S is for Sarah Palin

She is a much better tour guide than politician. I found her endearing. Loved the scene where her mother-in-law teaches the kids how to clean salmon- the same way my pa taught me how to clean salmon a couple summer ago. Common ground, people. Would my response to her campaign have been different if I had seen the show before hand?

(Just can't start another blog challenge before finishing the first one!) :)

R is for Report Card

The question was: Do people from all racial & ethnic groups have equal access to services?

I'm facilitating a Race Relations Dialogue-to-Change Circle at work and this was our topic of discussion last week. To be honest, the session was mostly a lot of venting. But I do think we need to be realistic about where we are before we talk about how to make our city more equitable across racial lines. Looking forward to the "action" conversation this week.

Q is for Quilt (not Quitter)

Of course it is. I don't know why I didn't think of it sooner. Lately every spare moment is spent with rotary cutter, iron, sewing machine or needle in hand in order to get these Christmas orders finished. Yes that is right, Christmas orders! Doesn't that make me sound professional?

Also, I would like to point out that Q is not for Quitter. I am not going to complete the alphabet in the month of November, but I plan to keep trucking along all the way to Z.

Postscript: Please don't tell my customers that my cat loves nothing more than to roll around messing up my fabric. I am going through lint rollers like mad.

P is for Pad Thai

I know, I know, Whitney also blogged about Pad Thai. But I would like to provide a visual illustration to prove it that it happened. :)

Fabulous food and lovely company. I am thankful.

O is for One-Lane Bridge

Another view from my Thanksgiving travels. How quaint. It was my first time driving this highway and it was a quite enjoyable trip. I almost forgot I was in Indiana.

N is for North

I drove by my high school yesterday in route to Thanksgiving celebration #3. (I attended the North school district in my county from K-12.) This old rock has sat outside the school for decades, daring rivaling schools to sneak out and paint it opposing colors after they defeated us in a big game. Painting the rock was probably the most "rebellious" thing my friends and I ever did in high school. Lame, I know, but we did get stopped by the police on one occasion. My BFF ran for the bushes and I'm pretty sure the cop was cracking up at our scared faces as he drove away after telling us just go on home. Fond memories. :)

M is for Measure

/ˈmɛʒər/ Show Spelled Mezh-er. Or may-zur. Whatever. I have been doing a lot of measuring lately. Next time I see my parents I need to listen closely to see if they are to blame for my funny pronunciation.

L is for Loving & Learning

I think I only have only recently started to love God. Like maybe within the past 2-3 years. Before that I think I would profess to love God, because that is what you do when you are a Christian. But to truly love God you must know his character. And I have come to know his character more and more as I have come to understand the "now and not yet" of the Kingdom of God.

On a tangent, sometimes I feel like I am not very smart. I am horrible at remembering things I've read or learned. Today I could hardly tell you anything about Sociology or Social Work theory though I spend 6 years studying those topics. I've been trying to challenge myself recently by spending more time in reflection, breaking things into digestible pieces.

Twitter, of all things, has helped in this area. At a recent conference I tweeted the biggest take-away for each session I attended. Three weeks later I found myself quoting a tweet verbatim to a friend as it related to our conversation. I probably would have never remembered it otherwise, but 140 characters made it manageable.

I know my head and my heart are wired the way they are for a reason, so I don't want to be too hard on myself. But I do want to be challenged. Which brings me to the quote I tried to capture above:

"For I tell you this: one loving, blind desire for God alone is more valuable in itself, more pleasing to God and to the saints, more beneficial to your own growth, and more helpful to your friends, both living and dead, than anything else you could do" (reading from The Cloud of Unknowing, as quoted in the book of Common Prayer).

My love and desire for the Lord has increased. I can't really explain it well, I can't pinpoint when it started to happen, and I can't quote many scriptures to back it up. But maybe the most important thing is that it is there. To hear that that in itself is valuable, pleasing, beneficial, and helpful to God and others encourages and empowers me. And I hope that love will drive more learning.

K is for Karma!

Remember the missing fabric? Consensus is that is was stolen from my porch. It was nobody's fault so nobody wanted to give me a refund. I was not sure if I could justify spending another chunk of money on fabric for the silent auction quilt. But then...

Karma (or, you know, Jesus) took care of me after all! My dad called me a couple days later and asked if I had noticed a mysterious $70 deposit in my savings account. I hadn't. (Other than the automatic deposits from my paycheck, I try to ignore the account to avoid temptation.)

So I checked, and there it was! 70 free dollars that were the result of my dad trying to deposit checks with his iPhone, accidentally selecting the wrong account, and being too lazy or loving me too much to try to undo it. Thanks Pa!

I was getting ready to re-order the fabric online when I found out via facebook that my local quilt shop just started selling the line! No shipping fees, no package thieves, and an opportunity to support local business! Plus the friendly store owner encouraged me to take a risk with a contrasting binding that I would have never chosen on my own. Yay!

I'm so excited to start this quilt.

J is for... Jeggings?

I know, I know. I am wearing jeggings and writing about it in public. At work I give lectures about how leggings are not pants and not appropriate workforce attire, but today I'm sporting them with boots and a long, booty-covering sweater. They are just so soft and stretchy and comfy... Reminds me why I wore stretch pants and stirrup pants for the majority of elementary school. Comfort cancels out ridiculousness in this fashion equation. I'm a fan.

I is for Indianapolis Skyline

Beautiful sunset last night as seen from Mass Ave.

H is for the Head and the Heart

H is a hard one. I thought about it a couple days and today thought I might do "the Heart," as in that valentine-shaped piece of your soul that holds all your passions and emotions, but quickly squirmed at getting too personal on here.

So I am copping out and posting a picture of the band. I love them. Give them a listen, if you haven't already.

