I wish I was a punk.

"When the head of state didn't play guitar
Not everybody drove a car
When music really mattered and when radio was king
When accountants didn't have control
And the media couldn't buy your soul
And computers were still scary and we didn't know everything

Oh I wish I was a punk rocker with flowers in my hair
In '77 and '69 revolution was in the air
I was born too late into a world that doesn't care
Oh I wish I was a punk rocker with flowers in my hair..."


Random song discovery of the day for the hippie in all of us (thanks to my new GMA friend Betsy and her MySpace song with the intriguing title):

Sandi Thom - I Wish I Was a Punk Rocker (With Flowers in the Hair)


The iTunes Free Single this week isn't bad either...
"Vega4 offers up a bit of positive affirmation with the track "Life is Beautiful... If you like the grandiose, sweeping nature of the best of Coldplay or Snow Patrol, we think you'll enjoy this."

Yes, yes I do. Thank you Apple. It was about time for a really good new freebie.

If you're an iTunes person reading this before April 30, give it a try. It's hard to argue with free.

***

GMA was a great, tiring crazy weekend. Had lots of fun, took lots of pictures, and ate too much food. I'm convinced that food and traveling are very closely linked. (Random Papa Johns at 12:30 in the morning... woohoo!)

Pictures to come... after I get around to downloading/sorting/uploading them.

Some people collect stamps.

I collect quotes. Here are a few that have been e-mailed to me and/or stuck on my computer monitor in the past week. :)

"You know, I'm sick of following my dreams, man. I'm just going to ask where they're going and hook up with 'em later." ~ Mitch Hedburg (comedian)

"A friend is one before whom I may think aloud." ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson (author)

And the one that adorns my monitor right now and can be a little *too* accurate sometimes...

"One of the advantages of being disorderly is that one is constantly making exciting discoveries." ~ A.A. Milne (British author and playwright)

I am not going to call this "Leeeeaaaaving on a jet plane" but....

That's what it is.

Yep, off to Music City U.S.A. tomorrow! It's GMA Week in Nashville, and I'm going to my first ever Radio Boot Camp for the weekend. (Does this mean I'm a professional radio girl now? :))

Returning Monday. With pictures and stories about riding the elevator with famous people, I'm sure.

Now that I think about it... I wish I'd thought to make an iTunes playlist of flying songs for the trip. Oh well.

You say "introvert" like it's a bad thing...

Once upon a time (actually more like last year), a very extroverted friend said, "Hey, I got a question for you." She pulled up a chair, looked me straight in the eye, and with serious look of awe and curiousity asked, "What's it like to be an introvert?"

What indeed? It made me laugh. I fumbled for an explanation, but you can't explain these things.

But I like it when I find someone who can. When I first read "An Introvert's Confession" several months ago, I found myself inwardly screaming, "Yes! That's me! Somebody gets it!"

"Finally, there was no more striving to be the socially confident guy, or to be the outgoing, “evangelistic” Christian, or to be something that was impossible for me to be. I could be me and not only that, but that I, quiet, reflective, socially awkward, introverted me, gave God glory not in spite of all these things but because of them. I was an introvert, and that seemed beautiful to me."

It has been my experience that people seem to balk at the idea of being considered an introvert... as if it were a bad thing. I guess there's a part of all of us that wants to be fun and outgoing. Even one dictionary definition I found carries a negative and even slightly condescending tone ("a person who tends to shrink from social contacts and to become preoccupied with their own thoughts" What? :P)

But you know what? Even if the world does favor the agressive, the exciting, the bold... being quiet and reflective isn't such a bad thing. Maybe the strength is from another place... used in a different way to accomplish a different purpose. I don't know. I'm still trying to figure out what that is.

I do recommend reading the article. If you're an introvert, maybe you'll be screaming that too (inwardly. because we're quiet like that.) If you're an extrovert, read it anyway... and maybe the rest of us weirdos will make just a little more sense now. :)

Tiny Pieces of Thread

In the name of being all hip and crafty (or at least wanting to be) I spent my Sunday evening ripping seams out of old jeans. And cleaning up all the tiny pieces of thread on my sister's floor. (oopsie.)

