7 years ago today I was saying. . .

Matthew, today I take you as my husband, committing myself to love and to serve you for the rest of my life. I know, and I affirm to you, that love is not merely the emotion I feel right now, but it is bond between us that we strengthen as we depend on eachother and on God during the challenges of life--a bond that I never will break. I promise to you that I will be patient and understanding as we both strive to answer God's call for our lives, learning and growing together.

I love you today deeper than that day seven years ago. Thank you for your steadfastness in your love for me.

The locals

(alternate title: "Interpellation")

Headed out for a morning jog the other day with Macy at about 9:30 am or so. It was sprint day, so I was running pretty hard (listening to "Everyday" by Carly Comando--great running song). Macy was giving about half-effort, which she's being doing more and more as it climbs to 90+ degrees by mid-morning. Slacker. Let's just say that I had a good couple of steps on Macy as we cruised down the block. As I'm running, I begin to notice from my periphery a large object creeping slowly up on me--it's a truck. For a couple of steps I keep my pace and pretend that the truck isn't following me. It's happened before that cars slow down to look at rental houses, etc., and I just happen to be in their line of vision. But it's clear after a few more steps that this truck is stalking me. I nervously glance over into the cab of the truck and see the driver, a somewhat wild-looking, if older man, start to roll down the passenger side window. By this time, I realize that my full attention needs to be devoted to this situation, so I quickly pull out my headphone earbud (left side only), stop running, and shoot the driver a look that says both "What's up?" and "I'm a little worried that you're a crazy person trying to kidnap me." Ignoring my look and its dual meanings, the driver yells these words at me across the cab of the pickup: "I'm betting on the dog!" He smiles, then speeds up and drives off.

better world

Just wanted to pass along info about a great place to buy books (new and used) online . . . www.betterworld.com . They sell used books, find homes for unwanted books, every order is shipped carbon neutral, and they support a variety of literacy programs. Thanks Lance for the tip.

Stars

On our way back from San Antonio, we stopped by to visit Ben in Winters. . .I had forgotten what stars uninterrupted by light look like. I have no words to describe it--just feeling like I need to get out of the city at night more often.

To live, we must daily break the body and shed the blood of creation. When we do it knowingly, lovingly, skillfully, reverently, it is a sacrament. When we do it ignorantly, greedily, destructively, it is a desecration.

- Wendell Berry
The Gift of Good Land

finally

driving on my way back to the farm after a lovely evening with new friends--friends I feel deeply connected because of shared experiences--and i finally felt a release of pressure as my breaths became deeper and my shoulders more relaxed. . .i can be fulfilled/content in doing life how i'm yearning to live it right now--right now. this is big for me. thank you Spirit for this revelation.

Why?

I’ve had several people ask me why I came out to work at the farm. Here are my reasons . . . I believe in what they do and wanted to do what I can to support that—educating people to go out and teach others about sustainable farming/agriculture. When I ask myself—what do I hold dear/spend time doing right now—I answer with growing produce in a way that is kind to the earth. I came to the farm to learn more about how to grow good things for my friends and neighbors. I also hope this to be a time in a different, more bucolic place, where I can meditate on what/if anything career-wise is next—I’m not even sure I know what this means. I’m meeting with a few people I know here in Waco to talk through some possibilities. I think that’s it for now. Thank you all for your interest/support of me.

good read

I finished reading this book a few days back . . . I think it might be my favorite book of all time. There were moments sitting in the laundromat or on our bed looking outside our windows as I read that I just broke down in tears and balled my eyes out--there were sections of passages that spoke so deeply to my soul; I felt like she talked through ideas that really resonated with me--I rarely find that depth of camaraderie. Good times.

goodbye denton

It looks like I'm going to be spending 2 weeks here starting next Monday. I'm really excited about what this time might bring.

gardening with my grandad

Back in the middle of March my grandad and mom came out for a couple of days to show me how to put in a garden. Not only did we spend time gardening, I got a chance to get to know new levels of my grandad--like he's been a lifelong democrat--who knew? My grandad was a farmer for a good portion of his life, and it was such a distinct pleasure getting to interact with him in his element. There's a beautiful art to how he works the soil, adds nutrients, and treats the seeds/plants. It was such a soul warming time and has reinvigurated my passion for the earth and its goodness. Here's what the garden looked like 1 1/2 months ago . . .

and here's what it looks like now . . .

