Epistle

Epistle has moved!

2010-12-11T22:28:00.000-05:00

We have moved to a new address, Epistle . Come on over and check it out!

Katie

Making a home: Books and Icons

2010-06-23T16:08:00.004-04:00

We've been moved in to our first apartment for a few weeks now and we're almost done. Almost as in our dining room is still full of stuff, my car is full of stuff, the porch is full of stuff, and there is still stuff to take to friends' homes to store.

We have too much stuff. A one bedroom apartment challenges us to scale back. It has been convicting how much stuff we own that has little use or value. We hang onto it 'just in case.' I have been forced to evaluate what are the things that help make a home that enables us to be the people we want to be.

Two of those things would be books and icons.

Books - Obviously Mike and I are readers and we're curious readers so we have books on theology, the history of Scotland, the American buffalo, as well as the works of C.S. Lewis, Walker Percy, and the whole Harry Potter series. Eclectic to say the least.
That's every book Mike and I own sorted into three categories: fiction, non-fiction, and theology. The largest pile? Theology.

Mike cataloged his books this spring and came up with 360. I easily have 200 so between the two of us that is over 500. This past year we've been trying to scale back and probably got rid of at least 200 books before moving.

In the end, all the books found a home - some on our bookshelves and the others in the NINE boxes of books we had to stuff into every available closet. The trick was keeping them somewhat accessible since Mike will need to get to a lot of them come the fall and school.

Icons - It was important to us for our home to point us toward worship and prayer. Icons are considered 'windows to heaven' and all are pictorial representations of the Lord Jesus Christ who is the icon of God the Father. Icons of Biblical scenes, the apostles, and saints are sanctified by Christ and therefore point to Him. Icons are a means of focusing our prayers on God.

We bought our icons from a monastery in Boscobel, Wisconsin: St. Isaac of Syria Skete.

First, the Holy Trinity by St. Andrei Rublev dating to the early 15th century. This icon is one of the most treasured icons in the world. It depicts the Trinity as revealed to Abraham and Sarah in the form of three angels. Christ is in the center and with the Holy Spirit has his head inclined toward God the Father.
The second is the Pantocrator, which is Greek for 'Ruler of All." This icon is the earliest of its kind and is from St. Catherine's Monastery at Mt. Sinai. What is special about this one is that I've been to St. Catherine's and seen this icon. The three fingers touching represent Christ's Divinity and the two fingers extended represent that He was fully man and fully God. His face is painted in two different styles to represent the Incarnation. Dating from the 6th century, this icon is one of the earliest icons of Christ in existence.
This last icon represents Jesus calling the disciples and is from the 20th century. It is from a fresco in a Greek church.
Eventually all three will go up with our collection of crosses and a few other pieces. They will be an important part of our home life - helping us pray and reminding that we are all called to reflect the image of Christ.

love,
Katie

Back in Town

2010-06-15T13:50:00.003-04:00

The rumors of my disapearence have been exagerated, but only by a little.

The past month and a half have been crazy. In April, we drove to Florida to for Mike's brother's wedding.

It was a 10 hour drive and I did all the driving since Mike can't drive stick. The night before we left Amanda helped us assemble our invitations. We loved our invites but they came less than a month before the wedding. It was a scramble to get them out as soon as possible. That week was also my last week of classes at Duke, but I got really sick. I only made it to one of my four classes. On top of all of that we found out that our reception site was not going to work due to construction.

We were incredibly blessed to have a family from the church offer their home for our reception. It turned out to be a better venue than our original one. It did mean renting a tent, tables, a dance floor, and chairs as well as changing the decor plans. But I first had to write my final papers. I averaged four-five hours of sleep a night for the next week.

I had two weeks between my last exam and when my family would arrive for my graduation. In the first few days the amazing Joelle spent 40+ hours with me shopping, cutting, sewing, measuring, and packing up all of the things we needed for the wedding. Then for the last few days I went on a long deserved break to beach with the girls. It was all about delicious seafood, falling asleep to the sound of the ocean, and baking in the sun.

Laura and I on the river walk in downtown Wilmington.

After the beach it was time to graduate.

Girls at Senior Banquet.

Me, Amanda, Anna at graduation.

In time I'll post on the wedding, but it was beautiful, moving, and everything-I-could-have-dreamed-of.

Bridesmaids at lunch in Thomasville, Ga.

Me getting ready.

Cutting the cake.

Duke friends who came for the wedding.

Since the wedding we've honeymooned in Savannah, packed up all that we owned, moved into an apartment, driven back to Florida for another wedding, unpacked and organized, and started a job (well, Mike has started a job). Whew, not bad for three weeks!

Now I am turning my attention to finding a job myself and starting to write. More on all of those plans later. For this weekend Mike's parents are bringing his youngest brother up for a two week youth academy at Duke.

In the mean time there is always a game of World Cup soccer to watch.

love,

Katie

10 months ago...

2010-05-15T05:02:00.002-04:00

I could hardly imagine that this - - would lead up to what is about to happen exactly seven days from now. Later today I'm going to graduate and that hasn't even sunk in yet. I can't even process that I will graduate Divinity school, and I probably won't believe it until after the wedding.

The wedding is going to be beautiful. There is chance of rain and I'm crossing my fingers I'm not forgetting details, but I know it will be beautiful. We went over the program for the ceremony and both Mike and I are so excited for the service. He's sure we'll both cry.

We're both so ready to be married too. We talked about the moments we're anticipating the most. He's excited about breakfast on Saturday mornings, and I'm excited for evenings grilling out. This summer is going to be about work, writing, friends, and World Cup soccer.

I'm so excited!

love,
Katie

Bridal Shower Extravaganza

2010-04-24T11:23:00.005-04:00

First, this adorable creature is Susannah:
She is the stray that showed up at our house back in March. We took her in, had her checked out by the vet, and even named her after the mother of the founder of the United Methodist Church, Susannah Wesley. She doesn't pay any attention to us when we call her name, but that's okay. And then after two weeks she disappeared.

For a month.

We were pretty sure she was in heat. Or maybe she just didn't like us. We took it personally.

And then she showed back up a week ago. Since then we've changed her name to Gomer and put her out at night. She has to learn you can't abandon people like that.

Still we feed her and play with her.

Mike thinks we're crazy. To protest he calls her Socks.

But back to the point of this post. Bridal Showers.

In March I had two in Tallahassee (read about them here) and this weekend I had one in Durham. But the day before I helped throw a lingerie shower for my roommate Laura who is also getting married. If I posted most of the pictures I took that night I wouldn't have friends left, but these two are safe. We had a very long dance lesson for Laura who, bless her heart, dances like a fish.

I think she's trying to shake her hips in this picture (above). Disclaimer: I also dance like a fish.

My shower was much tamer - something I did on purpose. I like dishing out embarrassment, but I'm don't like to take it.

My shower was at my lovely friend Joelle's house and was thrown by her and my two other bridesmaids who live in town, Anna and Amanda. Each girl who came made a scrapbook page and Joelle had extra supplies at the party for them to finish:
My lovely friends included:

Alexis and Amanda

Laura, Me, Anna

Amanda, Joelle, Anna

Keri, Betsy

I got lots of lovely gifts including:

A crazy fun apron!

And a water pitcher that goes with our cookware!

The highlight was definitely the scrapbook which Joelle is going to finish for me with all sorts of wedding details.

We played a couple games including one where I answered questions about Mike. I got most of them right except one very obvious one: his birthday.

Finally, the roses that were on the food table were just some of the most beautiful roses I've ever seen:

love,
Katie

Sorry

2010-03-29T11:05:00.002-04:00

Sorry I haven't posted for a while. With 54 days left to go until the wedding (and 47 until I graduate) my head is spinning in 15 dozen directions. You can ask Mike - I've been a crazy woman. I'll try to post soon, but it may be a while. In the mean time, enjoy the coming Spring!

love,
Katie

Moving beyond paint colors...

2010-03-18T12:39:00.003-04:00

I love decor blogs, but they think too small.

Decor blogs make up half my blog roll (see links on side for favorites). For me, comfortable and creative spaces is part of a ministry of hospitality. Albeit, as Christians there has to be a limit on how much money we spend on something no matter how fabulous. Yet, the pattern I've noticed is the discussions are two-dimensional. There are posts about eco-friendly design and links to charities, and these small things amount to a lot. Yet, there is more time spent on how to cheaply replicate the Pottery Barn catalog.

Issues of space effect not just our private homes, but our public spaces as well. It's great to exchange paint colors, but what about a discussion on the spaces our children are learning in? Or the protection of natural beauty like our parks and wildlife reserves? Anyone want to talk about how to build and sustain low income housing that isn't cramped and impersonal?

My dear friend Joelle runs the blog, Musings on Theology and Arts, where today she had a great post on why all architecture, all spaces, are of Christian concern. The post is here, and I highly recommend it.

At the very least we should begin to challenge our churches to think spatially - to involve art in worship, to ensure that signage helps visitors find their way around, and that the church's outside reflects the theology of its' inside.

For those of us with the luxury of time and resources to act it is time to challenge ourselves and our passions to do more than talk about paint colors.

love,
Katie

What's in a name? Part Three

2010-03-17T14:54:00.002-04:00

(Read parts One & Two of this series)

After a lot of talking, I finally called one last person. My brother.

Twenty years-old and a creative, slightly emo college student, my brother Michael is far, far removed from the issues with which I was struggling. His answer was simple, "I'm going to drop one Mom's name because we're the last of Dad's side."

"Are you going to hyphenate with your wife's name then?"

"No, why would I?"

"Because..." Then I launched into all the reasons our parents hyphenated.

Michael laughed and even over the phone I could see him shrug, "That's their campaign not mine."

He put simply what I needed to hear - what my parents choose to do was right and good for them. It continues to be right and good for their children - it has taught us important lessons about relationships and identity. Yet, it isn't my campaign. I have different ideas and hopes that I want my life to proclaim. I agree with my parents wholeheartedly. I just don't share their urgency.

The thing about seminary students is that we think too much about small things, but you'd be surprised how much the little things can radically transform you. Mike and I have specific convictions that are central to our life together. One choice for us is in terms of identity. What determines our identity? We would say first Christ (and subsequently the church). This includes our vocations as priest (him) and writer (me). That framework will determine our actions; for example, because of Mike's work in the church we will never spend holidays with our families. Our church family will always 'get us' for every Christmas and Easter. We want our witness as a family to point foremost to Christ and the church. Incorporated into the witness, but further down the list may be social eqaulity messages.

These convictions do not stand in opposition to the things my parents emphasized, but they are shaped differently because we are of a different life. My mom and I run into this quandry when it comes to women's issues. She is very proactive about them because she of the times in which she grew up, but the thing that shaped her more were some bad habits she watched in her family. When she married my dad they were proactive to create a different norm for their children. Her vehemency is hard to recreate in me, a girl who has always felt empowered and encouraged. Hyphenating our last name was simply not important enough to me to be worth the time and energy it would require.

The time and energy meant choosing between my parent's names, dissuading loved ones who don't agree with us, and leaving my children in the same quandary I am in now. It is terribly unfortunate that some people think a man changing his name robs the man of something. It is wrong that there is that double standard for men and women. A name does not define you, but is shaped into something that represents you. I choose not to hyphenate because it is not practical for a person with an already hyphenated name. I choose different means as witness to my beliefs about who we are as a family.

Still it is not without a bit of sadness that I make this choice.

love,
Katie

What's in a name? Part Two

2010-03-16T17:32:00.002-04:00

(Here is the first part of this series of posts.)

I said before that my parents hyphenated their last name to represent their view of marriage. We all share that name, even my father. I grew up in the mid-west where I knew some, not a lot, but some families with hyphenated names. Albeit, most of those people were friends of my parents from seminary. In other families it was only the woman who hyphenated and her children took their father's name.

My parents were married in 1983, and from what I read the trend has declined since the 70's and 80's (here). Growing up the biggest inconvenience was that the photo department at Wal-Mart always wrongly filed our pictures. Otherwise I gave little thought to my last name. Of course people asked what I was going to do when I got married, and I would joke that it depended on how much I liked my future husband's last name.

Coming to graduate school was the first time I ever experienced any complications with a hyphenated last name. People assumed I was married because I was older now and an unmarried girl with a hyphenated name was practically unheard of here in the South. People were always surprised that my dad hyphenated his last name, one person even asking how could any man with self-respect could do that. For the most part, though people were simply curious with what I would do when I got married.

This past summer as we were nearing engagement I began to seriously grapple with the notion of changing my last name. I knew I wanted to have the same last name as Mike, and he was willing to hyphenate if it was important to me. But I would be lying if I said he was excited about the idea. For him, he couldn't imagine not having his family's last name. As a man he'd never had to think about what it would be like to give that up. The problem was neither had I.

I felt obligated to hyphenate in order to make visible the same belief of marriage that my parents had taught me. I felt obligated mostly to my mother who had always been so vocal about a woman's identity not being subsumed by a man. There was an internal pressure to hyphenate my last name in order to make a theological statement.

There was the practical issue too. I thought it wasn't fair for Mike to take on my hyphenated name, and I wasn't going to add a third name making it even longer. So if I hyphenated I would have to split my own name and add it to Mike's. That left an almost impossible choice between my two parents.

People had strong opinions, saying it would be a travesty to our children to saddle them with a hyphenated last name. That irked me because it simply wasn't true. But at the same time, I wasn't sure if hyphenating my last name would make any sort of statement about the family Mike and I were creating. It surprised me how strongly people felt about what I did with my last name.

Finally, I had block out the opinions and figure out what I actually wanted.

More on who was most helpful in helping me, and what decision we finally reached tomorrow.

love,
Katie

Wedding Update

2010-03-15T09:22:00.000-04:00

A while ago I asked for your opinions on shoes and hair for my wedding. I thought I'd update you with the decisions.

Hair will be up. Something low, soft, and like this:

Going with the flats from Boden:

The hair was an easy decision - the heat and humidity of a Florida wedding trump any other consideration for me. I got the other three pairs of shoes and the truth was none of them were comfortable for an all day wedding. I loved the turquoise ones the most and they were the least comfortable. Then I got these little flats in the mail and fell in love. Done and done.

After last week's wedding extravaganza (here) we have a caterer and florist. We met with the liturgist at the church to talk about the ceremony. We toured the reception site. Now is for the fun stuff - decorating. The ceremony is straightforward - flowers on the altar and some simple pew markers. Our ceremony is a full blown church service so there is no need for ornamentation. The focus isn't me. It's Jesus.

But the reception - that is where I have freedom to run. The whole time I've been going for a storybook theme. Our save-the-dates resembled bookmarks. Our invitation was inspired by an old Grimm's Fairy tale book. I've been gathering ideas online and stumbled upon a bunch of 'literary' weddings:

A Bookish Wedding
Snippet & Ink: Real Literary Wedding
'To Kill a Mocking Bird' Wedding (this is more fantastic than it sounds!)
Cutest Wedding Ever

I have a bunch of good ideas and I can't wait to put them to good use!

love,
Katie

Wedding Extravaganza Weekend

2010-03-14T12:10:00.007-04:00

We went to Tallahassee for five days of wedding planning and spring break fun. We included Mike, myself, and our friend (and bridesmaid) Joelle. Our first morning Joelle and I headed to Apalachicola and St. George Island for a day at the beach.

It wasn't hot enough to don swimming suits, but it was beautiful and the white sand went on forever.

One of the beaches had tree trunks on it. They reminded me of chairs, as if a crowd of people had pulled up seats to watch the ocean.

This is my favorite picture of Joelle.

I liked this tree stump - it looks like it is curtsying.

On Sunday, Mike's aunts threw me a bridal shower. They picked up on the storybook theme and rented a historic schoolhouse.

At the end, Mike came to help clean up and we snapped a picture of the whole family.

Stephanie (hostess & cousin), Barbara (Mike's mom), Mike, me, Gina (hostess & aunt), Rebekah (sister-in-law)

Rebekah is marrying Mike's brother next month.

Joelle was there to help take pictures.

Rebekah tied all the bows into a bouquet for me to use at the wedding rehearsal.

Going with the storybook theme we played a guess-the-book-based-on-opening-lines game and everyone wrote a story by adding a sentence to 'Once upon a time a boy met a girl...' and then I read the story aloud.

They did an amazing job on the details. The wedding colors - blue, green, and yellow - were everywhere - in ribbons, balloons, and in the flowers.

Going with the storybook theme, guests signed the inside cover of a novel. They wrapped heavy law books in brightly colored gift wrap and bows as centerpieces.

The flowers were in mason jars (a favorite of both of us) and were happy which made me happy.

What also made me happy were all of the sweet, sweet women who came to celebrate with us. Most of them knew Mike growing up and their excitement was infectious as we get closer to the wedding day.

And I got to wear fun shoes.

