i have moved too often to be without liturgy. she is my companion, my little traveling tune, a plate of hot supper placed before me no matter my location or spiritual state. liturgy does not have regard for geography, and for all i know liturgy still thinks i mean kansas when I talk about kansas city. i don’t correct her if she promises not to mock me when i take up residency on parent’s couch at age twenty six.

when you see me next don’t ask me where i am living or what kind of job i have. ask me instead about my work, the liturgy. and when you ask me the nature of these liturgical rites, i will say

i am checking the bluebird nest in the back yard to count eggs. five! speckled! Purewow as call to worship. but now it has been several days and i have forgotten to step outdoors, forgotten also to set my friends free by my love for them. Lord have mercy, i confess. tell me, have you ever woken up to a mid-west thunderstorm? your morning heart will be flooded. you will go outside—finally—and receive big fat raindrops like a big fat favor, like a We’re okay, the assurance of pardon. so now. they say the healthy wo/man works, and i am back to checking the bluebird nest to count eggs. but horrible wrens have been here during my absence, horrible mean wrens have pecked sweet bluebird eggs to death. Nooo! and Help! these are the prayers of the people. we are buying a pellet gun at wal-mart. these are the plans of the people.

then church building on easter to get some hot supper. tim reads from the word: “For My thoughts are not your thoughts, Nor are your ways My ways, declares the LORD.” in pew mouthing This is the word of the LORD, thanks be to God.

is it true that answered prayers come in the form of closed doors just as often as they come in opened doors? God, then what prayer, I wonder, are you answering? if not door new york and its hope of glory, then what? if not door to little presbyterian church with its potlucks and its  members looking me in dead the eyeballs, with its members so strange that one can only assume they know the truth—oh how i miss you friends!

but wait: hope: here: at my parent’s dinner table surrounded by family. we are telling stories and passing the butter and passing the peace. i am holding Rachel and Jay’s brand new baby. i am having drinks with a friend on the porch later this evening. i am checking the bluebird nest and finding there are three NEW eggs.

life where there was death, this is existence in Christ.

and i am being made into the great thanksgiving

Let us give thanks to the Lord, our God :: It is right to give Him thanks and praise!

it’s strange but the biggest question i have regarding love is not who i will love romantically, or when i will love romantically, but rather why. why will i love romantically? why will i choose someone to ride next to in the mini-van forever? why will i disregard knit with this person and ask that he do the same? why will my hand need to find his leg under the table when the dinner party conversation is clearly “trying too hard” and squeeze* are you thinking what i’m thinking? why a ring on my finger that will blink and bling like an advertisement in Time Square reading: “we just knew, ya know?!” why will i day by day confess the parts of me that are true, really true, really awfully true: my bad thoughts, bad teeth, impervious moods and the tendancy to be demonstrative when i’m nervous. why will i willingly give someone audience to my nervous demonstrations? would ever a traveling circus just decide to stay put in one city year after year, presenting the same monkey riding horse trick like du-du-du-dun! it’s the greatest show on earth? why will he come back knowing the concessions are never changing? funnel cakes and ipa’s: stomachache. tootchache. heartache. this is the trifecta which replaces novelty. why will i, as natural as day, find myself dancing on his body in order to make a song? and what sort of party is this anyway that the dancing comes before the music? that the dancing must be made to look a fool if the music never starts? how many songs will we make and why will i care? why will i hope if when he lifts the veil and finds a leah, he is content not to have the other sister? or say i am his rachel, why will i then need him to convince me, spend the rest of time convincing me, never stop convincing me it is the case? why will i let myself be this needy to a man? i will say his name a million times for a million different reasons. and it will start to sound funny kind of like the way anything sounds funny if you say it three times fast, even and especially iloveyou-iloveyou-iloveyou. why will i need to say and hear this cackling cry regardless? why will i spend my life lying down on the grass next to him, watching ethereal lights go up and down a ladder? we will hold our breath between intervals. if i do not see an angel descend for weeks on end, if i am turning blue and no oxygen, he will pretend to spot one, will say You must have blinked and Wow it was super bright! why will i need him to believe for me sometimes or lie so help you God? why will i ask him to swear on the stand that This is the way it happened, and You see, she made all the smallest tasks lovely. why a hermit to confess me? why his witness as proof that i was real? and why without him will i start to dissapear one limb, one phone call, one half eaten cheese sandwich at a time? he will say that minus signs are not permissible in the type of relational algebra we make. but i was never very good at mathmatics, so i’ll make him tell why, why, why, why again again again. and as he pulls me up close to his face, so that our eyes are making coversation, he will turn the palm of my hand upward and trace the uniqueness quantification equation:

∃! (X) ⋈ (Y)

which translates: backwards-E exclamation X bowtie Y

and which also translates: there is one and only one natural joining of me(X) and you(Y)

then i will know i’ve been asking the wrong question all along. maybe the real question is who … because who is the why.

so, who is why?

who is Y?

who are YOU?

