Instagram

Forsaking Facebook, Twitter, Flikr, Pintrest, Reddit, etc, etc, etc... surely set me up for some kind of social media addiction sooner or later. Long known for failed teetotaling remedies to my sundry addictions, my children know to hide their beer, wine and cookies; but they forgot to steer me away from Instagram.

After a single week, I've logged some fifteen hours of scrolling through, selecting, cropping and filtering some of the thousands of images in my iPhone archive, connecting with the long lost inner painter I used to be in college.

Sorta takes the urgency out of "blah-gging" when your creative side finds a new outlet.

It's even diluted some of the poison in my depressed psyche that threatens to drown my poor family ever since a convalescent hospital moved in next door ...the urgent need to move away from one's home of 18 years takes quite a toll, unless one is utterly preoccupied pretending to be somewhere else...

Enter INSTAGRAM. HERO, saviour, rescuer.

Marvelous iPhoto EDIT possibilities lurk within every digital frame, thanks to the Camera+ iPhone application.  Sifting an image through the app's filters has stirred the lazy artist hiding twenty seven stories below my crusty surface; so much so that I'm certain PHOTO AP tools will be universally applied to all kinds of psycho-and-NOT-so-psychotherapies in future.

I'm also certain a new orthopedic diagnosis cannot be far behind:

"Instagram Hand" they'll call it:  that condition where the hand holding the mobile device freezes in place from hours spent clutching it while maneuvering in and out of albums, apps and camera rolls.

For now, "my shrink" (that nice gal I've seen twice to make sure I'm not the only one on the planet who objects to living next door to a hospital) must wonder why I'm not returning her calls?

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Images that didn't make the cut:

Find the hidden hover fly?

Could spend more time imagining Tiffany's

CONGRATULATIONS, H: COLUMBIA GRAD SCHOOL!

 Thanks to the Olympics, I've finally learned who Steven Colbert and Rachel Maddow are. 

((I liked the world better before.))

Little strivings over subtle degrees of flourish, color, symmetry, context... they hammer the truth home that art speaks to the soul.

When I listen, one message beckons: Only Christ can heal the broken. And only the broken really come to Christ.  Pretty sure I'm still a few breaks away.

[...Really? You hear all that just by editing digital photos??] 

{Um, YEAH...}

"Take care of how things look, and you'll take care of how things ARE."

- - FLT

HATS OFF to LOndon

WSJ image

When realities pour down,
When plans for summer drown,
I just spill my little jar of
'Summer's Comin'.


A cudgel of the shells
Ina Moser saved from hell;
Once Upon A Thursday she'd come
Knocking.

Now I keep them out all year
Where they harken her day's fear,
When those G.I.'s beat back daily
Foggy gloom.

No one asks, but I would tell
What her Donald did in hell,

Beating steel into those
Ships and turrets tall,

So that men and boys could die
In a land where Brits held high
The last vestige of a hope in
Summer's dream.

Now we glean what all we can
From mere memories that stand
For ideas that once loomed large
But trampled now.

Maybe London had to rain,
Had to bend so we could gain
A better grip upon the bludgeon
They held high,

Reminded now, of then,
When a foe was put to death
By the hell-hatched pray-ers
Timeless on their knees.

You just finger turn each one

With a prayer for sun to open

All the promises of someday

Sand and surf.

Then you pour out cups of Teafull
Chats recalling with the faithful,
Whisps of hope half cheered from fearful
God-breathed times

When rain produced a sorrow, and
Downturned smiles press'd out dour
Need borne pleas;
Sustain your minute, then your hour.

So tonight, we'll tip the pot
Pressed on couches that we got
From a butcher (whose old
Cumbrian remains

Won't be sipping tea; no.
Spirits much more of the highHO.)
And we'll cheer the Stars n'
Stripes and Union Jack.

Sipping, Tippling, Praying, Staying,
Wanting only for the baying
Hounds of heaven to just hurry up
Already.

Can we gain some kind of poke

And triumph o'er the joke

That are Ameri-weak an' holl'd

Centurians?

You just finger turn each one

With a prayer for Sunday's comin'

And full promises of someday

Bold Relief.

Pondering Rachel

So, given that we're "between churches" after leaving the one that was our "home" for 23 years, it's been our privilege and joy-fun donating our xy% to various amazing other causes and charities each month. This one came across our in-box, and I promised the young missions minded Grover (GroveCityCollegeGrad) that we'd consider the possibility of partnering with her.  She will soon begin a Social Justice internship raising awareness about Child Sex Trafficking.

There is a question I have, though, and I know it's one my husband will also ask when deciding how much to give, and for how long:

Is this Non-Profit ready to admit that the demand by sex addicts for ever younger people to exploit is fueled by an exploded internet availablity of every kind of porn? How ready are these socially aware young people to admit that there really is NO EXCUSE for porn of any kind?

