soul food

“What do the doctors know about the needs of a man’s soul?” - Don Pedro Aragon, A Walk In The Clouds

I’ve been re-reading Thomas Moore’s Care of the Soul.  Interesting stuff, and very timely for me right now.  As we were driving home from church and dinner yesterday, I told Chris that my soul craves fried chicken. 

“I doubt very much that your soul needs fried chicken,” he said somewhat sarcastically. 

“Yes, it does.  It needs fried chicken.  It needs fresh air.  It needs campfires.”  And then I proceeded to give him the quote included above, in my best Anthony Quinn impression (which is, unfortunately, not that good.)

I don’t think we understand soul very well.  Or at least, in white bread middle America, we don’t understand soul very well.  And we understand even less about nourishment.  We’re completely confused, as a culture, about how to feed our bodies in a sustaining, healthy way.  We have a hard time figuring out what the soul is, much less what it needs.  For some reason, I’ve had this idea in the back of my mind for a few days that these two things are connected.    Our inability to nourish our souls and our inability to nourish our bodies properly. 

I know that I started losing weight and feeling better when I stopped telling my body what it should want, and started listening to what it wanted (and how much) and honoring that.  And when I stopped being dishonest and sneaky with myself regarding food, like a little kid trying to hide things from her overbearing parent. 

There’s the kernel of something useful here. 

April 30, 2007 | Filed Under the soulful life, the writing life | Leave a Comment 

superhero insanity

Well, it’s all over now, so I can talk about it.  Sorta.The “big project” I had at work was for a particular television show that revolves around the early life of a certain man of steel.  I got to research and write profiles for several characters from the show, as well as write some comments from those characters.  I got an email from the client that I’m matting and framing, complimenting me on my work.Those of you who have seen our rather extensive comic collection, including a certain death issue, and a certain autographed wedding issue understand why I was nearly wetting my pants a few weeks ago.Apparently, it’s a good time to be a comic fan.  Not only does Spiderman 3 look amazing, but they’re working on a sequel to Batman Begins and the Iron Man movie has released the first pics of Robert Downey Jr. as the boozey billionaire playboy paraplegic (how’s that for alliteration?)

April 28, 2007 | Filed Under the daily brew | 1 Comment 

back from self-imposed blogging exile

Well, I’m back.

It’s been an exhausting couple of weeks. But on the whole, it was a very worthwhile few weeks and I’ve come through them a little stronger, wiser and more prepared for life in general than I started. I won’t bore you with too many details, because honestly the details aren’t the interesting part. What’s interesting is the way that all the unrelated details, all the little situations, were so consistent in the story that they told as a whole.
A few things that I learned in the last two weeks:

  • The biggest thing I learned related to how I deal with conflict. My natural way of dealing with conflict is to avoid it.  Be a hard target, move fast, keep things light and funny.  If you have kids and watch as much Nickelodeon as I do, you may be familiar with “Avatar: The Last Airbender.”  The four different nations in the cartoon describe four different ways of dealing with conflict:  avoid (air), redirect (water), initiate (fire) and absorb (earth).  In Avatar terms, I’m an “airbender”–and the hardest thing for me is to stand my ground, refuse to back down, and refuse to retaliate, simply absorbing the conflict being thrown at me.  This is in fact diametrically opposed to the way I usually deal with conflict.  But it was extremely clear that the conflict I encountered this week, that was the ONLY right and appropriate response.  It was HARD.  I wanted to run. I wanted to fight back.  I wanted to do anything but just stand there and take it.  But that was what I knew I was being called to do.  The upside being, now I know I can do that.  I know that no one can force me to run, or to retaliate.  I imagine this will be valuable information to move into the future with.
  • I finally figured out last Sunday during worship, why I cried my eyes out the first time I watched 50 First Dates.     Every day I forget that I love Him and He loves me.  I forget.  Every. day.  And every day, He makes me fall in love with Him again.  The pastor said “We need to hear the gospel.  We need to hear it over and over again, because we’re forgetful.  We forget what we know.  We forget to live in the truth because we forget that truth.  We need to hear it repeated daily.”  And it clicked in my head, and I remembered weeping and thinking “How stupid is it to weep like this because of an Adam Sandler movie?”  But now I get it.  I’m Forgetful Lucy.  We all are.  But fortunately, every day the One who loves us remembers for us, and convinces us to fall in love with Him again.
  • The last thing I learned was that you have to first learn to treasure your life, then learn to give it away.  If you give it away before you understand what it’s worth, then you devalue it.  You don’t really know what you’re throwing away.  How many of us threw our lives away with stupid, self-destructive behaviors because we didn’t understand how much God values us?  You have to get there first.  To the point where you understand the value of your life.  Then you have to get to the next place, which is understanding the value of His life, the one He offers in exchange for yours.  Because trying to grab one while holding on to the other is an exercise in futility and frustration.  You have to be really ready to make that leap of faith that says “I understand fully what my life is worth, but I also understand that in comparison to what I stand to gain by laying it down, there’s no question.”