In the garden we've got tomatoes, beans, onions, squash, zuccini, peppers, carrots, beets, spinach, arugula, herbs, cantelope, and watermelon.





The arugula and spinach are ready for harvesting and we've been able to share our produce with friends and neighbors. We met Carl and his wife Jane (our neighbors 2 houses down who are in a band and have 2 grammys! crazy, huh?) yesterday and loaded them up with spinach and arugula. It's a nice feeling getting to provide our family and friends with fresh, organically grown produce. Thank you earth for your bounty and thank you Grandad for your wisdom.

Beet greens

We had to thin out our carrots and beets, so they would grow big and strong. We got to eat these for dinner tonight. Yummy!

mushrooms

matt's asleep. i'm laying here wrestling with what i'm doing with my life. at times i feel grounded and assured, and at other times i feel like i just drifting through it all. it's coming up on the end of the school year for matt, and i thought i would have had it figured out by now--what's next. i'm tired of waiting and being patient. this so goes against my core as a person. aahh!!!

meanwhile . . . harvested our first mushrooms today. some yummy portabellas that we used for veggie sandwhiches. here's a pic (imagine i'm saying, "oooo. . .aren't those beautiful mushrooms i grew. i bet they'll taste good."--and they did :)

Swamped

I've realized a rhetorical dilemma with blogging for me: the interaction between me and you stands out as a problem, which I've solved in the past by the creation of elaborate and time-consuming narrative posts, attempting to provide enough context for any reader to enter into my experiences and thoughts. Some audience members appreciate this mode (thanks Dad!) while others have maligned it (boo unnamed!). But the baseline consideration is time. I haven't blogged lately because it was taking me two hours to craft the masterful art of each post, and I'm more interested in the possibility of keeping up communication and informing you all about our lived experiences. So I'm going to aim for brevity now, although a narrative may appear every now and again.

Yes, I realize that the paragraph above did not follow any of the "rules" therein contained. I'm starting....NOW.

Here are some pics from New Orleans--specifially, the Jean Lafitte National Preserve south of the city. There are some great narratives to go along with these pics, but...no, I must resist telling them. Brevity. (This new mode invites further conversation--I can tell you more if you call or email).


















Continuing with the exigency of brevity, I'm going to give a two-minute version of issues on my mind right now. Michel Meyer, a French philosopher of "problematology", suggests that everything we do--communication, action, thought--is a performance aimed at solving the problems that motivate us both "in the moment" and more significanctly at the core of our experiences. So, here are some of the more significant "problems" I'm trying to answer right now:

• Contending with postmodern philosophies (namely, those of Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida) and their implications for rhetoric
• Conceiving of a post-postmodern direction for rhetorical study
• Tying together these academic interests with my core values of faith and spirituality
• Living out whatever I come up with in my daily life here
• Getting ready for my class today instead of blogging

And I'd also like to share with you some of the ways I'm going about finding answers

• Understanding Michel Meyer's philosophy of problematology
• Figuring out the philosophy of Emmanuel Levinas and its implications for the above (thanks Liam!)
• Listening to the intelligent conversations on the Veritas Forum (some challenging ideas in this one by Timothy Keller and this one by Dallas Willard) (thanks Josh!)
• Reading Shane Claiborne's "The Irresistible Revolution" along with the Gospel of Luke
• Shutting down the computer and actually taking a shower and heading out the door

Snow day

Yesterday was March 6th--and it snowed over 1 foot here in Denton! Crazy, huh? It's practically spring and there's snow on the ground. Matt's classes were cancelled and we got to play in the snow and watch movies the rest of the day in celebration of our first snow day here. Good times.

