no falls: new year’s resolutions

Posted on December 29, 2025 by bookgirl

At the end of 2023, folks on a podcast, not one of my regulars, probably from the Ringerverse, talked about their New Year’s resolution: not falling. Now, these folks were, I believe, were in the northern midwest, so not falling on ice was super important. But, in spite of my residence in sunny Southern California, I took it to heart.

I have fallen sometimes. I go too quickly; I don’t notice things; I wear bad shoes. The one quarter I taught at the local university, I fell on my way in and broke a favorite coffee mug. I fell on the way in to a friends house because it was raining and I was going too quickly and it was slick. I got a road burn on my arm though, fortunately, it couldn’t be seen under my long sleeved t-shirt. I broke a bottle of vodka slipping and falling coming out from Bev Mo one year.

More than that because none of those was that big of a deal, a friend tripped on a root-broken sidewalk (in Echo Park, there was a One Day at a Time episode where Lydia turned her ankle at a root broken sidewalk in Echo Park), and fell and broke her arm saving her laptop (and an online friend who will probably read this also broke her arm in a fall). My grandfather was one of those many people who broke his hip coming down icy stairs. He lived for a few more years, but it was the end of his independent living (he was well into his 90s. He lived to be 100, but after that he moved into assisted living near my aunt and uncle). My mom fell and suffered a traumatic brain injury at age 75. She lived 5 more years, and some of them were lovely, but in that moment nothing was ever the same and she was never able to be independent again. Also, brilliant author Octavia Butler died at age 58 from maybe a fall, maybe a stroke.

So… I am a very young 54 and I live in Sunny Southern California, but I find this the perfect resolution. It matters. I’m not going to give it up. I can talk about it and proselytize about falls. Honestly, I am more careful because of this resolution. I think about what shoes I am wearing. I look around me and look down. I hold on to things when I need to. I walk more slowly than I might. I am careful in rain. I threw away shoes with slick soles. And… Apple tells me that my walking steadiness is low. When I briefly walked daily this summer, my walking steadiness went up to the OK level. So maybe this resolution will encourage me to walk regularly.

I believe I heard the podcast in late 2023 and took it for my 2024 resolution. I achieved the resolution. I did not fall in 2024! I didn’t quite make it in 2025. We pulled up to a motel this summer, and I didn’t quite realize the sidewalk was raised from where we parked. I hurried to the sidewalk and slammed my shins against the curb, falling hard enough to go down and have to catch myself with my hands. My son saw me. He was like, “aw, Mom, your resolution!” There’s a Friends episode I love, “The One with All the Resolutions” where Ross says, “no divorces in ’99” and Rachel reminds him his divorce isn’t final so he says, “just the one divorce in ’99!” So, after I fell in July of 2025, I didn’t give up. It became “just the one fall in ’25!”

This morning, I realized that ’25 is almost over. I can begin again. And so, it might be simple and it might be silly, but it makes me happy. My resolution: No falls in 2026! We’ll see if I can do it.

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soufflé on a thursday

Posted on December 4, 2025 by bookgirl

A little background:

I’ve always been intrigued by the idea of a cheese soufflé, but have never had one nor made one.

I am between second jobs right now, so I have days at home where I have much to work on, but nothing absolutely immediate.

My boy has his license, but we don’t have an extra car, so I let him take the car to school when I can which leaves me at home without wheels.

I got a *really* good deal on the NYT for the year, so I have been enjoying the Cooking section, experimenting with recipes (great marks for angel hair pasta + tomatoes and Florentine chicken).

For the last year+ my second screen viewing while I work has been Masterchef Australia on free Tubi. I’ve probably said this before, I’ve certainly said it on FB and to friends in person, I love these kind Australians cooking. There is so much less ego compared to what I have seen on American (and even British) shows, so much less yelling, so much less rewarding of bad behavior (by men) and more awarding of cooperation (by everyone).

I attended an honors luncheon at the college as a faculty member. These are some of my favorite moments, maybe because I get to hold court. They ask that one faculty member sit at each table. We eat lunch (taco buffet this time) and chit chat, and then they move into the second part of the event.

They invite the students to ask the faculty member questions. Students can ask anything they want, but they also have questions printed to use. After 4 or 5 minutes, they ask the faculty members to move to a new table, and students ask questions again. And so on. I had to go teach (?!). so I only got to do 2 tables this time.