On Stitcher Radio this week, a couple on an alternative talk-show had the pinheaded temerity to defend soft porn as a good thing.

Read Kinsey, Sex, and Porn, by Judith Reisman, my dears. You will never give Larry Flint or Hugh Hefner the time of day again. Not like I ever did.

dEar GOd. I feel sick at how little I've done with my life.  So, YOU GO, RACHEL.  I'M GONNA MEET WITH THE MAN AND PLUG YOUR NEXT STEP AS A COMMITTED GROVER & CLAW HAMMERED CRIME FIGHTER when Mr. D gets home from Half Dome. SO Proud.


Meanwhile, I'm compelled to keep my head in sand, and again retreat to an UPlift.  I will

go view

the vid @  


SeeingTheEveryday.com    .  REVERY for anyone feeling nauseous over our dim, sick, sinSaturat-e-d.culture.

Serve It Up

Waiting to move is taking a little toll on the Marital Contentment Dial. There's an issue under every cuppa Joe.  Roofers and plumbers and estimates, and decisions and, and, and... such a wellspring of male vs female conflict over nearly ever matter.

No wonder, then, why this was today's first click at the INbox.

MiddleChild swooped in to make sure I actually cooked with the wine, and not visa-versa

Edited down.

FamilyLife.com for the full treatment.

July 16, 2012
15 Things Wives Should Stop Doing
by Mary May Larmoyeux


"In the 1960s, The Supremes recorded their hit song “Stop! In the Name of Love!”

Can you identify?

I asked some girlfriends, “What should a wife stop doing if she wants to improve her marriage?” This list is based on their responses.

1. Stop thinking that your way is the “right” way.
2. Don’t put others before your husband. 
3. Don’t expect your husband to be your girlfriend.
4. Don’t dishonor your husband. Suggestions included: Stop all nagging and don’t correct hubby in front of others. If you finish your husband’s sentences, you may be unintentionally communicating, “I don’t really care about what you have to say.”
5. Stop expecting your husband to fail you as your dad failed your mom. 
6. Don’t put your husband on the defensive.
7. Never use sex to bargain with your husband.
8. Stop reminding your husband about things over and over. 

*** ding ding ding ***

9. Don’t make your husband earn your respect.  Many women think, I’ll respect him when he earns it. But there’s a reason that Ephesians 5:33 says, “Let the wife see that she respects her husband.”  As one friend said: “If women could learn to understand that respect is a man's native tongue, that it absolutely heals his heart and ministers to him like nothing else, it would make the biggest difference in the world.”

*** ding ding ding ***

- - Edit this to item #1 - - 

10. Stop giving your husband your long term to-do list.
11. Don’t act like your spouse is a mind reader.
12. Stop putting housework ahead of hubby. One young mom told her husband that she didn't want to make love one night because she had just changed the sheets and she wanted them to stay clean. What do you think that response said to her husband? Another woman, who puts her husband ahead of the housework, said: “Do not leave the unfolded laundry on your marriage bed.
13. Put an end to taking the lead because you think he won't take it. “The first many years of our marriage,” one wife said, “I would see what needed to be done and get frustrated that my husband would not take charge and get it done.” She went on to say that she’s changed by learning to wait on her husband’s leadership. “I really believe,” she says, “that our men don't lead because we women are too quick to jump in and take care of it all.”
Ephesians 5:23 says, “For the husband is the head of the wife even as Christ is the head of the church, his body … .”
14. Do not expect your husband to be Prince Charming.
15. Never look first to a book, a plan, or a person to fix a problem in your marriage.Instead go to God’s Word and believe and act on the things that He says. “He will lead me to any resources I need,” one woman said. “God has already given us everything we need for life and godliness (2 Peter 1:3) but we have to live according to the promises and expect Him to show up for us.”


A question
The Bible paraphrase The Message, says in 1 Corinthians 13, “Love never gives up … isn’t always ‘me first,’ … doesn’t keep score of the sins of others … trusts God always, always looks for the best.”

What do your words and actions say to your sweetheart about your love? Do you need to stop doing something in your marriage?

Before you answer,

'think it o-o-ver.' "

I LISTEN every morn'g, 8:30AM,  99.5 FM

When BIG is good

The close-in myopia of 

D'Ramsey's dystopia

Drums hard on

my immature pate;

[It REALLY only looks this bad when you mess w/ the edit feature ]

Saving up patien$e,

Tempts me with license

To cheat out of

Choosing to wait.

 So I dream up escapes,

Sometimes weekly

Or daily, this last one

To Rodeo Drive...

