The Mosher Pit

I’ve been away all weekend with my church group, and i come back to find that Octavia Butler has died?

I’m heartbroken. I had the opportunity to interview her in 2003 or so, and she gave me some of the best writing advice ever.

Given that I’m spread out all over the blog-a-verse at this point, I will try to remember to post a deviathan digest because this is my most general readership. I’m not _generally_ reading logged in as deviathan anymore, but i do try to tune in from time to time.

1. I’ve had an essay on temptation accepted for the next issue of Geez Magazine, the faith magazine edited by a couple of adbusters alumni who also happen to be gen-x mennonites. If I were anabaptist, I’d want to be a mennonite.

2. We spent the better part of last weekend putting my parents’ house back together. Pics are up at my flickr account.

3. The annoying co-worker I used to allude to from time to time? After leaving for a month to have surgery and calling last week to say she’d be back this past Tuesday, she submitted her resignation instead. We, uh, celebrated.

4. K. got another D in English on his report card. Maybe if I can get him to write his English response journals on LJ, we’ll have better results.

5. I spent this weekend, as I mentioned above, on a spiritual retreat. Made a couple of new friends and got closer to the group in general. The best part is that we stayed here, and we’re going to help with groundskeeping and other odd jobs around the place, since one of the aforementioned new friends helps the owner with that.

Not much else to report. How are you guys?

Posted in Books, Deaths, Faith, Speculative Fiction, Writing by: Helen
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FIVE PLACES YOU HAVE LIVED:
1. Philadelphia, PA
2. Middletown, VA
3. Colonial Heights, VA
4. Narberth, PA
5. Fairfax, VA

FIVE THINGS YOU WERE DOING TEN YEARS AGO:
1. Living with Justin in Charlottesville
2. Getting a divorce
3. Driving buses for a living
4. Majoring in Anthropology at UVA
5. Fighting for custody of my son

FIVE THINGS YOU LIKE TO SNACK ON:
1. ice cream
2. cedar’s hummus and pita chips
3. pie
4. chips and pico de gallo
5. pizza

FIVE SONGS YOU KNOW THE WORDS TO:
1. The entire catalog of pre-1992 U2
2. Hungry Like the Wolf (Duran Duran)
3. Kids in America (Kim Wilde)
4. The Mummer’s Dance (Loreena McKennitt)
5. Talk To Me (Peter Gabriel)

FIVE THINGS YOU WOULD DO WITH A MILLION DOLLARS:
1. buy a house
2. send mistermosher to college
3. send K to college
4. fix up house
5. fix up car

FIVE THINGS YOU WOULD NEVER WEAR AGAIN:
1. black lipstick
2. size 6
3. a drugstore brand of foundation
4. large-gauge earrings
5. platform boots, alas

FIVE BAD HABITS:
1. stacking stuff on horizontal surfaces
2. not putting my clothes in the laundry basket
3. accumulating handbags
4. futzing with my cat’s paws
5. procrastinating

FIVE THINGS YOU ENJOY DOING:
1. knitting
2. driving on country roads
3. photography
4. baking
5. blogsurfing

FIVE FAVORITE TOYS:
1. the borrowed iBook
2. library card
3. the dvd player
4. a kitchenaid stand mixer, which will be the first thing on my wedding registry since I don’t have one right now
5. knitting needles

Posted in Memery by: Helen
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WNC: Event Video Archives

Well, well. All the nifty events I’ve missed at the National Cathedral are right here. Future mister, in particular, you’ll want to take a look at this:

Daniel Goleman, Jon Kabat-Zinn and Thomas Keating, with Lynn Neary
Meditation on the Move: From Monastery to Lab to Main Street
November 11, 2005

Posted in !!!!!, Cathedrals, Faith by: Helen
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File under: friday-five, meme

RevGalBlogPals: RevGal Friday Five: So Long, Farewell:

1. How do you say goodbye to someone you will see again soon?
Depends on who it is. With the future mister and ds, it tends to be “love you!” and for ds, “see you this/next weekend” tends to go with it. “See ya!” or “Talk to you soon!” for just about everyone else, I think.

2. What is your favorite foreign word for ‘goodbye?’

3. Have you ever planned a special farewell for someone, or had one planned for you?
When I left Temple University, they had a going away party for me that touched me deeply just.. because.

4. What is the hardest goodbye you have had to say?
Not involving a death? It was a metaphorical goodbye, in a way. To Justin, an ex-boyfriend I still love dearly, when I realized I had to let him go.

