tuesday morning...

I'm sure I've said it before - I love soups. I love to both eat and make them. here was yesterday's vegetable concoction:




and one a little closer... go ahead, get a whiff of the savory, healthy goodness:




just as an FYI, if it looks like there's oil in there that's a little extra virgin olive oil that I start a lot of my soups with... I tend to chop up the onions/potatoes/carrots/whatever and sautee them in evoo, and then add everything else.


*****


I've mentioned her before, but I've been re-reading A. Lamott lately. Last week, when I was working out of town, some of us were in a studio talking politics when another actor/director walked in, listened for a moment, and then remarked to me that she wondered what that was like, to be a Christian that isn't right wing. ("or left wing", I silently filled in for her. my issues with defining labels.) Another factoid is that this person happens to be a professed atheist, and on the few occasions we've spoken about faith I feel myself grasping to explain myself, hoping God will help my clumsy words appear more meaningful, wondering just as curiously at her lack-of-faith and how that works in her life. Anyway, A.L. is very left-wing, very real, and I love reading about her faith conversion and life-struggles/triumphs. some exerpts from Travelling Mercies:

when she's still drinking and using, and toward the end of her rope, she stumbled upon a little Presbyterian church in San Fran:

Eventually, a few months after I started coming, I took a seat in one of the folding chairs, off by myself. Then the singing enveloped me. It was furry and resonant, coming from everyone's very heart. There was no sense of performance or judgement, only that the music was breath and food.
Something inside me that was stiff and rotting would feel soft and tender. Somehow the singing wore down all the boundaries and distinctions that kept me so isolated. Sitting there, standing with them to sing, I felt bigger than myself, like I was being taken care of, tricked into coming back to life. But I had to leave before the sermon.   p. 48

after she had an abortion, she was so sad and depressed she spent the next seven days taking pills, smoking dope, and drinking.  she discovered she was bleeding heavily...

Several hours later, the blood stopped flowing, and I got in bed, shaky and sad and too wild to have another drink or a take a sleeping pill.  I had a cigarette and turned off the light.  After a while, as I lay there, I became aware of someone with me, hunkered down in the corner, and I just assumed it was my father, whose presence I had felt over the years when I was frightened and alone.  The feeling was so strong that I actually turned on the light for a moment to make sure no one was there - of course, there wasn't.  But after awhile, in the dark again, I knew beyond a doubt that it was Jesus.  I felt him as surely as I feel my dog lying nearby as I write this.

I was appalled.  I thought about my life and my brilliant, hilarious progressive friends.  I thought about what everyone would think of me if I became a Christian, and it seemed an utterly impossible thing that simply could not be allowed to happen.  I turned to the wall and said out loud, "I would rather die."

I felt him just sitting there on his haunches in the corner of my sleeping loft, watching me with patience and love, and I squinched my eyes shut, but that didn't help because that's not what I was seeing him with.  p. 49-50

she talks of feeling followed for the next week, as though a little cat were following her around, waiting for her to open the door so it could come in.  and then:

...one week later, when I went back to to church, I was so hungover that I couldn't stand up for the songs, and this time I stayed for the sermon, which I thought was so ridiculous, like someone trying to convince me of the existence of extraterrestrials, but the last song was so deep and raw and pure that I could not escape.  It was as if the people were singing between the notes, weeping and joyful at the same time, and I felt like their voices or something was rocking me in it's bosom, holding me like a scared kid, and I opened up to that feeling - and it washed over me.

I began to cry and left before the benediction, and I raced home and felt the little cat running along at my heels, and I walked down the dock past dozens of potted flowers, under a sky as blue as one of God's own dreams, and I opened the door to my houseboat, and I stood there a minute, and then I hung my head and said, "F*ck it, I quit."  I took a long deep breath and said out loud, "All right.  You can come in."

So this was my beautiful moment of conversion.  p. 50

It moves me.  and she writes about her church just beautifully... makes me yearn to meet them.

*****

pictures from our outing to Discovery Green this weekend... (I'm pretty sure they don't want dogs to go down in the marshes like this)




We like the park...

and here is the brave, disease-less furry beast who was poked and prodded and pricked yesterday and ultimately was determined to be in fabulous health for a kid that's almost 13... (this was how he spent much of the afternoon... the doctor will take it out of you!)



*****


my husband starts his class at San Jac tonight... I'm so proud of you, mgb!! go get 'em!! wire it up!!

and now I have to go write anime and do laundry and nuke this coffee. not quite in that order.