A "reflective" moment

(Pablo Picasso, "Girl Before a Mirror", 1932)

Psalm 18:26:

"With the pure you show yourself pure; and with the crooked you show yourself perverse."

It all started this morning when I was brushing my teeth. I was looking in the bathroom mirror and had the sudden realization that when you look in a mirror, you don't see yourself--you see yourself, backwards. You see everything behind you, but nothing in front of you. Mirrors are not all that useful when we think about what lies ahead. Great for reflecting on what is behind us, though.

Then as I sat down with my morning habit of "The Daily Office" and my systematic, monastic run-through of the Psalms, what should be part of my reading but this tidbit in Psalm 18? (That's the trouble about the habit of regular Bible reading...it leads to thinking. Imagine that.)

As I sat with that thought, what bubbled up was a realization that we DO tend to reflect what surrounds us. If we surround ourselves with abundance and generosity, we tend to reflect those values. If we surround ourselves with the tools of self-absorption, we tend to reflect a self-absorbing nature.

Yet, things bigger than ourselves tend to influence what others see and reflect, themselves. I sat with my coffee, and pondered backwards. Although I could not tell you at what point this shift occurred, somewhere in that process of my becoming a physician, there was a day that I somehow stopped worrying about who I was to become--to "be"-- and thought more about "What do I want to reflect to others?"--and in that process I began to become that person. My best guess is it started to happen at some point when I realized medical students are apt mimics of their residents and attendings--for better or worse. But I remember thinking way back when, somewhere back there, I became cognizant of the fact I wanted them to mimic the good parts of me. It might have even happened when I caught one mimicking something I'd rather they not mimic in me.

I imagine many parents go through the same thing. A day comes when many parents realize that it's important for their children to see parents who reflect the values they want their children to embody. It's a day when they stop reacting and start consulting with their spouse about how to project that image. As that happens, parents mature, and relationships mature.

So it is with the "holy habits" we take on as we recognize regular spiritual disciplines are a part of being in relationship with God--things like regular prayer or meditation time, Bible reading, keeping a prayer list, etc. In the beginning, we take them on because we think we are going to "become something" as a result of the habit--that this somehow will make us more in tune with God. But over time, we come to realize God was in relationship with us all along, and it's no longer to "please" God, catch God's attention, etc. It is more to create a milieu that others can see when THEY are needing to see God's kingdom.

My EfM mentor often has described her experience of having survived a scary time on the ventilator as a result of surviving an often fatal pulmonary disorder called Bronchiolitis Obliterans--Organizing Pneumonia (BOOP.) She knew many people were praying for her, and in her mind, she could see a "net." Part of the process she trusted in her own ability to trust God, no matter what the outcome was to be, was to "lean into that net." She has described how she came to understand she was to lean into this net, that it was not about the net having particular power to control whether she lived or died, but simply that she was to learn to trust its power.

When I think back to this recent article I read, where Fr. Ron Rolheiser describes what he believes to be the ten major faith struggles of our age, it makes me realize that conventional notions of evangelism are like us looking in the mirror--us, backwards. To me, evangelism has far less to do with me personally, or my efforts, as it does to be a part that maintains that "net."

Yes, our holy habits shape what we reflect to others to some degree, and that reflection can be part of what others see as they search for what Rolheiser describes as the four great spiritual yearnings people most seek--a personal morality, social justice, mellowness of heart and spirit, and community as a constituent element of true worship. More importantly, our holy habits shape and maintain the net--it's not so much about "us" as we might think.Source URL: http://plasticsurgerycelebrities.blogspot.com/search/label/life%20choices
Visit plastic surgery celebrities for Daily Updated Hairstyles Collection

A hedge-y endeavor

Ecclesiastes 10:10:

"If the iron is blunt, and one does not whet the edge, then more strength must be exerted; but wisdom helps one to succeed."

Well, that is pretty much the sum total of what the Bible has to say about splitting logs.

In the last couple of weeks, I've had the fence builders out here, totally rebuilding my pasture fences. My long-eared equines (mostly my mule) have taken a toll on my woven wire fence. I opted for a taller fence, and seven strands of barbed wire. The other flaw in the previous fence was that the previous builder put the staples and clips on the OUTSIDE. Equines simply lean against the fence and pop the staples and the clips bend open. It doesn't take much for determined long-eared equines and their belief that the grass really IS greener on the other side of the fence, to wreck one.

