard not to look at it during anything to do with a meal, unless liquified liver is your thing.

I can't tell you how many times I tried to succeed at this. The social groups we were involved with in those days were rife with Tupperware parties, Color Me Beautiful makeovers, and Friendship Bread gifting, so I was frequently handed a bag of mix after church by a happy homemaker. Each time I tried to make it work. However, being a person not exactly noted for my organizational skills and dedication to routine, I'd invariably forget which day I was on; or neglect to squeeze the bag; or lose the instructions; or drop something on it and rip the bag open. Several times I actually made it to the Add Ingredients step before losing track. Then I'd find a bloated bag behind a the cookbooks or wherever I'd stashed it in a hurry when I had to either cook something else, or just get it out of my sight so I wouldn't gag. Finally I forgot it for a month or two (maybe longer) and the top burst open. It was not pretty. It did not smell pretty, either.

That's when I decided that Friendship Bread was really a divisive machination, a plot to make women like me feel inferior to other women. It's an open invitation for a Sharon fail. Like the bad perm I got back in the 90's, I vowed to never again put myself through that.

(And another thing: How long has the same mix been going around? Are the microbes in each bag the same critters that once graced the crockery of pre-plastic bag Amish settlers? Do I really want to know?)

Over the years, I forgot about Friendship Bread. I'm much older now, and the world has changed a lot. New Millennium women aren't into that sort of thing anymore...or so I thought.

Last week, a smiling friend was at the church door armed with bags. Bags with attached printed sheets. Deja vu all over again! Immediately I sprang into action and headed her off at the pass, explaining my position. She looked momentarily confused, but then appeared to understand. I thought all was well, that I'd dodged the bullet. How was it that I forgot that, once that stuff appears in the midst, it's like chicken pox in a nursery?

Then tonight, Irish went to a meeting.

And now, liquid liver with an instruction sheet sits on my kitchen counter.

Backwards Tuesday : KEEPER

I almost always write first, then find a pic or photo to accompany the text. Today I decided to go through my graphics collection, pick one, and then write a paragraph or poem about it. There was a catch, though: if I selected the picture first I would definitely compromise the point of the exercise, which is spontaneous writing. So I called on my DH to do the dirty work for me. Here's what he randomly chose from the 5000+ images on my hard drive, followed by what it inspired:

 

KEEPER

Many bleating voices call
All at once and in apparent need--
We sound alike. How is it he,
Amidst all this,
Distinguishes the primary
From the merely urgent?

Foolish, fragile things we are,
Apt to follow random butterflies
Over cliffs we do not see;
Inclined to wedge a leg beneath
Boulders camouflaged by daisy clumps;
Lagging behind at wolf-time.

Strong he comes, with crook in hand
To extricate the most recent stray
Without recrimination,
Without expecting thanks or understanding
Surpassing the wisdom of sheep--
Too well he discerns our limitations.

Yet we, despite our foolish tendencies
And stubborn, recidivist ways,
Still know only one voice: that of our Keeper.
We will not go after the call of a stranger
We will not go after the call of a stranger
Or heed
The pretender's sly seduction.

©2009 Sharon L. Shannon All rights reserved

Update on Dinah

The young lady I spoke of a couple of weeks ago is out of the coma and communicating a little. She is really despondent about her condition, however. I hear she's having panic attacks and must be restrained from pulling out her IVs and throat tubes. There is still brain damage and swelling as well.

How can anyone deal with this apart from the grace and comfort found only in the Lord? After going through many hospitalizations with our son and his eventual death, I cannot conceive of trying to do it on my own. There is something about a suffering child which makes the entire world seem askew, reality turned on its head.

I am so thankful that Dinah is still alive. Her mother Selena and her sisters Corina and Marta will need much strength to help her through the long, grueling rehabilitation to come. Dinah's brother Carlos is really having a hard time dealing with it all. Please remember them in your prayers.

How can it be Sunday if I haven't gone to bed yet?

And I haven't, so it's still Saturday.

So there!

He sees you when you're sleeping

He knows when you're awake
He knows if you've been bad or good
So conform before you break.

Love o' Scotland, love o' Earth

I'm quite proud to have Scots ancestry via my mother's family, the Bells, and have several times represented Clan Bell at various Highland Games and related activities. In honor of Earth Day, here is a lovely poem I found on Leslie's blog. It speaks to those things most important to the traditional Scot: God, family, societal order, true beauty. (Okay, it doesn't mention Scotch whisky or caber tossing, but you get the point.)

If there is righteousness in the heart,

there will be beauty in the character.

If there is beauty in the character,

there will be harmony in the home.

If there is harmony in the home,

there will be order in the nation.

If there is order in the nation,

there will be peace in the world.

So let it be.

~Old Scottish Blessing

I'm really inspired by that. It's really a prayer, isn't it? "So let it be"...in other words, Amen.

Caving

Blame it on the 99-degree weather (insane for here in April) and say my brain was sun-smacked. Works for me. There is a direct correlation between the thermometer shoving past 85 degrees, and my inability to function at a level much higher than that of a three-toed sloth after a sugar crash.