So proud of my sister Jojo and her soil and the sun family! I’m perpetually wrecked by this whole album, but can you blame me for being partial to the string sections?

children, go buy one and let’s all “wake up.”  it could be nice.

thesoilandthesun:

“Wake Up, Child”

 

Attention Friends

As much as l would like to grab a cup of coffee with you and chit the chat ’til the morning dew, I cannot.  So, let’s cut the fluff and get down to nitty gritty.   Here goes:

• “Wake Up, Child”, our new album, is finished.  
• Digital Download of the album will be available tomorrow.
• Vinyl Pre-orders will be available tomorrow.  Don’t fret, this will include the digital version so you can listen while you wait.  We are shooting to have the vinyl ready to be shipped by 11/1/11.
• thesoilthesun.bandcamp.com is the hub.  Everything will be laid out nicely and will be available on the site.
• The Album Art was hand-drawn by Ashley.  The image was taken from a Japanese coloring book.  All the vinyls will be screen printed by hand.  We’re making 500 of them!

The songs on this album are:

1] Spirit of Memory

2] WestDownRightUpLeftEast

3] Like Diamonds

4] Moshua

5] Arizona

6] Wheat-Germ Mother

7] Raised in Glory

8] Breakfast Song

9] I AM in Everything, Everywhe

10] There Is No Death

Some Side Notes: At shows we will be selling download postcards that are good for a couple goes, so you can download the album and then mail it to a friend as a gift!  Give to each other.  If you find yourself asking, “Why do I need this?  These are old songs” the answer is “Because it’s better, more cohesive, and more complete.”  As soon as this project is all tidied up we will begin recording the next album.

Some Thanks: Timbre Cierpke, for playing harp on “There is No Death”, Curt Kiser and John Hanson, for letting us use some of their instruments, Chad Wahlbrink, for mastering the album, and you, for supporting us and sharing the love.  

(Source: thesoilandthesun)

friend shanna recently wrote a great snippet about her experience with quitting facebook. she’s a good blogger. you should follow her if you’re looking to compensate—better—your blog roll.

 :: foreshadowing ::

i also quit facebook a while back, but probably for less philosophical reasons than she. my exodus had something to do with the 200ish unread messages that sat in my inbox like a thing of bricks, weighing on me every time i logged in. that and pharaoh demanding a wall be built. (mark zuckerburg as pharoah? tbd, i would need to see him after some tanning.) 

but facebook isn’t the problem, like no thing in itself is the problem. it’s just a medium, albeit a medium that lends itself to excess and narcissism if unchecked. i am, however, more interested in what facebook has revealed about each of our unique capacities for self-disclosure and accessibility. the heart of the matter is, well, always about the heart. and also sort of about those 200ish messages, about dead cell phones and casual exchanges in the break room, about eye contact, microblogging, and a long coffee date, about you and me on a sidewalk, earbuds in, but different soundtracks, and couldn’t we share? no, your music is elitist and boring, about txting and flxting and tweeting the fleeting, about every passing “how are you?” and every inbox with the subject line “what’s new?!”

is that skinny and fragile exclamation point supposed to make me feel less daunted by the immensity of the question “what is new?” what’s new?! mostly everything, to be sure! the size of the kiddie pool replacing arctic icebergs, the inches being added to the miniature models across from my desk, which will one day poof! turn into the new world trade centers. and then, this, the new york skyline, will be new too. not to mention the word of the day, the menu at neighbors cafe, a fading scar on my right knee, and eternity. eternity is the newest and oldest of all.

what’s new? let’s just skip it next time and scribble down a dissertation on the meaning of life as interpreted by the characters of Anna Karenina. i haven’t read it, have you? oh you have? my, now that is new!

