Monday, April 29, 2013

Weekend

So this was a good weekend.  Kinda busy, but a good kind of busy.  We've been watching this:


and finally got to see THESE:


which of course looks kinda weird until you realize they are BABY BIRDS!! And then it rained and rained and we worried and worried, but so far nobody has washed away. Now Kenny is sneaking the mama some sunflower seeds and she's letting us watch her feed them worms. 

The other spectacular thing was that my friend Tamara invited us to a house concert with her dearest friend, Kate Campbell. I like to think of her as my friend-in-law and she's kind enough to let a girl think that. I always get excited when I get to hear her because she's such a charming, witty, freaky-smart person who's read just about every book ever.  She's a great story teller and I think we are going to just laugh and laugh about the crazy that comes along with being the children of Baptist ministers and then she starts with a simple tune and lets loose this sweet, clear voice and I suddenly wish no one else was there to see me when my eyes well up. I am always completely disarmed by her humor so I don't see the piercing sincerity coming right at me until it's too late. She sings about the South in all it's old glory and quirkiness and civil rights and traveling and sometimes Jesus. I was telling my folks today that even people who don't like Jesus would like Jesus after Kate introduced them.  She's got a million CDs of her own and probably like a ton of appearances with other folks and you can get them on her website katecampbell.com or look for tickets to some of her shows. I heard she'll be on NPR's Mountain Stage this weekend. My favorite (for today, because yesterday it was "Peace Comes Stealing Slow" and you should certainly invest in that one) is "Yellow Guitar" so I'm posting her singing it at the Bluebird below.





Friday, April 26, 2013

Something to think about

I have a lot of friends in the non-profit world and a lot MORE friends who could be inspired to give to effective non-profit organizations. I am intrigued by Dan Pallotta's thinking here.

Thursday, April 25, 2013

It's better than the Coosa Valley Fair even



Saw this on MSN. I'm getting all kind of backyard ideas.  Kenny says he will sell the tickets.

Tuesday, April 23, 2013

I feel pretty...

Well it's that time of year again. All the ladies magazines are running the articles on which swimsuit you should wear for your body type.  If you wait til fall they will run the ones about which jeans work for your pear shaped body or your stick shaped body or your old lady shaped body.

Now I don't know anything about your body. And I'm not posting again today about what you should eat or whether you should exercise.  I could, I guess, but what else is there really to say about it? We all know what we should do and we will or we won't. That's nothing to worry over.  I'm a little tired of those articles anyway and especially tired now that I've gone from skimming articles about how to look good to skimming articles about how to look good "for your age."

But at the same time I'm worrying about my own sagging neck and ass, I'm frantically trying to communicate to my own daughter that her beauty is not something for the internet community to determine.  Frequent articles on how young girls are constantly baiting their Instagram and Facebook communities for reassurances of their attractiveness come across my newsfeed.  I'm trying to convince her that she's the greatest judge of her worth (because we all confuse BEAUTY with WORTH - we've talked about this before in this post: I Wanna Be Like the Big Girls) and yet I'm doing just the opposite if I fall for the latest Dove Beauty Bar commercial.  It's as moving as a Kodak and Folger's commercial COMBINED because it appeals to that same miserable part of women that buys the bathing suit guide. We believe if people think we are pretty we will be worth loving. You can watch it on YouTube if you haven't seen it. We are relieved because Dove marketers are right about one thing: we are much harder on ourselves than others would be.  But they are terribly wrong in placing the determination of worth/beauty on an external view still.  As Erin Keane says in her Salon article, "The only interesting thing Dove has done since it began this campaign to sell soap in 2004 is overtly shift the emphasis from sexual attraction to peer approval. The real take-away is still that women should care whether a stranger thinks she is beautiful. That’s not radical — it’s the thesis of every beauty product ad campaign ever."  Here's the link to the article:  Stop Posting that Dove Ad.


Now you can say all that stuff about looking at the inner selves and such to determine worth, and you'd be right, but if there's anything a young woman can tell you it's that beauty absolutely boils down to the currency of worth in their world.  This narrow view of beauty shouldn't, but it certainly can determine opportunity for young people. IT JUST DOES.  I've seen about a million articles on how psychologically and biologically we are engineered to respond more positively to attractive people. That certainly means open doors. Of course, I've also seen the articles on how people who are TOO attractive are not seen as capable, dependable employees. I suppose that's attributed to jealousy or perhaps those hiring think you must have some deficiencies because it just wouldn't be fair for someone to be lovely AND capable. God help you if you are beautiful and unemployed then. Boy are we screwed because either way we are shortchanging every one in the game. I think this is because of that mixed up belief we keep investing in that if we could just be thinner, more toned, perfectly skinned, we would be worth loving. See how beauty becomes entangled with worth?