Or say that I was just lazy and allowed myself to be manipulated.

What is it about convenience stores that turns me, the normally proud pennystretcher, into this alternate personality who thinks it's fine to fork over 2 bucks for a 12-oz. Diet Something? I mean, I was only a half block from home, and cold water costs nothing. That buck-seventy-five could have gone into the babies' Christmas coin jar, or even scored a couple of pieces of cool scrapbooking paper. But no. I was definitely lusting for a cold, fizzy beverage and the store was just...there...so conveniently.

Heading to the cooler where my poison of choice is kept, I noticed another bottle that looked familiar-but-different, and it caught my attention. A new flavor, another variant of one I've enjoyed many, many times--and what's this? The label trumpeting "Amazingly Smooth!" (Or was it "Amazing Smoothness!" I forget...but it's one of those two.)

I don't know about you, but I don't normally associate the word "smooth" with soda pop. After-shower powder, maybe...400-count Egyptian cotton sheets, yes...Dove dark chocolate, certainly. But a carbonated drink...?

And behold! Not only was it smooth--but amazingly so! They promised!

For the briefest of moments I pictured bathing in the stuff, like Cleopatra in her asses' milk. This set off the kind of giggle that one rarely releases in public, particularly when wedged in between a clackety-loud corner store cooler and unopened cases of Seagram's and Cup o' Noodles. Then the knee-jerk reaction so obviously sought by the ad exec who first pitched the idea kicked in. I wondered how a smooth ice-cold one of these would taste and how it would be smooth going down my throat.

I had to find out.


Back in the days of Tyrannosaurus Rex and before color TV--the 50s and early 60s, when I was a child--cigarette commercials were aired frequently. I remember hearing how one's throat could be relieved by a certain brand's "smooth" properties. It was pre-Surgeon General's Report, and every adult I knew smoked except my Methodist grandma and my Sunday School teacher. Didn't They tell us that smoking was a normal adult activity, and could even help a sore throat feel better? All totally absurd now, of course, but what did we know?

And now, all these decades later, I am faced with an icy-cold but strange bottle screaming "I Am Amazingly Smooth!I'll be good to you, you'll feel so much better! Buy me! Drink me! Now!"

You know the rest. I plunked my money down and got my amazing cold drink. Because nothing tastes as good to me as extra-chilled soda on a hot day, I really did enjoy it. There was extra cherry flavor and no sugar, so how could I go wrong? It was even pretty good...pretty darn good!

But I'd been had. Smooth? SMOOTH? Where in Jumping Jack Flash was the smooth?

Somewhere a little New York ad agency weasel is laughing his/her fool head off at us yokels out here who bought into their campaign; which is, in the great tradition of advertising, most likely nothing more than a big hoax anyway. "Gee, I wonder if anybody's amazed yet...'I'm amazed! I'm amazing! Look upon me, and be awed by my great smoothness!' BWAAAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAhahahaha!"

And I fell for it. I knew it was coming, and I caved anyway--with nothing in the least amazing or smooth to show for it

So now there's nothing left but to pitch the mocking empty bottle in the recycle bin, laugh about how silly I can be sometimes, and wonder...will I still respect myself in the morning?

Disguised

I've never been one of those rather creepy religious people who go around claiming that God speaks to them all the time. I figure if the Almighty, the Creator of the Universe really did decide to talk to me, I'd be too dumbstruck to casually blat 'n' chat about it. He knows that, too, so very mercifully doesn't send me voices, inner or otherwise. Once in a great while, though, something will come into my mind that I think of as a little text message from Heaven. It's never wordy and is not accompanied by flowery language and technicolor 3-D angelic visions. It's just a little impression dropped down deep that stays with me.

Many years ago I received one of these. I had just been through a very painful experience with some Christian people who had clearly wronged me, but adamantly refused to admit it, let alone ask forgiveness. In fact, they stubbornly insisted that they were right. Soothing my wounds, I retreated and pondered how these things could be. Truth is, I was having quite the little pity party, complete with funny hats, balloons, and noisemakers.

Then the "text message" came. (Okay, it was way before texting; I called it a telegram in those days--underscoring my age.) Here's what I "read": "Would you still be willing to be a blessing to people, even if they don't recognize it?"

That shut the party down.

I really had to think about it. Would I be? It's one thing to be the person whom everyone loves and appreciates as a gift in their lives. The sunshine! The sweetness! It's quite another to be the undercover blessing bearer. It means the recipient of the blessing doesn't always see it as such until much later, and after pain is involved--if indeed they ever do.

I'm not talking here about all the times I totally blunder, elephant-like but all too humanly, and say or do something stupid for which I need forgiveness--and there have been plenty of those. I mean the occasions when I had to do something that was most unpleasant at the time, but was an instrument of growth or help for someone else. It's always humiliating, and it always hurts. But God isn't so interested in our happiness as He is in our holiness, and He's working in these situations as much for my benefit as for anyone else's.