One of the questions the students were given was, “What is your favorite TV show?” Well! I talked about Long Story Short (maybe I’ll write about that soon, especially as I am obsessed and not seeing it on many end-of-year lists), but then I mentioned Australian Masterchef. One of the students asked, “Have you cooked any of the dishes?” I answered that I had upped my game in cooking and thought about it more, but not really anything specific. That question has been in my head ever since.

So… today I decided to give it a try. I wanted to make a cheese soufflé. I hoped to find a small recipe, but didn’t really, so I took a regular recipe and cut it into around a third. I have a terra cotta apple cooker that I prepped for the individual soufflé.

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There is a lot to a soufflé. Béchamel sauce, adding egg yolks, whipping egg whites, adding cheese (the recipe called for gruyere; I did a mix of cheddar and havarti because that’s what I had). I need to go clean up after this. Pans and bowls and cutting boards and utensils and mixer, oh my!

It came out okay! The issues, I think, came from trying to reduce a recipe for a dish I’ve never cooked. It was probably a little overcooked (no gooey center), the balance of flavors was a little off (a little salty), and I think there was too much batter for the dish. It sunk a bit in the middle, but was still fairly light.

I don’t know if I will make it again, but I could if it seemed right. I’m not sure how I would do it while preparing a meal, and I’m not sure it stands on its own as a meal, but maybe with a make-ahead salad or, the internet suggests, roasted vegetables (could they roast in the same oven or does the soufflé need its open space?).

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winnie the pooh drives to school

Posted on October 31, 2025 by bookgirl
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Those Winnie the Pooh PJs from the 70s.
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Me in the costume with little Minnie and Mickey in 2010

I have loved Winnie the Pooh since I can remember. When I was little, my favorite pajamas had a little Pooh Bear in the corner of the chest. In my early twenties, Winnie the Pooh was everywhere, and I embraced it. I was a single public schoolteacher in southern California. My girl friends and I all had Disneyland passes (in spite of the SBC Boycott). I got T-shirts and mugs and little pooh bears in costumes (Teacher Pooh! Spring Pooh! Pumpkin Pooh!, etc.). People gave me Pooh Bear gifts. And, one year, probably around 2000, I splurged on a full Pooh Bear costume to wear to school on Halloween.

3 years ago, in 8th grade, the boy got a last minute invite to a Halloween party. We went to my costume box where we had the remnants of Halloweens past (Yoda! Pirates! Anne of Green Gables–that was his sister’s!) plus some other possible pieces I had (graduation gown! Random Cape! a witch’s hat!), and My Winnie the Pooh costume. I also offered to take him shopping if he didn’t find anything. As this post suggests, he picked the Winnie the Pooh costume.

After the party that night, he suggested maybe he could keep the costume in his room.

He has worn that costume to school and parties every year since. It has become his Thing. I am delighted. I love that the costume has gotten so much use. I love that I can share this with him. I love his sense of whimsy and his confidence in being able to proudly wear it.

And so, today, Junior Year, age 16, Winnie the Pooh drove himself to school.

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when i’m fifty-four

Posted on May 13, 2025 by bookgirl

Grown-up birthdays are different. Mostly I have loved my birthdays with my family. For me, having kids makes celebrations fun. This year Mother’s Day was the day before my birthday. It is always close, sometimes on. This is the first Mother’s Day without either mother. This is also the year we have a high school senior.

I caught a bad cold. I tested, and it’s not covid, but I have been pretty miserable. I asked the family to put off my celebrations until next week. That was a great idea for multiple reasons.

Saturday was prom an hour away from home. I didn’t want daughter driving late on strange freeways, so I took her. Got home about 12:30. Not bad for prom, but late nonetheless. Fortunately, I didn’t have to preach on Sunday. It was Youth Sunday. I just had to make sure daughter was ready to preach and meet up with all the kids early to run through things.

Mother’s Day: Youth Sunday went well. Daughter had an outline and practiced for her brother. She did well enough. Her friend who also preached did well.