When we confuse our level of attractiveness with our real worth, however, we become a slave to any boy who says, "Baby, baby, baby, you're so hot" or, conversely, any little bratty girl who calls us ugly on the internet.  We become dependent on the external evaluation of people whom we may not even know personally.  What I want is to help create a young woman who can hear and accept that she's beautiful and add (in her head, please), "AND I am good at swimming" or "AND I rock at math" or "AND I'm great with a shotgun." And I want to raise a young woman who can hear, "Your nose is too big" and push back with, "Funny, I don't remember asking you."   I'm not sure I can raise that girl if the same child is subject to frequent despairing rants about the unfairness of my saggy parts - if I'm still associating my value with my appearance.  In other words, when it comes to our thoughts about beauty and worth, it's time to walk the walk friends, and expand our own experience of beauty beyond the basic biological symmetry that your mind categorizes as attractive.  Perhaps it's unfortunate, but there is no more powerful influence on your child's life and beliefs than your own example. And if you don't think that God is capable of delivering beauty to you in something besides perky, upturned noses and thin thighs, why would you expect your daughter to? Maybe it's also time for our WORTH to drive what we think is beautiful. 

So I want to clarify a thing or two about this very narrow current understanding of beauty:  First, physical attractiveness is truly in the eye of the beholder and it never, ever determines worth. There's someone who thinks just about any other someone is just gorgeous. So everyone can truly achieve feeling physically attractive at some point.  Just look at this site (awkwardfamilyphotos.com) and you will see that there's truly someone for everyone. I can assure you that if being adored for your appearance is your pursuit you will never have enough of it and that's fine with me if you're cool with that.  But your daughter isn't cool with that.


And the other thing is this:  If you can quit thinking that your worth is exclusively about anyone else's approval of your physicality, you will see that there is beauty in the ugliest of human situations, in the commonness of a crooked nose shared by a parent and child, in the simple will of survival in a baby with deformities. You will see sheer and brilliant splendor in the love between two broken people who's best garments include a tuxedo t-shirt and in the old, weather-worn, cracked hands and gray hair of a person who hums while he does honest work. If you can expand your thinking you will be stunned by beauty in the vulnerability of victims and in the strength of the sickly pallored. It will come to you in the awkward, obese and large pored just as surely as it does in long legs and your images of toned perfection. You will be impressed by the astounding loveliness in the committed mother who will stand in lines and scrub floors in a scratchy polyester uniform to feed her children. You will witness beauty unfolding in the addict's hourly struggle and the worried eyes of his desperate family and you will miss it, miss it, miss it if you limit your concepts of the beautiful to the magazine covers.  I do not want you to miss it.


I read this quote over 20 years ago in a book and managed to dig it up to share with you today:
"For I had no doubt that I had seen God, that is, had seen all there is to see; yet it turned out to be the world that I looked at every day. Everything was urgent with life and exceedingly beautiful. I experienced a complete certainty that at that moment I saw things as they really were, and I was filled with grief at the realization of the real situation of human beings, living continuously in the midst of all this without being aware of it.  This thought filled my mind and I wept. But I also wept over the things themselves which we never saw and which we made ugly in our ignorance and I saw that all ugliness was a wounding of life." 
I know this was a long one. Thanks for sticking with it.









Monday, April 22, 2013

Tuesday, April 16, 2013

Pickle Aisle Moment

So here's a weird thing that happened.  I was in the pickle aisle at the grocery (and that's about the only food aisle I will go down) when a grocery store employee (we'll call her Eunice) stopped me with these words: "You have abs. How do I get abs?"

And the earth's axis broke. The end.

Really, I may have had the appearance of abs that day but you'd have to work pretty hard to actually see them underneath some of the other nonsense going on there. I am writing to you as a woman of average weight who makes plenty of errors in consumption (hormonally fueled errors most of the time) and who eats out more than she eats in currently and who is the occasional unpaid marketer of Diet Coke.  So what I suppose she meant was, "You are over 40 and do not appear to be overweight so tell me how you do that."

Now this is the kind of situation that one must respond to appropriately.  FIRST, let's acknowledge that there's a certain amount of DESPAIR that causes a grown woman to stop a stranger and ask for advice.  So we want to tread lightly and then let's acknowledge that I'm probably only going to have 3 minutes maximum to help this person because it's not likely that we are gonna become best friends.  Eunice here with her hair net and extra 60 pounds doesn't have any idea of the food books that I've read or the exercise that I like but she happened to catch me at the exact right moment in my struggle with the processed food industry.