Where I ponder that Bigness

Isn't just business, it's

Crucial dire statements on

Mankind's heart-mind cry;

The freedom to dream there,

A birthright inbred, where

Vistas and properties

Bleed

Arboretums of spirit, that
Capably cheer up
My me-centered blinding
Child greed.

It's a Godbreath'ed faculty

Creative sparks always breed

Bigness from Bigness

Begat;

While the rest of us resent

What bigness can

Choose to spend,

Remaining but pygmies, and mean,

Instead, I am
Celebrating:

That dream of a Big new start,

Slave to a Ramsay chart,

Freed by a solstice

Of seeing

How shallow my eyes are set;

Wrestling with endless 'get,'

Mindless to

'Already have...' 

One good lifelong drag

On the lie of 'Don't have'

and I've muddied High Heaven's

Deep spring,

Where what is most keen

Can only be seen

Humbly germanating

In the deep;

Planted with errant weeds
Wanting to best compete
Watered with lemon or
Lyme, but

With summer just crouched,

 My laziness grouches

and smallness threatens
To deleaf.

If I harness a better pow'r,

Jesus' repairing hour,

Able to feed on
His Wait,

The Bigness without
May inspire me less pout,
Cooling this grieved
fevered slate,

Watching his angels craft

Rafters from whence to draft

Views of a stroll

With His 

Bigness of Soul.

On Place and Words

I'm at Mom's house up north, sitting
in her office, using a laptop bestowed
By the techiest sibling. It
Features no photo ap with which
I'm familiar;
So my strivings to ponder Mom's
Life and her living
Will
Have to post
Bare of pictures.

If our day and
My week of fix-it moments here
Were not all but predetermined,
I would imerse my heart and mind
and seive-full words
around
This place,
These times,
Those times now gone,
And Mum.

So, as she sleeps away her
Post Mass moments
To
Ready for a luncheon later,
I breath deep lungfuls of River air,
Field a call or two from
Loved Ones in my other world,

Then hurry to contrive some way
To understand this houseful
Of
Matrefacts.
On walls,
In closets, pantry, and
Garage;

They may as well be monuments to
Kitchen chairs and talking.
Essential hubs of motherhood.
This Place. Her Words.

One makes room for two.

One makes room for you.

How did I do with that
Brief window of time
When it was my turn?
I missed so many places,
So many words,
Omissions one could only see in hindsight,

But I resolve
To keep my sight
Full forward.
Prayerful
That by ones
Each generation follow,
At Christ's bidding, with
More excellence
Than preceding mothers could;

Compose.
Direct,
Conduct,
Rehearse. 

Devising ears for perfect phrasing
That,
When Christ returns,
Our symphony of family might
Be readyful
Of perfect praise and
Worship.

Or,
Will I be satisfied to sit,
A spectator
Of others' opuses.

My mom was but one canary,
Yet by singing, we might rise
Toward harmony with Him Who Calls

The Tune.

Time to go. No rewrites or proofing. Just a wish
that all my children and their cousins could
convene
Before the cross,
Agreed...




10/24/12: And here's the pic I'd liked to have posted back then, plus a few more:

Where her Dad emerged and worked. El Reno/Kingfisher, OK.

Sharing the photo of her Uncle Rob's famous painting

Ode to Creativity, Designers, and YWH

It was only right, on yesterday's 61st annual National Day of Prayer, to maintain a bedrock understanding of where Goodness comes from.  Not like the lesson doesn't beg for review every time I wind my way north on Baldwin Avenue, awestruck at the simple beauty of the mountains looming over San Gabriel Valley. If God declared everything He created to be "good," then beauty, by extension is fundamentally good. Everything beautiful is good, and everything good comes from the creative genius of the Creator, YWH.

On that annual day of prayerfully observing God's faithfulness and my need to respond to it, landscape designers and plant artists set up their wares at the L.A. County Arbo's "GROW Festival" garden show. The place was a teeming hive of electric creativity and adrenaline pounding energy.  I mean, huge piles of sand and pavers and granite and stone and bricks just flew off their pallets into an array of displays that you'd guess had been there for decades.

Surrounded by such beautiful beauty, designing designers and artful artistry, the question begs: where do these ingenious people get their ingenious ideas? I am bound by all I know of the loving Creator God to ascribe all the credit to our having been made in His image; and that befuddling concept that each one of us receives His "good gifts."  Just that some of us just get a few less than others...

How cool, if, by virtue of proximity, some wee little bit of it could rub off on me?

Crazy art installations were everywhere, too,  but my dirty gloves and ocd weeding prevented a thoroughgoing camera exploration. Even so, just gazing at these few images affords such a surge.  The artist inside is waking up.