We cannot but speak...

We cannot but speak what we have seen and heard… (Acts 4:20)

My eight-year-old is a talker. Everything he notices, everything he hears gets repeated. Everything that’s on is mind is spoken out loud. It can drive us all a bit crazy. It’s all innocent observation and interest, and for the most part, it’s thrilling as a mother for me to see his mind developing and watch him make new connections between principles and facts. He loves to learn, and I love that about him. But he is a talker.

One issue we have in particular is his tendency to tell everything about every scene in a movie he has seen before, spoilers and all. There is no boundary in his mind (yet) that prevents him from ruining the movie for someone else who hasn’t seen it.

He is literally unable to hinder any previous experience from making its way out of his mouth. The memory is so real, the excitement so potent, that it is unthinkable to keep it to himself alone.

I find intriguing the human process of experience-to-thought-to-words to which we are all bound. Intake determines product, “garbage in, garbage out,” “you are what you eat,” etc. I’ve blogged about that before. But it’s so true, I’ve got to address it again.

What we have been watching, we talk about. What we have been listening to, the conversations we’ve heard, are what we repeat.

What am I listening to? What do I put before my eyes? it is inevitably that which will come out of my mouth. Because we are made to be witnesses. And whether we use that element in our design for good or evil, we will nonetheless use it. Witnesses of something.

Our eyes are always seeing…what is it they see? For it is of this that we will witness. What do we hear? It is this we will repeat.

You cannot but speak that which you have seen and heard. It will come out, despite your attempts to stifle it. It is the natural flow to life.

Herein lies the beauty of God’s perfect plan. Having designed us with this tendency to repeat and reproduce what has entered our existence by our senses, He placed in us this ‘treasure in earthen vessels‘ that is so powerful, it trumps everything else! No experience can compare. And it’s ongoing… ‘further up, further in,’ so to speak. There’s no end to this amazing trip, so there’s always something more to say.

It is therefore my goal to seek Him with my eyes, studying His Word, and listen for His Voice with my ears…the ‘witness’ part is inevitable.

Roast Chicken

by Brooke C

1 whole chicken
salt
pepper
olive oil
various tuberiffic veggies, randomly cut into assorted sizes to ensure unequal doneness

Directions:

• find roasting pan at the bottom of cabinet under kitchen sink. Wash out dust.
• Preheat oven to 450. No, not a reasonable 350 or 325. We want black skin and pink juice.
• Place veggies (ooh, parsnips!) in bottom of pan, toss in EVOO and 'herbes du Provence,' just to say you did.
• Salt and pepper liberally. This is the only case in which you may be liberal. ;)
• Pause to yell at 7-year-old to get out of the bathroom: "the bathroom is not for reading comic books!"
• Gingerly cut away at germ-ridden chicken-in-bag, pinkies out.
• Wash hands every five seconds.
• Dump a tablespoon of salt into cavity; cringe and shrug.
• Massage outer bird with salt, pepper, EVOO. Place lovingly on rack in pan, whispering sweet nothings. Place in oven.
  
• Swat 2-yr-old for throwing a giant fit. "You don't get a snack until you CALM DOWN."
• 40 minutes, a load of laundry, and an emptied fridge later: admire the beauty of the browning bird, take temperature (180! great!), then cut into it to find it's still pink.
• Proceed to remove bird every ten minutes for another hour and marvel at the Chicken That Never Cooked.
• Eat wooden shards of overdone meat dipped in pink juice of still-raw meat. delish.
• Scrape incinerated ex-veggies off bottom of pan.
• Give up and go to bed.
  

Breakfasting with VIPs

Today, I had the honor of sharing breakfast with two very important business people. One, a woman of twenty-six who works in sucker acquisitions (more on that in a moment), and the other, a thirty-year-old male creator of websites with a focus on fictional galactic characters.

The scene went something like this:

The attractive blonde sits with a furrowed brow, staring at her computer, alternating bites of applecrunch muffin with vigorous typing spells.

"So, what kind of work do you do?" I ask.

"Well, I go and get money from people, and then I take it to my boss, and he takes it the bank, and the bank makes suckers, and they give him the suckers, and he brings them back for everybody."

"So, you're in sucker acquisitions." I reply.
"Yes," she says hestitantly, with a modest half-grin.

"Do they make the suckers at the bank?"
"Yes."
"And how long have you done this job?" I ask.
"For forty-nine years."

"Wow! You're seventy-four? You look awfully young for seventy-four."
"No, I'm not that old!"
"Well, most people don't get such a good job like that until they're about twenty-five, after they've gone to college."
"Well....I've only worked there for a year."