See, for years I have read all the books on how the processed food industry manipulates folks into eating more and more toxic garbage. I have done the research on their commitment to scientifically pinpointing what lights up that pleasure center in your big old brain and I am terrified of how closely it resembles other addictions we see that kill people. I have seen publication after publication regarding their very deliberate attempts to attract children to things which are not even food in order to assure their future financial commitments to big food companies.  And if there's anything I hate, it's knowing that I've been manipulated.  If there's a reason to give up the garbage, it's that your brain, currently blurry and fuzzy from all manner of chemicals not intended for humans, can make a much better choice once it's had a few days of Oreo-free clarity. Also I had just been at Six Flags the day before and witnessed first hand the MISERY that folks who are enslaved by sugar, fat and salt are slogging around every day in their motorized scooters.  The fury I feel for these people and their children had been simmering when I ran into Eunice.

Eunice, of course, only asked a question.  She wasn't asking me for a treatise I keep in my head on the Devil in Dairy so simplicity was in order. Eyeing the cross around her neck I decided to appeal to her through her spirituality. I told her, "Don't eat anything God didn't put here on the planet for you, Eunice. Stick to all those fruits and vegetables and fishes and fowl there in those departments and don't touch any of the stuff that man made for you. And no frying."  I was hoping God would have more pull than Kellogg or Kraft. She was nodding.

She says, "I'm diabetic. I've got the cholesterol and the high blood pressure and my doctor is skinny.  She tells me to exercise, but it's hard."  Oh Eunice.  She's got a doctor who can't begin to imagine how to communicate the specifics of exercise to a person who's never worn tennis shoes for that purpose. So I told her, yeah, she had to move around some more. If her skinny doctor tells her to do one lap around the track today, try two tomorrow.  Her numb, diabetic foot will hopefully take her farther every day and then maybe she could think about strength too. I didn't mention that you don't get abs from walking. Start slow Eunice...

She tells me about her friend who had lap band surgery (who also happens to be gaining back all of her weight) and that's when we get to the hardest part of our pickle aisle conversation.  I am shaking my head begging her not to consider surgery because see, if you are carrying more than say 30 or 40 pounds, or if you're gaining and losing it over and over and over, I believe it's not about the food anymore. Sure, you are seeing consequences of consuming the food. As Geneen Roth says about obesity in Women, Food and God, "It's not about the food, but it's not NOT about the food."

There's plenty of evidence that food has become a tool to play out whatever struggle over your worth is going on inside your head and heart at this point.  What about Eunice doesn't think she is worth seeing her kids graduate and her grandkids' futures?  After 30 or 40 pounds or several decades of struggle I think it's worth it to ask a professional, a counselor, to let you spend some time on the couch figuring out what would cause you - other than that you are being manipulated by big food companies - to deliberately, with every single bite, choose a shorter life and, since most of us are purchasing and preparing food for everyone else in our houses, to choose a shorter one for our children.  Intellectually, all of us know how to lose weight, but the fact that most of the people you know are in a constant struggle between gaining and losing, along with the fact that we live in a culture that supports a $60.9 billion dollar weight loss industry and still remain obese tells us that the problem is bigger than the gaining and losing of weight. If we are still obese with that kind of money spent, it's time to do something different.

I just met Eunice, but I did tell her right there amongst the relish and poisonous condiments that I hoped she'd consider that something in her head was keeping her from the life she wants.  I told her that I thought she was worth being around longer, that her children deserved more time with her and that she already knew everything she needed to do. With her little hairnet and her exhaustion, she's worth even the one more day or week or month she can have here with her family and friends.

So we had kind of a moment there in the grocery. Maybe she helped me see the real despair of people around us who struggle and maybe I helped her see that the goal is bigger than abs. If I read our moment wrong, at the very least, Eunice has learned to not stop people in the pickle aisle.

Friday, April 12, 2013

"They was law everwhere..."

Even though Susan plays April Fool's pranks "all the time," no one in her family thought this was very funny...


Thursday, April 11, 2013

Wednesday, April 10, 2013

Sunshine on my shoulders...

