I can't even count how many people have said nice things this week everywhere.

Words are units of energy.

Either lifting

or pressing to extinction the heart that gathers them.
We have been listening carefully and speaking even more carefully because there is a heart on the other end of that line.

This week the world found wings in your words because you chose compassion over competition.

Will you join me tomorrow and say nice things to everyone everywhere?

Love,
Lisa

What's Big at the Farm? Yep. Dinosaurs.

"You know you're eating a dinosaur right now?"
I look down at my chicken strip then back up at Nora, incredulous.
"Chickens are dinosaurs."

That's right, folks.  Dinosaur fever has broken loose here at our household.  Saturday we visited the museum at UNL filled with bones and display cases and...

I loved it.  I realized while walking through that I don't get out much.  I could feel entire regions of wonder lighting up in my brain.  This feels good, I thought to myself as I stared up and through the graceful curl of mastodon tusks, wondered at the fossilized trilobites, turned bright inside like the minerals that glowed under the black light.

Today Nora and I played our version of The Dinosaurs Meet the Ice Age.  Here you go.  And, yes, that is a frozen block of ice.  We had to plan ahead for this one.  "Gee, Carl.  What is that?"  "Um, I think it's a giant ice cube, Larry."  "We're doomed!  DOOMED!"

Reminder to self:  Be wondered by life because this is part of knowing God.

Littles

Sponges rubber-banded to our feet as we dance clean Nora's bedroom floor

A prayer from a friend, a prayer to shape my week

Missing my sisters and knowing this is love

Schoolwork and laundry and sorting through the hazardous piles of "stuff" that collect when one is too busy to put things away

How much I love steamed broccoli with butter and salt

Not even close to being ready for all that the week holds but knowing He shapes my days and if I keep my eye on Him, all is well and all is well and all is well

Not missing a Bible study in the morning for many, many, many weeks now

Comforting Nora when she can't sleep, how she noticed the plants needed water, how she talk-plays with dinosaurs

Love and Late Night Laundry

Walking into the mud room tonight, the smell of laundry soap reminds me of Grandma's house on Mondays, how the dryer vent was beside the door, and before you even set foot in her house, you could smell the clean, slightly floral scent of her work.  Grandma always ironed clothing and linens so flat, you could slide them under the door, and sometimes when I use one of the potholders she made, the heat will remind the fabric of that same smell, and there she is.  And there I am.

Tonight I'm sorting through the garbage bags of clothes passed down from Nora's three older girl cousins.  This is how I've dressed her for most of her life, wrapped in fabrics filled with memories and the smell of the different detergents each of my sisters use.

We made a run to Lincoln with Grandma and Grandpa today, picking out eight or so pairs of leggings that will be mixed and matched with the short sleeved shirts she's inherited and a few others bought new today.

When I was a kid, I was asked a lot about when I was expecting the flood--you know, because all of my pants were what we called "high water" pants.  Do you still call them that today?  I've been talking about discourse communities with my comp class, and they'd never heard "gag me with a spoon" before.  The times, they are a' changin'.

What I'm really enjoying right now is the quiet of the house and the sound of the dryer running late into the night, how Nora is sleeping peaceful in her new T. Rex t-shirt, and how everything smells of love.

Robins and Chalkboards

While I've heard reports of robins from others, I had yet to see one until today.  The burning orange chest shuttled clear as day across the field.  And then I remembered the story Grandma Smith would tell us of how the robin got its orange feathers while sitting too close to the fire that glowed in the manger the night Jesus was born.  I want my own heart to burn the same way because I can't do this alone, and I wasn't meant to.  None of us were.  So I will pull myself up to the Light of His love and I will give up my awkard and painful attempts to be perfect, to be good, to be right, to be respected, to make things go the way I think they should.

Because wasn't this the lesson in the classroom Tuesday?  The one that left me stripped down, afraid, heart shaking and suddenly so self-aware I wished for one of those buttons to push, the kind that opens up the trap door below you, and you drop out of sight.  But this is the business of the teacher, too.  The business of opening your hand and asking that they all gather round to see the same miracle you've seen in the story, in the poem, in the lessons that ultimately come down to whether or not we will repond with competition or compassion.  And how important it is to me.

Or, as I was reminded, how important I am to myself, and it was this very thing that allowed me to forget the real lesson, the subject I was teaching and think only of how I was failing them somehow.

Tomorrow, without a doubt, I will enter the room again, and I will do my best to listen, to respond with patience but most importantly, to find a way for all of us to gather with our hearts exposed, not to my "brilliance" or my "insight" or my "humor" but to the Light of Another who owns my words, my joy, my sorrow and my salvation.  Let all wisdom point to Christ.

She Heaved Silent

Beside the stove in the kitchen, tears erased with a hiss

And her hair fell forward to hide it.  Bread rising still and

Outside the clean, wet apron bent over the wire in the wind

The plains threw like a straight ,cold knife

That named its edge by the divisions it made

between mother and child or father

And daughter or wife and husband

How she needed even this domestic miracle, the bread

Rising, to remind her to lift her head

.

The apron slaps.  The white sun marking lines on the vinegar scrubbed

Floors where she'd discovered new creaks beside the old ones,

Those she'd memorized so as not to wake them when passing through the hall.

Do you see the soul thin woman in her white bleached night

Gown working her feet silently toe to heal down the worn wood

To the back door where she'd stretch moon-full

And stealing tomorrow's rest for a moment late at night

In the biting snow that seemed to wash her clear inside?

She thought the snow looked like angels' tears

But they might not have been.

She wanted to talk to them about

Doing God's work.  She sometimes

Wasn't sure if she'd gotten it right.

And the apron lifts itself from the line, catches

above in the pin oak still wearing

leaves through the winter that won't be gathered

until she's sure they've fallen undressed.  Only

then will she go to them scratching her name

hard into the bark with the bread knife after she's raked

every crumbling heart she discarded into a pile she can burn

warming herself against another winter like the one

she didn't know she'd live through.

But she probably did, didn't she.

I'll Fly Away

Tonight Star Belle played a set for the volunteer firemen of Beaver Crossing.  The kids sat eating at a fold out table beside us while we played, and I looked over and winked at Nora, and she winked back.  Later when I looked at her again, she was eating the noodles I'd spooned onto her plate, and I told God how much I appreciated that she liked them (she's going through a picky-eater phase).  I was thinking all of this while my mouth was singing other words and my hands were strumming chords.  And later yet, I glanced her way and she was singing along:  "I'll fly away..."   And when we finished, she sat on my lap and told me I had done a great job and asked if I would like her to fix a plate for me from the potluck, so I could eat, too.  But I just held her instead, and we clapped for those receiving awards.  When it was over, she pretended to be a T. Rex stomping in boots through the rain.  I love her.