Oh, ok. I understand now. "So you're twenty-six."
"Yes." She focuses hard on the small screen of the blue-and-red laptop, which is repeatedly requesting loudly that she type the letter that begins the word "cat." She responds to the metallic voice, attacking the keyboard with vehement zeal.

I leave her to her pressing task and address my other guest.
"And how old are you, sir?"
He suppresses an amused grin and responds,
"Thirty."

"And what do you do for a living?"
"I create websites about Star Wars. My website is Anakin Skywalker dot com."
"I see."

"This is my computer," he says, pointing to a small felt change purse the size of a deck of cards.
I am impressed.
"Wow, that's a small computer."
"Yes. Here's my website, see?" he says, deftly typing on the miniscule keyboard.

"So people pay you to build websites about Star Wars?" I ask.
"Yes. Actually, the reason it's called 'Anakin Skywalker dot com' is because I'm him. My name is Anakin Skywalker."
"Well, that's very interesting. It's nice to talk with you, Mr. Skywalker."
He smiles and returns to his muffin and milk.

My colleague, the fourth member in our distinguished party, has been silent throughout the meal, except for a few unintelligible bursts. Now he is studying the cranberries in his muffin, chewing with his mouth open, still grasping with one hand the spoon that had been in his cereal.
I decide this would not be the appropriate moment to ask him about his work.

All in all, a very interesting meal. :)

There's no gold in them thar hills

So, we went for a little family outing Saturday...diggin' for gold, so to speak, at a used bookstore. It was packed, and the aisle with titles like How to Write and Not Sound Like a Moron and You Can Make Up Stuff that Other People Want to Read and Pay For!!! was crowded with other hopeful miners.

When I finally managed to maneuver my double stroller (yes, double) to the desired spot, I discovered a sadly lacking variety of titles. Only stuff like Maybe You're Not the Worst Writer and Buy This Book so This Author's Children Can Eat was left. Also unnerving was the fact that none of these books really looked like they'd been used much. What seemed more likely was that they'd been bought by some hopeful loser who read two pages and gave up, then traded it for a DVD of All Dogs go to Heaven. That person is still on his couch, now watching reruns of "Home Improvement."

The only shelf I didn't scan was the bottom one; however, bending down to look would have been impossible: I was hemmed in on every side by oblivious fellow pseudo-intellectuals ("they're called 'readers,' Dad"); the aisle was so narrow, and I'm ...not. So while there may have been priceless titles awaiting my perusal on the bottom shelf, they escaped unnoticed.

It was upon my removal from that aisle that I developed my plan: rather than actually writing something worthwhile, and going through all the rigamarole of studying books on how to write, and going to conferences, and getting an agent and all that, I'm just going to self-publish some stuff about a dwarf who has to return some jewelry to a volcano, and cram it down defenseless children's throats. And I'm going to draw the cover art myself, to save money. And it's going to be a trilogy, so I'll make three times as much money on it.

Success and fame, here I come!!

This just in...New Post found on ancient blog..

So, I haven't really taken the liberty to post to ye olde blog in almost three years. This you know, because you can look at the dates on the posts below and determine that yourself.

"so, this is worth reading so far," you yawn..

Hey, humor me and stick around. It's bound to get interesting...you may in fact learn the secret to the cantaloupe loaf that to this point has eluded you.

But first, let's catch up.
Since November 11, 2006,

• the economy has gone decidedly south. Since I live in the south, I should be in the right place..;)
  
• I've moved. Slightly...20 minutes from the last house, but a bit bigger, with a yard this time, for my growing brood.
  
• on that note, we added two to our chicken coop. Joel joined us in March of 2007, and Eliza was born in May of 2009. We now are officially a family of 6 who have no choice but a minivan. (that's ok with me...I don't do well with too many choices. Now I know the Lamborghini is out.)
  
• DH (Wes) discovered he has a brain tumor: to be removed, Lord willing, Oct 14 of this year.
  
• I switched to Mac. YIPPEEEEEEEE is all I have to say about that.
• I've discovered I'm a writer. Not necessarily a good one, mind you, but a writer nonetheless (I feel kinda like Bill Murray in "What About Bob" when he claims to be a sailor). And it feels good to admit it. Now just to funnel those random impulses to write into something worthwhile and marketable... A Children's Picture Book! About a rabbit who learns a life lesson and a hug at the end! Yeah, that's fresh and unpredictable! And who needs proper grammar for a kids' book! They don't know how to spell or punctuate anyway!

...sigh, I'm discovering it's a bit more complicated than that. And this writing industry takes a bit (or a lot) of effort to break into. Stands to reason: I don't want any old publisher with ugly pictures producing my book amongst a flood of others destined for the clearance table. Like Hot Pockets--straight to the toilet (thanks, Jim). So, as I figure out how to navigate this lovely field, I shall blog.

Hello, and welcome. again.