Simple Resolutions

Simple Resolutions

A bit late in posting this one for the new year, perhaps, but the advice is always relevant. We did just start the semester. Take this one to heart, dear students, and have a great Spring 2010!

A Heart As Big As God’s � United Methodeviations

A Heart As Big As God’s � United Methodeviations

Another thought provoking post for me. This one doesn't connect up so much with Blue Like Jazz, on which we are basing our discussions as with Francis Chan's Crazy Love. I just got through reading Crazy Love (check out http://lordifiknow.blogspot.com for thoughts surrounding this challenging read from Aaron Bouwens, a UMC pastor in the Cortland area who is also an amazing speaker - I was one of 4 from our church who took his class last spring. The result of that class? Children's choir!)

I get a sense of not being able to soak in enough information fast enough on my faith-journey, and I'm getting overwhelmed at the moment. Time to step away and just be.

Once More With Feeling: What are you doing this for?

Once More With Feeling: What are you doing this for?

I came home from Sunday School today only to get whacked in the head by a few blog posts. No suprise to me that Susan Eichhorn-Young had the first one - she always manages to provoke me into thinking about what I'm doing and why. Been doing a lot of that lately, but I'm realizing I'm being called to some kind of action and direction that is not certain - to me, at any rate. Will it include everything about me now? Of course - our past always influences us in some way. But how and why - and what we do with it makes all the difference. The results of the spiritual gifts survey we took at church showed me that I have been ignoring the healing call that has been on my life since I was a child (I didn't want to be the usual things - other than a performer, I looked at physical therapy as a career in junior high; my first major as an undergrad was music therapy; and now I find the healing arts (Feldenkrais, Alexander Technique) far more appealing than going back for a doctorate (unless it could combine some aspects of those two therapies.)

Looking back over what I've just written, it sounds like I'm leaving the performing arts. I don't think so. Not yet, anyways. Interesting that today's Sunday School discussion turned to our individual calls. When asked, I answered "I"m not sure." (Normally am pretty quiet - a surprise to my students, I'm sure). Where this journey will take me, I'm not quite certain. Thoughts to follow.

http://action.sierraclub.org/site/MessageViewer?em_id=155101.0

Konbit Pou Ayiti | Working Together for Haiti

Konbit Pou Ayiti | Working Together for Haiti

The images of Haiti are strongly burned into my brain, as they are for all of us. However, those images are not always of Port-au-Prince. Please remember the rest of Haiti in your prayers - the port city of Jacmel is also heavily devistated. Am working on how to do a concert to benefit Working Together for Haiti, which was founded by the daughter of our church organist. The link at the top is for the organization itself, and the embedded video below is of Jacmel.

Haiti � United Methodeviations

The Golden Rule of Writing | Write to Done

 Here's a post that I saved for a blog post - not only for my renewed writing habit, but also for my voice students. Consider this an exhortation to not let a single word or acting choice slip by you! Am renewing that commitment myself, along with a commitment to continue improving my language skills. I ran into a piece I loved performing, but I ran into a problem with one word. I was pretty sure I knew what it meant, but couldn't find it in any dictionary, and the French specialists around me couldn't help either. I finally located program notes from one of the few published CDs of the work (darn mp3s - I miss liner notes from both CDs and LPs - they were such useful tools!). Turns out those of us that made an educated guess were correct, but while I was uncertain, guess where I had a problem with the song? Yep. The phrase with that word in it. Do you homework!

Billeves�es: Julie Andrews

A blog post about one of my primary inspirations in my singing - Julie Andrews. I grew up listening to and singing with her on my parents' cast albums from My Fair Lady, The Sound of Music, and Camelot. Good thing I turned out to be a soprano!

PCRM 21-Day Vegan Kickstart Program: Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine 21-Day Vegan Kickstart

I discovered this program in a search for new ideas on eating vegan. A few simple ideas that I'm looking forward to trying!

Wish list book for recipes:
Candle Cafe
Vegan With a Vengeance

RYOB (Read Your Own Books) � MizB's Reading Challenges

RYOB (Read Your Own Books) � MizB's Reading Challenges

Reading challenges are always good, and I certainly have plenty to read! I wasn't so successful at my first couple, so I'm only picking one for the new year. It happens to go along with my continued decluttering campaign, so here are the list of books I need to read from my own shelves before donating them to my local library. (For those who aren't aware, the Baldwinsville Public Library has a book sale a few times a year, and will always take donations.) I'm sure there are those who know me pretty well, might look at this and think I'm slowly loosing it, as I'm a ravenous reader, and have been since I was 10. However, I'm coming to appreciate simplicity in my life, as well as the amazing value of a wonderful local library. My thought: if the donations end up on library shelves, I can always borrow them. Am using the same philosophy with any Christian fiction I have and our church library. One thing's for certain: I'll never lack for reading material on the treadmill or elliptical at the gym!