A few times over the years I've had the joy of the person contacting me later to thank me. These have been rare, but are such treasures! And I myself have been the "recipient" at times, too--the one who finally sees that what I thought was meant to hurt me was sent to lift me above myself. That gem is no less valuable.

Sometimes I was that blessing without ever knowing it--as others have been for me.

Today I am grateful...I am loved, I am truly blessed. I am a blessing, and so are you--whether or not we see it right now. Together and with large doses of grace and mercy, we'll get through this thing called life.

Susan the Magnificent

Susan Boyle is Queen of the Week. Shoot, she's Queen of whenever and wherever and whatever she wants from now on. I think she's absolutely phenomenal. Her performance touched me profoundly, in a way that many technically flawless professional singers I've heard never have.

YouTube won't let me embed the video. Just in case you're one of the 5 people who haven't seen it yet, here is Miss Boyle flattening the pompous judges and hooting audience at the Britain's Got Talent audition last weekend.

And she won't let "Them" make her over, either! I love this lady!

Sometimes good things really do happen to good people. If Susan never sings another note, she has achieved her dream. She's also given millions of people their possibilities back.

Things that really matter

A young lady we know is comatose and in critical condition after wrecking a car she had no business driving in the first place. It's bringing back a lot of the horror we went through when our own child was in a similar situation many years ago. This girl will have a long, difficult recovery...if indeed she recovers. She may have severed her spinal cord. Unbelievable. Just saw her at our grandson's birthday party, vibrant, lively, smiling. Now she lies wired together in an ICU up in San Jose with her life in the most fragile balance. Her family are completely freaked out. Their suffering is only beginning, as Irish and I know well.

If you pray, please remember the young woman I'm calling Dinah. The Creator of all knows her and exactly what she needs.

UPDATE: Praise God, it appears her spinal cord is intact. Her hip is crushed, though, and she is still severely swollen all over her body. Still not awake yet.

Rotten Monday to me, rotten Monday to me...

Before the Glory: A Good Friday poem

Before the Glory is revealed
There is suffering and scourging
Spitting and cursing and untold shame
Bloody betrayal and no companions who remain
Not overcome by presumption of misspent faith
And terror of complicity.

Before the Glory can be seen
Before lilies can burst open, rejoicing
And transformed men forget their own lives
And disconsolate women see past their own pain--
One being no less miraculous than the other--
Life must turn its face away
And disinherit all hope.

A grave-lust must be satisfied
The seed fallen in darkness and forgotten
And shadows, prematurely triumphant,
Swallow Light alive
And crow in celebration
At the presumed victory.

Before the Glory sunrise brings,
First comes the stone
Of Reckoning.


© 2009 Sharon L. Shannon All rights reserved

What I give is what I get is what I give is what I get

Goodreads mini-review : The Shack

The Shack by William P. Young

My thoughts:

Rating: **** 4 of 5 stars
Many of my fellow evangelical Christians who pan this book because it does not satisfy their strict orthodoxy are the same folks who object to The Chronicles of Narnia since it contains fauns, centaurs, and other fantasy and extra-Biblical characters. This is an allegorical work of fiction, not a theological treatise; imagination highly recommended for maximum benefit.

Shhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

That, my friends, is the sound of decompression.

All week long I've paid the price for foolishly thinking that throwing together a nice scrapbook/album for a major event the day before it was due was somehow a good idea. The book actually turned out quite nicely. Of course, it would have been ever so much more enjoyable had I actually put the time into it an hour or two at a jag, instead of pulling a 14-hour blitz! (Didn't get a picture of it. Maybe M will let me borrow it back later for that, but right now she has much bigger fishies to fry--like getting married next week!) Ever since last Saturday when the Shower of the Century took place, I've been recovering from my self-induced burnout by being really under the weather and, if possible, even less productive than usual (read: slower and lazier.) It's all culminated this weekend in the worst allergy attack I've ever experienced...my poor immune system, what have I done to you?

All right now--this is the last time I castigate myself for it. Movin' on.

Always does it for me!

Artsy inspiration + necessity + these guys =






Now please don't interrupt me, world, till I get this project done. Michelle's shower is tomorrow!

"She meant to..."

Please put that on my tombstone.

I don't know why I always do this to myself. I say I'm going to take control next time and give myself plenty of precious time to complete something and have it done well. But then along comes a phone call/Facebook message/email/tenant problem/irresistibly adorable grandbaby/flash of inspiration/ drowsiness/ chocolate craving/ interesting Web site/sparrow outside the window and that's it.

And now I'm up against another deadline for something major, and everything is going wrong.

I guess that means, in Sharon World, everything is as it should be.

In other news: I had a delightful birthday yesterday, thanks to my loving friends and family. The calls, cards, flowers, cake (!) and little notes mean a lot to me. I know I don't deserve you.

(I especially don't deserve a certain Bratabreadasaurus Regina--and I'll leave her to ponder the many layers of meaning in that statement.)

'tis Himself we honor today!

This has nothing to do with the real Padraig (Patrick) who, for some reason, folks think should be memorialized with goofy hats, drunkenness, and bad singing. However, it does have cute bears and Riverdancing--so what's not to love?