One of the decisions I made was to put hedge posts in for my corner posts. Hedge is one of the densest, sturdiest, most resistant to rot and decay woods available in this part of the world. It's even better than many of the treated posts available. The sidelight has been there are little "leftovers" of the posts given to me so I can burn them in my chiminea later on. Seeing as how hedge is also one of the highest BTU delivering woods out there, this is a bonus.

There's only one problem--some of them are too big for my chiminea. I had to break out my axe, my splitting maul, and my wedge, and revisit something that used to be a real pain in my life--but this time, as a tourist, as a pastime.

Let me share a little history. I grew up with a wood stove being the major source of heat in the house where I lived the bulk of my junior high/high school years. I grew to hate the wood stove and everything associated with it. I hated being dragged along to cut and split wood. I hated stacking wood, hauling wood in the house, and lugging out the ashes. I hated how the house was cold in the early mornings, I hated how I often had to get dressed in front of the wood stove in order not to freeze, and I hated how it seemed the entire set of activities of daily living revolved around feeding and maintaining that wood stove every winter. I hated how wood heat dried my nose out, I hated how all my clothes seemed to have a smoky smell to them, and I hated how we had a propane furnace and never used it, being told we couldn't afford it.

I vowed never to have wood heat in the house, and I have kept that promise.

Yet I love sitting outside by my chiminea fire. Go figure.

Most of the wood I use in my chiminea has been cut by someone else. But I kept all my woodcutting tools because once in a while I still have to deal with an oversized log.

As I looked at the little pile of hedge logs that was growing by my driveway, I made a radical decision--I would use splitting them as a form of meditation. I would simply split them and see what popped in my head as a result.

I pondered the first log. Suddenly it dawned on me that I was 30+ years older than when I used to do this all the time. I used to have well-tuned muscles for this task. I was younger, slenderer, better muscled, and more flexible. What am I doing? I could throw out my back or miss and cut the end of my foot off. Out of all the types of wood I could have taken on, I took on the densest, hardest wood in NE Missouri. Am I NUTS?

Just the same, I closed my eyes, took a deep breath, opened my eyes, reared back and let fly with the axe. It landed pretty much where I intended it to go, scoring the log. I took a few more whacks with the axe, then grabbed the splitting maul and started in with it. Pretty soon, after a few swings, a big chunk of that log came flying off with a pop, and I felt the rush of feeling the maul peel right through 18 inches of solid wood.

I wish I could have seen my own grin.

Over the next half hour, things came back to me I did not even realize were buried in my memory banks. Layers of clothing started to peel off as I felt myself sweat. My hands found the right spots on the handle. I automatically used already split pieces to prop up the piece I was working on. Before you know it, I had a little pile of split logs, just the right size. Realizing one little pile was enough, I quit, and got a soda and sat down to think about what had just happened. I was tired, but not sore. I wasn't sore the next morning, either--I'd done it about right.

But as I sat and drank my soda outside in my "post-splitting" phase of the exercise, I realized just how GOOD it all felt. Something I used to hate to do became pleasurable. I felt very physically and spiritually "connected". I felt empowered. I found myself saying, "God, I can't believe I'm telling you this, but I'm glad I had learned how to do that, all those many years ago."

I'm sure God laughed.

It brought me to some other interesting spiritual awakenings. Nothing that happens in our lives is for naught. It made me realize that things we hated, things that hurt us, things we discarded as "no use to us," can eventually come to good. Mistakes aren't mistakes, and things we came to regret only remain regrets if we choose to leave them there. Left the size they are, they are useless--but if we dare to take them apart, no matter how hard they are, they can come apart through the power of things we forgot we have or never knew we possessed--in other words, with God's help. Most importantly, we can turn loathing into gratitude. We can take what seemed inert, dead, and useless, and turn it into heat, light, and warmth.

That in itself, is a form of resurrection, isn't it?Source URL: http://plasticsurgerycelebrities.blogspot.com/search/label/life%20choices
Visit plastic surgery celebrities for Daily Updated Hairstyles Collection

The video that made the hair stand up on the back of my neck

When I watched this, I cringed. I don't know or really don't care if the man sitting on the pavement has Parkinson's or not, (I think he does, judging from his head movements) or what created the situation that put him in the position to want to counter-protest the group of Tea Partiers. I don't care about what life choices he made to be without health insurance. I don't care about his lifestyle habits. The only thing that matters to me is the chilling attitude of the man in the white shirt and tie throwing money, and his words, "I'll decide when to give you money."

Does this man think he has the right to decide anything for any of us any more than the rest of us in a free republic?

Money seems to be the one thing that we always seem to think we have more control of than we really do. There's always someone out there who wants to tell any of us how to spend our money, and we always seem to act like we know more than God in how to spend our money. We always think "we" earned it.