I've been meaning to write to you about what a wonderful and interesting time the Barfield family had last weekend.  We've been waiting for months for a gorgeous weather day just to soak it up. If there's anything that inspires us to get outside it's the promise of a 75 degree, sunshiny day.  We did a little piddling around in the morning, but Kenny had promised Olivia he'd take her out to practice skeet shooting so we all piled in the car and drove out to see what we could see. I am only committed to lying on a blanket like a snake in the sun with ear plugs shoved in my ears. The rest is up to them.  Our niece and her husband and dogs showed up so we ended up walking down to the river to do a little exploring while we were there. Slow conversation and the occasional animal sighting made it just a perfectly wonderful day fueled by that big yellow ball.

By 4 we decided to pack it up and head home, but our water had gotten hot (only downside of the warm day) so we decided to stop for a soda on the way home. If you are a connoisseur of soda, you know which fast food places have the best ones.  For instance, McDonald's has a good Diet Coke, but their ice to soda ratio is way off and you end up with a kind of watered down, warm fizz. Plus, you are tempted by the fries. Best to not even drive there.  Krystal has the best Sprite, but the BURN of Diet Coke is best experienced at Bojangle's. I'm in it for the burn so Kenny zipped in the drive-thru line.  What happened next is a truly bizarre event. Here's an exact transcript:


Olivia (backseat): Hey Mama, see over there at the St. Mary's playground? That's where we worked when our group did the church thing that weekend.

Lori (absentmindedly because she tells me this every time we pass it): Mmmmm... That's great hon.

Kenny - driving: What do you want me to order again?

Lori: Diet Coke and Dr. P.

Olivia: Hey mama, is that guy on the playground naked?

Lori: Naked? I'm sure he's not naked.

Olivia: I don't think he's wearing khakis.

Kenny: DIET COKE AND WHAT?

Olivia: MAMA I SEE BUTT CRACK. THOSE ARE NOT KHAKIS.

Lori: What? Holy moly! Stop the car, honey. Oh my gosh, she's not kidding that guy is naked on the playground. HE'S GOING UP THE SLIDE. UP! THE! SLIDE! STOP THE CAR KENNY! I've got to see this.

Kenny: Did she say naked? HEAD DOWN OLIVIA! (He's pulling the car forward while I struggle with my phone's camera).

By now the guy is sitting in all of his glory atop the slide in a sort of lotus position (back to us, thank you Jesus) while his legs flap up and down. Olivia's screaming with laughter as Kenny informs the two Bojangle's employees that they've got a naked friend on the playground. Here's THEIR conversation:

Bojangle's employee 1: Oh my gosh. There's a naked man on the playground. BUTT NAKED.

Bojangle's employee 2: BUCK NAKED?

Bojangle's employee 1: Yes, but it's BUTT naked.

Bojangle's employee 2: Either way he's really naked.

Olivia: Wait, is it BUTT or BUCK naked?

Kenny and Lori: BUCK.

Lori: Enough with the semantics. Kenny, I'm going to need you to drive me back around there so I can get some footage. Maybe he's just in a skin suit. Oh look, he's heading to the swings. Ewwww.

Kenny: Sigh (now he's thinking of all the other times driven me to things he wishes he hadn't probably, but he's pretty sure he doesn't want to tell me no). Deep breath. PUT YOUR HEAD DOWN OLIVIA.

Olivia: (from between her knees): Use my camera, Mom.

Lori: Quick Kenny. Just get me close enough. It looks like that woman with the stroller is calling the police already and then it's PARTY OVER.

Now we did get close enough to verify that this person was sunning himself fully.  I'm not interested in making fun or making light of whatever situation led him to that moment.  From the newspaper it appears that he will be working all of that out with this legal representative.  I'm only relaying this story to you so that you can see that building a perfect day just sometimes has to do with everyone needing a little sunshine.

Monday, April 8, 2013

Go Daddy Go!

I'm going to have to go ahead an post this before Father's Day because of this video:


That's not Kenny.  But it is kind of my point that one of the best qualities of Olivia's father is that he is absolutely, unfailingly willing to embarrass himself if it will get a laugh out of his daughter.  And when she was smaller, there was plenty of opportunity to do that.  Kenny embraces this role like some kind of super hero who's strength is replenished by squeals of delight. I have pictures of Kenny in at least 3 different wigs, feather boas, lots of great hats, on the Barbie scooter (ended in disaster, but only because he insisted that our Cocker Spaniel try to pull him) and also footage of him trying not to put all 200 lbs of his weight on the streamer laden bike while Olivia instructed him.  I actually have some fantastic video of the two of them dancing. The best video is probably the one in which he emulates the shot-put spin with a pumpkin so that she can measure how far it will go. He was dizzy by the end of it, but the important part was that he threw it farther than she could imagine. It's the wind up that counts.  It's like he's fueled by the phrase, "Go Daddy go!!"