Monday we met with the staff at the church to go over the ceremony, and on Monday night the church threw us a cookout (sorry, forgot the camera) where I met so many wonderful people from Mike's home church. On Tuesday Joelle and I met with caterers and florists, toured the reception site, and went to see the new house Rebekah and Forrest (Mike's brother) just bought. Wednesday morning we left early and made the 10 hour drive back to North Carolina where we collapsed into beds.

love,
Katie

Wedding Rant

2010-03-03T15:05:00.006-05:00

Excuse me while I step on my soap box...

I am not this:

Or this...Or this...

Above and beyond any identity I am this...

Pilgrims at Church and Garden of St. Mary at the Garden of Gethsemane in Jerusalem, May 2009.

I am first the baptized, the child, and the redeemed.

I love this picture because it is out of focus. You can see the people kneeling in prayer, the light filtered through the crosses, and the lamps burning like flames. The moment causes me to breathe, to literally stop mid motion and look closer because I can recall in perfect clarity the silence that suspended above us in that place like a spider's web glinting silver in the darkness.

Today it is hard to remember that moment. There is so much chaos around me and in me. So many things going on and so many wants and needs. When my life gets chaotic I forget who I am and when I realize my fugue I am scared. Scared that I am this:

and this...

...the modern woman. The modern woman who is all things and nothing at the same time. She has so many things she is trying to be in order to please herself and please everyone else too. Yet, she accomplishes little but multitasking.

I am in the middle of tons of wedding stuff right now. I can't wait to get married to Mike. I want to be married, but I don't like planning a wedding. I'd rather be writing a paper or reading a book. I can't wait for our wedding day, to stand before friends and family, and to make a covenant between God and us. But I also can't wait to graduate, which will happen a week before our wedding. I can't wait to wear the robes, have the hood placed upon my head, and know that I accomplished it. I worked hard for three years, and at the end of it I'm finding that what most people are interested in is how the wedding planning is coming.

"It is coming," I tell them, "it is coming along just fine. Want to hear about the writing I do on Friday mornings? Or the lecture I went to last week? Or idea for a paper a professor and I are talking about? Oh...yes we're going to do yellow roses. No, I hadn't thought about pew markers..."

When life gets chaotic I have to work extra hard to see myself not necessarily as others see me, but as God sees me. No one is trying to belittle me or make me upset. They genuinely want to know about my life, and the wedding is visible and exciting. I understand. It is just hard...

love,
Katie

p.s. For some reason when I typed in 'modern woman' into google this was one of the ones that came up. Though it doesn't fit, I think it is lovely. I want to be her (without the bonnet).

Jesus Broke Up with Me

2010-03-02T09:50:00.002-05:00

Great post here on 'Jesus-as-my-boyfriend' syndrome. Read it. It points out something that is far too prevalent in our Christian culture.

love,
Katie

Timeline of a Paper

2010-03-01T14:31:00.000-05:00

Weeks ahead of time: Decide to be a diligent student for this class and put forward good effort.
Thursday Afternoon: Read email with instructions from professor. Print off readings. Tell Mike there is no fun to be had this weekend because HAVE TO WRITE PAPER.
Friday morning: Decide to 'tryout' Google Calendar for a month. Upload life.
Friday afternoon: Discover you can color code with Google. Life is happy. Find phone that has been lost for four days. Mike is happy.
Friday night: Dinner with friends.
Friday late night: Read a little, but get distracted by bobsledding.
Saturday morning: MUST WORK...but wait there are wedding details, laundry to do, roommates, parents to call. Find driver's license in washer, happy dance!
Saturday afternoon: Time lost completely.
Saturday night: Mike comes over. No time for dinner MUST READ. I eat pretzals and he has a poptart. Watch 5 (!) episodes of Law & Order:SVU, bobsledding, and Saturday Night Live while reading. Go to bed at 1 a.m. when finish.
7 a.m.: Wake up.
8 a.m.: Get out of bed.
9:30 a.m.: Church in heels can't walk in.
11:05 a.m.: REI garage sale with Mike. He's sad because the lines are too long to stay.
11:20 a.m.: Target. He's sad because I walk so slowly in those heels.
Noon: Dropped off at home. Decide to return shoes to mall.
3:00 p.m.: Dude Ranch (Mike's house) to watch USA/Canada.
4:45 p.m.: Mike's truck begins to sink in front yard.
5'sih: USA looses, Mike looks ready to cry and covered in mud, I go home because I'm no help.
6:00 p.m.: Iron, fold, and put away 4 loads of laundry that have been sitting on couch for 4 days.
8:28 p.m.: Update facebook.
8:30 p.m.: Start outlining for paper.
10:06 p.m.: Start this blog post.
10:08 p.m.: Finish first diet coke for the evening.
10:46 p.m.: Finish 4 page outline. Can start writing.
11:37 p.m.: 2 of 10 pages. Update facebook & get sustenance, i.e. diet coke & pretzels.
12:58 a.m.: 5 of 10 pages. Answer hecklers on facebook who cannot believe I'm doing this this early in the semester.
3:04 a.m.: Print rough draft. Go to bed.
7:30 a.m.: Up, edit, correct, turn in.
8:30 a.m.: Shower
9:30 a.m.: Out the door, doctor, school, dinner with new Dean, home again 8 p.m.
8:01 p.m.: Fall over.

No one should ever pity me. I do this to myself.

love,
Katie

Giving Up and Taking On - Part Two

2010-02-26T08:59:00.002-05:00

To remind you, Mike and I gave up meat and dairy for Lent and took on an increased prayer life. (Part One). After one week I have to say it: Lent is hard.

It pains the body, but more so it pains the heart and mind. In giving up meat and dairy Mike and I were both overwhelmed by how much it bothered us. We were always hungry, could never get enough food. Constant hunger meant we were like frayed wires, exposed and undone. It isn't that Lent has made us into terrible people, but that the hunger (and frustration) has exposed our already present fallibility. We were disappointed in how much hunger, such a basic impulse, controlled our moods and relationships.

It went so badly that we avoided each other for the first few days. When our reactions did not improve, we decided it was time to reassess. Why were we giving up meat and dairy?

The original impulse was to follow in the footsteps of early church leaders who did this to overcome the body so to focus the spirit more clearly on God's Spirit. Mike and I found ourselves unequipped to do that. We were focused so much on our own discomfort that we never got to the spiritual part (i.e. the prayer part).

Have you ever been faced with something about yourself you don't like? Lent has been an honest look in the mirror. A long gaze that we had tried to do too much, too fast. We need to address the basic impulses of our bodies before we can concentrate on God. This is not the ideal pattern; but it is the honest one.

Often as Christians we fail to recognize our own fallibility to do, believe, or trust. We think we can pull ourselves up to 'good enough.' Lent is the exposing of our insides - the lusts, hungers, and sins - that never show up in the other seasons of our year; and it does this because nothing is more arresting, more compelling than the Christ strung up two pieces of wood held there by iron.

Fallibility is not an excuse. We decided to not eat red meat and dairy. This slight alteration allows us to have the energy and focus to commit to going to morning prayer at school three days a week. For me that means getting up at 6 a.m. (to be there by 7:30 a.m.) on days that I don't have to be at school until 2:30 p.m. It means going to bed earlier and getting my homework done earlier. What was important for us was to not let what we gave up get in the way of the habit we were trying to take on. The prayer was more important than the food; we could not use our hunger as an excuse to keep from prayer.

On a more practical level, the fasting has been good in two ways. First, it causes my body and mind yearn for Sundays. We don't break our fast until we take Eucharist in worship. Sunday has become truly a time of rest: time to take joy for the morning, worship, the bread and wine, and for fellowship. Sunday is the end and beginning of my week. Second, my body feels better. I've always had an easily upset stomach and the fasting has taken some of harshest things I eat out of my daily diet. It is a nice side effect.

A third development is an intense hunger for foods I can't have. I'm day dreaming of -

Farfelle with Zucchini (Picture and recipe via Pioneer Woman, here)

Risotto (Picture and recipe via Pioneer Woman, here)

A Five Guys Burger

Lots and lots of cheesecake...

...drool!

I hope you are doing well with your own Lenten disciplines and if you are not practicing one then I hope you are encouraged to consider this season in a new way.

love,
Katie

p.s. We had a hard time with no meat, no diary in part because of our schedules and daily demands. It is not impossible, but was almost impossible in our current season.

What's in a name? Part One

2010-02-24T16:57:00.000-05:00

One of the biggest challenges I've had in getting married has been what to do with my last name.

Names are important to our human existence. For the Jacob to be blessed he must tell the angel his name (Genesis 32). When Peter confesses Jesus' full name, Messiah, he is named as the rock on which God will build the church (Matthew 16). In the ancient world names denoted parentage and the world from which you have come. In Scripture, names are used to denote God's action through an individual - Jacob is renamed Israel, Peter (meaning rock) had been called Simon.

My name is probably not quite as momentous, but it is still important. I often get questions on why my parents hyphenated their last name. They take seriously Genesis 2:24:

For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and they will become one flesh.

In marriage, 1 + 1 = 1. One flesh, one family, one name. The question of course is whose flesh do they become? A more old-fashioned view would say that the wife joins the man's flesh, takes on his family and name as her own. A more modern view of marriage (one I've witnessed with friends) would say a new flesh is created, a new family. The name is a matter of practicality and tradition. You take the man's name because that is how it is done.

My parents wanted to make tangible their view of marriage: that when they said their vows before God a new flesh was being created, made out of the two of them, and so they hyphenated name represented that.

You might think, who cares? You have to be called something; a name doesn't define you.

I would argue though that a name does represent you. In Jacob and Peter's stories their names were changed to describe the people they would become: Jacob the father of Israel, Peter the rock of the Church. A name doesn't define us, but as we are formed into people our names are attached to that process. We impart the meaning into our name so that when we are called out by name it is a sign of being known.

When faced with changing my name I began to think more about all of this. I realized how much my name represented who I was, yet like Jacob or Peter, changing my name didn't mean I ceased being that person. A name change can indicate the person you will become.

There is the practical too - do you hyphenate an already hyphenated name? More on that tomorrow.

love,
Katie

Monday of the First Week of Lent

2010-02-22T08:05:00.002-05:00

"Therefore, as we are about to celebrate the most eminent of all mysteries, in which the blood of Jesus Christ has wiped away all our sins, let us first of all prepare to offer the sacrifice of mercy, so that what we have been given by the goodness of God we may ourselves show to those who have trespassed against us.

We must show more liberal bounty toward the poor and those who suffer from all kinds of affliction in order that many voices may give thanks to God and that the relief of those in need may support our fasts. Indeed, no other devotion of the faithful is more pleasing to the Lord than that which is directed toward the poor."

Leo, Fifth Century

love,
Katie

Giving Up and Taking On

2010-02-17T14:38:00.007-05:00

Blow the trumpet in Zion;

sound the alarm on my holy hill.
Let all who live in the land tremble,
for the day of the LORD is coming.
It is close at hand-

-Joel 2:1

Today is Ash Wednesday, and yesterday was Mardi Gras. Today is the beginning of Lent, the forty-day season of preparation for Holy Week. A lot of us know about giving up something for Lent, but rarely do we connect that act with anything.

Giving up is a discipline in which you practice self-denial. The sermon in chapel today marked that we live in a perpetual Mardi Gras, a culture of carnival rather than Lent, of self-gratification rather than self-denial.

Ash Wednesday is the first day of Lent and it is a time to remember our death. This is counter-intutitive for us who do everything we can to immortalize ourselves. But we cannot have the Resurrection unless we have death first. Ash Wednesday is a witness to the world about our own fallibility. The whole of Lent is a confession of guilt. We cannot build ourselves up. It is a time of humility and contrition.

So during Lent we strip the Altar like Christ will be stripped prior to being hung on the cross.

It is turned so the inscription is 'I thirst' for Christ thirsted on the cross.

So during Lent we remove all signs of life from our sanctuaries in preparation for the death of the Son of God.

We cease singing Alleluia for darkness will descend.

We fast to redirect our bodies toward God.

We prepare new members of the church to receive the Resurrection.

Do not despair - all of Lent is not like a heavy, gray cloud over our year. In the calculation of 40 days (a number signifying a time preparation reaching all the way back to the Old Testament), we do not count Sundays. Sunday is the day of rest, the Sabbath day. It is a feast day and a time to rejoice. A time to put aside our disciplines and feast.

I point this out for my own sake. Mike and I have given up all meat and dairy for Lent. Early church leaders believed that if a Christian could not discipline their stomach they could not overcome anger, pride, and the like. I find nothing wrong with meat and dairy - it is about giving up the impulses of the body so to take on the work of the Spirit. We are giving up meat and dairy, and taking on a more active prayer life. So Sunday will be our feast day, a day we yearn for so much we can taste it in our mouths.

I plan to keep you updates this Lenten season of what it means to give up and take on. Every Friday morning I will post what the past week has been like - the frustration, hunger, temptations, and joys of trying to do this. It is my hope that those posts will encourage you to think more about what this season can mean to you. The sermon this morning charged that this perpetual festival we live in is really a fever, a symptom of a real sickness that prevents us from living as children of the Living God.

Lent is about moving against that sickness, a treatment.

love,
Katie

The Quest for the Wedding Shoe

2010-02-16T10:15:00.006-05:00

I go in for my first fitting next week which means I have to have all the major accessories in place. So this past Sunday I researched spanx and how many different configurations there are for a bra. But the more frustrating, albeit fun, part were the shoes.

I am 5'1" and Mike is 6'3" so heels would be advisable. We won't be standing for the whole ceremony, but they still need to be comfortable and I'm a baby when it comes to heels. They get kicked off the moment I'm uncomfortable. So with height and comfort the main requirements, I headed to the mall with my roommate (who is also getting married and looking for shoes). I had no idea this would be so hard.

I would love a pair of Aerosoles, which might be the most comfortable heels I've ever tried on, but this spring they all look like Grandma shoes.

Protocol (in blue leather) $70

Or I would love a pair of Cole Haan shoes, but I don't have the $300 they cost.

Do you see the pearlized gold leather?

So we went EVERYWHERE...Macy's, Belk, Norstrom, Cole Haan, Aldo's, Payless, Aerosoles, Rack Room, DSW. The only thing we managed to find was a fabulous sale at The Loft where I got a great denim twirl skirt.

Back home I trolled the websites I knew about - J.Crew, Bannana, Amazon, and Piperlime. Nothing. Maybe I was being too picky? Straight gold or silver wasn't going to work and neither were satin or strappy sandals. I think that took out most wedding shoes. I would love something blue or a metallic.

After a quick break to have leftover fondu with my roommates (Yum!) I felt revitalized and was determined to have picked out something before midnight. Finally, I stumbled upon Zappos.com. Other than having great search options and pretty much every shoe ever made, I fell hook, line, and sinker for the free shipping and free returns. So I ordered three pairs:

Kenneth Cole Reaction 'Need to Know'
Rsvp 'Katrina'

Kenneth Cole Reaction 'Know by Heart'

After I pressed the purchase button I had this sinking feeling that none of them might work out - why should they when I've rejected so many options in person? So I ordered one last pair which would be the shoes I'd wear in an instant if I wasn't looking for heels. They are a pair of shoes I've coveted, but wasn't going to shell out the money for them considering I didn't *need* them r

Boden's Embellished Flats.

They are navy and so cute. I even got them on sale so the price wasn't quite as bad. If these three heels don't work out, I'm throwing in the towel and telling Mike we're just going to have to look like Mutt and Jeff (here) in our wedding pictures. We look like that all the time:

Note: We're standing on a hill so I'm not normally that short next to him. And Mike would appreciate it if you ignored the look on his face. He doesn't do posed smile well.

But back to the shoes - am I crazy to say I am kind of praying the three other pairs of shoes are a flop because I want a reason to own those flats? I do really love the first pair of Kenneth Cole's...

love,
Katie

Day After

2010-02-15T21:32:00.003-05:00

Valentines Day was special - we had a picnic inside and I got two dozen roses and a candy machine full of these little guys:

But the day after was even more special for two reasons.

One, my best friend Sarah got engaged! She's joining the wedding hoopla of 2010 (more on that in another post) and getting married this September.

Second, this lovely poem was sitting in my email box this morning from Mike:

The Wild Rose

(written by Wendell Berry for his wife)

Sometimes hidden from me

in daily custom and in trust,

so that I live by you unaware

as by the beating of my heart.

Suddenly you flare in my sight,

a wild rose blooming at the edge

of thicket, grace and light

where yesterday was only shade,

and once again I am blessed,

choosing again

what I chose before.

He's a good one, that boy! We drove around Durham tonight looking at some apartment complexes for a place to live next year.

love,
Katie

Happy Day!

2010-02-09T11:36:00.003-05:00

Durham Downtown (via piedmontgeographic.com)

Mike was able to finalize his field education placement this morning so we're going to be in Durham this summer. Actually he'll be working in Raleigh at an Anglican church, but that means after our wedding whirlwind we can come back here for the summer and set up house.

The alternatives were:

a) Put our stuff in storage and move Somewhere, USA for 10 weeks and live with strangers for the first part of our marriage. Undesirable and expensive.

b) Mike move to Somewhere, USA for 10 weeks and I live in Durham by myself and work to pay the bills. So undesirable the idea of it gave me stomach pains.