where i mean to go with all of this is unsure except to say that i’ll indubitably go alone, and without a following string. for as many as there are different facebook pages, there are different faces (and curiously more). thus it is important that we read one anothers faces, but also that we read ourselves. and if once we begin reading ourselves we find a peculiar brand of simplicity and solitude emerging, we must surrender ourselves to it - we must regress! - in order to see what the author has in mind. how he means to develop these leanings toward redemptive purposes. what his business is with making us fully human and fully ourselves—embodied, faced, and free.

like gerard manly hopkins says, “myself it speaks and spells, crying, ‘what i do is me; and for that i came’ “

anyway, you all know me by now. know by now that all this talk about facebook, is really all this talk about something else, which is really all this talk about blogging. i gave lizzy-writes a tumbling shot, i did. but i just love my moleskine epistle too much and the lack of answers i can bring to it.

so maybe i’ll leave you with case in point. a point in case. a case of pointy things? yes, just yesterday i got an email from scotty who tongue in cheek asked me to sum up my life in a condensed paragraph. i could only reply with what i had for breakfast.

that’s how i feel on here sometimes.

so, here’s what i had for breakfast:

found a ten dollar bill on the street
put it in my pocket for tomorrow
dunkin donuts: one dozen for $9.99
everyone at work will be happy, I think
but then no one wants a donut
like they are over donuts
only maria, who washes window super good, and I, who push door button with conviction, want a donut
i wonder, would God have rather that i bought a coat for the winter?
new york is getting cold
but our tummies are full
the windows do shine
and what joy, when another hermit to confess me. 

just ran across this in my inbox. it was the first draft of my first ever attempt at a music bio. I have no idea why we didn’t go public with it :: aren’t KFC anecdotes still alive and well? 

“In a world of dry chicken, Andy Davis is a 30 minute marinade. And I only bring it up, because we’re kind of proud that his music is the type that you want to savor, listen to all the way through, sit in for a while—you know, until the juices start run down your lower lip just a little and you now look like a greedy, euphoric fool. But you don’t mind, because you know that this is better than the Colonel. This is Andy Davis, and he’s singing acoustic rock-pop in your ear. And you know nothing else, but that you like it.

Aside from various poultry, Davis has earned comparisons from Ben Folds to Paul Simon to Billy Joel. The singer-songwriter spends his summers on tour with Ten Out of Tenn, selling more than 25K records independently and making yadda, yadda … “

guys, name me one articulate and thoughtful bio that didn’t include the line ”aside from various poultry”

i think i owe my friend charlie peacock a huge thank you for sticking out the magazine project that birthed this gem. even i would’ve dropped me … but maybe in a gentle way, maybe i would’ve dropped me into some sort of batter meant for frying things.

tons on my “to read” and my “to haven’t gotten to” and my “to why so many hoops to jump through to get a new york library card?” and my “to doesn’t matter when i insist on owning and marking up every book i read” only “to sell my library when i relocate every three months” list.

the newest must read is a work entitled I Remember Nothing by Nora Ephron—screenwriter of When Harry Met Sally, Sleepless in Seattle and pretty much every other classic, pre-op Meg Ryan.

besides the fact that i’m completely bagged by the dialogue in these movies, the title of Ephron’s book is what made me want to pick it up (see below my encumbered struggle with unicorns).

anyway, i should mention the entirety of the cover reads: I Remember Nothing by Nora Ephron, author of I Feel Bad About My Neck.

i’ll pick that one up too in a few years, when i start feeling bad about my neck. right now it’s just the memory thing. my neck is okay, i think, because i use a pretty good moisturizer and never take issue with the occasional knit turtle so long its paired with tights and glitter shorts. If Ephron ever wants to write a book entitled I Eat Graham Crackers and Icing for Breakfast Every Morning, she would have my full and anonymous support.

“The homemaker has the ultimate career. All other careers exist for one purpose only - and that is to support the ultimate career. “

-c.s. lewis

in college, we meant what we said. with good intentions, my friends and i, we really meant it. we poured our granola in the school cafeteria and we meant all the things we vocalized about saving the world (or at least traveling it wholly), about our professional pursuits, and the egalitarian marriages that would allow for our professional pursuits. we would not be restrained by the traditional typecast. besides, this was the 21st century damn it and partnership was no longer a financial imperative. as far as proliferation, a woman’s body was no longer necessary in terms of provision and sustenance. bottle feeding! yes, we would make these sacrifices and more because real change happens on a large scale. much too much in this world needed fixing. we were total ladyists, our hearts meaning every word.