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The boy leads in prayer
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The girls gives her Senior Sermon

I was tired after church, but I had agreed to make breakfast for a church youth program at a local high school on Monday (I’ll bring breakfast on my birthday! It’ll be fun!). I got myself to the store. I stayed up making eggy bread casseroles. My daughter got home from work and started working on calculus. I didn’t realize how much calculus she had to do. I finished prepping the casseroles and got them in the fridge. The girl kept working on calculus.

My Birthday: I got up early to get the casseroles in the oven, got the girl up. She had slept some, and hadn’t finished all the work. The AP test was that morning. She had to get to school early, 7:30, early for any day in our 8:30 start-time California, but really early for late start Monday. She had a meltdown about whether the teacher would accept the work the next day. She left to pick up a friend, get some food, and get to school for the test. Later, she said the food helped a lot and other students also had work not turned in. (I am a little frustrated that they had prom on the weekend in the middle of all the exams. I’m also frustrated we did Youth Sunday this week. I’d have adjusted that if I had understood what I was asking. That one’s on me.)

I baked the casseroles. I had too much in the oven, so the baking was uneven and there was some burning, but I figured they could scoop around it. I took them to the program leader and headed home to get ready to teach. Took my son to school (late start Monday) and headed to teach.

The last several years in the second semester, I have spent a day showing TV episodes in class, giving the students a chance to spend their out-of-class work time catching up and working on papers and assignments. It was fun. We watched a short episode of Peppa Pig about the Queen, the pilot episode of Derry Girls, and the Romantic Poet episode of Ghosts UK. We had good discussion about the shows and British Humor and Ireland. I was once again surprised to realize how little Northern Ireland comes up these days. My students really knew nothing about The Troubles. I found myself explaining what it was like in the 80s and early 90s.

I came home and decompressed. We had a more or less normal Monday. We do DIY dinner on Mondays, and we did the same. My daughter got home from school and exams (AP Calculus, first part of IB Biology) and settled in to work on her Calculus homework she was behind on. Given how tired she was and how much she needed to do, I was so glad I wasn’t trying to do birthday stuff. My son made them both grilled sandwiches, egg and bologna for himself, ham and blue cheese for his sister.

Having had two short nights, I crashed at 10, but woke up off and on concerned about daughter who had had less sleep than I. She did okay, worked some, napped some. She didn’t finish everything, but she was in better shape than the day before. Today was the second part of IB Bio (she was none too sure about that. Her better IB exams, English and History, were last week, though she is feeling okay about Spanish.) She worked tonight. Tomorrow is AP Lang (I assume that means 7:30 again) and the first part of IB Spanish. Thursday brings the second Spanish Exam and the first IB Math one. Friday wraps up with the second part of IB Math.

I’m trying to understand the pressure of this week and last week. I don’t think I’ve ever had anything like it. The IB exams are a lot (and this is on top of the other IB projects/papers due in the weeks leading up). They are doing the two AP exams on top of IB, I guess as back-up and because their IB prep should stand them in good stead on those particular exams.

I’ve taken my share of exams, including a Master’s Exam and my Ph.D. Quals, but nothing like this.

I posted this on Facebook yesterday: On my 18th birthday, I took the AP Calculus Exam.
On my 54th birthday, my daughter is taking the AP Calculus Exam.
Here’s hoping it goes better for her!
(Oh, right, in case I’ve never told you, though I probably have, I didn’t pass it.)

Coincidentally, it turns out she is taking the exact same two AP Exams I took: Calculus and English Language and Composition. Just, she’s also taking all those other ones, too. (in my day, my school offered only three exams, the two I took + AP US History which I didn’t take for reasons. I actually created the AP English Literature and Composition course there a decade later.)

So… It’s been a good birthday because it is the culmination of many things. And I look forward to celebrating me–and the end of tests!–next weekend. I just hope the girl survives! There is an end in sight, I think.

(Maybe say a prayer for my girl in the next couple days.)

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mom-post #3 mom gps

Posted on February 15, 2025 by bookgirl

When I decided to go to graduate school, I applied to a bunch of school across the country. Over my Spring Break, I went to visit the 3 of them where I had been accepted with funding: Loyola in Chicago, Purdue in Indiana, and Case Western Reserve in Ohio. This must have been Spring 2002 before I would start in the fall.