Instead, we're going to be here, be together, and not go broke. While field ed. is not going to make us rich, we both feel so blessed. Best of all Mike is excited for the work he'll be doing and that means the world to me.

So today is a happy day! I may not be able to smell or taste anything for the 4th day in a row (sickness, blah!) but Mike's got his field ed. and I've got a cute outfit on.

love,
Katie

Good Enough

2010-02-08T13:17:00.004-05:00

Sea of Galilee - One of the most beautiful, peace places on earth.

I got sick this weekend with some sort of cold that made me feel like my head was seriously swelling by the minute. I went through two boxes of kleenex and was pretty much hyped up on drugs for the last 72 hours.

Yet, I still had an assignment due on Monday morning. A text analysis of Acts 3 to be precise. Not only was it due, but it had to be emailed out to the entire class for everyone to see.

The saving grace was that I'm taking the class pass/fail. Given the semester ahead of me I decided to take two of my four classes pass/fail. It takes some of the pressure off. So I gave myself a midnight deadline and trudged through the commentaries (which Mike was kind enough to make sure I had). I even alternated between the Superbowl and the kerygamatic elements in Peter's sermon.

And at midnight I turned the sucker in.

That may not seem like an event to warrant a blog post, but it is! I'm a perfectionist when it comes to a lot of things including school. To me (in a not rational way) if something can't be done perfect then I don't want to do it. If the paper isn't perfect I don't want to turn it in. But with the pass/fail option I was able to just say 'Good enough..." There are other things in my life right now that need attention. I don't get to fret about it.

It is a lesson in 2 Corinthians 12:9: 'But he said to me, "My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness." Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ's power may rest on me.'

Paul is writing about being glad in the midst of hard times because it keeps him humble. I need that lesson over and over again: Grace is sufficient for me. My own effort is a weakness when I try to 'make it perfect' on my own. My effort to 'get it perfect' causes me to stumble into pride and then frustration when I can't actually 'get it perfect.' I love the phrase 'so that Christ's power may rest on me...' because I imagine wind over water. It is a strange image, but it works for me.

So being able to say 'Good enough' was a practice in letting grace be sufficient, letting Christ's power rest on me.

love,
Katie

Snow, An Explanation

2010-02-04T09:35:00.006-05:00

December 9, 2009 - Madison, Wisconsin gets 17 inches of snow in 24 hours. The University, in the midst of finals, cancels school for the day. A first since 1990. The next morning:

They dig out...

They become pirates...

They ride bikes...

They wheel out the snow blowers...

They go for a run...

a.k.a they go on living.

January 27th, 2010 - Durham, North Carolina gets 4 inches of snow overnight. The next day is a Saturday, but almost every single church cancels Sunday services. Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday - public schools are still canceled.

Friday Night - Duke Chapel
Note: Duke Chapel was one of the only churches that held services, but their chaplain had to walk to church because he couldn't get out of his street.

But over the next week they...

Don't clear the roads...
This is the interstate around the city over 24 hours after the snow fell.

Stay inside...

Continue to stay inside...
My street looked like this when I went out on Sunday night, a full 48 hours after the snow. It finally was plowed yesterday, 5 days after the snow.

Continue to stay inside...
Obviously this isn't my neighborhood, but it was taken this morning 6 days after the snow.

A note of explanation: They never get snow like this. Never. Anna, who has grown up in North Carolina, was in utter shock when the snow started falling as hard as it was. Mike showed up at my house with a propane stove and an ax in case the power went out.

They don't know how to deal with the snow either. Cities near us (Greensboro, Cary) were putting down rock salt on the streets two days before the storm. Stores were selling garden shovels as snow shovels and people were buying generators. I saw a woman shoveling her driveway with a broom.

And because they're not prepared the streets are sheets of ice for days. It isn't safe to drive in, and the only reason I was able to get around is because Mike has a truck with 4 wheel drive. My little Vibe, even with its snow tires, wasn't going anywhere until two days later after some of the snow had melted.

Now it is all melting and mixing with the dirt and the clay and it is all a big soupy mess. I've switched from snow boots to rain boots. It makes Wisconsin snow look pristine and even pleasant in some way.

love,
Katie

Photo Source: WRAL for Durham, KMOX for Madison

Wedding Hair - Soliciting Opinions

2010-02-01T13:20:00.005-05:00

This shouldn't be that hard, but it is.

How should I wear my hair for the wedding?

Unfortunately I can't show you the dress or veil since Mike frequents here often. But I can tell you the dress is simple and the veil is fingertip length and will be worn for pictures and the ceremony only.

Other factors include the fact that I'm getting married in May in Florida. So there are two options: short or up. I've let my hair grow out so it is right at/just past my shoulders now. By May it would be long enough.

Short would be something like this:

(without the jewel)

This isn't exactly what I had in mind, but I can't find an electronic picture of it so this one will have to stand in. Short bob, parted on the side, with soft waves is the idea.

Advantage: It is simple and it is me. I am one of those brides who wants to look somewhat like she normally does. Another advantage is that it is more informal while also being classic. I like that. As evidenced below I wear my hair like this often:

Winter '09 with roommates

Summer '09 with the Blakes

Disadvantage: Humidity, 'nuff said.

Up-Do would be something like these:

Katie Bower at All Bower Power

(without the flower; I especially like the front though)

(This one is soft and pretty)

(I like how simple this one is)

Advantage: Easy, classic, and won't be affected by the heat.

Disadvantage: Is it me? Is it more formal than I'd like?

Other advantage is that I've been wanting to try this hairstyle forever - long with bangs. I always get too impatient and cut it all off, but if I do an up do after the wedding I can try this out:

I am seriously looking for opinions so let me know what you think.

love,
Katie

p.s. The wedding is likely going to be a 3 o'clockish wedding with early evening reception that is indoor/outdoor.

Snowed In

2010-01-31T11:41:00.002-05:00

We got a winter storm here and haven't left the house much. Hunkered down, we started a fire and cook deliciousness. On the menu was Pioneer Woman's lovely Artichoke & Tomato Pasta. You've got to try this one. It is super easy, makes a ton, and tastes great. The great part about it is that it reheats well. I've been eating it all weekend. Add a little chicken broth to the left overs and it becomes just like new.

I'm supposed to go to the library today, but it is closed due to the snow. And tomorrow it may be too. We don't handle snow well here in North Carolina. But try the pasta recipe and no matter the weather you'll be just fine.

love,
Katie

Useful New Links

2010-01-25T12:30:00.000-05:00

I am in the midst of getting back into the swing of things. This semester is a sprint. I am already bogged down in papers and books to read: 2 papers this week, 3 books to read. Two non-school related pieces of news:

This weekend Mike and I helped chaparone 30 high school and middle school students on a ski weekend to West Virgina. We didn't ski (those 3 books had to be read), but we did drive a 15 passenger van (okay, Mike did) with 6 boys through the mountains in the rain. That's an adventure for any relationship.
My house was adopted by a cat. She showed up on our front porch, knocking (as cats are prone to do) on our front door, and we crumbled and let her in. She's litter-box trained, clean, and healthy so we think she is someone's pet, but we haven't found anyone looking for her yet. We've named her Susanna after Susanna Wesley (mother of the founder of Methodism). Pictures and stories to come. The challenge will come spring when we have to decide who keeps her.

But the real point of this post was to share some of the useful new links I've stumbled across (or been introduced to) recently:

Uncrate

The Buyer's Guide for Men, from yachts to bottle openers. Mike loves this site. I think this wine rack is cool.

Knock Off Wood

Free plans to build your own version of name brand furniture! We love these nightstands, bookshelves, small dining table, and these side tables. Mike and I plan to try the little side tables come March (and warmer weather).

Ikea Hacker

A blog for all lovers of Ikea. I love this floating vanity and dining banquet.

Copy Cat Chic
Offers cheaper versions of some of our favorite brand items. I am a fan of her Room Redos
and chic finds like this $143 rug from Overstock in lieu of this $328 one from Shades of Light.

Love,
Katie

Superficial Reasons Why I'm Excited to be Married

2010-01-21T08:15:00.000-05:00

1) Both sides of the bed will be away from the wall so making the bed will be SO much easier.

2) I have someone to change the light bulbs in the overhead lights.

3) After living with girls for the last seven years I will be living with someone whose hair isn't long like mine and which won't shed to create hair tumbleweeds. Any of those in our house will be entirely mine.

4) Mike changes my oil for free.

5) A killer of all things creepy and crawly.

love,
Katie

p.s. What are your superficial reasons?

Oh Baby!

2010-01-20T16:32:00.000-05:00

Somehow I have started getting baby stuff in the mail.

I don't know if it is a secret conspiracy on the part of my mother or if my name somehow got on a list somewhere in the intra-web or Mike's idea of a joke. First, it was two cans of formula from Similac -
...which promptly got donated to a food drive. Then it was a free copy of Amerincan Baby magazine. It got burned in the fireplace. Then it was a letter from some people in Wisconsin inviting me to participate in some sort of study for pregnant women. This is why I think my mom is conspiring against me.

But sadly for her that ship isn't even on the horizon. In the meantime, I will start forwarding the baby stuff on to her.

love, Katie

Periodicals.

2010-01-19T10:51:00.000-05:00

When I was growing up I thought magazines were a huge luxury, but then again I also thought a pack of gum was too. (I was a deprived child.) Really they are a luxury item when you're looking to save some money, but they are also quite delightful.

Last year I wanted to be more informed of what was going on in the world so I got a subscription to Time magazine, a periodical I read when flying, only to find out they come every darn week. I don't have time (haha) to read Time every week so thus I give them a 3 second glance to see if the cover story interests me and they go straight into the fire food pile. Waste-o-money.

But I also got two other subscriptions last year - both of which I love - Christianity Today and Image Journal. Mike and I like Christianity Today because it is a good, general overview of what is happening in the American Christian church. We're a bit more conservative but it isn't not nearly as far right as I think it once was. And I really appreciate their commitment to presenting theology to a general audience, such as this cover story on Calvin back in September.

Image Journal is a quarterly journal on religion and arts published by Seattle Pacific University. It is a great read for Christians who are interested in art - poetry, literature, painting, and want to think theologically about imagination, creativity, and beauty. It is something that is meant to be read slowly and savored. They have a blog that I enjoy reading in my Google Reader every day.

Mike has introduced me to two other magazines I enjoy: The Week and Oxford American. The Week is what Time cannot be: a weekly that I can actually read. It does an excellent job of telling the story of the past week is less words, but not in a way you feel short changed. It is digestible in five or ten minute reads rather than multi-page articles. We don't subscribe right now, but it is one I would love to have once I'm not in school.
Oxford American is a magazine published by the University of Arkansas and calls itself 'The Southern Magazine of Good Writing' which it is. It publishes beautiful short stories and essays which I thoroughly enjoy even if I'm not from the South. They've won two National Magazine awards and published previously unseen stuff by the likes of William Faulkner, Walker Percy, and Carson McCullers. Something I enjoyed earlier this year was a list of the best southern novels of all time (here).

And lastly though I don't have a subscription to it, I love it Martha Stewert's Real Simple
It is always beautiful, straight forward, and helpful. And like Christina wrote, they have the best wedding glossies too.

We'll see which we subscribe too next year once we're married. It'll still be a luxury, but for the ones listed here it'll be worth it.

love,
Katie

Bags

2010-01-17T23:34:00.003-05:00

Tomorrow I begin my last semester of school (EVER...maybe, we'll see...), and I begin it with bags. Lots and lots of bags. Got the backpack into which goes pencil case (with the ever important Ipod, headphones, Ipod charger, post-its, colorful pens and highlighters, whiteout, gum, glasses, lotion, and chap stick but no actual pencils) and the all around emergency kit. Honed from many years spent on campuses, this bag includes aspirin, antacid, daytime allergy medicine, band-aids, hair ties and clips, Shout wipes, and the ever important dryer sheets for when static cling haunts you.

Then there is the gym bag and lunch bag and the handy, dandy reuseable bag which gets thrown in the locker for the days I need to carry something extra home. This week it will be lots and lots of books. And yes, I still do have a locker. Mike and I share it. He even sometimes carries my books.

Lot's of bags means prepardness, and for days I'm not prepared I can always run to my roommate Amanda who carries more bags than I do like a proper Southern lady should (she adds a pocket books which is Southern for purse). She always has everything.

And when I'm in dire straits I call Mike who loves me enough to leave the comfort of his house, pick me up on campus, and take me home so I don't have to walk to my car in the pouring rain. What did I need so badly? Pants. I had gone to the gym, run, showered, and forgotten pants (besides the sweaty ones I'd just run in). That's love people.

His loving me should mean I carry less bags, but I am neurotic.

love,
Katie

p.s. The Duke Divinity lunch box is not mine, it is Amanda's extra one. She is prepared for everything, I tell you!

Oh Ikea!

2010-01-14T08:59:00.005-05:00

Yesterday I went to Ikea with Anna and Joelle for one brief adventure before school starts. Other than seeing easily 30 cop cars pulling people over on the way there it was an uneventful trip. We ate the requisite lunch in the Ikea cafeteria (I opted out of the Swedish meatballs) and then hit the show room. Anna had never been to Ikea (and I only once and briefly) but quickly she was as in love as we were, but I think it was the kitchen cabinets that got all of us - the space! the organization! the colors! Then there were also the bookshelves (which I shook to test) and then we sat for a long while in the Poang chairs with the leather cushions and sighed.

But other than Joelle, who was there to outfit her entire house with curtains, we were mostly there to gather ideas. I grabbed a few things though:

Handy dandy hanger for scarves.

Duvet cover for ugly old bedspread. Will be used as guest blanket in future. Now does not resemble fire hydrant.

European pillows in lux dark gray velvet for my bed - practically as good as a trip to the continent.

I also gathered some ideas, including crossing out some ideas on my 'first-married apartment' list. But what I loved:

A row of these Expedit bookshelves for our ridiculous amount of books.

Rug for bedroom - and since it isn't a high traffic area the quality will be fine.Floor lamp (and table version) for living room.

The requisite Poang chair - here I go back and forth. I want one and the one above would run $150 (not including stool, which would be nice). Then there is also the option of buying one off craigslist (of which there are a TON) and then getting a new cover from Bemz (here). We will see what I end up doing.

Mike and I've started a competition to see who can put the most money into our couch fund which right now consists of a box full of change in my office. He likes to win so this competition thing should be good for both of us. A couch isn't in the near future because we already have a nice futon and there is no where for the two to go in a one bedroom apartment, but Mike graduates we will have a little nest egg to buy a decent couch. In the meantime, we're going to start looking at apartments in the next month or two which is always exciting.

love,
Katie

The High Cost of Ignoring Beauty

2010-01-12T18:35:00.000-05:00

I ran across this article on Apartment Therapy of all places, but it was originally published in The American, the journal of the American Enterprise Institute. The author, Roger Scruton, compares European versus American sensibilities concerning beauty, especially as they apply to our buildings and towns. The cost of ignoring beauty it put plainly:

People need beauty. They need the sense of being at home in their world, and being in communication with other souls. In so many areas of modern life—in pop music, in television and cinema, in language and literature—beauty is being displaced by raucous and attention-grabbing clichés. We are being torn out of ourselves by the loud and insolent gestures of people who want to seize our attention but to give nothing in return for it. Although this is not the place to argue the point it should perhaps be said that this loss of beauty, and contempt for the pursuit of it, is one step on the way to a new form of human life, in which taking replaces giving, and vague lusts replace real loves.

I love the phrase 'We are being torn out of ourselves...' That image coalesces with my concerns with our modern, American church.

In a church where beauty is not evident we become too much like the culture and become me-oriented: salvation is more about a personal choice than the Cross. When we cannot see God's beauty in this world we put ourselves in the center, think ourselves entitled: "I have a right to happiness, to good health, to blessing..." When beauty is not present in our worship, it becomes about the individual experience rather than the beauty of God's holiness: we stop going to church because "I don't get anything out of it." In short, we become idolatrous.

Yes, there is a very high cost of ignoring beauty.

love,
Katie

Truth vs. Headlines

2010-01-10T11:13:00.002-05:00

I wondered as I flew home this week whether I'd run into longer delays at airports thanks to the 'Christmas Terrorist' as he's been called. I'd heard about new measures taken, but I didn't see any of them though I heard a lot of talk both from fellow travelers and on the news. This morning, I watched an interview on 'The State of the Nation' on CNN that I thought was interesting.

Headline: The Brittish had revoked his visa.
Truth: They revoked it because he listed a school that did not exist. It had nothing to do with terrorism.

Headline: He paid cash.
Truth: He bought the ticket in Africa. Most people in Africa buy their tickets with cash because of fraud.

Headline: He didn't check luggage.
Truth: He had a carry-on bag. How many people don't check luggage?