Earned. That's an interesting word. Forces beyond us determine the worth of our labors. Society has deemed janitors are worth X amount an hour, and managers are worth Y, and the various professions are worth Z. Even the same job has different worth in different cultures and geographic areas. But "we" earned it.

I wonder how the man throwing money at the man on the ground felt. Did he feel justified? Did it make him feel a little wealthier for a moment? Did he feel a little guilty later that he was "over the top?" We'll never know.

Did the man on the ground ever pick up the money? Or did he leave it lie?

So many questions; no good answers. But it chilled me to think any of us has the capability of being either the man on the ground, or the man tossing the money around. Probably each of us has behaved at least a little bit like either person in the video at least once in our life. Pray for all of us.Source URL: http://plasticsurgerycelebrities.blogspot.com/search/label/life%20choices
Visit plastic surgery celebrities for Daily Updated Hairstyles Collection

It's only a game! Or is it?... A crisis of Values

by Cassondra Murray


No, this is not about politics. In fact, I’m trying desperately to escape that.


It is about something much stranger. The mind of a writer.

Have y’all seen that movie, How to Lose A Guy In Ten Days? It’s a great chick flick. Humor, drama, Matthew McConaughey (I’m not a big fan, but he ain’t hard to look at.) and Kate Hudson, a cute, smart girl who—and this is SO rare these days-- gets the guy without benefit of surgical enhancement.


For you who have NOT seen it, the movie opens with Kate as Andie Anderson, serious journalist who wants to write about world peace, forced to write fluff for Composure Magazine, a materialistic rag for women. Andie is in the office with her friend.

Friend: “Andie, there’s an envelope here for you.” (waves mysterious white envelope in Andie’s face) “You know that editor at Sports Illustrated—the one you’ve been shamelessly flirting with?” (Andie gasps and snatches at the envelope) “Looks like it paid off.” (Friend hands over envelope and Andie tears it open like a mad woman.)

Andie: (dances in a circle) “Wooooohoooooooo, I just got tickets. In. The. Tenth. Row!”

Friend: “For what?”

Andie: “Only THE most awesome display of athletic grace on the planet!”

Friend: “The Ice Capades are in town?”

Andie: (dances madly in a circle, waving tickets) “No, the NBA FINALS ARE IN TOWN!!!!!”

Andie has just received a coveted pair of Nicks tickets—for the first game of the finals.

I am a girl. I freely admit this.

I can put on the goo and fluff when I need to, and I like pretty clothes. I even did the pageant circuit when I was young, hot and in shape. I like sparkly stuff, candles, bubble bath and good wine.

But I’m kind of an odd girl. I like the outdoors. I like shooting and archery. I like canoeing, rock climbing and rappelling. I don’t hunt but I can field dress a deer.

I own a big chainsaw. When I took the ASVAB to get into the military and scored high enough to do anything I wanted, my first choice was some job where I’d get to blow stuff up. (No lie. That’s what I asked for—“got anything where I can blow stuff up?”) I can mix mortar and I can build things. I can plumb a house properly. I like to fish. On my do-before-I-die list is “Learn to operate a bulldozer and a track hoe.”

But sports?

I don’t get it.

At my local Mexican restaurant, when they have football on the tube (not AMERICAN football—it's soccer) I actually enjoy it. But let’s face it. Some of those Central American sweaty hunks are dang HOT.

The fact that I like looking at hot men in great physical condition is NOT the same as appreciating the sport. There’s a country song I hear now and then called “I’m A Lucky Man” and one line goes… “Last Sunday when the Bengels lost, Lord it put me in a bad mood…..” This has never happened to me.

Because I studied photojournalism as an undergrad I had to shoot every sport available in the northern hemisphere. I liked soccer best. And yet I’ve never gotten interested enough to follow it. Something is apparantly wrong with me.


I. Don’t. Get. It. It’s a ball made of leather and filled with air. Where it ends up is irrelevant in the larger scheme of things. I just don’t care. I would guess some of you feel the same.

But there’s trouble, you see. Big Trouble that’s not going away.

This trouble started about mid-October. We get season tickets to the symphony orchestra. If you’ve never been to a symphony concert you haven’t lived. You can FEEL the music. It’s powerful. I leave on a slightly different dimension than the one on which I arrived. A higher dimension.

Sixty to Seventy people—each of whom is one of the best performers on the planet, and has spent nearly his or her entire life devoted to the intensive study of an instrument—all up there just for me, working together to bring something static to life—to make it breathe and soar—for those few minutes in time to act as one and create something that will never happen exactly like that, ever again anywhere any time. And I GET TO SEE IT! To feel it. To be forever changed by it.