So that was my past couple of weeks.  Well, that and watching a couple of new movies.  The Prestige and Casino Royale–both quite entertaining.  Hope your last few weeks have been interesting as well.  ;)  May we all live in interesting times.

April 25, 2007 | Filed Under the soulful life | Leave a Comment 

sabbatical

I feel like my posting has been a bit infrequent lately, and what I’ve posted hasn’t been terribly interesting.I feel like I need to drop back a little and refocus.I’ve gotten a few more large writing projects at work, so I’m going to take an official “sabbatical” from the blog for a week or so.  But before I go, I have to share this little tidbit.I just found out that the producer of a very popular television show is going to be reading (and critiqueing) my writing in the next two weeks.   (I’m not writing for the show itself–I’m writing for a online marketing campaign for the show, but still.)I admit to being more than a little freaked out by this.  I spent most of yesterday’s drive home repeating “[Client which I can’t name] is going to be looking at my writing.  Oh crap…” like a mantra.And I would like to send a personal shout-out to my husband Chris and my sister Jen for talking me down from my mental ledge on the cell phone…  Chris, no matter what, you’ve always believed in me.  Thank you.  Jen- thanks for the support and encouragement.  And for mentioning that Johnny Depp is from Owensboro.  ;)Have a great week, everybody!

April 3, 2007 | Filed Under the daily brew | 1 Comment 

getting healthy

I was on the Indiana DNR website today, looking up the regulations for fishing licenses.   Santa brought Josh a Rocket Fishing Rod, and he’s driving all of us nuts, asking to go fishing.  So anyway, after determining that Josh doesn’t need a license until he’s 17, I found a little Flash video of Peyton Manning promoting the governor’s fitness initiative.

I’m always a little behind.  The program, INshape Indiana, ran from January to March 25, the “10 in 10 Challenge.”  The idea being, make small lifestyle changes in nutrition, activity level, and smoking (if applicable) and lose 10 pounds in 10 weeks.  Even though the Challenge officially ended last week, all the resources are still available if you sign up.  Each week you receive an email with that week’s suggestions.  If you started right now, your 10 week challenge would run until June 8. 

I started getting serious about a healthier lifestyle last fall.  Since September, I’m down from about 190 pounds (and you have no idea how hard it is for me to blog that number) to about 175 now.  I feel 110% better than I did last summer.  However, I’ve “plateaued” at 175-178 for the last two or three weeks.  And my real goal is to lose another 10-20 pounds. 

So Chris and I teamed up yesterday.  He cleaned out the fridge (including washing the shelves–YAY CHRIS!) and I went to Wal-Mart (which is in the middle of moving every frickin’ thing in the store… grrr… ) and bought plenty of healthy, tasty food for all of us.  We’re making a commitment to walking outdoors and being more active as a family.  

April 1, 2007 | Filed Under the soulful life | 1 Comment