Now why they didn't follow-up with the father's concerns is disturbing and indicates the system failed. It is poignant to me how the headlines we get so often have another shade of truth to them.

love,
Katie

Interview:

Good-bye Wisconsin, Hello North Carolina!

2010-01-07T11:12:00.005-05:00

Tomorrow morning I am flying back from Wisconsin to North Carolina and go from 14 degrees and snow to 20 degrees and no snow. Before I jump feet first back into school I wanted to recap with a few pictures:

Tasha on Christmas morning...chewing as usual.

Jenny, on the other hand, is wiser and is resting.

Tasha is still chewing...

...but she is so cute!

Pepper prefers to be left alone.

Aimee is sad Tasha chewed her present.

I am excited because Tasha can't chew Pyrex.

It is snowing outside.

And I cooked a yummy meal of chicken alfredo lasagna and minestrone.

Later in the week we hit the road to Illinois to visit my Grandmother. Sometimes we had problems finding the road.

New Year's I went to Onalaska to hang out with Sarah and Kristin while looking like a teal disco ball.

This Christmas I:

Showed Mike how cold it can be in Wisconsin.
Had a mini-shower.
Went to Illinois to visit my grandmother.
Went to Onalaska to visit Sarah three times including New Years.
Looked for apartments.
Went with my sister and Sarah to buy bridesmaid dresses.
Preached at my home church and was liturgist on Christmas Eve at my Dad's church.
Showed Anna around Madison when she came to Wisconsin for a liturgy conference.
Watched a lot of West Wing.
Sewed with my mom.

Alas, it is time to go back to the real world of papers and studying, but I am really looking forward to seeing Mike again and sleeping in my own bed. Good-bye Wisconsin, Hello North Carolina!

love,
Katie

Resolutions?

2010-01-04T11:09:00.003-05:00

I don't do resolutions because I will break them. I'm just being honest here. I've done the more-resolutions: read more, write more, work out more, and the less-resolutions: eat less, drink less diet coke, and even talk less (I have foot-in-mouth syndrome). But I've read lots of blogs that start the new year of with a list of resolutions, and I've talked to lots of friends who are resolved as well.

However, I am resolved too.

The end-goal: To be married and to start my writing career.
Time of Completion: August 2010 (May for the marriage part, August for the writing part)
The steps along the way:

to plan the wedding (i.e. no more putting it off to look at decorating blogs)
to get everything I can out of my last semester at Duke (i.e. read for class)
to write every Friday morning
to start sending out queries (i.e. believer in yourself)
to work on this blog a bit more
to write 40 freaking-fantastic pages for my application to the SPU MFA in Creative Writing
to relax better (i.e. trade crap television for a good novel)
to stick to a budget (i.e. stop buying clothes on sale, online. It is still spending money)
to survive the wedding while looking spectacular (i.e. workout)
to enjoy the honeymoon ('nuff said)
to move-in to an apartment and decorate a little, cook a little, cuddle a lot
to get a job that I don't hate (standards!) and start paying down school loans

There is also the church youth ski trip, an Anglican Missions conference, two trips to Tallahassee in March and April (wedding planning, brother's wedding), and my graduation. We hope to visit my cousin and her family more in Wake Forest, Christina and Jordan in DC, Robert and Phyllis in Wilmington, Bailey (my old church), and maybe even do a beach weekend or something with beloved friends.

I am resolved and I know it looks like I have a lot of resolutions, but I don't. These are the things that are necessary to live the type of life I want to live - a life about words, God, marriage, people, and learning. A New Year's resolution would be to learn to like salad (had one the other day, not impressed) or not to speed. Those are fine and dandy, but I don't have the mental effort to accomplish them. There is enough going on in my life.

What about you? Do you have resolutions?

love,
Katie

p.s. I don't hate New Year's Resolutions. I'm just feeling opinionated this morning.

Hope Chest

2009-12-24T16:49:00.001-05:00

After Christmas my mom and I are going to embark on a project. This is all going to take some explaining, so bear with me please.

Three years ago, when I was packing up to move to North Carolina and start at Duke, I asked my mom what you get for graduating from graduate school in our family. For high school we've each gotten a laptop to take to college, and for college we each get a car (used, but it's a car) and a bedroom set (because my mom has an obsession with buying furniture) all with the idea that we're set to go make it out in the scary, big world. Generous doesn't even begin to describe it. So of course I was excited to hear what comes with another degree.

My mom snorted, "We take you out to dinner."

Thwarted, I suggested maybe a cedar chest, "Then I can put fun things in it like a dowry for someday when I get married."

"I let you read too many historical romance novels." Was my mother's reply and the subject was dropped.

Fast forward to this summer when my mom was down in North Carolina visiting. My mother is sewing fiend. She's made every bedspread I've ever slept under, my prom dresses, and even her own wedding dress. She isn't making mine because she lives too far away, but we are going to make my veil. Naturally she wants to pass these skills along to her daughters. My sister's interest level is in the negatives and mine has remained neutral until recently. She gave me a sewing machine one Christmas which I've lugged with me to every house or apartment for four years. Finally this summer I decided it was time to learn how to use it (I wanted new throw pillows). So her visit coincided with 1) Mike proposing 2) Me learning how to sew on my machine.

And thus the idea for my graduation present reasserted itself. The deal was she and I would work together to make the things we put in the cedar chest - the things being my linens. Of course the first part of the business is to decide on a chest.

The original idea is the simplicity of a blanket chest:

But I really like this Shaker style too:

Or this chest-like media center:

Here is the issue - I don't need anymore heavy wood furniture. I have lots - a sleigh bed, wardrobe, dresser with mirror, night stand, desk, table for eight, two coffee tables, and a wood frame futon. Poor Mike.

I have thought of asking my mom for something else that I might actually need or want.

Like this mirror:

Or this rug, neither of which I need. Or this chair that I tell myself I need but I really just want:

We do actually need bookshelves...

And some table lamps...

But I think I'm getting ahead of myself. I think the point is that I sew with my Mom. We might end up going with just the linens for simplicity sake. We'll buy some things and make others. My mom's machine can embroider letters so some fun monogramming might go on. The actual stuff we're going to do this Christmas...

A plain apron like this one with my name added in white stitching:

And a button monogram throw pillow like this one to put somewhere:

Stripped dish towels:

Fun yellow sheets:

A duvet like this one (thanks to Lettered Cottage) for a guest bedroom:

A table runner with velvet or ribbon trim (blue or a silver one for the holidays):

A neutral table cloth like this one for everyday use:

A fun bright runner for more casual settings:

My mom made me a quilt a few years so she'll include that and some other family heirlooms, some china and books that belonged to my grandfather. And last but not least on our list is my veil, of which I have lots of pictures but you'll all have to wait alongside Mike.

Off to sew!

love,
Katie

Mini-Shower

2009-12-19T21:13:00.004-05:00

So I was going to have a bridal shower today, but it got canceled (LONG story, not interesting). But my dad forgot to cancel the cake so we had a cake: And we had a few presents from some family so my parents, sister, and youngest brother had a mini-shower. We ate Hyvee Chinese and then cake. Then I opened some presents. There were some little things, but the major present came from my grandmother who has an affinity for kitchen products. And she got me:

A beautiful, silver-like-a-fox, Kitchen Aid Artisan. Sigh.

love,
Katie

Space?

2009-12-19T13:17:00.002-05:00

I'm looking at apartment complexes today for Mike and I to live in once we get married. This is a form of procrastination since I'm putting off writing a sermon and a family Christmas letter. As I look at complexes price and space definitely come into play. I would love an extra room for an office/guest room, but it is definitely not a necessity by any means. We're only going to be in the space for a year. What is necessary is price.

It got me thinking about space. How much space do we need? And how often do we define what we'd like (such as an office) as what we need?

I was watching HGTV with my mom last night and we watched a couple with a baby talk about how they 'needed' at minimum 4 bedroom house. They didn't work from home or plan on having anymore kids, but they needed 4 bedrooms for 3 people. Ridiculous! But then again so is an office/guest room for two people who make NO MONEY. Then today I stumbled upon a blog, Six in the City, which chronicles the life of a family of 6 (including three teenage boys) moving from spacious, suburban Colorado to a 1,200 sq. foot apartment in New York City.

I think I can do without the office.

love,
Katie

Do-it-Yourself #2

2009-12-19T12:30:00.000-05:00

DIY Project #1 were those dining room chairs and they aren't actually finished completely but it got cold so we moved indoors.

Then one day about two months ago (yes, that is how long it takes me to get around to things here) I was looking at a Pottery Barn catalog and saw this:

and I thought to myself, "How nice it would be to have a system like that..." Two problems 1) I don't have the money to buy said system. 2) I don't have an army of children that would constitute such an elaborate system.

So time for a DIY project. I had a large whiteboard that I'd picked up along the way sitting in a corner of my office. The problem was that the frame was gross:

So I went to Michael's and after enough wandering found colored duct tape. I know, duct tape. This is the lazy person's paint. Duct tape worked for me because when I pulled the faux wood off the frame came with it. To paint I'd need to strip the faux wood paper and in the process make the surface very uneven. It also worked because this whole system is temporary. I plan on making something nicer once we get married and I'm *just* working. I picked the bright turqouise because it goes with the rest of my office:

and because it is temporary. It's amazing what you'll do when it is temporary. So I covered the frame in the duct tape and then took two squares of pin-board stuff that I got at Michael's and using double sided tape attached it to the bottom of my whiteboard.

I hung mounting hardware on the back and hung it in a corner of my office. I hung a ribbon board I already owned above it to create a little organizing corner. I slipped an unused side table into the built-in cranny and filled over-sized coffee mugs (I'm not a coffee drinker) with white eraser markers, sharpies, and note cards. I also hung some hooks and now have a place for my most often used purses. I even found a Kleenex box I didn't hate at Target. Voila! A wonderful little system just for me.

love,
Katie

Meet Tasha

2009-12-17T00:28:00.006-05:00

Tasha is my parents' 3 month-old golden lab. She is adorable with soft fur, eager eyes, and big clumsy paws. And she chews EVERYTHING. She chews chairs, legs, paper, remotes, arms, socks, mittens, tables, shoes, and legs again.

Seriously, I've stepped into a time-warp by coming home. It suddenly it feels like we live with Dr. Doolittle. Before we had two cats and a very old golden retriever. One of the cats hid all the time so it really just felt like two animals and they pretty much just slept. But the once-hidden cat likes to taunt Tasha and the other two spend half their days trying to avoid Tasha so now there are four animals constantly underfoot. Plus, my parents are unbelievably patient with the dog. If we broke something we got in trouble. When Tasha chews on the brand new coffee table, Mom laughs. Crazy, people, crazy!

In trying to do our part, Mike and I took Tasha for a walk two days ago...Tasha thrives in the 17 inches of snow and 10 degree weather. Mike does not. We had to turn around after a block because his face was frozen. But before we go inside, Tasha wants to explore the yard...

I caught the scent...

...that's weird, I hear my name...

...but I'm going to ignore it anyway...there is the scent again...boy this is going to be good...

What is it?

Never mind people, it's just a stick. What's next?

Mike says, Florida that is what is next.

Sadly, Mike is going to Florida tomorrow without me. I'm staying with life-is-a-chew-toy puppy Tasha and the snow. He's going to be with the sunshine and another dog named Zeke (his brother's dog). After this break we're both determined to never have a dog. We like peace and happiness too much.

love,
Katie

Farmhouse Chic

2009-12-15T23:18:00.000-05:00

Some friends recently bought a house which reminded me how long it will be until I have one of these: a surrounded-by-the-woods-can't-see-from-the-road farmhouse!

When I mean a long time I mean a LONG time. And the day I have a house like that one above...well maybe never. :Sigh:

But a while ago I stumbled upon this blog, Twice Remembered, which chronicles a couple taking a cookie cutter house with that modern-look-like-everyone-else feel and is turning it bit by bit into a cottage farmhouse feel. And I liked it. I liked it a lot.

I always picked the farmhouse card in the game of Life and I really like Anne of Green Gables. Could it mean I like breadboard and painted cabinets, built ins and wide plank flooring?

Not exactly an existential crisis here, but I did some looking around the internet at pictures of this particular style and found I did like it. Some examples:

I don't like distressed jeans, but I love distressed hutches!

Oh so perfect library - the ladder puts it over the top.

Love the baskets. This makes doing laundry look like fun.

Someday I want a farmhouse dining room table and a round pedestal table like this in the kitchen. And it's blue! Remember my love of all things blue (here)

This makes me want to garden and I don't garden.

Claw foot tub = Happy

I have this in my inspiration 'folder' on my desktop. The blue chairs, the ottoman coffee table, fireplace, hutches, windows, rug...it goes on and on.

It maybe official - I love all things farmhouse.

love,
Katie

I got trivets!

2009-12-09T15:55:00.005-05:00

Mike got me trivets for Christmas!

No, really he did. And I couldn't be more excited. We exchanged gifts last night in a very, very low key affair. I told Mike to get me something off the registry cause there isn't much I need. Thus, my two heavy duty trivets:

Pretty starbursts!

But that's not all. He also got me Pride and Prejudice in the new Penguin Classic series with covers designed by Coralie Bickford-Smith. Below is the whole line, much of which I would love to own someday. In the mean time I'll gladly curl up with one of my favorite novels of all time and peak at the wonderful cover from time to time. The last thing I got was this great galvanized metal key cabinet from Pottery Barn. It was also on our registry and Mike and I both thought it was neat. I love the little hooks on the inside that have places for their own labels. Can't wait to hang it in our first apartment!

Yay for trivets and kitchens to put them in!

love,
Katie

What's for dinner, honey?

2009-12-08T05:05:00.000-05:00

Meet my frequent dinner companion: It's Noodles' Penne Rosa with Parmesan Chicken. The little franchise is tucked in a shopping center near campus and I find myself going to it over and over again. I get a small and the meal comes to about $6. I make myself feel better by telling myself it isn't fast food. To understand why this gets its own blog post I need to make a confession: I HAVE NOODLES PROGRAMMED INTO MY CELL PHONE. Whew, not a proud moment!

Meet Mike's frequent dinner companion:
It's a Firehouse meatball sub. Firehouse and Noodles are right next to each other so we'll go together and meet back at the truck. Then we'll take the food home, sit at the dinning room table with a single candle, and 'have a date' which consists of eating from plastic and Styrofoam containers while chatting with my roommates. Now, that's romance baby!

But lately Noodles has had competition:
Meet Bertolli's frozen dinners brought to you by the local Super Target (which I live 2 minutes from - proof there is a God!). For about $7 I can eek two meals out of this for myself. In reality it really only feeds you for one meal and a half, but if you pair it with other food (the notion!) then I am confidant it is enough for two. These babies even have Mike's approval (he loves the Chicken Parmesan) and I love them because they're in my freezer and I don't have to go outside to pick them up.

I'd like to make the excuse that I am in school and therefore eat like this. But that isn't the truth. The truth is that I have atrocious eating habits. Atrocious I say, atrocious! (I want to say that is a movie quote, but it probably isn't). They are so bad that people have worried if my children will be malnourished because all I feed them is diet coke and pretzels (which I inhale as if they were air.) It is so bad that when I eat Noodles or Bertolli Mike, my family, and friends breathe a sigh of relief because I'm actually eating a real meal.

But when I'm home with my family I do cook. I cook in abundance. Evidence: here Yes it was from two years ago, but it is proof I do cook meals when called upon to do it. And I plan on cooking once we get married. I had a ton of fun registering for things so I can do the cooking...

love,
Katie

Best of the 2000's?

2009-12-04T09:03:00.003-05:00

Entertainment Weekly has a new cover listing the top 15 entertainers of the decade. (Here) Normally I wouldn't care, but when I scanning the pictures I thought Yes! to almost every single one of them. The list includes:

1) Johnny Depp
2) Beyonce
3) J.K. Rowling
4) Simon Cowell
5) Tina Fey
6) Justin Timberlake
7) Peter Jackson
8) Oprah
9) Sarah Jessica Parker & Sex in the City
10) John Lasseter (Founder of Pixar)
11) Will Smith
12) J.J. Abrams
13) Steve Jobs (Founder of Apple)
14) Meryl Streep
15) Jon Stewart and the Daily Show

The two who I really loved seeing on this non-important list was J.J. Abrams and J.K. Rowling. Both are people whose imaginations I adore (or at least what is produced from their imaginations.)

J.J. Abrams (below) is responsible for Alias, Lost, the latest Star Trek movie, and the newbie show Fringe. I love the solid story-telling you always get from him mixed in with the bizarre and wacky.

J.K. Rowling of course is responsible for the enormously popular Harry Potter books which you should read if you haven't. But what I love especially is that the last book, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, stands as a marvelous book - mature, full of depth, and the perfect resolution to all that led up to it. It made me happy that the book was that good.

I just enjoy seeing people who change the way we think (Steve Jobs) and who make us laugh and think (Tina Fey, Jon Stewart) as well as writers on a list (even an unimportant one) as the ones who shape us.

love,
Katie

p.s. As we close this decade what do we call it? The 2000's? Seems imprecise since it's still the 2000's...