Late night caucus

Last Thursday I got to go to into Fort Worth to hear Obama speak at a rally there. Just entering the building brought tears to my eyes--there was such a beatifully diverse group of people there; I was deeply moved by the experience. Many of you got a call from me on Tuesday encouraging you to vote for Obama or at least make your voice heard in this process. After voting on Tuesday, I got to go back to my precinct at participate in the caucus. It was crazy--no one expected that many people to show up (five times more than the norm at our precinct), and we didn't get done until 11:00 that night. I got to meet a lot of great people and will be a precinct representative for our county convention--it's exciting to be a part of this process. Even though Barack didn't win the popular vote in Texas, he did win almost all of the major cities in Texas and should actually win the delegate count in Texas due to the large turnout of support for him in the caucuses. I just want to encourage all of you to do what you can to get the person elected you feel would best lead this country. I leave you with this message of hope. . . http://youtube.com/watch?v=jjXyqcx-mYY&feature=related

Adrienne

After 5 years of not seeing eachother and living in states across the country from one another, the two of us end up in Texas in towns about an hour apart. She was my only friend out here when we first moved--I love that I've been able to see her more lately. She is wonderfully creative and has such a beautiful soul. Thank you for being in my life.

yummy earth

In preparation for my grandad (a farmer by trade) coming out in a couple of weeks to help me plant and figure out irrigation for the garden, I've been composting all of our food scraps, leaves, other people's leaves I've raked for them, and so on to have some healthy soil when spring comes. I love the smell of fresh dirt when I turn the compost pile. It makes me happy.

Here we go again. . .

Where I'm going, I don't know yet, but at least I'm going to get back on blogging about it. For those of you who don't know, last semester was a tough one for the both of us--I thought I was pretty good at handling transitions, but this last one rocked me. Thankfully, I feel as though we're out of the worst of it and are beginning to connect with the city and people here in Denton. Here's to hope and life that is all around us!

-Makinzie

Imminent Domain

“It isn't going to be what we expected. It is old and little, and altogether delightful--red brick. From hall you go right or left into dining-room or drawing-room. Hall itself is practically a room. You open another door in it, and there are the stairs going up in a sort of tunnel to the first-floor. Three bed-rooms in a row there, and three attics in a row above. That isn't all the house really, but it's all that one notices--nine windows as you look up from the front garden.”

When E.M. Forster wrote these words in Howards End, he understood the central importance constructions of brick and wood have in our lives. Houses construct meaning. The house in Forster’s novel is built by the people who live in it, but the house builds the people as well—it shapes their perceptions of what is “safe,” what is “stable,” and what is “home.” A house, as Forster suggests, can become a touchstone for wealth and happiness, providing a standard by which we compare our lives with others’. The windows through which we gaze out into the world are always framed, and those frames are part of a threshold of experience we create, protect, and invest with time and energy.

What Forster’s novel doesn’t show is a house composed by the hospitality and humanity of the people within it: a house that welcomes, befriends, comforts, and heals. Maybe Forster never saw a house of this construction in his day, but they must have existed. You can’t recognize a building of this type by its drawing-rooms or dining-rooms or red bricks; it can only be experienced in relationship with its people, for the house becomes an extension of the human desire to belong and connect.

For months we have been looking for our “dream house,” and we have been slow to realize that our dreams really don’t depend at all on the shape or size of a building. Days after this epiphany struck us, a nice little house with a big yard came up for sale close to campus. We put an offer down within three hours of the listing.

So we buy a house on Friday, and our thoughts and prayers frame our hope for the house to become a space of belonging and connection.