graduation came and cafateria days went. and then we started buying our own granola.  

that is to say

and then we noticed the way our mother would watch for the bluebirds. then we read annie dillard and felt compelled to find every creek until one found us back—set up shop, here! and then jo ellen quit her job so she could homeschool emmaline and the twins and margaret-the-great. then we were glad to move where our husband could find a political science program. gladder still to make him coffee as he studied if only we could steal some sips. and then we saw a little girl on 45th street and noticed how she didn’t smile when the nanny stroked her face, and somehow, intrinsically, we knew it was that way on the next street too. we knew that from 46th to 146th, none of the kids were smiling at their nannies’ touch. we knew that the world was moving too fast. that their was a price for all this “progress.” and when we looked to see how many coins we were clutching in the palm of our hands, we couldn’t pay. but the stranger thing was, now, we knew we didn’t want to.

so we fell in love with being simple. and simply being. and simply being our whole life with God, with the few he has given us. like the great oak tree whose highest creaturely praise is to exist and reflect beauty by none of its own efforts. for it can do nothing but turn two hundred thousand leaves into a color every fall. 

and speaking of fall, we agree with ms. dillard that “the wind won’t stop but the house will hold.” so, we add, maybe the house should have some chickens out back, and should smell of something sweet and novembery. yes, perhaps the house should smell like the homemade granola recipe we looked up online. we are making our own now because we are total ladyists, our hearts meaning every word,

our cereal bowls overflowing, and ourselves being saved.

p.s. writing a new song about that dillard quote above … will post soon!

because i’m so internally occupied and frenetic, i have a hard time absorbing enough external/sensory stimuli to create meaningful memories with them. i forget everything. i’m rarely completely present. thus, my childhood feels like one of those lite brite boards except instead of a picture of a unicorn, i have only a few, sporadic colored pegs punched through. (i’ll admit i had to google search “backdrop lighting + game + pegs + entertainment before the wii” because i couldn’t remember the name of the lite brite toy. but i do think this example showcases how high my technological quotient must be. search intuition, people.)

anyway, some scenes from childhood have stuck with me and shaped me for obvious and meaningful reasons. but i would say most of the things i remember about my ”little life” have no seeming explanation: kindergarten liz giving the cheese off her pizza to robbie miller. we were at the same table because his last name was M and my last name was P. but i liked cheese. colored peg. fourth grade liz misspelling the word “government” in front of her whole class. but srsly, a silent “n”? never trusted the en(n)glish langua(n)ge a(n)gain. colored peg(n).

see what i mean?

well, one such peg involved my brother sitting across from me at Tequila Harry’s, our fav mexican restaurant before chipotle, saying to adolescent elizabeth “for some reason i can just see you growing up to be that crazy aunt who lives in new york and does yoga in her living room. ommmmmmm.”

James, your “om” yoga effect was really clever. and  i love that you refuse to call me anything but elizabeth. also, james, you were right. it just dawned on me one minute ago that you were competely and and prophetically right. it just dawned on me a minute ago that i am precisely that aunt who attempts the crane position in her 9 X 9 ny living space.

although, i feel like i’m not in it alone. (jo-wazzie, i’m throwing you under the bus here) after all, when joanna went natural and tried to get me to stop wearing deodorant, i stood up for dove products by mentioning its sort of like your armpits just really loving birds because they are God’s creation and stuff. i totally stuck to my bathing rituals!

why didn’t you predict that she would also be that aunt? and if there are two that aunt/s, does that make us those aunts? and if we are those aunts, do our completely wonderful, giving and educated parents wonder what happened and start to blame themselves when really they empowered us to go with God and live our dreams in community? And if those empowered and dream-doing aunts are coming home for thanksgiving … could they again request that we not have turkey (one for reasons of vegetarianism and other for reasons of loving marinated chicken kabobs more than turkey)?

it’s all james fault. he’s the one that went touting off his apocalyptic mouth.

regardless, perry people, i think together we make a really great lite brite picture. which is nice, cause then i can just look to the whole when i forget who i am.

also, really excited to receive my copy of this year’s epic harvestfest mix—thanks timmy! feeling super nostalgic. and even though i too plan on escaping the city this weekend for some camping in the state park, i get the feeling it won’t be the same. so Jacobs Well, (Jason’s Well?), just know i’m thinking of you and wishing we were noshing on some yummy food around a campfire together.

missing you sorely, my little latkes (potato pancakes)!