Signs it is time to graduate...

2009-12-02T14:45:00.006-05:00

1) You have 12 page paper due tomorrow by 5 p.m. that you haven't started on and that doesn't worry you.

2) You decide finals week is the week to begin loosing that weight for the wedding.

3) You fall asleep thinking of ways to make a generic apartment look like a home.

4) You discuss the literary attributes (or lack thereof) of Twilight.

5) You make a fire to study beside, note it on your facebook status, and then proceed to have a 50+ comment facebook conversation about it with your roommates who are all sitting in the same room as you.

6) You follow Tiger Wood's car-crash hoopla on Entertainment Weekly, and proceed to yell at the radio in your fiance's truck when they go on and on about it.

7) You write blog posts about how it is time to graduate.

Now back to trying to focus.

love,
Katie

On Hold

2009-12-01T08:13:00.002-05:00

Mike and I got in late from Florida after a week in Tallahassee with his family. We both felt like it was one of the most delightful visits. I got to meet a lot of Mike's extended family and spend even more time with his parents, brothers, and future sister-in-law. We met with Mike's priest at the church where we'll be married, and figured out a lot of details. I finished Jayber Crow by Wendell Berry after months of reading off and on. And I had duck and fried turkey for the first time. Nothing better than all that!

Especially when you have what I have waiting for me at home: errands out the whazoo and 44 pages of academic writing (a.k.a. slow as death writing) to get through by next Monday. So this lovely little blog will be on hold until then. After that I've got some posts I'm excited to put up, including a DIY project I did about 2 months ago but still love.

Hope you have a lovely week and weekend. I'll be in the library.

love,
Katie

Beautiful

2009-11-25T19:16:00.000-05:00

There is a something beautiful about this poem. Read it aloud.

SUPERNATURAL LOVE by Gertrude Schnackenberg

My father at the dictionary-stand
Touches the page to fully understand
The lamplit answer, tilting in his hand

His slowly scanning magnifying lens,
A blurry, glistening circle he suspends
Above the word "Carnation." Then he bends

So near his eyes are magnified and blurred,
One finger on the miniature word,
As if he touched a single key and heard

A distant, plucked, infinitesimal string,
"The obligation due to every thing
That's smaller than the universe." I bring

My sewing meedle close enough that I
Can watch my father through the needle's eye,
As through a lens ground for a butterfly

Who peers down flower-hallways toward a room
Shadowed and fathomed as this study's gloom
Where, as a scholar bends above a tomb

To read what's buried there, he bends to pore
Over the Latin blossom. I am four,
I spill my pins and needles on the floor

Trying to stitch "Beloved" X by X.
My dangerous, bright needle's point connects
Myself illiterate to this perfect text

I cannot read. My father puzzles why
It is my habit to identify
Carnations as "Christ's flowers," knowing I

Can give no explanation but "Because."
Word-roots blossom in speechless messages
The way the thread behind my sampler does

Where following each X I awkward move
My needle through the word whose root is love.
He reads, "A pink variety of Clove,

Carnatio, the Latin, meaning flesh."
As if the bud's essential oils brush
Christ's fragrance through the room, the iron-fresh

Odor carnations have floats up to me,
A drifted, secret, bitter ecstacy,
The stems squeak in my scissors, Child, it's me,

He turns the page to "Clove" and reads aloud:
"The clove, a spice, dried from a flower-bud."
Then twice, as if he hasn't understood,

He reads, "From the French, for clou, meaning a nail."
He gazes, motionless. "Meaning a nail."
The incarnation blossoms, flesh and nail,

I twist my threads like stems into a knot
And smooth "Beloved," but my needle caught
Withing the threads, Thy blood so dearly bought,

The needle strikes my finger to the bone.
I lift my hand, it is myself I've sewn,
The flesh laid bare, the threads of blood my own,

I lift my hand in startled agony
And call upon his name, "Daddy daddy"--
My father's hand touches the injury

As lightly as he toughed the page before,
Where incarnation bloomed from roots that bore
The flowers I called Christ's when I was four.

The In-Between Shots

2009-11-23T09:15:00.010-05:00

Mike and I took engagement pictures last week. The wonderful Meredith Koebley took the photographs at Duke's campus. The challenge is always to get Mike to smile naturally, but he did wonderful and we got lots of great shots. Then there are the in-between shots which capture a more realistic picture of us. Thought I'd share some:

He's appeasing me right now.

Ooops, hand in wrong place.

This is our shoot for the next Joni Mitchell album cover.

Mike says we look like mating walruses here.

This is a very true-to-life shot of us. We're playing thumb war and Mike is cheating.

Yes, honey you can be done.

This is Mike's favorite shot out of all of them. He wants to put it on the wedding invitation. This is his 'blue steel' stare.

We'll see.

love,
Katie

p.s. Thanks to Christina I fixed 'steel blue' to its appropriate 'blue steel' Zoolander reference.

Books for a Young Girl

2009-11-19T11:38:00.000-05:00

Because I am strange when I was growing up I thought about what books I would give to my daughter someday to read. Mike recently sent me an article (click here) which talks about 12 year-old girls getting Brazilian waxes and 'sexting.'

What? I'm pretty sure I was in the library most of my twelfth year. This makes me think about what it will mean (in some day long, long from now) to be a parent in this modern age. It will be imperative to give her a different model for how to live in this world. Ultimately the priamary model for how to be a human being will be baptism and the church. But another formative experience for me was the novel - I grew up with Laura, Anne, Elizabeth as companions of sorts. I hope to be able to give the same gift to her.

The 'must read' list:

Little House on the Prairie Series (Laura Ingalls Wilder)
Anne of Green Gables Series (L.M. Montgomery)
Harry Potter Series (J.K. Rowling)
Chronicles of Narnia (C.S. Lewis)
Nancy Drew Series (Carolyn Keene)
Mrs. Mike (Benedict & Nancy Freedman)
Pride and Prejudice & Emma (Jane Austen)
Swiss Family Robinson (Johann David Swiss)
To Kill a Mockingbird (Harper Lee)
Cry, thy Beloved Country (Alan Paton)
Anne Frank's Diary
Julie (Catherine Marshall)
A Voice in the Wind (Francine Rivers)
The Chosen (Chaim Potak)
Trumpeter Swan & Charlotte's Wed (E.B. White)

Do you have a beloved childhood book you can't wait to share?

love,
Katie

Words I can't spell...

2009-11-18T01:06:00.005-05:00

In paper writing the words I couldn't spell the last two days include:

mustache
initiate
rhythm

The only one of these has anything to do with my paper was initiate.

Sigh.

love,
Katie

Update: After 20+ hours of working on a paper I forgot how to spell maybe.

It Begins...End of the Semester

2009-11-17T00:04:00.002-05:00

It's the season...not Christmas, but End-of-the-Semester. There are no presents except for the supremely intelligent or neurotic. Those who are lucky enough to make the list make the grade. The rest of us get B's.

You have to understand people here at Duke have a tendency to be overwhelming perfectionists, overachievers, and Type A personalities. So put us all in a room together (or a library) and apply the pressure of deadlines* and you get CRAZY.

*You can easily replace deadlines with self-inflicted pressure brought on by convoluted dreams of academic stardom fueled by the belief that outside this place someone cares about the mythology of Q source or Karl Barth's rejection of the communicatio idiomatum of Christ. The pressure is to be transcendent and bring illumination to all. We're not ego maniacs either.

This is a crazy that can be fun though. Today Anna and I sent 34 emails between the two of us in an hour ranging from topics like poor facial hair choices of the boys in the library to dogs named Tate. Later I was in the stacks when one of my earrings jumped out of my ear (yes, jumped) and fell beneath the bookcase which for some reason I don't understand has slots beneath it to the next floor. Result was Mike and I going through every shelf of the stack a floor below looking for said earring. I can happily report that the earring was found.

And then Mike sent me this:

And then he sent me this link (click here) of a alligator getting eaten (yes eaten) by hippopotamus.

And Anna sent me this:

See how sad our lives get at the end of the semester?

But I am done December 7th. Until then I've got 56 pages of writing to turn in - 12 of which is due Wednesday. But in brighter news Mike and I took engagement photos this past weekend. I think they turned out well though I haven't seen them yet. I'm looking forward to sharing them.

love,
Katie

Meet My Bridesmaids

2009-11-13T09:30:00.000-05:00

Please meet my bridesmaids...

Sarah: My maid of honor and best friend since high school. Sarah lives in our hometown where she is an anchor for one of the local news stations and is getting her masters in political science from Virgina Tech.

Favorite story: On a high school band trip she got hotel security banging on our door at 2 a.m. because she wouldn't stop screaming because she thought she might get pregnant from the less than clean bedsheets.

See how cool we were in high school?

Aimee: My lovely sister who is ridiculously beautiful and now a junior at University of Milwaukee where she is studying nursing.

Favorite story - Aimee was cooking dinner for a boyfriend's family for the first time and decided to make meatloaf. An hour later my mom and I get a phone call from her. She was hiding in the pantry and said to me in a paniked voice, "Katie, I've browned the meat. How do I make the loaf?"
Laura: Laura and I were in a Bible study together and accountability partners throughout college. Laura married James (whom she met our freshman year) in May 2008. They live in Boston now where she just started teaching music at a new school. In addition, she is an amazing bassoon player (is bassoonist a word?).

Favorite Story: When Laura gets talking about music she starts moving her hands like she is conducting an invisible orchestra. That and she makes voices that crack herself up.

Middle School dance our freshman year of college. Rock on 90's!

Rachael: Rachael and I first lived on the same floor and then in the same house all through college. We shared a room for two years and spent endless hours studying (or not studying) at the Honors Center. She married Josh in September 2008 and they now live in San Diego where she is finishing up a pharmacy residency (and learning to surf). Her blog is here.

Favorite Story: Rachael and I shared a room for the last two years of college and she slept on a loft above me. One morning her alarm was going off at the end of her bed. In half-sleep mode I open my eyes to see Rachael roll over to turn it off and at the same time go flying off her bed to the floor. She took out a shelf, but landed on her feet. She looked at me and said 'Good morning.'

Tornado hits Iowa City and we run around taking pictures of giant uprooted trees.

Amanda: Amanda hails from East Tennessee and when I first met her I thought she might be related to Paula Dean because 1) They have the same last name. 2) The accent is similar. 3) Her cooking is fabulous. But even if she isn't related to famous people, she is a wonderful roommate. She has lived and worked in Atlanta and has a heart for missions and campus ministry. She graduates in the spring with me and Anna after which she will be ordained with the United Methodist church. We're also roommates right now.

Favorite story: She once had guy show up to take her one a date in overalls and with a t-shirt with the sleeves cut-off. Love hearing that one. Or the one about her crazy cat or the one about...the stories growing up in East Tennessee are priceless.

I think they were trying to put a sombrero on her head, but I forget why.

Joelle: is from Seattle which explains a lot. Just kidding. No, really it does. But, seriously she graduated a year ago from Duke Divinity with a masters and is in the process of applying to return to do doctoral work. Her area of study is built environment (church buildings) and how space can be used in worship and spiritual formation. She and I enjoy talking about furniture and decorating, much to the dismay of our significant others. Her husband, Brent, is a groomsman for Mike. Her blog here.

Favorite Story: Joelle likes to buy hats and wear them and they make me smile.

Not sure what she is doing here...

Anna: is a native North Carolinian. The daughter of a United Methodist pastor, she and I have lots in common. She will graduate with me this spring with an M.Div. and wants to work both in the local church and go on for a Ph.D. in liturgics. She works with Mike at our chapel planning worship. She and I first bonded over books. Her blog is here.

Favorite Story: Recently Anna was sick on medicine that required her not to eat dairy. She kept getting an upset stomach and when asked what she was eating she replied, "Water, toast, and Cheese-its." She didn't think Cheese-its have dairy in them despite the "Made with Real Cheddar" on the box or the hunk of cheese underneath it with a cracker size shape cut out of it.

I was looking for a funny picture of Anna and noticed that she has a tendency to take pictures with her mouth wide open - Evidence A)

Evidence B:

Recent picture from our Engagement party -

That's them. Ridiculously beautiful and talented bridesmaids. They're spread all over the country (San Diego to Boston, Wisconsin to North Carolina). Not a single one of them was born in the same state or grew up knowing one another, but they're all wonderful and supportive, and the perfect ladies to stand up there with Mike and I on our wedding day. And coincidentally they are all 5'3" or under.

love,
Katie

Christ and the Sword

2009-11-12T12:58:00.005-05:00

Okay, this isn't a Where's Waldo?, but can you find what is off (to a Christian) in this Letter to the Editor that appeared in the Herald Sun yesterday? (Link here)

Great Commission

Gen. George Casey has asked we not presume a connection between Nidal Malik Hasan's Islamic roots and his attack on the Fort Hood soldiers. Inasmuch as quite a volume evidencing Hasan's anti-American, pro-jihad views has been compiled, Casey has shown over-the-top political correctness here. His comments were more to be expected of a floral arranger or hairdresser than of a U.S. Army Chief of Staff. I'm certainly no holy Joe, but sometimes I can't help thinking of a certain Biblical passage that liberal clerics have been trying to run away from for the better part of a century. That would be the Great Commission, which concludes the Gospel of St. Matthew. The present-day United States is the first entity in history with both the willing missionaries and the military power to carry out that instruction. Doing so sure would eliminate a lot of problems. Just thought I'd mention it. XX Chapel Hil

Did you spot it?

It is this sentence: The present-day United States is the first entity in history with both the willing missionaries and the military power to carry out that instruction (The Great Commission)

Arghhhhh!

It isn't the part about willing missionaries or the supposition that the United States is the first entity in history to think about evangelism (a blatant factual error). It is more the part about the military power being linked with the sharing of the Gospel, that brute human force will grow the church.

Wasn't the violence on the cross enough to show us that isn't true? The Cruciform life is about undergoing suffering not about afflicting it. Jesus came to atone for our violence against one another. It is offensive to pick up the sword after Christ came so that they maybe bent into plowshares (Micah 5). More than offense though, the linking of the Great Commission and any military is dangerous.

It is dangerous for any Christian to look to a military for help in the commission given to us. Jesus stopped the disciples in the Garden of Gesthemene from using the sword. He commanded us to turn the other cheek. He taught us that real love is giving up one's life for a brother or sister. The way of the weak, the marginalized, the servant is the way of Christ. Might, power, and intimidation stains the witness of the Church. Peruse a history book if you don't believe me.

We loose who we are as the church when we stray from the way of Christ. Let the military be the military. They are a result of the sinful world we live in. But we cannot not co-op ourselves into their means to an end even if the end we both seek is peace. This is a slippery slope because too soon we begin to imagine America as the Church going out into the world to 'fix it' and that is a very dangerous lie to believe. The greatest witness we have is to remain steadfast to the sacrificial love of Christ. That type of love conquered death, tore the curtain, bridged the chasm.

No military on earth will ever do more.

love,
Katie

Update: Michael Gorman has a great post about the mistake of praying for 'our troops' in churches. The mistake is not prayer for troops, but in thinking they are ours. Here for more.

Sigh

2009-11-11T13:37:00.003-05:00

I want to go back here...to preaching on the ruins of a crusader castle in the Syrian desert as the sunsets.

I talked about my trip to the Middle East to a group of other students who might go, and in talking about it I want to go back and take Mike with me. Then after I go back I want to go other places - namely Ireland, England, and Scotland (I have an unhealthy emotional connection to Ireland). After my tour of Europe I want to go to South Africa and Africa in general. Then Panama.

Okay get set go...to class. Sigh.

Reading Lists

2009-11-11T11:25:00.000-05:00

I have a confession to make:

I love lists.

I love them color-coded, bullet pointed, and stuck on post its. I will admit I have written things down that I've already completed just to be able to cross it off. Please do not judge harshly. I also love looking at lists: world's richest people to American Literature classics. A daily habit/time waster of mine is looking at stupid Entertainment Weekly photo gallery lists like "Monty Python: 10 ways they changed comedy" But one list that isn't a waste of time is a reading list.

Reading lists are disturbingly important to me. They help guide you in what you read which shapes you as a person. Growing up, my mom always bought me Newberry Award books which I read alongside other classics she handed to me like Little House on the Prairie and Anne of Green Gables. In high school my AP lit teacher was instrumental in putting the works of Chaim Potak, John Steinbeck, and Nathaniel Hawthorne into my hands. In college my English degree introduced me to the literary intricacies of Daniel Defoe, Charles Dickens, Jane Austen, Bram Stoker, and Margaret Atwood. Even seminary has put novelists like Marilyn Robinson and Flannery O'Connor in my hands. Still, I've read a lot of romance novels and other fluff literature often because I didn't know what else to read.