“Only connect.” –E.M. Forster, Howards End

Deus Imbrium

August 21, 2007

Last Thursday as the sun went down, had you been traveling in rural Comanche county, past the fields of cows and quiet ranch houses, miles away from any city lights, you might have seen a car stopped by the side of the road—its blinkers on and music issuing almost imperceptibly from its closed doors. Had you been a native West Texan, you might have wondered at the car’s California plates, noticeably out of place among the pump jacks and mesquite trees silhouetted in the darkening West Texas sky. “Tourists” you might have thought at first, but then you would have remembered that there is nothing to draw tourists to Rising Star, Texas, or, for that matter, to the nearby towns of Pioneer, Okra, or Chuckville. You might have thought “kin”, but then you would have had to rationalize the car’s present stopping place in the middle of nowhere. Ultimately, you would have been forced to conclude that the artifact from California had ended up where it was for a reason, and that, since it wasn’t your business to meddle in Californians’ affairs, you’d better just pass on by and be grateful that you were a Texan.

The car was ours, and the story of how it came to rest on a country road in the middle of rural West Texas is worth telling. It started with a sunset. Driving home from Brownwood, Texas, where we had helped my sister move in to her college dorm, we witnessed a dazzling display on the horizon—the sky awash in streaks of blue and gold as a thunderstorm faded with the dying light. We had to stop and take a picture. Mistake number one—violating the Texas Code of Living: Texans don’t stop and take pictures. The cosmic forces of Texas immediately made us pay for the mistake by locking our car doors and blowing them shut—our keys still inside. Then, without warning, the beautiful storm we had been watching in the distance changed course and began heading back towards us, thundering ominously and blackening the sky as it advanced.

As the rain began pounding the ground in front of us, our vision was clouded so that the only light we could see was the car’s turn signal blinking feebly orange. We had seen a ranch house in the distance before the storm hit, and we fled from the storm in the general direction of the ranch. Fortunately, we found the ranch house after a short sprint and the elderly couple inside graciously allowed us to use their phone, having first made sure that we were not rogue highwaymen come to wrestle their cattle. (I admit we did look rather harried—and I’ve always fancied myself a bandito.) A few phone calls later (including one “800 number” that was NOT a 24-hour towing hotline), I managed to locate an ‘ol boy with a truck who would help. Our conversation proceeded thusly: “When can you come?” I asked.


“Is it stormin’?”


“Yeah,” I said. “It’s comin’ down pretty hard” (I did my best ol’ boy Texas accent here.)


“Will I get wet?”


“Very likely.”


“Well, then, I’ll come whenever the storm finishes.”


“How long will that be?” I asked.


“Hard to say,” he said. It was clear that the cultural barrier had been breached at this point and I was not a welcome stranger. Imagining a long night in a lonely farmhouse in the middle of nowhere, I changed tactics.


“Is there anything I could do to persuade you to come more quickly?” I importuned.


“Depends” he said. “I don’t wanna get wet. What are you offerin’?”


So much for Texas hospitality. After a bartering session, we reached a gentleman’s agreement on a rip-off price and our noble rescuer promised to brave the storm and be there soon.
In the meantime, the kind woman who had taken us in had been talking nonstop to K— and was now scooping pecans into a bag for us to take on our way. This stranger, a veteran of many years on West Texas farms, had managed during our short intrusion to cover her entire family history from the Civil War to the present, with photographs for illustration. But her loquacity was comforting in a way, for the generous welcome and hospitality we received reminded us that there are still places where a stranger stranded by the side of the road will be taken care of—without thought of reparation or consideration of cost.

The ol’ boy towing man arrived about twenty minutes later, minutes after the rain had stopped completely. After taking all of two minutes to wedge open our car door and lift the lock with a tool, the tow-man went his way and we went ours. I began thinking about how silly we had been to make such a costly and time-consuming mistake. Then K— spoke. “That was amazing!” she said. “I wish that would happen more often.”