I don't know what kind of parent you are, but I can tell you that the relationship between father and daughter is critical. However much Olivia will find herself at odds with us as she becomes an adult, she will never be able to claim that her Dad didn't positively exude willingness during her adolescence.  He's the guy at Six Flags most Saturdays in the Spring riding Superman over and over and over with two 12 year old girls screaming his head off because they like it when he's terrified. He's the guy who looks suspicious at WhiteWater because the kids run off and he's stuck by himself in the wave pool supervising from a distance. He's got a strap for his glasses so he never misses a waterslide opportunity and he knows all the words to Call Me Maybe and Thrift Shop. He's the guy who played restaurant behind the shower curtain for years and now rigs skeet throwers and fishing rods.  He's the guy who would be dancing at the stadium if he'd thought of it first.

I would love to share all the embarrassing footage with you, but I like to keep some leverage for later. Here's one where you'd swear he's normal, but he keeps his cape put away with his glasses strap.





Wednesday, April 3, 2013

Things that need to happen more often...





What I wanna do

I appreciate you for not nagging me about being quiet lately. I have to say the last few weeks have not been my best so your patience was very kind. I've spent the last few weeks thinking about life and God and relationships and time so maybe some good things will come of that.

I think we all turn to thinking about how short life seems when people around us die.  And we have these few days of very intense concern over our purpose and our very own short existences and we make internal commitments about living as fully as possible. Take those trips! Call our old pals! Then someone needs to take out the garbage and the dog needs to be walked and bills come in the mail and we forget about it.  The thing is that I'm over 40 now so the rate at which I will confront death will be increasing, I suspect, at a pace that makes me very uncomfortable.

It's always been perplexing to me that we are so alarmed when folks around us die. It seems to me we ought to be more alarmed that folks DON'T die more frequently.  I mean, we are all moving around in these little boxes on wheels all day long and still usually manage to make it home alive. That's just one of the risky things that happens every day - what about germs and genetics and toxins and gang wars and  SINKHOLES? Add to that that there's no like contract with guarantees in it that your mom signs with the universe when you are born and you have to see that you've been flying along all these years on just a wing and a prayer really.  The death of someone close to you (or not close even) just kind of lifts the veil a little on the whole backstage process called "Living and Dying" that's taking place and we don't like to see that. Not at all.

But how do you really live fully if you don't look at death and it's looming possibility? I'm not sure that we can. Because I honestly believe that what propels us to live more than just a small, selfish little existence is the gratitude we have for the moments we've strung together to make a life and that gratitude can only come from the acknowledgement that we've not been sucked into the sinkhole yet. If you think this conversation is about me encouraging you to quit your job and go skydiving or start that bucket list thing then you are mistaken.  I'm just pointing out that when someone dies I think about connections and relationships and how little our differences really matter and I feel compelled to touch the other people around me with a greater urgency. I've never heard that anyone said they wished they'd worked more hours when they died.  I've heard a lot of people express regret and affection and acceptance though.  I don't think that has to wait until we are dying and I don't think it has anything at all to do with skydiving. The clarity that loss brings us doesn't need to be temporary.  It's like we've been given an opportunity to witness this big picture event and we can honor it by living accordingly - deliberately, generously and fully.

Olivia has a new phrase that I like for now.  She says, "I'm gonna do what I wanna do."  What a loaded phrase. Now she says it when she's telling me she is going to follow her gut and doesn't care if folks approve or if her friends don't like her decisions. She's telling me she's above some peer pressure (she's 12, so don't hold her to that).  I use it in a different way. I see so very clearly that I simply do not have time to use my hands and talents for mindless tasks, to invest in people who don't want to connect, to waste time worrying about things that can't be changed.  Maybe that's just a luxury us stay at home mom's can afford, but if you can identify what you wanna do and spend even part of your day doing it, then you're on to something, right?  And no, I'm still not encouraging you to leave your job - but what if you just improved your work by being willing to let the petty things between coworkers just be petty? What if you allowed yourself to feel the compassion that does reside in you rather than the disdain that protects you for people in different situations than yours? At least if it ended today we wouldn't be fools for focusing on things that have no lasting importance.

So today, at least, what I wanna do is read a little, maybe find something to wonder about, delight in a conversation or two, be the source of some laughter, feel work-tired muscles when I get in bed and think about God for a while. Tomorrow I will see what I can do about the rest.

Tuesday, April 2, 2013

This guy is winning the internet

I will beg you to watch this. You will want to probably pay me for introducing you to it.