So I was sitting at the symphony the other night and a distressing thought occurred to me. A horrible thought. A thought that could cause a shift in my entire system of values.

In my weird writer’s mind, the understanding of the gift happening in front of me smashed headlong into that first scene in the movie with Kate Hudson and the footage they showed of the Nicks games and I had an Oh Sh*t moment.

That professional ball team—that’s a group of individuals, each of whom has devoted his or her entire life to his sport—though his instrument is his physical body and the way it handles a ball, and his skill is, among other things, brilliant teamwork—to perfecting its use and the performance, just as a dancer would—and they’re all together at that game, working like crazy to make something happen—in a clash against another group, perhaps as talented as THEY are, and this clash of wills, of physical prowess, of skill, of talent, of PASSION even—gets played out in front of me and I get to see it. To perhaps be elevated by it. To even, perchance, be CHANGED by it?


But I don’t. Cuz I never watch. Cuz I don’t care.

But maybe I should? Maybe now I MUST!

There are vast numbers of people who care. They gather around tvs and in arenas and behind coffee tables loaded with snacks and beer and put incredible amounts of energy into caring.

Why? There must be a reason.

And if I decide to care (and I believe I might be on the verge of caring whether I want to or not) how do I learn about this? The rules of any given sport are like quicksand. It’s a quagmire of complex “if this then that, but if THAT, then this other thing…” ..and they change from little league to high school to college to pro. The athletic conferences alone are confusing.

It’s like firearms and weapons calibers.

Why is a certain caliber called what it is? For example, the rifle caliber .45-70 gov’t (you say this as Forty-five, seventy, government) Why is it called that? It’s a .45 caliber round with 70 grains of black powder. (A grain is a measurement of weight).

Are you zoning out yet, the way I do with sports regulations? No?

Try this one. .30-06. (Pronounced thirty-ought-six). Thirty caliber with six grains of black powder? NO! Thirty caliber, invented in 1906. Let’s consider the .380 (Three-eighty). It’s actually a 9mm short. The cartridge is 9mm in diameter. But a pistol chambered for .380 will not shoot 9mm ammunition. A 9mm MIGHT shoot .380, or it might not. HA!

The .38 Special (Thirty Eight Special) is actually .357 inches in diameter. Is it a three fifty seven? NO! They’re different. And is a .38 Special a “Saturday Night Special?” NO! It could be, but it’s not necessarily.

NOW are you confused?


Heck, even I’m confused, and I know about guns.

So back to sports. A foul in football is not the same as a foul in basketball, is definitely not the same as a foul in baseball. I think a foul in football isn’t even called a foul. A penalty maybe? I know sometimes they throw some flag on the ground, but that’s not the same as flag football, right? And then they stand around for like half an hour deciding what to do then they play for thirty more seconds then stand around again.

In basketball, you have only so long to shoot, right? Well, not necessarily as far as I can tell. There’s something about a shot clock. And depending on the league you’re allowed to touch the net or not, and the shot line is in a different spot. I’m reeling here.

Then there’s the goal line in football. I went to cheer my friend’s senior running back (why are they called that? Nobody can explain this to me. Everybody runs, after all. Half back—I see nothing missing on this man. Why is he called a half back?) on for his final game. They were behind, then after half time they took off like crazy. I started cheering. OH, NO! How was I supposed to know that at half time THEY SWITCHED GOALS!????? I was cheering for the wrong team!



Knowing men the way I know men, and their general aversion to touching each other in any kind of affectionate way that does not puncture a lung or knock loose a kidney, what’s up with that bottom patting on the football field? As far as I can tell the ball is not in play when the bottom patting is going on. Does the “no touching” rule for manly men get thrown out if you’re in a football uniform? Does it have something to do with the tight ends?

Now that I’ve gotten sorta interested, or at least seen the potential value in being interested, how am I supposed to figure out what is going on?

I know that some Banditas are sports fans. Jeanne ( La Duchesse) actually flies to Chicago to watch the Cubs play. And not just cuz she lives with sports fans. SHE LIKES IT! Anna Sugden is a hockey fanatic. Even at writing events, her phone pings her with hockey scores. Donna, Jeanne, Posh and Nancy have been, at one point or another, involved in rivalry based on Buckeyes, Lions and some other strange stuffed creation from North Carolina.

I’m in an awful state. My very way of being is in flux. My core life values are teetering on the edge of...perhaps not collapse, but at minimum, significant deflation.