To Read:
1. Beowulf
2. The Faerie Queen (have thought about keeping this one due to its connections with the play Shadowlands - Joy Gresham refers to it at one point as a book she loves. I think that as long as I've read it as part of my character study, I'm good to go.)
3. Goethe's Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship
4. The Iliad
5. The Odyssey
6. Great Dialogues of Plato
7. The Inferno
8. The Purgatorio
9. The Paradiso
10. 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (I'm almost positive I've read this before, but it was sitting amongst some unread books and I am not recalling much specific that doesn't include images from the Disney film)
11. The Quest for the Holy Grail (Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade rekindled my love for all things Arthurian. What can I say?)
12. King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table
13. The Complete Sherlock Holmes (2 volumes. Actually have read most of these, but like 20,000 Leagues, too long ago to remember details as I'm accustomed to.)
14.Ovid's Metamorphoses
15. The Christmas Box Collection
16. War and Peace (started this many, many times. Determined to finish it!)
17. Anna Karenina (likewise)
18. The Portrait of a Lady
19. The Great Gatsby (again, read this a long time ago, but don't remember enough)
20. The Age of Innocence
21. Howard's End
22. The Aspern Papers
23. The Turn of the Screw
24. As I Lay Dying
25. Vanity Fair
26. Uncle Tom's Cabin
27. Ivanhoe
28. a few collections of inspirational poetry

and - I can't believe I'm willing to donate them, but my entire collection of Dickens (minus Christmas Carol, which I can't bear to part with at the moment.)

Am thinking this will not only help declutter my shelves, but if I read it all on the treadmill, I'll be at my goal weight in no time!

The Next Hundred Pounds: WEIGHT GAIN TRIGGERS

The Next Hundred Pounds: WEIGHT GAIN TRIGGERS

Am choosing to accept Cindy's homework assignment from the above post.

1. Weight gain triggers: the holidays (did relatively well this year), Girl Scout cookies.
2. What I have let slide: scheduling meals. Not tasting everything I cook/bake (when making homemade candies, it was really difficult not to drip chocolate outside the molds, and was even harder not to lick my fingers after I had finished the project!)
3. Realistic ways to get back on track: remain committed to going to the gym/doing a DVD (or two shorter ones) at home as weather dictates. Plan meals. Use my vegetarian cookbooks, and the great sites available to me online, like Fat Free Vegan . Create a schedule (hey, I am a United Methodist! :-)

Huhns.org - 18 Tips on Starting a New Habit

For my students, an inspirational post. Pick one area you know you need to work on and focus on it for the semster using the ideas in the this blog post. (Pick one - more than that and you could end up defeating yourself.)

Where Jesus Goes After Christmas � United Methodeviations

What a wonderful post! We do tend to throw it all out after the holidays (and the Wise Men haven't even shown up yet!). I have been grateful for a more meditative approach to the season this year, and am contemplating a retreat. I haven't figured out details, but am making this a goal for the year. Big Moose is a slice of heaven on earth, but going with my extended family is not exactly a way to do a retreat! They are a wonderfully exuberant bunch, and there's always something going on. Will look into going up on my own, or perhaps finding a new spot not too far away. If anyone reads this post and has any suggestions, feel free to post a comment.

The Next Hundred Pounds: THE YEAR OF THE TENS

Why am I not surprised that one of my favorite bloggers, Cindy Sadler, wrote a post that has inspired me for the new year? If you haven't read her blog, follow the link above and then peruse the rest of it.

My fitness goals for the year:

Continue with Pilates and yoga as well as my work at the gym; supplement with DVDs at home when necessary (am loving Biggest Loser and Jillian Michaels' 30 Day Shred) - needed in the sometimes snowy days we occasionally get just south of Lake Ontario. :-)
Also: eat in a more vegetarian vein, focusing on local produce when I can - and being a better steward of the resources I have around me.

And in keeping with the new-to-me tradition also inspired by Cindy, for me, 2010 will be The Year of Relationship. Meaning focusing on strengthening all sorts of friendships and family ties. I firmly believe that we are designed to be in community with each other - as Mrs Gibbs said in Our Town: "We're meant to live two by two in the world - t'aint natural to be lonesome." I know - Mrs. Gibbs is referring to romantic relationships, but for this year, I'm using the quote to remind me to work on myself and learn how to understand how I interact with those around me - a process already begun in our Spirit Gifts class at Baldwinsville First United Methodist Church. We used the book Equipped for Every Good Work, and through it I learned the following two points:

1. I am a mostly a dreamer - someone who is outgoing, creative, loves a good time, talkative, expressive, competitive, sociable - yeah - it's me (but I can be painfully shy at times.) As much as others liked to joke about the seeming drawbacks to this category (disorganized, opinionated, doesn't always keep promises, annoyed by logic, not on time), a fellow dreamer whom I respect very highly and I noted that it was Joseph (as in Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat), scorned for being a dreamer, that saved the land of Egypt and people from surrounding nations from a potentially devastating famine. We do get things done - it's just a matter of learning how to work within our leadership style - and how to interact with the other styles effectively. Haven't read the story? Check out Genesis 37 - 50.

2. I have the spiritual/scriptural gifts of
a. Miracles: I tend to recognize the miraculous work of God in this world, pray a lot - and am not surprised when my prayers are answered. Part of me wonders if this is not my grandmother's influence on me. However, in another group study, we discussed inherited faith versus someone who came to faith without a family background. So I suppose gifts could work the same way.
b. Healing: conducting God's healing powers in the lives of God's people.
c. Compassion
Well - I try with all of these.  I just need to keep growing in them!

There's a lot more to the class, but this is probably enough to process for now.