Happy Birthday, Emily :)

Emily Dickinson's To-Do List
by Andrea Carlisle

Monday
Figure out what to wear—white dress?
Put hair in bun
Bake gingerbread for Sue
Peer out window at passersby
Write poem
Hide poem

Tuesday
White dress? Off-white dress?
Feed cats
Chat with Lavinia
Work in garden
Letter to T.W.H.

Wednesday
White dress or what?
Eavesdrop on visitors from behind door
Write poem
Hide poem

Thursday
Try on new white dress
Gardening—watch out for narrow fellows in grass!
Gingerbread, cakes, treats
Poems: Write and hide them

Friday
Embroider sash for white dress
Write poetry
Water flowers on windowsill
Hide everything

(Poster available from the Emily Dickinson Museum by artist Penelope Dullaghan. Seen here.)
A POEM BY EMILY DICKINSON
Fame is a fickle food
Upon a shifting plate
Whose table once a
Guest but not
The second time is set.
Whose crumbs the crows inspect
And with ironic caw
Flap past it to the Farmer's Corn —
Men eat of it and die.

The Third Place

I scored a spot at a velvet chair the color of an eggplant near the fireplace at Starbucks. There were flurries flying outside, and faux-flurry window clings stuck on the doors. I put headphones on and began "work" at Facebook, continuing to my blogroll.  It wasn't 'til I hit my email that I realized I hadn't ever turned on music...I was listening to the indistinct chatter of the 60-or-so people sharing the cafe floor. I clicked into iTunes and lasted 2 songs before deciding that I was missing out on something.

I caught snatches of the professor/student meetings happening on my right and my left. I hadn't spoken a word to any of them except the velvet-chairholder next to me. I knew no one else in the place, but felt little sense of aloneness. I surely wasn't comforted by productivity - for heaven's sake, I was browsing pictures of people that I barely knew, eating an over-expensive sugar cookie painted like a polar bear with a scarf. So...what was so great about this sociable anonymity?

I had sunk into the third place, "a term used in the concept of community building to refer to social surroundings separate from the two usual social environments of home and the workplace. Ray Oldenburg calls one's 'first place' the home and those that one lives with. The 'second place' is the workplace — where people may actually spend most of their time. Third places, then, are 'anchors' of community life and facilitate and foster broader, more creative interaction. All societies already have informal meeting places; what is new in modern times is the intentionality of seeking them out as vital to current societal needs."

Positive:  It was easier to see these strangers as people than if they were next to me on the road, shrouded in his and her own vehicle. Negative:  The fact that no one knew what I was supposed to be accomplishing there did allow me to waste my time and call it "restoring my energy."

Thankful.

For each new morning with its light,

For rest and shelter of the night,

For health and food, for love and friends,

For everything Thy goodness sends.

-Ralph Waldo Emerson

Mama and Papa Burnison are in the air right now, winging their way back to Kansas City. Their visit was wonderful - very "People, Look East," verse 1:

People, look east. The time is near 
Of the crowning of the year.
Make your house fair as you are able,
Trim the hearth and set the table.
People, look east and sing today:
Love, the guest, is on the way.

In this case, the guests were the ones to trim the hearth...and patch the driveway, and clean the windows, and rake the leaves, and chop the wood, and fix the blue chair and bake the pies.


Thank you, Mom & Dad. I love you. Happy Thanksgiving.

"It's your turn to say 'Happy Thanksgiving' back:"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nHuqZrIZ2yg

Someone else's words...

...to jumpstart my own.

"When I look into the future, I am frightened,

but why plunge into the future?

Only the present moment is precious to me,

As the future may never enter my soul at all.

It is no longer in my power,

To change, correct or add to the past;

For neither sages nor prophets could do that.

And so, what the past has embraced I must entrust to God.

O present moment, you belong to me, whole and entire.

I desire to use you as best I can.

And although I am weak and small,

You grant me the grace of your omnipotence.

And so, trusting in Your mercy,

I walk through life like a little child,

Offering You each day this heart

Burning with love for Your greater glory."

St. Faustina, Divine Mercy in My Soul

la la life

Well, hey.

Yesterday my friend played a writer's round showcase. She was stunning. The best guitar player on the stage. And vocalist. And lyricist. Also, and very importantly, she made the whole thing not awkward.

(I'm SO proud! And she's wearing my shirt.)

Later that night, I awoke to a phone call from Orem, Utah. Me:"Yes, I'm at home. My house is on fire, you say?" (Sniffs the air. FREAKS out. Runs downstairs, still talking to the security system lady on the phone, to find an open oven with a blackened bottom, fans spinning, doors open...and the most delicious-looking apple turnovers Williams Sonoma has ever seen.) The firemen hadn't received the "false alarm" message in time from Utah Lady, so we offered them cookies when they showed up, apologized profusely (not even trying to pretend that I wasn't in pajamas), and tried to take pictures of their truck as they pulled away from the house.  I went back to bed, and laughed out loud. Like a crazy.

(Here's their truck. Nicely washed, just for us. Can't you see it shine?)

Now, I'm at Starbucks. God bless America. I've already listened to a podcast on Reckless Love. Feist and Joni Mitchell and Eva Cassidy have played on the store speakers.  I have done NO work, but I don't feel bad yet. I did receive the most beautiful, completely unexpected, and perfectly-timed message from an distant college friend. It was such a made-for-tv-movie moment. My eyes filled with tears and I wondered if the guy in the chair next to me had any idea what a great day like this felt like.