A reading list can guide one another to good literature. And there is no ryhme or reason for how a reading list is put together. One reading list is not helpful for everyone, but if we thought as much about what we read as we do what we eat I think we'd be healthier people all around. I want to write literature that centers on Christian themes and ideas. I thought the epitome of such stuff was Karen Kingsbury, and I said to myself in high school "I can do better than that." It wasn't until I got to seminary and took a class on theology and the arts that I realized I was sadly mistaken. There were people doing better work than that (for example: Flannery O'Connor, Anne Tyler, and Wendell Berry) and now I am playing catch up to figure out how to join them.

I don't mean to sound elitist - that Karen Kingsbury and her contemporaries aren't good. They are, but they could be better and that is my problem. These are stories that settle - settle for stock characters, predictable plot, and flat language. Probably the most offensive thing is they create a Christian dream world rather than grounding their work in the sin drenched ways and means that fill up our days. When everything is hopeful and always turns out, when life just seems to fall into place for the characters - that isn't a story about Christian hope - it is an antiseptic washing out the real struggles of what it means to be human. Those stories are dangerous because they portrays God as talking to us like it's a conversation over coffee, when the Biblical model is the whirlwind in Job and the angels in Isaiah. Characters overcome deeply rooted sins by hearing a single sermon and there is no continuing struggle, no relapse. Worst is their presentation of conversion or of God's character, but we won't get into those today.

So what is a person to do? Get a good reading list. Read smarter, think deeper, and the beauty of God will open up to you.

Using the example of Christian literature, here are a few recommendations:

If you like Karen Kingsbury contemporary romances and plots ripped from the headlines, try Jodi Picoult's Keeping Faith or My Sister's Keeper.

If you like historical romances try Francine River's Mark of the Lion series or Catherine Marshal's Julie and Christy novels.

If you liked the thought provoking book The Shack try the classic, Pilgrim's Progress, or the Pulitzer Prize winner Gilead.

Exchange any Frank Perritti or Tim Dekker novel for C.S. Lewis' classic Screwtape Letters.

If you are looking for something fun and 'clean' try The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Society or anything by Jane Austen.

And if you just want a great story with some nod to religion try People of the Book by Geraldine Brooks or The Monster's of Templeton by Lauren Groff.

I hope that those are helpful to you. If you ever want a recommendation or a 'reading list' let me know and I'd love to help. It's why I'm here.

love,
Katie

Charleston

2009-11-09T13:00:00.000-05:00

For our anniversary we went to Charleston to visit David, Debbie, and Ann Carver. David is Mike's old youth pastor, now a priest, and will be part of our wedding ceremony. Ann Carver is Mike's goddaughter and our flower girl. And Debbie is just plain awesome so of course we'd want to come visit. Plus it is Charleston.

Note: This is one of my favorite things about the East Coast - you're two hours from the beach or mountains, five hours from DC and Charleston, six hours to Atlanta and Savannah, ten hours to Florida or Boston. Back home six hours in the car would have gotten me to Decatur, Illinois. 'Nuff said.

On the way to Charleston, we had to stop by the church Mike went to a few times this summer. It is a wonderful Anglican church plant that just happens to also resemble a Twinkie from the outside:

Friday night we all caught up and watched Ann Carver be adorable. Saturday morning we headed for historic Charleston - first to the Battery and then up Church Street toward the Market.

At the Battery I glimpsed Fort Sumter offshore, and saw Oleander - a bright pink flower that is common down here. It reminded me of the Oleander I saw on Mount Nebo in Israel this summer (below). The South and Israel have Oleander in abundance, and as I learned this summer it is very poisonous and was used by women from both areas to poison cheating husbands. I can't verify the historical nature to that fact.

Of course you can't do Charleston without looking at fabulous houses in bright, bold colors that only houses with copulas and palm trees can pull off...

But one of my favorite things about Charleston were the signs. They were everywhere and they are more telling of Southern pride/eccentricity than anything else. For example, this monument in the Autumn of 1718, Stede Bonnet, notorious "Gentleman Pirate" and 29 of his men met their just desserts. They were buried in White Point Gardens in the marsh just beyond the low-water mark.

Or this sign on a very large, very opulent home that reads "Beware of Dogs - they will bite ye butt."

Eventually we moved from the Battery to the Market, which is one of the oldest slave markets in America still standing. Now it reached for six or seven blocks and contained all sorts of touristy type booths.

And at the end of the Market was a museum with which the Daughters of the Confederacy had something to do.

Charleston has some of the best graveyards (the South in general does). This one read 'Near this spot is buried..."

One of the priests at Mike's church used to be rector at this place -

St. Philips Episcopal Church is fabulously old and grand and everything you expect in the heart of historic Charleston. And they have the best sign on their graveyard:

It reads "The only ghost at St. Philip's is the Holy Ghost - Join us for worship..."

And finally at the end of a long day, Ann Carver was tired...

But not too tired to ponder deep thoughts...

There we go - adorable!

Time to go home!

love,
Katie

Save-the-Dates

2009-11-06T12:47:00.005-05:00

Our save the dates are finally done! Here is a part of them -
Aren't they lovely? The 'theme' we're going for is Storybook (without the prince/princess thing) so we're doing bookmarks that say "Boy met Girl...for the rest of the story save the date..." We're going to add ribbon with the other wedding colors through a hole at the top and then they'll be mailed out in brown kraft paper envelopes.

All of our stationary is being handled by the lovely and talented Jessica Nell Graves. She is a friend of Mike's and the owner of Front Porch Studio (here) and The Love List (here). I highly recommend her. She designed the dogwoods for the top because they are our favorite flower. The plan is to walk down the isle with a bouquet of them.

Yay! for wedding planning finally coming together.

love,
Katie

State Fair

2009-11-04T12:17:00.000-05:00

A couple weeks ago Mike and I celebrated our 1 year anniversary by going to Charleston, but the weekend before that we went to the North Carolina State Fair, site of our second date and first kiss. We went with our wonderful friends Anna, Joelle, and Brent for a fun (but cold) night of fried food, animals, and people watching.

Some pictures -

Anna and Joelle took a Bible Quiz which they failed because apparently baptism does not wash away sins.

Baby chicks!

A draft horse whose flanks were as tall as Mike (6+ ft)

Instead of a stuffed animal, Mike tried to win me a 10 lbs turkey from the Jaycee Turkey Shoot (real guns included)

And no fair would be right without fried food (this year - candy bars)

love,
Katie

Breathe Katie, Breathe

2009-11-03T12:21:00.005-05:00

I like control. I like a plan and especially if that plan includes lists. I have lists for everything: books to read, posts to write, homework to read, groceries to buy, projects to DIY, and catch all lists that include getting my oil changed and applying to graduate.

Every Sunday night I sit down and make a week to-do list on the back of an envelope with sub categories. I coordinate that list with my weekly schedule, deciding what goals I have for each day. Often that daily To Do list will go on a white board I have hanging in my office.

Obsessive you think? I call it functional.

So when it comes to my post-Duke future (which is rapidly approaching) I want to attack it with the same strategy. I met with a professor today that was able to help point me toward some good places to begin getting published so I can build up my CV. He was helpful, giving me names, and suggesting some new ideas I hadn't thought of. I walked out feeling overwhelmed with things to do and immediately made a list.

But I felt scared too. This is a new thing for me - the fear. Talking with a friend recently about it she pointed out that this dream of mine to write has come to the implementation stage. I've been scheming and going to school for years now. Now it is time to make all those things I've talked about into a reality. How that is going to happen is another story.

That is the scary, world tipping, deer in the head lights feeling that washes over me when I begin to put my nose to the grindstone. I think How is this going to happen? And I begin to run through all the things I could do instead: pastor, English teacher, lawyer, stay home mom, under-water basket weaver (I told you I panic). I could do all those things and I could be good at it. It would be so much easier.

But I don't want easy. And I have things to say. And I want this. I want this almost as much as I want to marry Mike. Almost as much as I want to talk to God face to face. And there is a real purpose to all this writing that isn't about me. You have to understand writing is about seeing. You cannot write unless you first learn to see. And both the Christian life and the writer's life are both about seeing rightly. Part of what we are doing when we go to church, read the Bible, talk with friends, and so on is about reorienting ourselves to the perspective of the Cross. In the Cross weakness triumphs over death, and the least are made great. Writing is about recording the order of the Gospel, about noting how it manifest in the modern world, and putting it down in tangible form (story, article, sermon, etc) so that people can begin to see rightly.

My call is to seeing rightly, and I cannot do that (aka write) unless I continue to keep God at the center of things. It is a matter of remembering Psalm 46, "Be still and know I am God... I am the Lord almighty" With God there is no room for fear. That doesn't mean things suddenly become easy (or even successful), but with Him as the center fear is driven out (see 1 John 4).

God can not be put on a to do list so I will have to learn a new strategy.

love,
Katie

Confession Part II

2009-11-02T09:24:00.002-05:00

Here was something I forgot to confess the other day -
I can't wait to get married, but I'm less concerned about the wedding. Guilty as charged, I'm more interested in apartments, white servingware, recipes to try on Mike next year when I'm just working (just, ha!), and cuddling in bed on Saturday mornings. All of this is about imagining our life together best friend by my side, and not having to say goodbye at night and call him five minutes after he leaves to tell him something.

Caterers, flowers, and the like - not terribly engaged there (get it, engaged?!). Two reasons 1) They don't matter as much. A wedding is not the most important day of your life. Period. Your baptism wins that title. 2) Since I can't have a $100,000 fairy tale wedding where doves fly out of balloons the moment of our first kiss, we're going for a much more laid key affair. I'm not going with the notion that since its my wedding day I can have whatever I want. No, school loans still need to be paid off after the sun sets. Money is an object. With this attitude its not quite as much fun to plan because weddings are EXPENSIVE and Do-it-yourself is time consuming and I'm in school. Simple, pretty, and meaningful is the road less taken, but we're going to take it!

So, I'm not a twitter over menus and center pieces, but I can't wait to marry Mike. I can't wait to fall asleep to his snoring (he does!) and teach him how to fold t-shirts (he doesn't!). And when it comes to the girly wedding stuff, I spend plenty of time staring at my ring...

love,
Katie

Happy Halloween

2009-11-01T13:29:00.005-05:00

Like everywhere else it was Halloween here this weekend. It was just a little freaky...

First, party at the Dude Ranch with 60 of our best friends (the rest are inside)
and with a bonfire (pallets as fuel thanks to Duke Libraries) that included fire jumping by Mike's roommate David and all the girls covering our eyes in horror.

Note: the fire was much, much taller by the time he started jumping over it.

And the costumes had a divinity twist - Blessings in Disguise

Duke Undergraduate with leggings, sun glasses, Uggs, and blond hair.

Pastor's wife and H1N1

The girls - Amanda, me (as Hermoine), Anna (as Mortisha Adams), and Joelle (as cheerleader)

But the really freaky part was the weather. I'm still not used to the weather down here. Friday night it rained and one of the cars parked at Mike's house slid into a ditch and needed to be towed out at 3 a.m. So by Saturday it was 80 degrees and HUMID. The leaves turned over the weekend and showered our house in red and gold.
And our front yard that-is-a-jungle looks almost charming in the fall light -

But do not be fooled. This was a freaky day because with sweltering humidity in October your porch sweats (condensation)...

And you wear chacos because your flip flops can't traverse the mud.
But the one normal thing about the weekend - Amanda was baking when I got home wonderful delectables (yes, those are white chocolate spider webs topping chocolate cupcakes!)

Happy Halloween!
Katie

Confessions

2009-10-30T14:23:00.003-04:00

Note: It is Friday and tomorrow is Halloween, this post may be a bit odd cause I'm baking cookies for a party tonight and have eaten half of them already.

I was thinking of all those decorating pictures I look at some on my favorite blogs (no accounting to how my brain jumped to this topic) and what always strikes me is how perfect the homes look in the picture and logically therefore the lives of those who live there are also perfect. Everything has a place, but more so everything keeps its place.

This is not true first for my house, and second for my life. I am not the "After" picture, but much more likely to be the "Before" one. In reality, I am the one running out the door in the before picture because I'm late. So this got me thinking about the little confessions of who I REALLY am versus who I'd like to be -

I'm late a lot and I don't care. Unless it directly affects people I could care less if I was late. Why would anyone care if I'm late? I don't comprehend.

I do about half the reading for school. Always have. Until all I have to do for school is read novels half the reading is all that will get done. You'd think being an English major in college that was all I did was read novels, but not true. It is called general ed. classes.

I'd love to be either five inches taller or ten pounds lighter. As much as I'd love to love me just as I am (like the proper modern girl is taught) there are things I would change (or pay someone to change...) if I could. Am working on those ten pounds for the wedding though.

I like material things - clothes, furniture, dishes, books, and so on. I like having them around me. I like the activities that go with them: fashion, decorating, and cooking. Sometimes I would rather do these things than study, pray, or go to church. This is a point of contention between me and God. If I could only decorate His mansions in heaven I think that would be a good compromise.

There are perfectly nice people I just don't like. These are people who have never done anything to me, who are sweet, sweet human beings, but they annoy the crap out of me. This is totally my problem and not theirs' so I try to give them a wide berth.

I swear and say 'that's what she said' too much. That's just an obedience problem.

I am an introvert. I don't care what my Myers-Brigs says I like to be alone. I especially like to work solo. If I have it my way, Mike and I will someday live in the country outside of a town in a house you can't see from the road. There would be woods and water close nearby. And I'd have a room with books and a desk and a chaise to curl up on. I would read and write articles, op-eds, Bible studies, and novels all day long until Mike got home from work. Then we'd make dinner and I'd throw some laundry into the washer. We'd watch a show or read or talk or have sex, whichever we fancied that night, and then go to bed early. And the next day I'd do the same thing over again, happily.

If Wisconsin had North Carolina weather and a beach and/or mountains, I'd move back in a heartbeat. Until Jesus returns and we find out that Heaven is like Wisconsin and North Carolina married into one glorious kingdom, I will have to settle for North Carolina cause I hate what winter does to my clothes, car, and mental status.

And my final confession...

I watch America's Next Top Model and Project Runway. I wish I was like one of the professors at school who doesn't watch movies or television because they are wasted time where one could be reading or translating Greek or whatever it is that that man does, but no I am just me and I get a cheap thrill out of crap television.

Half my days, I'd love to be someone else, but alas this is who I am. And it is Friday so rather than dwell on any of this I am going to go eat more cookies.

love,
Katie

Take the Picture

2009-10-28T20:13:00.004-04:00

My roommate Laura just got engaged a month ago and she asked me to take some engagement pictures of her and her wonderful fiance, Kevin (who happens to be Mike's roommate). A couple of years ago I decided I needed a hobby, so I tried scrape booking. I enjoyed that but it didn't really interest me. So I decided photography was more of a challenge (and handier skill). So last year for Christmas I received the Japanese knock off version of a Canon Rebel XS which my photographer brother informed me was no different in specs than his real Canon Rebel XS. Meaning: Katie has a really nice camera that she really doesn't know how to use outside of the 'automatic' modes.

For Laura and Kevin, I decided to try to learn one new thing about taking the pictures. After perusing Pioneer Woman's photography tutorials (click here) I decided I wanted to play with aperture settings since that is responsible for making the background blurry and focusing in on whatever is closer to the camera - i.e. the people I'm photographing. From what I could tell this is important in taking portraits. The result was a lot of blurry pictures out of the 300+ I took. But I did manage a few nice shots:

Note: These look slightly better on my computer and not shrunk down.

I think this one is adorable.

Okay, this is the one shot I was looking to do with the aperture stuff - close up on the ring with them blurry. It works for someone not knowing what they are doing.

This may be one of the best and it was done with the automatic setting.

On other notes - it was a beautiful 75 degrees and sunny today, and it is almost November. People wonder why I would not be motivated to move back to Wisconsin.

love,
Katie

Blue's Clues Style

2009-10-27T08:22:00.000-04:00

I've never been a girl with a lot of style. I wore overalls in high school and had the same hair cut for like 10 years. Growing up in a parsonage, I lived in permanently white walled homes. I would be more apt to spend money on books than clothes or throw pillows. But that engagement ring sparked some sort of domestic fury in me this year. Now I'm pouring over blogs every day, and dreaming of different ways to decorate a rented apartment (I'm not kidding on this one). My final step into this cesspool of domesticity (Mike's view) was starting an Inspiration File on my desktop.

So recently I took this style quiz (click here) which I found perusing a favorite site, Homage (click here), in hopes of narrowing what 'inspires' me. My results:

Hamptons Whitewash
A calm, balanced environment is your perfect space.
Your home is a temple to all you love and beloved materials fill your home.
You love textures and details and all the pieces you pick have a story to tell.
You home is welcoming, a place where people love to spend time together.
Each room has multiple functions.

This seems true to form. I don't know about everything prominently being white, but it matches up with some of the photos I have saved. Some similar favorites:

Love: chairs, tufted ottoman, and rug. Would do a chocolate brown couch.

Love: farm sink, white cabinets, hardware on drawers

Love: the painted bookshelves and the table.

Love: Blue chair and low side table with glass lamp stand behind it.

Love: Spindle straight legs, touch of blue.