I got lost on my way to Case Western Reserve. I did what I always did. I called my folks. We had cell phones but not GPS systems (I got an early one in 2003. It was an amazing top of the line portable GPS. Totally worth every dollar to me. I still kind of miss her. My cousin and I named her Gertrude Penelope Starfinder. She went from Indiana to California and back multiple times. But that’s another story.)

I was trying to get to a motel in Ohio. I was lost and I was driving. My folks were also on a road trip, but my dad was driving. My mom had a Thomas Guide handy. She found where I was and where I needed to go and talked me through the trip. That’s who my mom was. She would do anything she needed to do.

I dream about her a lot. I miss her a lot.

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momvember #2: that time she wrote a play

Posted on November 8, 2024 by bookgirl
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This is going to be short. I am sadly lacking in details on this entry, but I think it’s super cool.

My mom was always involved in drama. She played one of the old ladies in Arsenic and Old Lace in high school. She directed plays all my life. She put together skits all the time for church and school. She was a major part of the theater group at Leisure World in her retirement.

When my mom was teaching elementary school in Riverside, CA, she was part of a program, I think emphasizing emotional intelligence. She wrote a little play that students from her school put on as part of the program at their school. The greater program picked up the play for use throughout its program.

For the next couple of decades, she would randomly receive occasional royalty checks. She didn’t keep any of the money. She had a particular place to which she gave her royalty check money–I have no idea what group it was, but I assume it was something fitting.

Anyway, I just think that in the ordinary course of the things she did, it’s super cool that she was a published author who received royalty checks.

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momvember #1: refried beans

Posted on November 7, 2024 by bookgirl

My mom died in mid September. She was 80 years old. She had been living in a memory care unit for 2 years. I officiated at the memorial service last Saturday. As I worked on the service, I had to figure out which stories to tell. There are so many more stories, though. For the rest of November, I am going to try to post more stories. (My Mondays-Wednesdays are super filled, so it may be a Thursday-Sunday thing).

The Presbyterian Women made my mom’s Chile Relleno casserole and rice and beans and cookies for after the service. They sent us home with a lot of rice and beans. I’ve frozen some of them to pull out when I make Mexican food. This made me think of the refried beans story.

This is a story from Taiwan. My mom was from California and Mexican food was a staple for us no matter where we lived. In Taiwan, she would make big batches of chicken taco meat from the breasts they sold cheap because they didn’t use them and big batches of refried beans to have on hand. We had a small refrigerator/freezer. Sometimes she would store things in the school freezer, using whatever container was on hand.

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There wasn’t a lot of dairy in Taiwan. There just weren’t cows. We used dry milk as necessary. But, the Foremost guy did exist. People could order ahead and he would deliver ice cream and milk and other dairy products to the school. You might be able to see where this is going.

My folks got to the school on a Monday and started hearing about the *terrible* chocolate ice cream someone had gotten for a dinner party. They had come to the school and got their Foremost chocolate ice cream from the freezer. They tried to serve it, but they couldn’t even scoop it out. When they tasted it, it tasted terrible–not sweet at all. It was the Worst. Ice Cream. Ever. The Chinese national secretary chewed out the Foremost guy. How could they send this terrible terrible ice cream? What even happened?!?

You can see what happened. My mom figured it out and had to confess. “That wasn’t ice cream. It was my refried beans in an ice cream container in the school freezer.” Worst. Ice Cream. Ever. (but great refried beans.)

We always wondered what the Foremost place made of those refried beans handed back to them.

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acts as transitional text + monologues

Posted on August 14, 2023 by bookgirl

So… My colleague (and friend) retired at the end of June. I’m not even sure what to say about that. I’m mostly filling in for now, though I expect we will call an interim at some point. I asked for some breathing time between the farewell and someone new coming in, but I do think having an interim is a good idea.

I considered preaching ideas. Would I ignore the idea of transition or tackle it or somewhere in between? I was trying to go to the lectionary, maybe doing a Lectionary Series, but I wasn’t feeling the Matthean parables and the idea of preaching Romans felt like I might be saying the same thing over and over. If I could have started genesis at the beginning, I might have gone there, but it was well started before I started preaching. I finally decided that a good transition text would be the book of Acts, the stories of the disciples as they transition into a world without Jesus right there (though I promise I am not equating my former pastor to Jesus.) Then I immediately questioned my choice because doing a series on a book felt so evangelical, like I was falling back into something, and it’s not something my colleague would have ever done. But I didn’t have a better idea, so I went with it.