Best case scenario: I'll get a cool skirt and DIY points all for the price of heavy-duty thread.
Worst case scenario: they'll go in the trash... like last time.

"If I can ease one Life the Aching..." (or: Band-aids and Empathy)

Maybe I was imbalanced or at least overly-sensitive already, or maybe it was a culmination of a lot of other things in my head. Perhaps it was even a revelation. Whatever it was, I've never found the Publix checkout line as depressing as I did tonight.

Have you ever stopped to look -- I mean really look -- at the magazines in the checkout, poised and ready to lure the casual shoppers with their colorful type and sordid tales of scandalous celebrity misadventures? As I went through the line to pay for tomorrow's lunch, I felt nearly sick with sadness about this... and wondered when and why our culture became so fascinated with other people's pain.

Morbid curiousity? Or could it just be that our own worlds are so fractured we need the assurance that even the ones with fame and money on their side are equally in need of repair?

Even sadder than this... was that I'd barely noticed before. Intellectually, I've always found it disgusting, but this time I really felt it.

I thought about it a lot while making dinner... thought about how fallen our world is, and full of people who are broken and dirty and tired. How I too am among them, but somehow, sadly, I can all too easily forget that.

I want to be a healer. It's in my nature to want to "fix" everything. I'd like to change the world and clean things up. I'd like to put things back together. I'd like to be a cure.

But I can't. None of us can do it all.... I'm well aware that the most I can offer is a Band-aid and empathy. But somehow, that's okay. No one person can do it all.

Which brings me back to Miss Emily, my poetic heroine: "If I can stop one heart from breaking... I shall not live in vain."

Or as said in other words from Donald Miller's Blue Like Jazz: "The human struggle bothered Rick, as if something was broken in the world and we were supposed to hold our palms against the wound."

What if it were as simple as finding the broken places, and just holding them... putting pressure in the right places... just to help the healing begin? What if changing the world was as simple as all of us doing that where we are?

I'd like to be a part of the change... but I'm not sure where to start. But maybe it is as simple as listening to someone who's had a bad day without judging or feeling the need to solve everything with a few words of trite advice. At least it could be a place to begin.

I hope I don't forget how I felt tonight. Of course I will... because I'm broken and dirty too, and only the grace of God can make that right. But I hope whenever I get too complacent, something will shake me out again and remind me what I'm here for.

Because sometimes... a Band-aid and empathy can be more than enough.

"I wanna wake up kicking and screaming..."

New video for Switchfoot's "Awakening." Also check out www.switchfoot.com/awakening for the concept/making-of story.

The animated TV is pretty darn impressive.

raindown.

"Can you imagine the hopelessness of trying to live a spiritual life when you're secretly looking up at the skies not for illumination or direction but to gauge, miserably, the odds of rain? Can you imagine how discouraging it was for me to live in fear of weather, of drizzle or downpour? Because Christianity is about water: 'Everyone that thirsteth, come ye to the waters.' It's about baptism, for God's sake. It's about full immersion, about falling into something elemental and wet. Most of what we do in worldly life is geared toward our staying dry, looking good, not going under. But in baptism, in lakes and rain and tanks and fonts, you agree to do something that's a little sloppy because at the same time it's so holy, and absurd. It's about surrender, giving in to all those things we can't control; it's a willingness to let go of balance and decorum and get drenched.

There's something so tender about this to me, about being willing to have your makeup wash off, your eyes tear up, your nose start to run. It's tender partly because it harkens back to infancy, to your mother washing your face with love and lots of water, tending to you, making you clean all over again..."

~ Traveling Mercies by Anne Lamott

***

Splashing in puddles... the delight of the open sky... and the whole world looks and feels and even smells new. Yet we all grow up, and we hide under our umbrellas, duck and run for cover at the first threat of drops from the sky...

I wonder... when did we become so afraid of the rain?


(Last night I read that passage from Traveling Mercies, and, being a rain and water kind of person, I found it beautiful and it stuck in my mind. Especially with the off and on rain today. Such a good book... but I should probably save my open admiration for her writing for an entry in the book blog :))