p.s.

i promise that once the wedding planning stuff is over i will be able to have a normal conversation that does not include any of the following:

• what my "colors" are
• seating arrangements
• getting addresses for invitations
• and so much more...

i would love to talk about:

• traveling mercies and why i'm expectantly awaiting Anne Lamott on April 7
• how every morning i will the tulips and daffodils that have sprouted outside my house to stay alive...that i'm hoping just as they are that eventually the sun will come out to stay
• the blood red sky that i saw out my window last night as the sun was setting behind the lake
• how i'm struggling to get out of the pattern of my upbringing when it comes to my relationship with food

soon...

planning is so not my thing...

so, i need to figure out what music i want for the wedding and i'm having a hard time putting my arms around it.

Is "And So It Goes" (Billy Joel) a bit too sad for the special day? because i do believe it gets the message across.

here's what i know so far:
the lord's prayer (hopefully sung by the one and only Dana Baker, if he gets back to me with a "yes". so, if you'd like to help in the coercing, please feel free.)
pastoral symphony from The Messiah (for the girls to walk in)

a few considerations have been "brother, let me be your servant" and "bridge over troubled water"

any advice?

i'll be there

there are times when i think i work at the best place ever...


A CONVERSATION WITH ANNE LAMOTT
Hosted by Timothy K. Beal
Friday, April 7, 4:30 pm
Amasa Stone Chapel, 10940 Euclid Avenue

Doors open to Case community members at 3:30 pm, and to the general public at 4:00 pm

Sponsored by the Rose Wohlgemuth Weisman Women's Voices Lecture Series.

“Reading Lamott is like having a chat with one of the angels,
a smarter, wittier one.” — The Denver Post


Anne Lamott writes and speaks about subjects that begin with capital letters: Alcoholism, Motherhood, Jesus. She does so armed with self-effacing humor and ruthless honesty. Since her first novel, which she wrote for her father when he was diagnosed with brain cancer, Anne Lamott writes about loss – loss of loved ones and loss of personal control. She doesn’t try to sugar-coat the sadness, frustration, and disappointment, but tells her stories with compassion and a pure voice. Anne Lamott says, “I have a lot of hope and a lot of faith and I struggle to communicate that.” In her books and in person, Anne Lamott lifts, comforts, and inspires, all the while keeping us laughing.

Anne Lamott is the author four best-selling books of non-fiction: Operating Instructions, an account of life as a single mother during her son’s first year; Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life, a guide to writing and the challenges of a writer’s life; Traveling Mercies, a collection of autobiographical essays on faith; and Plan B: Further Thoughts on Faith. She is author of six novels: Hard Laughter, Rosie, Joe Jones, All New People, and Crooked Little Heart. A Guggenheim Fellow, she has taught at U.C. Davis and at writing conferences across the country. Lamott’s biweekly online diary in Salon Magazine, called “Word by Word,” was voted “The Best of the Web” by Time magazine. Filmmaker Freida Mock (who won an Academy Award for her documentary on Maya Lin) has made a documentary on Anne Lamott, “Bird by Bird with Annie” (1999).

Making a Fast

LORD LET ME MAKE A FAST,
from all those things
that have filled my belly
for so long.
Bloated from excesses,
slowed and dulled and
numbed in spirit.
Lord, let me make a fast
from those POISONS I have called
nourishment,
from the POVERTY I have called
wealth,
from that SHALLOWNESS I have called
depth,
from any MEAGERNESS I have called
abundance.
I am ready to go out with You
to be emptied
in whatever desert will be mine.
Lord let me make a fast.
May I fast from SPEED.
May I drive more slowly.
May I remove these shoes that help me walk
quickly,
and with great purpose -
and may my feet contact your earth,
slowly
and
with great care,
with gentleness
and
with much respect.
May I walk as your calm presence in this world.
May my voice be lower, slower.
May it be a voice more understood
by those whose ears are failing;
a safer voice that does not make the listener
ask again,
a voice that comforts in its tones.
May I be your slow and soothing, still small voice.
May there be breeze where I have passed,
not cyclone,
not chaos,
not whirlwind sense of things of great import,
but only the echoing whisper of
where you have walked.
Lord, may I fast from SPEED.

May I fast from BUSYNESS.
May I learn to bless my simple be-ing,
and may I come to know that be-ing
as the fertile soil that roots and grounds
my do-ing.
May my days be less full, less likely to implode,
collapsing in on themselves, a black hole
dense with all those tasks, commitments,
things
I simply cannot cease to do,
for fear the world - indeed, the universe -
will
cease along with them.
Instead, may there be holes and gaps,
may there be light,
great periods of wicked, wasteful idleness,
that devil's workshop
transformed as, slowly, I come to trust
that You are there
in the quiet,
in the calm,
in the vacuum
of nothing planned to do
but be alive,
that being quite enough.
Lord, may I fast from BUSYNESS.

Lord, may I fast from FEAR.
May I come out from my hiding.
May I know sun and snow,
wind and rain,
feel heat and cold
as armor drops
to only such protection as I need,
no less, but most assuredly
no more.
May I befriend the shadow.
May I coax it out of hiding,
remove its ban of excommunication,
bring it back from exile.
May I embrace that darker side
that I have banished for so long,
beaten down, denied,
and my I own it fully.
May I give shadow energy a voice,
and come to know that healing lies in unity,
polarities in tension,
but
never in denial.
Lord, may I fast from FEAR.

May fasting time be sacrament,
outward sign, inward grace;
empty belly, an open space wherein You
might dwell
replacing illusion of fullness.
LORD LET ME MAKE A FAST.

by Gloria Carpeneto