(Edited to add, I used Willie James Jennings commentary on Acts + posts from various chapters of Acts at Working Preacher. I am grateful for the Working Preacher Bible Index that let’s me see if a passage is covered.)

My series seems to have been well-received.

  • Week One I talked explicitly about transition using Acts 1 and 2, new beginnings and the coming of the Holy Spirit.
  • Week Two was Peter and John carrying on Jesus’ work, healing and preaching though they were ordinary men.
  • Week Three I walked about the creation of the deacons and discussed our presbyterian structure and the office and significance of deacons.
    • Week Four was Saul’s conversion, God surprises us with whom God chooses and a bit of an emphasis on Ananias who comes alongside Saul.
    • Week Five was Cornelius and A New Way, inclusivity for all including us 2000 years later.

I could have gone on a few more week, but 6 weeks seemed long enough for a series and I had one lay leader who asked me several times “when I would be finished with this thing with Acts.” We are not used to non-seasonal series. So I decided to wrap it all up in week six with a number of reflections on several moments I hadn’t covered. I was hoping to write monologues, but I wasn’t sure what would happen. As I worked through the end of Acts, I came up with four moments to highlight. I created an order of worship with 4 sets of Scripture/Reflection/Refrain. I invited 4 young people, siblings/cousins three of whom were here for the summer from Minnesota jobs and colleges to be the readers for the service. These are people I have worked with for a decade of youth Sundays as well as other readings and services. 3 of them were able to do so. I did manage to write monologues. I went back and forth about whether I should read them myself or ask my young people to read some of them. Sometimes when other people have read what I wrote, they haven’t totally gotten my intentions and nuances (my colleague could, but with other people I had to be satisfied with not quite). But I decided having multiple voices was better, and I was willing to take a risk on these particular people who are all brilliant and strong readers, so on Saturday I sent an email to my young people asking them to read 3 of them. They agreed. They were brilliant! So good. I read the final monologue, but I’m pretty sure they read my other monologues better than I read the last one. I have to admit, I kind of got chills listening to them even though I had written the things. They are also excellent lectors, adding in exactly the right unwritten bits and leading with grace and strength.

When I started working on this service, I look up “monologues from Acts.” I found very little. So I thought I would post here what I came up with. These are free to use. Credit would be ideal. They are specific to my context, but I think they could also work elsewhere. If I could have chosen the refrains after I wrote the monologues, I would have changed it somewhat. I thought the first two refrains worked excellently, but I would have saved “God Welcomes All” for the end and added in “Take O Take Me as I am” or something else after Priscilla and Aquila. I worked the last lines of the Luke dialogue to make “Within the Darkest Night” work, but it felt labored.

Here is what I did:

SCRIPTURE: Acts 9:36-38

Tabitha
I was dead and now I am alive.
I don’t have words. I remain confused, flummoxed, grateful.
I live to serve another day.
I am called Tabitha, or Dorcas for the Greeks.
My name means Gazelle.
I have often felt like a gazelle, running on the plains, part of a herd,
my eyes wide open to the need.I see so much need in the world.
The women without families, without provision
Who helps them?
I saw no one, so I did what I could
I made clothing to give to those whose clothes were threadbare and worn out
I made clothing to sell to provide food and shelter
I did what I could.
But I became ill. I could not sew any more.
I died?
They tell me the grief was palpable
Wails and laments
Especially from the widows.
But
They knew Peter was nearby
They sent for him
He sent everyone out of the room
The next thing I knew, I had come out from where I was
I was opening my eyes
Seeing Peter’s rough but kind face
Looking into his eyes as he prayed.
He held out his hand to me
And helped me up.
I was not weak, I was not ill. I was well.
We went out to the others
They believed; they called for Peter after all,
but they were still astonished when they saw me
Alive!
I don’t know why I am singled out
A woman alone
People die every day
Why did I get to live?
Why did I, a woman who lived and served among women, matter?
But somehow, to the community, to Peter, to God
I did.
I mattered. I matter.
And so do the needy widows I serve
Because I live to serve again.
We matter.
Women matter. The destitute matter. Those on the outside, matter.
And so I live
But my life will never be the same.