G is for Godly Play

These questions are posted in the 2nd-4th grade room at my church. We recently implemented a new way of teaching/worshiping/ministering called Godly Play. Since I'm just an occasional volunteer, I have only experienced a little bit of it, but I just did some googling to learn more and found this video that sums it up really well.

These questions made me pause when I first saw them:

What does this mean for my life?
How am I connected to God's big story?
Will I think or act differently now that I know this?

I think we would do well to answer these in our grown-up conversations about Jesus. Maybe I should be dismissed with the rest of the children during church to go experience God through storytelling and objects each Sunday. This may be a reoccurring theme in my desire to know God- I once took a children's bible from a toddlers room after putting him to bed because the story was so simple and beautiful and I wanted to keep reading!

If our children come to know the Lord in this way, knowing the interconnectedness of the stories, being able to embrace the mystery and wonder, I think they will be able to teach us grown folk a lot.

F is for Missing Fabric

Sad face.

F was gonna be for the new line of Lotta Jansdotter fabric that I ordered last week... but it never arrived. It was the prettiest fabric I've ever seen. It was $70 worth. And it was for a baby quilt that was gonna be donated to a silent auction for a Ugandan ministry. Where is the love, karma? I just filed a report with a post office so here's hoping it turns up.

E is for Eagle Creek

Last Friday I had to facilitate a session on reflection, so I made everyone drive out here, gave them a list of questions, and just let them wander or paint or sit and look out the window with their headphones. It was fabulous. I do some of my best thinking in the woods.

I always start to get bummed as the trees lose their leaves. But the leafless winter forest is still beautiful in it's own way. I am reminded of a day last winter when I was driving through the country with a dear friend who is 40 some years my senior. From a place of grief and hope she said "Don't you ever wonder?... Everything needed for the leaves is in there right now, yet they look so bare"

In the picture there are two yellow leaves holding on for dear life. They've probably fallen by now, but something new is already inside, just waiting for the season to change.

D is for Dye

We dyed some curtains today. I didn't wait around to see the finished product, but I'm pretty sure they will be fabulous.

C is for Crane Game*

I won this today! It helped that two new gentlemen friends had just spent an unreasonable amount of quarters to nudge it into a better position. But I was the lucky girl to bring home the...what exactly is it? I think it's a Christmas bear and mouse mask. The mask was tied to the back of the bear and I have no idea why.

*and Contra and Cam. :)

B is for Building

I built this! It's a feline outhouse. Also known as a kitty latrine or litter box. Yes, that is crown molding at the top. Freckles is a classy little thing.

It took me a good 12 hours to accomplish this...15 if you count time spent at Lowes on two separate occasions, wandering the aisles and wondering what kind of wood, supplies and tools I might need to bring this idea to fruition. It's far from perfect, but it's amazing what some glossy paint and trim can do to dress up a crooked plywood box.

In a season where I am very tired of sitting in a concrete building looking at a computer all day, it felt so good to built something tangible with my hands. I'm not an artist or a perfectionist, and am not sure I have the discipline to become either. But I think I may have been created to create.

A is for Alaska

How is it that land can have such a powerful pull over us? Is it really the land, or the people there? Can we untie land from family and memory?

Pop songs say "Home is whenever I'm with you"..."You’re already home where you feel love" and "you are home to me"... And I guess that why, though I've never lived in Alaska, I've stopped correcting people when they say "Are you going home for Christmas?" I am going to Alaska for Christmas, going home to see my family, and going to honor the memory of my Grandmother who loved that land so fiercely.

ABC...

I have been invited to participate in an alphabet blog challenge! I am excited to start writing a little bit again. But so as to not set myself up for failure, I plan to keep it short and post a photo for each letter as well. So if nothing else, you will have something pretty to look at. In the process I will nearly double the amount of posts this blog has seen in 4+ years, how bout that?

Indpls

This week marks 5 years since I moved to Indianapolis. In that time I’ve been privileged to live, work, play, and go to school within the same 2 mile radius. I recently started thinking about all the changes that have developed in the downtown area in that time. I started with the physical changes…buildings that have been built, torn down, or renovated, new trails, shops, restaurants, stop lights, beautification projects, the list goes on.

My mind then shifted to the people behind these changes. What I am loving even more about this city at this time is the people. I’m not talking about my friends – they’re nice– but I am talking about the people in this city who ended up here- or stayed here- maybe on accident- maybe on purpose- and have decided to do something to help this city become a great place.

I have a growing stack of old Nuvo’s on a shelf at home. I keep them when they include people I know who are doing good work. I also keep them when they include people I would like to meet. And I eventually get to meet them. I love that this town is small enough for that.

Looking back through those articles I can see that significant strides have been made for local food, handmade products, bicycles, neighborhood quality of life, beautifying our city, developing the creative class, etc. etc. Not to mention the things were emerging before I got here: the art scene, the fair trade movement, neighborhood development. There’s also the handful of churches who are getting real about the gospel and how Jesus calls us to live alongside one another. I love seeing glimpses of what these communities are doing in neighborhoods across the city.

But it’s not limited to the earthly folks or the non-profit folks or the Jesus folks. I was reading in last week’s Metro Mix about a Fashion Collective that just started. Its no secret that Hoosiers aren't the most fashionable folk. But I love that the stylish people are getting together and saying “Hey, why not? This city is what we make it- and we can put Indy on the fashion map”. I love that spirit. I'm in awe of it.

After college I wanted to go somewhere with mountains, or an ocean…or at least Louisville. But I ended up here- and I would not change it for the world. This city seems ripe for action- and it’s small enough that change is attainable for anyone who gets the right group of thoughtful, committed citizens together. I am proud to put roots down and call Indy home. And I am excited for all that is to come.