(I hope you have an idea.)

G.K. Chesterton on what we DO have in common...and what we don't.

"There is a phrase of facile liberality uttered again and again at ethical societies and parliaments of religion: “the religions of the earth differ in rites and forms, but they are the same in what they teach.” It is false; it is the opposite of the fact. The religions of the earth do not greatly differ in rites and forms; they do greatly differ in what they teach. It is as if a man were to say, “Do not be misled by the fact that the Church Times and the Freethinker look utterly different, that one is painted on vellum and the other carved on marble, that one is triangular and the other hectagonal; read them and you will see that they say the same thing.” The truth is, of course, that they are alike in everything except in the fact that they don’t say the same thing. An atheist stockbroker in Surbiton looks exactly like a Swedenborgian stockbroker in Wimbledon. You may walk round and round them and subject them to the most personal and offensive study without seeing anything Swedenborgian in the hat or anything particularly godless in the umbrella. It is exactly in their souls that they are divided. So the truth is that the difficulty of all the creeds of the earth is not as alleged in this cheap maxim: that they agree in meaning, but differ in machinery. It is exactly the opposite. They agree in machinery; almost every great religion on earth works with the same external methods, with priests, scriptures, altars, sworn brotherhoods, special feasts. They agree in the mode of teaching; what they differ about is the thing to be taught. Pagan optimists and Eastern pessimists would both have temples, just as Liberals and Tories would both have newspapers. Creeds that exist to destroy each other both have scriptures, just as armies that exist to destroy each other both have guns."

Priscilla's right.

I just love this. If I could write a song, I would like it to be like this one.

One step enough for me...

"Lead, Kindly Light, amid the encircling gloom

Lead Thou me on!

The night is dark, and I am far from home --

Lead Thou me on!

Keep Thou my feet; I do not ask to see

The distant scene -- one step enough for me..."

-s. 1, The Pillar of the Cloud, John Henry Cardinal Newman

It's so real. My heart feels this, tenses at these words. Inside, uncertainty about what's forever and what's next juxtaposes itself with the right-now knowledge of being LOVED. (*All of the fiery words in here are capitalized. Slam your hand on the table with each capitalized word for greater effect. Maybe raise your eyebrows, too.) It's a cozy light in a long, unlit hallway. Cozy is not even enough of a word. Because I am loved, I can do anything good. (Ahahaha! Sorry, Cardinal Newman. Totally serious here. Back to furrowed thinking face.)


I wish I could spell precisely how TRUE THIS IS. (*Three slams on the table, eyebrows high.) Love has made me the good parts of me. That's why I write about it ALL the time and think about it ALL the time and cry immediately when Father Baker or some random country song describes it, as long as no one is looking at me.  It's why I have the courage to say stupid things in front of smart people (which is mildly unfortunate), and even do some good things in bad situations (more fortunate).


I have been loved by my parents. From the first, in the school of the family, I learned love. Alert the media: This changes the WORLD, a parent's love. I know women, and men too, with broken, broken hearts because they do not know this love.


I'm loved by the greatest friends EVER. Try and test me on this one. I won't budge. Some would die for me, and greater love has no man than this. I have been cherished and forgiven and challenged. LOVED.


So, when I squint to follow the Light, when the night is dark and I'm far from Home, when I must insistently remind my achy-breaky heart that He DOES have a plan, and it's a reeeeally good one, it's Love that keeps my feet and lets me say "I do not ask to see the distant scene -- one step enough for me."


And I mean it.


Because they mean it, when they love me.


And because He meant it first, so we can love.


(*Slam.)

Who was your friend when you were in space?

Cleaning out my yahoo.com inbox, I came across this email from Daddio. Experience a seasoned storyteller with a distinctive emailing style:

March 5, 2008
Yesterday, I went over to a school in a neighboring town, as they had Clay Anderson, the Astronaut from Ashland, Nebraska (who spent 5 months at the space station) at this school for the day. 

I was there for the 5:15 p.m. time they had for the public. At the Q&A session ... once some old guy asked the obligatory question about Space Ship bathrooms and there were questions about fuel, water, etc ... a little girl  maybe 5, 6, or 7 years old, sitting a couple rows ahead of me, raised her hand and asked in all seriousness:

" ...Who was your friend when you were in space?" 

Having shared life with 2 daughters, I recognized that this would be a question a little girl would ask ... and in all sincerity, this would be some thing a little girl would have recognized as an item of real concern, even miles above the earth...a question worthy of asking in front of a gym full of people. 

This guy was good. He responded:  "First off, I have to tell you that I got to email my wife every day and got to call a few times a week, and once a week we got a video visit.   My wife was my best friend on the space station."  

"...Then, the 2 guys from Russia and I were like the 3 musketeers."

***********************************************************************************

That little girl's question gave that Astronaut hero a chance to show another side of him being a hero. 

That little girl's simple question let me nod in recognition of what all little girls hold as important in life.  

The others were worried about getting there and back and the danger of space walks, and this little girl was worried about the "danger" of Clayton Anderson not having a friend for the 5 months he was in space. 

************

As beautiful as any night time lift off. 

Dad Kevin Burnison

There is a castle on a cloud...

Save this one in the "Concepts" file for inspiration.