SUNG REFRAIN (GtG 544) Bless the Lord, My Soul Berthier
Bless the Lord, my soul,
and bless God’s holy name.
Bless the Lord, my soul,
who leads me into life. (Repeat)

SCRIPTURE Acts 13:4-5, 13; 15: 36-39

John, Called Mark
I am a failure, a deserter; I abandoned them.
I blew it.
I had the chance to work with Paul and Barnabas.
I was their assistant, taking care of the little things so they could minister.
They were amazing men, so learned, so spirit-filled
And here I was, John, not The John, but John also called Mark
Young, untried, irresponsible
And I blew it.
I left them.
I couldn’t hack it.
I went back to the relative safety of Jerusalem.
I didn’t have enough stamina, enough guts, enough trust.
But then I was sorry.
I was so sorry. I knew it was my fault. I knew I had messed up.
I tried to come back.
And I was the cause of one of the great breakups in history.
Barnabas.
The one who sold his land and gave the proceeds to the church
The one who came alongside Paul and trusted him and introduced him to the apostles
The one who travelled alongside Paul for his first journeys
The one they call Son of Encouragement
Barnabas took my side
He wanted to bring me with them on their next journey
He… trusted me… that I had learned and would not fail again
But Paul was having none of it
Once a deserter always a deserter
They disagreed so sharply they parted company
Paul went off with Silas
And Barnabas put his trust in me. We sailed to Cyprus together
He didn’t have to do that
He risked trusting me
And I will be forever grateful.
I think sometimes people say this was for the good
Two pairs of people could do more in spreading God’s word than one alone
Maybe God ordained it.
I just somehow don’t think so.
There are times to part,
But I don’t think people disagreeing sharply and parting ways in anger is God’s plan
It worked out, but it wasn’t Good.
I did change. I grew up and I grew in the Spirit.
Eventually even Paul asked me to come to him, to assist him once again.
But I never would have had that chance if it hadn’t been for Barnabas,
Son of Encouragement.

SUNG REFRAIN (GTG 204) Stay with Me Berthier
Stay with me; remain here with me;
watch and pray.
Watch and pray. (Repeat)

SCRIPTURE Acts 18:1-3, 24-27

Priscilla and Aquila
We are Priscilla and Aquila.
We are always mentioned together.
True partners in life, in work, in mission.
Priscilla or, formally, Prisca, the venerable, the revered one
Aquila, the eagle with far sight and gliding strength
We are God-fearing Jews who were exiled from Rome
We found a home in Corinth and together set up our tentmaking business
This is where and how we met Paul.
He was a tentmaker! Who knew?
He was a pharisee, a learned man
But he, too, worked with leather, sewed, made tents
And there is this about Paul
He travelled around and around for the churches he started
By he never asked for funds for his ministry
He asked for communities who needed help
But he supported himself.
So we worked together, and talked together, and learned together.
We also travelled together,
but we were called to remain in Ephesus while Paul travelled on.In Ephesus we encountered Apollos.
Apollos was great, so charismatic
Many people listened to him and followed him.
But his learning was incomplete,
He knew Jesus, and spoke eloquently and enthusiastically about him
He knew about the baptism of John
A baptism of repentance
But he did not know about the Baptism of the Spirit
The marvel that had been happening since that day of Pentecost in Jerusalem.
After we heard him speak in the synagogue
We took him aside
And, together, we instructed him
We told him the glad news of Jesus’ baptism, the baptism of the spirit.
It was not easy to correct someone who was so right in so many ways
But we could not hold back
We had to be able to teach the teacher
But sometimes we are incomplete
Our vision needs to expand
And he heard us.
He listened and expanded his message.
And then he took the message abroad
And became known for his ministry and mission.
We are glad he was able to discern the truth with us.We continue to work together
To forward God’s kingdom
Where all are one
Just as we two are one
In life, in work, in mission.