Love: headboard, color palette (though I probably wouldn't use it), bench

Love: freestanding tub, mirrors, light..

Conclusion: I like the color blue. Like Blue's Clues. This is as close to a style as I get.

love,
Katie

Monday Morning Update

2009-10-26T11:30:00.003-04:00

Hello lovely world!

There is nothing like a weekend in Charleston to make you feel genteel and right with the world - that is until Monday morning you wake up to your roommate yelling from the hall, "I think your toilet is about to over flow."

Oh, no it wasn't about to overflow, it was overflowing. Old Faithful had erupted in our bathroom. Both Laura and I, who share this particular bathroom, jumped out of bed. Quickly we surmised the following:

1) The water pump thingie (technical term) in the toilet tank (brownish water EWWWW!) had snapped off sending water spurting up out of control over the back of the toilet.

2) The knob to turn the water to the toilet off was rusted.

3) The water was flowing through the floor and coming out the light fixture in our hallway below. Which quickly brought back this debacle from last spring (same house, different toilet):

Amanda stuck her finger in the hole which slowed the water while Laura is throwing sopping wet towels into the bathtub. Kari is talking to the maintenance department who is arguing with her about whether they should come out. I take the phone and start yelling about how there is water coming through the ceiling and they need to send someone out quick because we can't turn off the water. I might have said something about the house washing away and/or my boyfriend (such an easier word to say than fiance) was going to come and get them if they didn't show up.

Note: You have to realize last time this happened it took them three days to show up and even longer to really fix it. I'm not a patient person in times of stress.

Amanda's finger was going numb so I took over with a plunger over the hole to stem the tide and Amanda flushing the toilet every 30 seconds or so to empty the tank. I got Mike on the phone, waking him up from a dead sleep with "GET OVER HERE RIGHT NOW. IT HAS HAPPENED AGAIN!"

After assuring him that, no we did not flush tampons down the toilet, he came and with his handy dandy tool box managed to shut the water to the toilet off. Forty minutes later the maintenance man moseyed on over.

So much for the genteel life.

But in other news - This Saturday was our 1 year anniversary! He got me a Garmin (click here) and I got him an alb (click here), but being the sweet, sweet man that he is I got these too:
Yes, those are Godiva truffles. And he took me to Charleston for the weekend. Spoiled girl, I am!

In Charleston we visited Mike's goddaughter, the adorable Ann Carver (and her parents David & Debbie). Pictures will show up soon (as well as our adventures to the State Fair). In addition, I have posts in the works with a few DIY projects I've done around the house, and a wedding update. But those will have to wait because I need to hop in the shower and get to campus for class.

See Mike is giving me that look he gives me to stop tinkering and get going -

But until later, here is my newest favorite obsession (does staying up to 1:30 a.m. count as obsession?) The Pioneer Woman (click here). I've read through her ranch history, recipes, and photography tutorial. But what kept me up late at night was the love story of her and her husband. It is swoon worthy and hilarious. There is a lot of it, but taken in chunks totally worth the read. Highly recommended for lunch and study breaks. (click here) Hint: Scroll all the way to the bottom and start there.

Enjoy and love,
Katie

Taking Rightly

2009-10-23T08:25:00.002-04:00

Yesterday we had good worship in Goodson Chapel (above).

Bishop Willimon came and preached a sermon about how Jesus' sacrifice frees us. It frees us to leave family behind to pursue a call and it frees us to do those things about which God has made us passionate. And most important, Jesus' sacrifice with all its blood, guts, and glory frees us to celelbrate. We did that yesterday in the form of Eucharist.

I had been asked to help distribute the elements and was given the chalice. To my delight, I was able to offer Eucharist to several of my professors - Chuck Campbell, Richard Lischer, and J.Warren Smith - in succession of one another. It was a delight because I got to experience how Eucharist should be taken.

Each man came forward with his hand cupped, in the position to receive, so that the bread might be placed in his palm. Each closed his eyes and ate the bread, pausing for a moment to be still within the tactile reconciliation with Christ's broken body.

Next, each stepped to me with his hands clasped together as in prayer and bowed forward until our eyes met. They waited for me to tell them what they were about to receive: "This is Christ's blood shed for you." In that moment it was not about me, it was not about him, but about the life giving grace imparted because Christ was there in that moment. I raised the cup and each sipped the juice, stilling for the visible experience of the inward grace washing over them as a wave upon the shore. With a slight nod to me each fell away, back to his seat, and the migration to the Table continued, one after another.

This is how we should all receive.

Author Alert: Marilynne Robinson

2009-10-21T11:30:00.000-04:00

Marilyn Robinson is certainly not new on the scene, but she is certianly worth mentioning. She actually teaches creative writing at my Alma matter, the University of Iowa, and won a Pulitzer in 2005 for Gilead. Her latest book, Home, is a continuation of that story.

There is a lot that makes her unbelievable, but one highlight would be the ponderous language she uses. Gilead is a perfect example of this. It is an epistolary novel written by a 76 year-old pastor in 1956 Iowa to his seven-year-old son. The pastor is near death and wants to write to his son who will not remember him after his death. It starts with -

I told you last night that I might be gone sometime, and you said, Where, and I said, To be with the Good Lord, and you said, Why, and I said, Because I’m old, and you said, I don’t think you’re old. And you put your hand in my hand and you said, You aren’t very old, as if that settled it. I told you might have a very different life from mine, and from the life you’ve had with me, and that would be a wonderful thing, there are many ways to live a good life. And you said, Mama already told me that. And then you said, Don’t laugh! because you thought I was laughing at you. You reached up and put your fingers on my lips and gave me that look I never in my life saw on any other face besides your mother’s. It’s a kind of furious pride, very passionate and stern. I’m always a little surprised to find my eyebrows unsinged after I’ve suffered one of those looks. I will miss them.

See?

Robinson writes in a way that forces you to slow down. She won't let you skim over her sentences though the words are simple ones. Instead of breaking up the dialogue with tags, she runs it all together as if it is being gazed upon through a single lens - the voice of a dying father to his son. You enter into his world immediately and learn to see the world from his (wise) perspective.

For more from Marilynne Robinson PBS recently did an interview and review of her latest book, Home as well as some reflection on what it means to be a novelist and theologian. (click here)

Stop Lurking Day

2009-10-19T00:53:00.000-04:00

If you are a regular visitor, take a moment today and leave a comment and let me know you're there. It would brighten my day!

love,
Katie

Searching for God

2009-10-14T12:02:00.000-04:00

As Christians we're always looking for a sign from God.

Even if we don't want to admit it, we yearn to know that God is wrapped up in our lives and is guiding us by giving us 'signs.' What we don't realize is that this habit is embodied in an ancient practice of the church - lectio divina - but like ancient practices rubs against our modern sensibilities. Lectio Devinia is about knowing God, but it isn't about knowing what God wants for our lives as much as it is about knowing the character of God. This puts Him in the center and not us. Unlike our random 'looking,' Lectio Divina requires us to quiet and discipline our minds to hear rather than see.

Lectio Divina is first practiced by church father Origen around 220 A.D. and by the Middle Ages it was a common form of prayer. The name is Latin for divine reading and it is simply a method of prayer that is meant to promote communion with God and to provide special spiritual insights. A couple of things before getting started:

Pick a time to commit to every day/week and keep it. Start with 5 minutes.
Pick a quiet and restful place. Preferably a place where you can be alone.
Get in the right posture: start by taking slow, deep breaths with your eyes closed. Prayer is an embodied activity and our physical posture will affect our spiritual one.
Pick a passage - four or five verses should be plenty. When starting out, try something rich in imagery like the John 1:1-5.

First, read the passage aloud slowly. Do it again. Second, reflect (aloud, silently, on paper) on what the scripture means to your own life. Third, respond by pray by asking God to open up your heart and mind to Him. Fourth, (and this is the hard part) listen to God. Do not speak or think. Keep your mind fixed on the images of the passage. Turn over individual words over in your head and wait. Remember to slow your breathing and submit both your mind and body to prayer. This is the part of prayer we so often forget - that half of it is listening to God.

Another way to do this is with images. Now, I don't want to get into the Greek Orthodox use of icons (click here) because as Protestants we shudder at the use of holy images, but I do think we cheat ourselves of a rich resource when we do not make use of the aesthetic in our worship. The St. John's Bible Project (click here) is a perfect way to incorporate image into your prayer life. Benedictine monks have been commissioned to produce the first illuminated Bible in the modern age. The visuals are simply fantastic.

For example, after reading John 1:1-5 several times look at this image and use it to spark your imagination as to what this passage means for you:

When looking for 'signs' from God it is my belief that we spend too much time interpreting random events into what we want God to want for us. When we take on a posture of listening directly to God we are acting on faith that the Holy Spirit truly dwells within us, groaning for us in prayers we cannot understand (Romans 8). When we look to Scripture as the foundation for our prayer life we are staking a claim that the story is alive and that we are committed to live within the story already written.

Note: An excellent resource for Lectio Divina is Praying the Bible by Mariano Magrassi.

Dress Up

2009-10-12T11:28:00.000-04:00

You can feel the crisp fall air and hear the roar of the crowds - that right football season is well upon us. Having grown up in the Mid-west, this is what I expect for college gameday: But in the south this is what I get:

Dresses and pearls. Yup. Dresses and pearls to college football games. Actually there is costume change. Tailgating is called 'Boulevarding' with tents and sponsored tables of food and this is where you wear the dresses and pearls. Later for the game you don the appropriate t-shirt and khaki shorts. Now there are plenty of exceptions - Duke for instance is not very good and is a wet campus so game day is less about watching the game and more about getting rip roaring drunk. Undergrads dress in ridiculous costumes and do this:
It was so bad that my Iowa roommate and football enthusiast, Christina, was disturbed that Duke undergrads were more licentious than Iowa's undergrads. (I just want to point out that this stuff is professionally catered too.)

Despite Duke's Saturday morning football attire from Hot Topic and Wal-Mart - the general rule is that anything the Mid-west wears to an event is ramped up a notch out here on the East Coast. So the big thing I learned very quickly was that the one brown dress I had, that I wore to five different places in three weeks, was going to need some sister dresses:

So now my wardrobe has expanded to 10-12 dresses. The beautiful thing about the South is the weather for fall, winter, and spring so I can get away with showing my legs a lot longer than I ever could in the Mid-West. And what first started as a way to fit in (and not be underdressed to everything I went to) has become a new love. I love wearing dresses and skirts. The reasons being:

1) Much more flattering. Face it skinny jeans and pants in general don't do well for women who are under 5'8" and have curves. They hit you at the wrong spots, hiding the smallest part of you (curve of the waist) and hitting the wider parts (thighs, anyone?). The right dress will always hide more flaws than a pair of pants. For someone petite like me (5'1") the also chop my body up into sections and make me look even shorter. For example, this one (from the Loft) has that waist band up at the smaller part of you and flows from there rather than hitting at your hips:

2) Much cooler. This is a fact I learned quickly after my first summer in the South. When the humidity hits 90% before 8 a.m. you're not going anything touching you. Pants aren't an option and skirts are always cooler than shorts. For instance this favorite dress of mine (from the Loft again) kept me much cooler this summer at the beach (and happened to be the dress I was wearing when Mike proposed, sad I know that right!?)

3) Comfort. This is just an opinion, but I think as a 20 something that looks 16 normally, wearing a dress makes me look closer to my age and helps me feel comfortable in my own skin. This isn't true for every girl and that is perfectly legitimate. You can ask anyone, I almost never wore a dress in college or high school, but the more I tried them the more I felt at home in them. When I feel blah, a dress helps elevate my mood that little bit so I'm not focused on how I look all day. Instead I can concentrate on the more important things in life like people and ideas and the world around me. I wish I could say I didn't care anything about how I appear and that those feelings of vainity just faded easily into the background, but alas I can't. For me, being comfortable in my own physical self is necessary to accessing the emotional, intellectual, and even spiritual self.

Does this resonate with anyone else or is it just me?

love,
Katie

A few places I like to get dresses and skirts -

The Loft (www.anntaylorloft.com)
Old Navy, Gap, Banana Republic, Piperlime (oldnavy.gap.com) - All owned by the same company, you can order anything online from any of the stores in a single purchase and get the same $7 shipping fee for the entire thing. I look for Gap and Banana Republic sales at the end of a season because I can get better quality for prices I can afford.

This navy floral shirt dress is a favorite of mine. My very curvy roommate borrowed it last year and said it was a I-don't-look-good-in-anything day-but-I-have-to-leave-the-house outfit. It is professional enough when paired with a cardigan (I prefer red) to lead worship in it and casual enough to wear to school with a pair of boots. Worth the $20.

Victoria Secret (www.victoriassecret.com)

This cotton/cashmere sweater dress is all about cozying up. The elastic waist cinches things, but none of those dreaded lumps are going to show. I haven't quite jumped on the leggings train, but here in North Carolina I could get away with this and a pair of boots until December for sure. In leggings, probably all winter. $50 (different colors too)

Boden (www.bodenusa.com) - This is going to be your more expensive purchase. I go here for things I want to last for till I'm in my 30's. Based in England, it will also give you the more classic look rather than American trends (tunics anyone?!). But if you want well made, last forever, well tailored clothes - go here.

This silk, pinspot (that's what they call it across the pond I guess) dress will run you $200 but you will have it to wear to your kid's first Christmas recital in many (many!) years too. I'm waiting to see if they ever mark it down enough that I could buy it.

The Pane of It

2009-10-10T09:22:00.009-04:00

Happy Saturday Morning!

So I have free access to old, discarded window panes. Like 12 of them. But I'll probably only use one to do a fun DIY project. Design Sponge (click here) had this project up yesterday and it got me thinking of things I could do - Magnetic chalk paint to make a display board

A greenhouse
(unlikely because I have no construction skills or any need for a greenhouse, but I was impressed)

Stain glass pieces and glass globs

Paint pens on contact paper added to each pane. Could use to make wall art.

Similar to the other one but with the nails at the bottom for hanging keys on.

Friends of mine did this - made a coffee table out of a window frame.
(I already have a coffee table I like (two in fact) so probably no, but still very cool)

Pot rack
Love the simplicity of this - buy a poster and stick in behind the glass. Feels like you are looking out a window.

So, what am I going to do? Have a preference? Have a different idea? I'd love to hear them!

love,
Katie

p.s. Two places I got photos and ideas from: Design Sponge (click here) and Trash to Treasure (click here)

Last Semester

2009-10-08T18:25:00.002-04:00

We just got the new course listings for this spring so I am set to register for the last time EVER. It is unnerving. I had to fill out a form the other day and it asked how many years of completed education I have and counting (on my fingers) I came up with 18. You can grow a whole person in that amount of time.

But the courses I have to take this spring are two education courses

Persons in Communities
Bible Study Programs for the Church

Not sure what the first one is but sound riveting don't they?!

I still have 2-3 other spots to fill and contenders include:

Jesus and the Gospels (Bible course)
Psalms: Praise & Protest, Prayer & Poetry (Bible course)
Revelation (Bible course)
Person and Work of the Holy Spirit (Theology course)
Spirit, Work, and Mission (Theology course)
Writing as a Christian Practice

Sigh. I'm really going to miss this.

love,
Katie

Love Story

2009-10-07T09:53:00.006-04:00

Fall Break this time last year was when stuff with Mike and I really started happening so I thought I'd share the story (warning: it's long)...

August, 2008 - We met when Mike started at Duke Divinity in the fall of 2008. He's from Florida and my roommate Laura (see us all below) is also from Florida. They grew up together and became good friends in college. We were introduced in the weeks before school at various events - a baseball game I think was the first official meeting but we didn't really talk then. Mike says he noticed me that first night and thought I was cute. The first time we really hung out we went to get a beer with Laura at Bull McCabes. I remember Michael Phelps was winning another medal in the Summer '08 Olympics and thought that evening was a really great start to the school year.

September, 2008 - Once school started Mike was always around - watching Florida State games with Laura, getting us all to go out for a beer, eating lunch in the Great Hall with friends. We figured out we were taking C.S. Lewis together so Tuesday afternoons we'd kill time sitting and talking, pretending to study. Very quickly I realized how funny Mike was and how much I wanted him to be a good guy friend of mine. This is notable because it was the first time I had ever picked out a guy for a friend. Mike made me feel comfortable in a way I wasn't used to. On his part, Mike wasn't sure if he liked me or if I drove him crazy. We were always picking on one another (or I was picking on him he'd say). Our friends noticed something though cause on a camping trip some of the guys asked him what he thought of me, and I had friends who didn't know Mike at all tell me they'd heard he liked me. At some point he did decide that he wanted to pursue me cause he picked it up a notch.

