Even though it is Monkfish Abbey night and I was supposed to be cleaning for our gathering; even though I was supposed to be making lentil tomato soup; even though I was supposed to be preparing discussion questions for the first four chapters of Generous Orthodoxy…..I went to the Episcopal Bookstore and gathered all the pictures I could with women in them. I’m going to make a stories scrapbook for my girls. Here’s the first one. I can’t seem to size it properly, but you can see it on their website, linked below.

Last Supper
by Bohdan Piasecki (1998)
Avoca Publishers

While reading a picture book about the “First Lord’s Supper” (a.k.a. Passover/The Last Supper — leave it to the conservative protestants to insist that the kid’s book has the “proper” name and a note on the back about not allowing the children to actually eat the bread and wine, but only to recieve a blessing from the pastor. But I digress…)

Cate (interrupting the story): Mommy! Why are there never any pictures of girls in these stories?!

Mommy: You’re right, Cate. This is a picture of Passover and there would have been lots of women and children in this picture…. Also, their skin would not be white.

Cate: Why aren’t they in there then?

Mommy: Because the artist was foolish and wrong.

Cate (after … {read more…}

First of all…who the hell’s ever heard of midwinter break.?! There’s winter break and there’s spring break and that should be it!

Then again, Eden does love to have “no rush” mornings, and I love that bit too. It’s 11am when they are bored and bickering that makes me nuts. Or at least, it makes me nuts when I am all migraine-y and medicine-y and decidedly not very Jesus-y. Ah! How I take comfort in all of Anne Lamott’s stories where she is swearing at her kid and slamming off the TV, or dragging him to something significant (damn it!) I especially love her Ash Wednesday tale here. It’s hard to feel that down on your parenting self … {read more…}

Does your relationship with Jesus make you weary?

Once upon a time, before we were Monkfish Abbey, before we were even ThPM, we were a church plant. There were more of us then, maybe 30, and we were exploring other ways to do and be church. Israel was a worship director at the time and he and his friends had marvelous ideas. They would put together these things called “worship infusions” and there would be music, and art, and chill zones, and experiential prayer (though we didn’t know it was called that at the time.) There was a core group amongst those thirty folks who thought we would just do worship infusion every week. So we hosted one, which I think we … {read more…}

Don’t you just love tips? Here are some that Paul has sent me lately. He advised me to pass them onto “all your invisible blogging friends.” As he is very smart, you would be ill advised to skip these links!

What to do about comment sp*m attacking your blog:
http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1759,1752331,00.asp

The Myth of the Perfect Mother (more tips on being a slacker/three martini momma):
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6959880/site/newsweek/

Today I tried to play make-believe with Cate. This is not my strong suit and is usually left to the pervue of our nanny, Sharon. But this afternoon I donned a large mass of plastic jewelry and became the queen of the princess. Here’s how it went when I tried to narrate a story set in the princess’ bedchamber.

Me: Then the queen fairy gave princess cate three wishes. And her first wish was…?

Cate: Not to have any lovey dovey stuff.

Me (thinking we were off to a good start): And her second wish was?

Cate: Not to go to college.

(sigh) Me: And her third wish was?

Cate: That Mommy would stop telling this story!

Later, exhausted by my failed efforts, I … {read more…}

On the back page of Vanity Fair each month there’s a questionnaire with a famous figure. Two months ago it was Louis Auchincloss a novelist and biographer from New York’s upper crust. Among a number of one-liners he was asked “What is your moto?” His reply?

“Quod dixi, dixi.”

“What I’ve said, I’ve said.”

The perfect blogger’s tag line…I’ve got to get that on a tshirt!

On Inaguration Day we were at a loss. So we turned to old patterns and wiser heads. We said the Prayers of the People from the Book of Common Prayer.

Of course, we’ve made a pet of the anticonformity bunny, so we couldn’t just say the Prayers of the People. Instead we cut it up into little slices and posted them on our bulletin board. Then folks went up and picked one that rang with them. We rewrote them in our own words. Here they are, followed by the orginal.

Monkfish Modified: Prayers of the People

For our president, for the appointed leaders and for the citizens who direct our country, we pray to the Lord.
Lord, hear our prayer.

For safe travel … {read more…}