SUNG REFRAIN (399) God Welcomes All Bell
God welcomes all,
strangers and friends;
God’s love is strong
and it never ends. (Repeat)

SCRIPTURE Acts 27:33-40 

Luke
I was a witness.
I wrote about the life and death and resurrection of Jesus.
And then I wrote about the Acts of the Holy Spirit.
The transformation of an ordinary group of men and women
By the Holy Spirit
Into a whole movement
A new way
The way of Jesus Christ.
I am Luke, and near the end of Paul’s travels
I had the great privilege of traveling with him
I talk about the things “we” did.
He is in trouble for preaching the Gospel
And he claims his Roman citizenship
And asks to plead his case in Rome.
So we work to get to Rome
Maybe the way Jesus worked his way to Jerusalem
(I may have included some parallels in my books).
We have a ship, but it’s winter and Paul suggests we stay where we are
The pilot disagrees and the centurion in charge listens to the pilot and pushes on
To be fair, it was not a great port
They were hoping to get to a better place to winter.
So we go.
We hit a storm and our ship is battered and everyone is on edge.
Paul is the only one who stays calm.
He does say, “I told you so,”
But then he also reassures them that everyone will be safe
There will be no loss of life, only of the ship.
Then he does this thing
Everyone is exhausted and scared and hungry
Paul takes bread, gives thanks to God, and breaks it.
He eats and he encourages everyone else to eat.
Communion
And invitation to eat
A source of hope and divine love.
They may not have understood the symbolism of the bread
But they gathered around it
They were sustained
Bread for the journey, the body of Christ, the source of love.
Eventually we made it to land.
The sailors did try to kill the prisoners—
Better dead than escaped—
But the centurion wanted to save Paul, so he stopped that scheme.
We were welcomed by the natives who showed us “unusual kindness”
and were able to winter there.
While we were there, Paul did his usual thing of healing many people.
Three months later, we were able to set out again.
We finally arrived in Rome, and Paul was allowed to live under house arrest.
He found a house and welcomed all visitors
Including John-Mark, whom he asked for personally to come and help him
He continued to preach and teach and write about Jesus Christ as he awaited trial
He offered hospitality to all
He welcomed all
He spoke to all.
This was Paul and this was the way of Christ.
I hope that in my books, I have made it clear
Jesus came to transform the world
To bring a new kingdom
And the Holy Spirit continued that work after Jesus was gone
Through this group of people who were transformed by the power of God.
And so the Spirit is still at work, calling all
No matter how dark it gets
And a ship in a storm is pretty dark
House arrest awaiting a trial is pretty dark
But God is there
Jesus is with us
The fire of the Spirit will not die away.
May it ever be so.
Amen.

SUNG REFRAIN (GTG 294) Within Our Darkest Night Berthier
Within our darkest night,
you kindle the fire that never dies away,
never dies away.
Within our darkest night,
you kindle the fire that never dies away,
never dies away. (Repeat)

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quick update

Posted on February 9, 2023 by bookgirl

I’m sitting in an office hour, so I thought I’d do a quick update.

I didn’t do very well with the free writes. I can’t make myself sit and work during class. That semester is over. It was good, but really hard to keep up with everything.

This semester I am teaching one, in-person American Lit class at the college. I’m having a ball. It is a small class (10 students), and they are super interested in the readings and conversations. I am enjoying the resonance of the American Lit. Brit Lit, which I will always love, is removed in time and space. American lit feels, to me, here and now. This is the second half of the survey, so it covers 1865-the present. The issues of 1865 are so similar to the concerns of 2023 that it kind of takes my breath away. I am so much more enlightened, awake, aware now than I was the last time a studied or taught American Lit that I am seeing all sorts of things I missed before. It’s heartbreaking and breathtaking at the same time.

I like doing “Book Groups” in my classes to give students some choice about a reading and to fit more books into the semester. In Brit Lit first semester I just do longer texts that we don’t get to, so we get Utopia and Dr. Faustus and and Gulliver and Robinson Crusoe and Oroonoko. In Brit Lit II (where I started the idea), we do books by women authors to balance the Dickens that is on the course outline and that we read as a class. I offer Pride and Prejudice, Frankenstein, Jane Eyre, Cranford, Mrs Dalloway, and Strong Poison. The students do their roundtable discussion when the text fits chronologically into the course. For Lit by Women, I did genre literature, choosing, sci fi, fairy tale, mystery, dystopian selections. For American Lit, I decided to do diverse contemporary authors. I asked on Facebook for friends to make suggestions (I have Facebook friends from both my graduate programs + English teacher types), so I figured I would get good input. Of all the texts suggested, I chose four: The Poet X by Elizabeth Acevedo, American Born Chinese by Gene Luen Yang, Deacon King Kong by James McBride, and There There by Tommy Orange. There are other, better known texts, but I decided to go with really recent ones, and ones that came up more than once from people. (I will teach Octavia Butler at some point, but I didn’t go there this time. I offered her last semester, but was not taken up on the offer.)