Fall Break - A couple different things happened over Fall Break. One night Mike came over and hung out. After everyone else had left he and I talked to early in the morning. I remember thinking after he left that long conversations like that were not good if we were going to be just friends. The other thing that happened was Meghan visited. Meghan is Laura and Mike's best friend. He brought her on board the convince-Katie campaign. She talked him up, his family, and how great he treated women, but it still didn't register that Mike liked me. I had been asked out on a date by a guy at the Divinity school, a date which I was excited about more cause I liked getting asked but quickly decided I wasn't interested in the boy. When Mike found out he wasn't happy and took to mocking the boy. Meghan took another route. She suggested they stop by the coffee house after a specific amount of time. If I could use them as an excuse to end the date if I liked or I could just wave them on by. After three hours my date and I were talking about clouds (seriously) when they came and I quickly invited them to sit down. It might have been the most awkward thing cause Mike spent the entire time staring the boy down. It was at that point that I realized how much Mike liked me. I remember that same night sitting on the couch with Mike just the two of us talking and listening to music. I looked at him and realized that I thoroughly enjoyed being around him in a way different from anyone else.

Pursuit - In the couple weeks after Fall Break Mike asked me out four or five different times. It wasn't that I was saying no, I really didn't get what he was asking. He'd ask me to dinner in front of friends saying, "Anytime you want, Katie, I'll take you out. Anytime." Then he'd do this click click thing with his mouth and wink at me like I was supposed to get something. Another time he passed me a note in the library asking me to a play that I knew he'd gotten free tickets too. At the bottom of the note he'd written Yes/No/Maybe boxes for me to check. He suggested a camping trip to watch a meteor shower and then said everyone should bring a cuddle buddy and then 'called Katie.' It was awkward and I didn't understand what was going on so in true Katie fashion when it comes to boys, I ignored it.

Rough Day - The last Tuesday in October I had had a rough day. A bunch of us walked to our cars from class and like usual I took Mike to his. Instead though we sat and talked. I remember thinking I had promised myself I wouldn't do this after that long night talk over Fall Break. I wasn't looking to date. But in the course of the conversation he mentioned that boy who I had had coffee with over Fall Break. I interrupted him and asked him why that boy bothered him. I knew why, but I wanted to make him say it out loud. He tried to duck it, but after about four tries he finally just said: "Because it bothers me that you don't make a guy pursue you. So-and-so asked you out and you just let him take you out. But I've been pursuing you for six weeks and I would love to take you out to dinner. Even if its just as a friend just so you know how you should be treated." Wow. I agreed to go out, but he couldn't tell any of our friends. I wanted to see how we did before making a big deal about it.

Date - We agreed to dinner that Friday night and by the time I got home I was grinning ear to ear. I broke my own rule and told my roommate Amanda who was sworn to secrecy. Mike started emailing every guy he knew around Durham asking for advice on where to take a girl to dinner (wouldn't say who). The next day he handed me an envelope and inside was a typed out invitation to dinner. That Friday I had a meeting that ran late so I didn't even have time to change out of my school clothes. I was so excited, and this voice in my head out of no where said, This could be the beginning of the rest of your life. I met him at the restaurant and he practically jumped when I walked in. He was dressed so nicely in a button down shirt and dark jeans. We had the best time and talked for two hours and it was everything I hoped it would be. It felt completely natural. At the end of the date he had to get home cause he was hosting a bonfire at his house in twenty minutes. I told him he could tell people where he had been that night. I got into my car and immediately called my mom and best friend Sarah. He called his brother and Meghan who were both waiting by the phone.

The night of our first date - at the bonfire with Denise.

Ferris Wheel - The next night we were set to go to the State Fair with Laura and her boyfriend, but once there we ran into a group of our friends from school. Very quickly everyone figured out we were together. At some point we got away from everyone and walked around just the two of us. The one thing I wanted to do was ride the Ferris Wheel. We got there right when the park was closing and the line was still very long so we opted to stand beneath it and watch the closing fireworks instead. And there Mike gave me our first kiss and there we made it official that we were dating.

At the state fair - the closest picture I have of the two of us there cause I didn't bring my camera. Me and Joelle with Mike in the background sharing a deep friend Pecan pie with her husband Brent.

Winter 2009 - It took six weeks to say I love you and eight to decide that we might want to get married. There were a lot of adjustments too, and like when we were just friends we picked on one another a lot so sometimes there were fights. But we figured it out and in February I took Mike home to Wisconsin to meet my family. That same winter was the winter-of-mono-and-hell in which I cried about every other day and never got out of my sweat pants and Mike permanently sat on my futon cause I never wanted to leave the house. But we did lots of fun stuff like go to Tallahassee for Thanksgiving, go ice skating, hang out with friends, and saw the Broadway cast in Rent.

All bundled up and ready to skate!

Crazy faces, go!

The ever peaceful Tallahassee

Summer 2009 - I went to the Middle East for three weeks during which I didn't have my cell phone and only sporadic email. Everyday I was gone Mike would send me an email though so I always had something to look forward to when I did get a chance to connect. When I got back he asked me to go figure out my ring size because he was ready. Before that we had talked about getting married, planned it, but now it was very real. I remember being giddy and wondering how I had gotten to this place. Me, the most least likely, was going to get married. We went and picked out the setting together, but he picked out the sapphire on his own. We were two hours apart for the summer - me at the beach in semi-paradise, and him in hellish nothingness. But he came up 7 weekends out of the 10 I was there, I listened to long rants about his work, and we came out alright. He proposed on August 2 after talking to my parents who had just gotten into town for a visit. We had been together just a little more than nine months.

Summer at the beach!

4th of July with Anna, Joelle, and Brent

The proposal!

May 22, 2010 - Wedding day!

Happily...

love,
Katie

Yay for Us!

2009-10-03T23:28:00.005-04:00

This (click here) is the closest I've ever seen for a ranking of graduate theology degrees, and happily it puts Duke on the top.

It is a nice feeling to know you are learning from some of the best minds in your field.

An Elegant Evening

2009-10-02T10:13:00.007-04:00

It was my roomate Amanda's 30th birthday yesterday so we threw her an elegant evening of dessert and wine. Everyone dressed in black and white except for the birthday girl. She was in a fun purple dress. Everything was twinkle lights, candles, black couches, and white table clothes. The table (above) was so good with Kahlua cake, chocolate cake, Tiramisu brownies, German Chocolate cookies, chocolate pecan pie, and cheesecake. Yum!

Fun flowers!

We're still working on the smiling part with Mike.

Roomates
(Betsy, me, Amanda, Laura, Keri)

Me, Alexis, Laura, and Amanda hanging out in the kitchen

Happy Birthday!

Best of Friends: Joelle, Anna, and Me

Laura is excited to see Darriel

Joelle and me

Everyone

Telling the Truth

2009-09-30T23:32:00.004-04:00

There is a very intelligent man with whom I go to school, who has the most annoying habit of saying ‘like’ after every other word.

It grates and disappoints.

Admittedly, I am a language snob, but I am because I believe language matters. For a man who holds a degree from an Ivy league school, writes for theological journals, and wishes to preach to not be able to kick the ‘like’ habit of the thirteen year-old Miley Cyrus fan is sad.

But he’s not alone. In fact I am in the same category. I so often I take my foot and stick it in my mouth. Recently I read an article in Christianity Today called "Letting Words Do Their Work (click here) by Marilyn McEntyre about language and the church that challenged my own habits.

McEntyre premised that it is hard to tell the truth today because of our imprecise language. We live in a world of ‘awesome’ youth trips, the new ‘essentials’ for your spring wardrobe, and schools dedicated to ‘excellence.’ These are just a few examples of the imprecision we live with daily (i.e. forms of marketing and propaganda: cliché, abstractions, generalizations, jargon, passive construction, hyperbole, sentimentality, and reassuring absolutes) that all seek to “[minimize] discomfort and create[s] a big, soft, hospitable place for all opinions; even the completely vacuous can find a welcome there.”

The opposite of imprecision – precision – is more difficult. We are not all called to be writers, teachers, or public speakers, but as Christians we are called to tell the truth and telling the truth requires precision. In the same way that the life of the Christian ought to be harder than easier, language ought to be work.

See language creates possibilities. I am a firm believer that if you cannot imagine it, it does not exist, and language is a primary expression of our hearts and minds. We are so steeped in the forms of falsehood that we cannot imagine properly. We cannot tell the truth even to ourselves.

How do we lie to ourselves? McEntyre gives two good examples that resonate:

“Think of how the term "collateral damage" spares us the discomfort of imagining the bodies of women and children ripped open by the explosions of "smart bombs" that destroy everything within a 120-foot radius of their target. Or how the idea of economic "health" begs the question of how we measure a healthy economy and how that term fails to take into account the health of the humans within the economic system.”

But as Christians, called to speak the truth, how do we lie to ourselves?

We use weak language in the church. We employ marketing strategies in order to attract people: giving services names and logos, but not a thought-through order of worship, or opening worship a song like Every Move I Make:

Na na na na na na na na na na na (x2)

Every move I make I make in You
You make me move Jesus
Every breath I take I breathe in You
Every step I take I take in You
You are my way Jesus
Every breath I take I breathe in You
Waves of mercy, waves of grace
Everywhere I look I see Your face
Your love has captured me
Oh my God, this love
How can it be?

na na na na, na na na na na na, na na na na na na, na na na na

Instead of a song like Lift High the Cross:

Chorus: Lift high the cross the love of Christ proclaim, Till all the world adore His sacred name.

Led on their way
By this triumphant sign,
The hosts of God
in conquering ranks combine. (Chorus)
Each newborn servant
of the Crucified
Bears on the brow
The seal of Him who died. (Chorus)
O Lord, once lifted
On the glorious tree,
As Thou hast promised
draw the world to Thee. (Chorus)
So shall our song
of triumph ever be:
Praise to the Crucified
For victory. (Chorus)

Singing Every Move I Make at the beginning of a service is about energy, it is about getting everyone revved up. Yet, it’s language is as deep as my bath tub. What do we learn about Christ in this song? That He is everywhere. Okay, but this is not the gospel.

Then there is this line from Lift High the Cross: ‘O Lord, once lifted on the glorious tree, as thou hast promised draw the world to thee.’ The irony is poignant – that glorious tree the cross both enabled us eternal communion with God, and crucified our Lord. Christianity is full of paradox like that, but Jesus loves us that much. Singing Lift High the Cross at the beginning of a service is about focusing us on the central feature of our faith, namely the Cross.

It is fact that weak language in our worship equates to weak theology and this results in weak faith. The problem with a song like Every Move I Make is that it is hyperbolic – it seeks to stir us into a praise-frenzy where people are singing ‘Na na na na na’ to the Lord of the Universe like it means something. If language is the expression of our souls, is the best that we can come up with is ‘Na na na na na’ (which the devil in me thinks is ironically close to ‘No no no no no no’ )?

McEntyre sums up what is at stake in telling the truth with precise language for the church:

“ Finally, if we give way to bland hyperbole—and to the comparable temptations of sentimentality, slogans, and other kinds of language designed to "sell"—we lose credibility. The corporate media, with multimillion-dollar marketing budgets, have the competitive edge in devising and using those instruments of persuasion. I suggest we let them have it, and avoid their persuasive strategies in favor of the plainness, clarity, beauty, and even elegance in the worship, song, and speech we share, and that we also remember the power of silence in a culture of noise. A "still small voice" still speaks beneath the whirlwind. Our words depend upon silence for restoration as plants depend upon the fallow season for nourishing soil.”

p.s. I love myself some praise songs. Give me Blessed be the Name or Be Thou My Vision any day. Just give me intelligence and care too.

WTF?!

2009-09-30T15:45:00.003-04:00

I love my home state. I really do.

Mike's roommate brought it to my attention today that the Wisconsin Tourism Federation changed their name because the acronym WTF led to too many internet jokes. To what did they change it? Wisconsin Ferderation of Toursim so the acronym is now WFT.

Sigh.

Here's the story: (click here)

Decorating: Some day

2009-09-27T12:12:00.003-04:00

Mike is wondering if all this domesticating comes from our impending marriage. It might, but it is also inherited from my mother who will drop a pretty penny for furniture resulting in a basement for unused furniture for me to pillage when I go home for Christmas.

But the book I've picked up for guidance is the now-out-of-business decorating magazine Domino. It is full of ideas, but for a newbie like me also practical advice on the bones of design.

It is wishful thinking, but I would love some furniture from the get go, but will likely have to wait many years. But looking is free right? In looking I started with the Pottery Barn catalog sitting on my coffee table. And the Buchanan sofa is a right chocolate brown caught my eye:

But the more realistic (and similar) Durapella sofa from Ashely furniture is pretty too in the same chocolate brown (I'm really caught on chocolate brown for a sofa):
Not knowing where we are going to live in the next few years (and the fact that we'll be moving a lot) makes buying furniture tricky so I'm hoping for some smaller pieces that can be used in different ways. The problem is that Mike is 6'3" so small doesn't work well for him, and all he has asked for is a couch he can take a nap on.

But still I love this Drake armchair from Pottery Barn:
Can't you see a fabulous DIY ottoman sitting in front of that with a reading lamp and fun throw during December?

And then there is this Courtland (not in light blue leather though) chair from Ashley. I don't know how I feel about the ottoman with the chair though. Seems like a bit much.
Finally in a sort of non-related pattern, I recently read this very helpful post on bossy color blog (click here) about how to ideally start from scratch in a living room:

1) Start with the rug, whether if it is what you have or one you're going to buy.
2) Then window treatments if they're going to involve fabric.
3) Then sofa and upholstered chairs
4) Coffee table next
5) Upholstered chairs, side tables, end tables etc.
6) And then only then paint color

This is of course not taking into the reality that we never have a blank slate most of the time. Fitting old items in a new space is part of the fun though right?! That's what I'm counting on if I end up buying furniture in the next two years cause that's our reality.

But thoughts on the sofa and chairs?

There is only one

2009-09-24T23:59:00.004-04:00

I was looking at engagement pictures of two high school friends tonight - the boy being someone I dated for a few months back in the day. And I realized something quite funny - he looked a lot like another boy I dated years later. Same slight, pale build and same dark square frammed glasses. The color of hair was even the same. And then I looked at pictures of another boy I didn't date but seriously liked from college. Same thing.

Creepy.

And then I look at Mike and see someone who doesn't fit my type at all. No glasses. No slight build. Different hair color. Pale, yes but so am I.

And I am very, very glad he's nothing like my 'type' or anyone I would have ever dreamed up for myself. He is wholly unique. Wholly unexpected and gift.

And you know what he would say to that? With that stupid grin of his and twinkle eyes he'd say "Of course cause you know what - there is only one Mike Boone!"

An opinion on health care...

2009-09-24T12:53:00.004-04:00

Not mine entirely, but I do think it is a valid point.

Socialized Nature by James Poniewozik (Times)

The article is actually a review of a documentary on PBS about National Parks that is too long for me to ever actually watch (pushing 6 hours I think), but Poniewozik makes one very simple point:

That we need government to do things the private sector can't or won't.

If FDR and others hadn't stepped in places like Niagra Falls, the Grand Canyon, and Yellowstone would be private parks like Disney or worse, a subdivision. The film argues that the free market does not alway act in our best interest, and that it is a good thing that every American shares ownership and responsibility for what is beautiful among us. Essentially, it is a love letter to big government an idea with which I don't always agree. Yet, Poniewozik makes the very valid point that the film might encourage to debate with intelligence not about who is destroying whichever America you imagine you live in, but to speak about what our country should be.

It'll all be alright...

2009-09-24T12:30:00.016-04:00

I'll let you in on a little secret: There are things about wedding planning that are so much fun (like picking out a dress) and then there are things that aren't as much fun. For me the planning the reception so far hasn't been 'not fun' but it has been stressful. The other night I was falling asleep second guessing some decision and I had to repeat (out loud mind you) 'It'll all be alright. It'll all turn out just fine. It won't matter in 10 years."

I have problems.

See we're going to have it at Taproots, the wonderful education building of Mike's church. As you approach...You see that it is a beautiful old home surrounded by live oaks dripping with moss. There is even a big, wide front porch:
And it has a lovely backyard with a patio where I could see us dancing with lanterns strung up...
And this room where I want to put the cake...

It is perfect except that it can't seat more than 60 for a seated dinner. Since our families make up 60 people alone I don't think that a seated dinner is an option. We could do appetizers or we could have a desert reception. We're still knocking it all around, but the reality is that whatever it is will be shorter and will be without the traditional toasts, cake cutting, first dance because there is no single place for everyone to gather. Or all those are going to have to be modified to fit. How will that work? Will people think it is lame? Will it be awkward and annoying? Will all of my out-of-town guests (and there will be a lot) feel gypped? Will it look cheap? What can we afford?

Can you see why I'm stressed?

In a day where weddings have become THE MOST IMPORTANT DAY OF YOUR LIFE (sarcastically yelling at this point) we forget that a generation ago many included a ceremony and cake in the parish hall. Why can't I do that?

I can do that and I likely might. Mike says to hell with all of them (them being an ambigious crowd of people) we should spend the money on our honeymoon because most of the people who will be at our wedding won't care.

I have a sinking feeling that he might be right.

But in the meantime I am going to continue telling myself before I fall asleep "It'll all be alright."

love,
Katie