Involving a death? Saying goodbye to my grandmother at her 1999 funeral.

5. What is the most romantic goodbye you have seen in a movie?
Gosh, I dunno. I mostly watch science fiction-y stuff, so it’s likely I’ll say something kinda Joss Whedon-oriented, but that’s technically television. And I honestly am drawing a complete blank, because romance, for me, is tension, and so goodbyes tend to be unhappy ones.

And a Bonus question for Musical Theatre geeks: Which Von Trapp child would you like to be in ‘So Long, Farewell?’”

I want to be the director, so… Maria!

Posted in Random by: Helen
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An ongoing theme in my work lately—my vocational work, that is—is that of listening. It came up last night while I filled Fr. Jim in on all the directions I feel pulled, including toward ministry. There was so much to talk about, largely because I had never had a chance to talk to him about, well, me, and the more self-absorbed side of me enjoys nothing more.

As a result, I have to be conscious of listening, even to listen. I’m one of those people whose ability to empathize rests solely in my ability to connect your experience to something I’ve experienced, and if you’re not savvy in the ways of dealing with people like me you’d mistake us for being utterly self-absorbed because we always have to make everything about us. But no, that just our way of connecting, and while it might be a bit graceless, it doesn’t lack grace.

I struggle to listen. Sometimes it’s struggling to listen to, and sometimes it’s struggling to listen for. It doesn’t help that I’m going deaf. (Children, wear your earplugs at loud rock shows. Every time. Like brushing and flossing.)

I stopped by the library on the way home and picked up a book by Phyllis Tickle. She is one of those folks who, as I suspect and Jim confirmed, lives out her vocation in much the same way that I think I am called to do. He also recommended Nora Gallagher, whose work I have not read, and Anne Lamott, whose “Plan B” was probably not what I should have started with. But I don’t know that he was recommending that I read them; he was just identifying how I might live out my call.

Here are the things I have to remember from last night’s meeting:
1. Pray.
1a. Listen.
2. Meditate.
2a. Listen.
3. Keep writing.
3a. Listen.
4. Develop circles of trust.
4a. Listen.
5. Listen.
5a. Discern.

I have a whole lotta listening to go on. I have never been terribly good at it, but getting good takes practice, right?

Posted in Features, Life, Reflections by: Helen
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email post flaked out, so this may post twice. if so, apologies, but it’s short, I promise.

but…

am i the only one that when i see “big mommas house” on the movie marquee, I think, “laß es raus”?

Posted in Music, Random by: Helen
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I got K a mad libs calendar for Xmas.

tonight’s grand hit:

The hardest thing about golf is controlling your bladder.

that was DFH’s contribution, and they spent the next ten minutes trying to get me back off the floor.

Posted in LOLZ! by: Helen
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I find myself reading the Revealer more and more often, and one of the things I feel I should draw attention to is that regardless of what is happening in the ECUSA, I will always sit on the left of the fundie camp.

Sam Brownback Is A Fruit
02 February 2006

On biblical literacy, bigotry, the price of grain, real estate in Tbilisi, free market cheetahs, and the secret work of committees.

By Jeff Sharlet

Although he’s firmly opposed to both homosexuality and crude slurs such as “fruit,” Senator Sam Brownback won’t mind me saying he is one. That’s because the senator uses the word in the biblical sense — as in the results by which you shall know the merit of an idea or the character of a person. Brownback, the most ambitious — and maybe most powerful — religious conservative in U.S. politics, is one of the fruits by which we can evaluate the health of democracy in America.

Read the whole thing:
The Revealer: Sam Brownback Is A Fruit

Posted in News and Links, Politics, Religion by: Helen
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… as A. the art director goes to make chai — We’ve been having a rough time of things, as we are down an editor and a designer. so back and forth on one section, laughing about it, trying hard to make the best of things when the head of one section comes down and asks for her piece to be completely rearranged.

So I say to A: “If at first you don’t succeed, chai and chai again.”

Posted in About Me, Random, Yay! by: Helen
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Gallycat’s Abbey – February 2nd 2003

Candlemas has a very special meaning to me, because it happens to be the day I came back to faith. It was very wobbly and shaky at first.

I thought to write a reflection, but I feel like what I wrote on the day it happened is enough.

Happy third birthday, little light of mine.

Update: I’ll be at the Candlemas service at St. Paul’s, K St. tonight.

Posted in Random by: Helen
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