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Last week I read all of them except There There (on my list for this weekend). These are some great books. Here is my update on them from Facebook:

Of the four books I selected for American Lit book groups from the list you all created for me, I have now read three of them.

All three made me laugh out loud and one (The Poet X) made me cry.

Deacon King Kong had a funny resonance because of the question raised more than once in the book, “what is a Deacon?” [Our Deacon Moderator] spoke eloquently on that very topic in church yesterday. It was such a wide-ranging book. I liked the last third better than the first 2/3s, but it needed the first 2/3rds to build up to the last third. So. Much. Hope. Beautiful book.

American Born Chinese, as Asian American books usually do, had personal resonance for me because of my time in Asia and living in So Cal. It also made me laugh and surprised me with the ending. Additionally, when. my 8th grader saw I was reading it, he casually said, “Oh, yeah. I read that last semester.” so we got to talk about it. (I’ve read a lot of the books he has been assigned in the last two years, but didn’t actually know about this one.)

The Poet X undid me. It is a beautiful novel in verse that makes me want to write poetry and so much more. (this is the one that made me cry.)

Just There There to go.

I was also intrigued by how much these three books have to say about faith and religion. I guess I know this is an ongoing theme in American literature, but I was surprised about how much it came up in the very contemporary texts. Questions, arguments, but also symbols and moments. The Monkey King Legend part of American Born Chinese has a Holy Family allusion in and illustration. It also has other references to scripture including, “even at the end of all that, my hand is there holding you fast.” This stood out to me because Deacon King Kong uses the quote from the end of the Irish Blessing, “May God hold you in the palm of his hand,” as a king of motif and continued allusion. It was an unexpected connection, and kind of a lovely one.

In this class, I have made the book groups the final assignment for the class, so it will be a while before we get to them, but I will be fascinated to see what the students do with them. Of course, they are each reading just one, so they won’t make the cross-book connections I made, but they will delve into each of the books and listen to one another talk about them. It’s so much fun.

We wrapped up 1865-1914 today and begin the 1914-1945 section of the textbook on Tuesday. Fascinating stuff. So good. So many of the stories that stand out clearly to me from High School anthologies are in this course, stories that stunned me when I first read them (“The Yellow Wallpaper,” “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge,” “The White Heron,” etc.). I have these clear memories of reading them as a 15 or 16 year-old. It is pretty amazing to revisit them. Also, rubbing hands together gleefully, I get to do Modern American Poetry, a class I took both as an undergraduate student (Stephen Axelrod, UC Riverside) and Graduate Student (Wendy Stallard Flory, Purdue University, my favorite British Americanist), and which were two of my all-time favorite classes (along with my other all time favorite classes like the Emily Dickinson class which was my all-time favorite). Anyway, I’ve concentrated on Brit Lit for so long, and I’ve always said I loved individual bits of American Lit, but didn’t love it so much as a whole. I am revisiting that now. I want us to read it as a whole and understand why were, as a nation, as a people, are where we are, how we got stuck, and ask ourselves whether we can do batter. What a privilege. What a responsibility.

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freewrite 11/14

Posted on November 14, 2022 by bookgirl

I was slow getting started today, so I have only about 3 minutes. I look at the National Day Calendar and if there is anything interesting I offer it to the students for a prompt. Today is National Family PJ day. I find the family PJ thing both charming and kind of silly, but I have to admit, when my kids were small my son had a hand-me-down pair of snowman pajamas that he loved, so I got my daughter snowman pajamas as well and we have pictures of them lighting advent candles in our home in snowman pajamas. So when he finally outgrew that first pair (they were very large the first couple years), I have bought them each snowman pajamas for Advent. I think last year may have been the final year for that, though. Neither of them really wears pajamas anymore and I’m not sure they would wear them for more than one photo one time. Makes me a little wistful.

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