Do I just pick a team and start to care? How do I choose?

Is it possible to catch up and actually understand? Am I doomed to be eternally confused, cheering even though the team is running the wrong way?

Do you care about sports?

Which ones and why?

How did you start? Do you have to be “born into it?”

What is your favorite team?

Do you have a favorite sports hunk or hunkette?

If you had to pick a sport to learn about, what would it be?


Third base in baseball has nothing to do with third base in romance and is CERTAINLY not related to a three-pointer, but they are ALL related to SCORING. And getting to any one of the above seems really complicated.

Third base in romance is the only one I actually understand.


Help a Bandita out. Throw me a line here!

Oh, and how the blazes do those soccer/football players keep their socks up?



Source URL: http://plasticsurgerycelebrities.blogspot.com/search/label/life%20choices
Visit plastic surgery celebrities for Daily Updated Hairstyles Collection

Roads Not Taken

by Nancy

This is not actually about Robert Frost, though his poem, with its image of roads diverging "in a snowy wood" has always spoken to me. Life is full of choices. Roads diverge all the time, and each road taken leads into events and possibilities that exclude other events and possibilities.

My very first career choice, so far as I can remember, was nursing. I was in first grade or so, and this choice endured until I found out about the blood thing. I'm not squeamish about dealing with blood, exactly. I'm just not keen on it. And I hated getting shots, so giving them would be, well, less than cool.

About the time I was rejecting my first career choice, somewhere around third grade, I discovered Greek mythology. The school library had the D'Aulaires' Book of Greek Myths. I fell in love with the art and the legends. I also loved their Norse mythology volume. All things Greek fascinated me. When I wasn't mooning over knights in olde England or warriors in medieval Scotland (our family can torturously trace our lineage back to the Bruce), I was thinking about Greeks. Odysseus. Aeneas. Penelope. I did notice that, apart from the Amazons (yay, Wonder Woman!) and the goddesses (yay, Athena and Artemis!), doing cool stuff in Greece was reserved to men. Since that was the way of the world at the time, I shrugged over it and went on, straight into an interest in archaeology. Then I found out about the bones thing--as in, digging up. Ooops, not for me! Another career choice shot down in flames. *sigh*

I liked to draw. I was also a fairly girly girl, aside from liking superheroes and displaying serious geek tendencies, so I thought perhaps fashion design might be in my future. I sometimes remember this when I watch Project Runway. I'm so incredibly glad not to be in that industry now. My clothing taste is way too conservative for the market trends. However, this interest persisted until I was doing college visits and found out just how much chemistry I'd have to take to major in design. I finally settled on a history major, which fit right in with my geeky interests and ultimately, via a long and winding road, led me to teaching.




After my freshman year in college, I transferred. I was thinking of waiting a year, but medical problems compounded my general unhappiness, so I made the jump. As a result, I met people whose influence led me to grad school and then law school and then to the man I eventually married, who nudged me into teaching. I also got to study Tudor and Stuart Britain at Oxford for a summer, one of the highlights of my life.

I sometimes think, what if I hadn't transferred when I did? Or had gone somewhere else? What if I'd pursued archaeology or design? Where would I be? What would my life be like? Is there a me somewhere who actually wore that wide-brimmed white hat with the veil streaming down the back at her wedding? Or do all the me versions wear that white floral wreath veil?

We make the same sorts of choices in writing. I've moved away from Restoration to medieval, but I may go back. I have lots of ideas for the period. I've also written a contemporary in first person. Will it sell? Will any of them? At this point, I have no idea. I hope so. Do I regret having written things that were not middle of the market? Not really. Sometimes doing something different recharges the batteries in important ways.

I don't regret any of my choices, but if every choice creates, as some science fiction writers and scientists theorize, an alternate reality in which the choice not taken becomes the choice on which we act, then what kinds of realities have I spun off behind me? Which ones have you created?

What sorts of choices have you made in life or in writing? Do you ever wonder where the other choice(s) would have led?

Late Bandit Booty:

I've been very bad about booty announcements this summer, so here are two that should catch me up. I apologize for the delays!

The winner of Julie Kenner's prize, a copy of Deja Demon, is Tetewa!

The winner of Gillian Summers' prize, a choice of either The Tree Shepherd's Daughter or Into the Wildewood, is Rebekah!

Email me via the link at the top of the blog page, and I'll pass the information to the authors!Source URL: http://plasticsurgerycelebrities.blogspot.com/search/label/life%20choices
Visit plastic surgery celebrities for Daily Updated Hairstyles Collection