ranting & raving

there was a headline in the "news" today that said, "kirstie alley vows to get her bikini body back!".

kirstie alley is 58. why should a woman who is 58 - or 28 or 18 for that matter! - need a "bikini body"? surely as women we have more to offer the world than that? surely our lives matter more, mean more, have more fulfillment in them than that?

when i am 58, i want to have a life that is so full and joyous that it wouldn't even occur to me that swimsuit season is coming. i want friends & grandchildren & curtis & my brothers with their families; i want meaningful work & thoughtful conversations & new ideas; i want to be so much more than the sum of my physical parts!

this made me sad today. for kirstie, and for all the women & girls who can't seem to look beyond the size of their jeans to see where & why they matter. frankly, it's all too often me, too. india arie, in one of her songs, sings, "i am not my hair/i am not this skin/i am the soul that lives within".

exactly.

will starve for food

14,000 children die every day from hunger & malnutrition across our world. the cost of feeding one of these beautiful lives for a month is only $30. so kyra & i, and our student ministries group, is participating in the world vision 30 hour famine this weekend. we will go without food for 30 hours to get a sense of the hunger that faces these children, and kyra is also raising sponsorship. if you'd like to contribute, you can email me at raemulder@gmail.com, and i will give our address so you can send a check (made out to world vision)!

ghandi once said, "there are people in the world so hungry, that God cannot appear to them except in the form of bread." i want to be that expression of God to them. how about you?

it makes my heart happy!

these are the glory days. 85 in the heat of the afternoon, but 55 at night... windows open at dusk so we can wake up to the smell of fresh green things - my house smells alive. chilly toes on the linoleum, hot coffee and radiant sunshine. then later in the morning the windows all close, keeping in the cool and out the heat, but if you step out onto the porch your whole body relaxes into the heat & light of the sun. glory days.

and our new roof is currently sitting on the driveway, about to be put onto the top of our house!! woot woot! WOOT!

there's a new man in town....

and he's dreamy.... big & broad shouldered, long eyelashes, funny & sweet... ah, arnold!


i met him this weekend, while i was at the radiant retreat with a fantastic group of girls. the camp keeps a small "petting zoo" kind of farm, and arnold is an 800lb part of it. he's been raised since he was a wee little pig to be a pet, and he is very friendly and comes when you call him... so funny! but the best part of this story is that he likes to eat eggs, and the chickens in the barn just happen to lay them by the fistful! the camp director, dennis, told me that if i found any eggs i could collect them up and feed them to arnold... and so i did! not only me, but almost every girl in our cabin got to gently drop the egg into his (albeit disgusting) mouth and watch him merrily crunch them down and start sniffing the air for more! it may or may not have been the highlight of my weekend!

the first time i held my egg over the fence, he was 50ft away from me. persistent "aaarnooold! here pig pig pig!" got his attention, and with great effort he turned his body and wedged himself between two trees, stopping for a satisfying scratch on one of them, then slowly but determinedly hauled his bulk over to me, sniffing the air with his pink nose - the only part of him not covered in mud on a very hot day. as i placed the egg on the cusp of his lips, he almost seemed to smile... i could have sat all day.

thanks for the memories, arnold...

hell hath no fury...

i wish you could see her when she's indignant. feet planted wide, hands on hips, eyes wide & flashing, tilting her entire being toward you in the passion of her argument. it's all i can do not to laugh out loud - she gets really pissed off when i laugh.

most recently this happened after i finally broke down to parental cliches and said, "you are going to have to learn that the world does not revolve around you."

this stopped her for only a moment before she "assumed the position" and spat out the words, "are you trying to tell me the world revolves around grown ups?!"

you can see why i have a hard time not laughing.

"well, yes. as a matter of fact it does revolve around grown ups."

"that's not right, either, because God made everyone equal!" oh, if only you could see the righteous fury in her eyes!

biting my cheeks not to grin, "true - he did. it's not that you aren't equal, meg. it's that you are still learning. you don't yet know everything you need to know to be counted as a grown up."

if she tilts any farther forward i swear she will fall over. " i know everything i need to know!"

"really? are you going to pay the bills? get the groceries? make dinner? make decisions about our immigration?"

"i can do all those things!" but her tilt is a little less vigorous.

finally, i couldn't hold it in. i laughed. and, oh, was she angry! someday her passion and willingness to argue her case will change the world for the better - when she's sitting on the supreme court, or petitioning for aid for developing nations. but right now, she's only 9, and i don't care what she says. the world does not revolve around her. it revolves around me. ;)

good morning, world!

as we ate our lunch yesterday, curtis complained, "the birds are starting to drive me crazy in the morning." for a moment, i thought he meant our stupid birds, but no, he meant the actual, outside birds.

i wanted to cry, "blasphemy!", and stone him - but there is a serious lack of stones in neo japan.

summer is edging into my yard... the birds in the morning singing their psalter to the dawn, the frogs at night, honking and barking in the dark, the giant bugs that occasionally find their way into the house much to everyone's dismay... there is perhaps nothing more truly beautiful than north carolina in the early summer. the back so lush with the new, bright green leaves it seems tropical, the azaleas heavy with blooms - add to that the promise of what is pushing up through the dirt: my lilies, budlea, gardenia... my garden is going to be a riot of color and fragrance!

so let the birds sing! let them wake us up entirely too early! let the frogs croak their drunken songs and keep us up late! spring is here, and summer is coming - God is in his heaven and all is right with the world! :)

maybe, just maybe...

we traditionally read it as "the reinstatement of peter". a liturgy of sorts between the risen Jesus and peter, who denied him... three "do you love me?"s for three denials. but maybe...

peter gets off the boat. there is Jesus, on the beach waiting. "peter, do you love me?"
"yes, Lord"

curtis comes home from work, i am on the porch waiting. "curtis, do you love me?"
"yes, rachel."

a moment later, Jesus stirs the coals on the fire, turning the fish, lost in thought. then, "peter, do you love me?"
"yes, Lord, you know i love you!"

i am making dinner, and my heart is flimsy. i leave the stove to touch curtis' arm. "curtis, really? do you love me?"
"rachel, you know i love you!"

once more, with the dawn rising over the water and the smell of the sea in the air, Jesus catches his eye. "peter, do you love me more than these?"
"Lord! you know i love you more than anything!"

i lean my forehead against his chest, my words muffled, "curtis, do you love me really? forever?"
he wraps me up, leaning his head on my head, "rachel, i love you. i love you forever."

about this passage, ellen davis writes, "were it any other speaker, we would not hesitate to recognize the poignancy in the question, and the anxious doubt, especially following a betrayal."

even the second half of Jesus's words to peter - "then feed my sheep" - almost read as a plea from the one who must leave to the one who will be left to carry on. it kept me up last night, as i was reminded of the agonizing choice parents must make when they choose guardians for their children. if i die, who loves me enough to love my children enough? who knows me enough to tell my children about me, tell them how much i loved them, to share my stories & keep me alive in their minds? who loves me enough to raise them up the way i would want them to be raised? who could possibly be that trustworthy?

Jesus chooses peter - but first, "peter, do you love me?" then, "please, peter, feed my sheep... tell them my story... tell them i love them... remind them... take care of them..." there is more going on here than a stoic liturgy on the sand. maybe, just maybe, we see a bit of the vulnerability of God, the nakedness of Jesus' heart... "do you love me?"