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Photo by Betchie (can’t find link)
I put together a musical series over the weekend, ten songs that mirror my spiritual journey the past twenty years or so. It’s something my writing teacher wrote about in this post about writing her memoir with music in mind and how the hymns (which are her chapter titles) were always the “common ground” between her family members. While they differed on many things, the music always brought them back together, their voices raised in unison.
I thought it was such a beautiful picture, I went searching for ten songs (hard to narrow them down!) that described my journey, which will someday be my memoir.
The first is Imogen Heap’s “Hide and Seek” from her Speak for Yourself album. Why did I choose this song to describe the confusion of the fundamentalism years?
where are we?
what the hell is going on?
the dust has only just begun to form
crop circles in the carpet
sinking feeling
spin me round again
and rub my eyes,
this can’t be happening
when busy streets a mess with people
would stop to hold their heads heavy
hide and seek
trains and sewing machines
all those years
they were here first
oily marks appear on walls
where pleasure moments hung before the takeover,
the sweeping insensitivity of this still life
Mmmm whatcha say,
Mmm that you only meant well?
well of course you did
Mmmm whatcha say,
Mmmm that it’s all for the best?
of course it is
Mmmm whatcha say?
Mmmm that it’s just what we need
you decided this
whatcha say?
Mmmm what did she say?
ransom notes keep falling out your mouth
mid-sweet talk, newspaper word cut outs
speak no feeling no I don’t believe you
you don’t care a bit,
you don’t care a bit
Because I’m not going to throw stones on this blog or in any of my writing, and this song puts to words what it was like to have a vibrant faith in God that was quietly and rapidly polluted by man-made beliefs that were absolutely false and ill-conceived. And when I expressed any concerns during my year in Indy, I was told to be quiet. So I went to home to hide. Although the leadership of this cult left me alone for many ensuing years, God did not. He pursued me, much like the words of this Francis Thompson poem:
I fled Him, down the nights and down the days;
I fled Him, down the arches of the years;
I fled Him, down the labyrinthine ways
Of my own mind; and in the midst of tears
I hid from Him, and under running laughter.
Up vistaed sloped I sped
And shot, precipitated
Adown Titanic glooms or chasmed fears,
From those strong feet that followed, followed after.
If you’d like to hear Imogen Heap’s amazing song, listen here:
So glad it’s Friday! While it’s been a productive week, I’ve been busy rethinking my organization and time management here in my office and daily schedule. Always good to work with my strengths. Because I’m such a visual person, I need to “see” tasks in a very upfront, in my face way.
1. Out come the white boards. There is something about a dry erase white board that makes me feel very in tune with my goals and to-do list and anything else I’m trying to organize. I have one hanging on my wall, but yesterday, I hauled the spare board out from storage and divided my tasks and goals into five horizontal lists. Oooh, I love white board lists! Just looking at it inspired me so much, I got one major thing done and crossed off my list and circled on the white board (which means I get a cookie!). I wrapped up my workday yesterday thanking God for such an accomplishment. It felt great!
2. I am addicted to banker boxes–turquoise banker boxes. I use each one for a different project or as I’m calling them now, different curriculum. Yes, I’m reverting back to kindergarten, but didn’t we learn most everything about life back then? I learned about reading time, art time, play time, nap time, snack time. (I’m being silly, but still!) Sometimes the freelance life is much like college would be (had I ever gone), with me juggling multiple clients, classes, assignments, tests, schedules in one day. So my banker boxes are my college credits, yes. (I get another cookie!)
3. I have to see everything in the open to reiterate my top priorities. I am so visual, if I don’t look at my big-picture goals each day, I’m lost in the minutiae of my day. Of course, the minutiae are often talking to family and friends about their lives, talking with hubby, replying to friends’ emails, and chatting on forums with other writers, so it’s not like those tasks are a waste of time. I just don’t want to get caught up in it so that I don’t accomplish something I’m working toward. And because I’m so visual, when I see a cookie, I’m completely distracted!
4. Being visually oriented is actually a great way to remind myself that my day is not my own. I like that I can’t get too lost in my own little world. I like that an email from a friend or a call from a family member can stop me in my task so that I remember that there are other people out there, and my stuff is not the most important thing. Cookies might be though!
5. Being visual is rather chaotic at times. These next few months I will take time each day to organize and weed the clutter from each part of my office. This weekend is my immediate desk area for starters. Just one drawer, one shelf, one counter space and we can pluck 100 worthless pieces of junk out, to either file, donate, or trash. Right? I could do that just with my to be shredded junk mail pile. Now I need a cookie.
Have a great weekend.
Photo by electra-cute
I’m sorry. You’re going to have to hear more about my beloved Oregon. Thank goodness, I didn’t move very far away after I got married. The south side of Seattle is close enough to the big city for me. True, I have to drive to get to my weekly events (class and church each week) and Todd has to really drive to get to his soccer games, but we love our neighborhood and we do love living where things are slower and kids meander home from school each day. I love that they race to it in cars in the morning and just shuffle along in the afternoon! I did the same thing! Ha!
Sure, we were in a cult, but we lived in Oregon, far away from cult headquarters or major ministry opportunities. This meant we had to fly to get anywhere near and while it was a hassle when we wanted to actually see people, it was a blessing when we just wanted to be left alone, far from it all on the West Coast, independent, enjoying the small things, not worrying about saving the world and whatnot.
From our perch on the side of our hill, the Willamette Valley stretched out like a patchwork of green fields as far as I could see. Only in the distance could I see the looming shadows of the coast range. When we were feeling too land bound, we would venture that way, through all those dazzling green fields, and up into the coast mountains, which after they put in the new highway, were gently looping and much easier to drive. But there were areas of that Corvallis to Newport highway that still harbored hairpin turns that are now embedded into my memories of Oregon. Often we would drive those corners in the family car, but as we got older, my sister or I would often volunteer to drive our own car.
We’d put on a cd of some movie soundtrack (usually Babe or Muppet’s Treasure Island; kid’s movies were our favorites and “approved”) and would sing and joke and laugh all the way through those hills. And then it was always with baited breath that we would come over that last hill and there was the Pacific, a giant mass of blue that one forgets is there because of the thick coast mountain forests.
Our first stop was usually Yaquina Beach with a lighthouse that my husband is still mesmerized by and usually whales breaching about 70 yards away. The beach is all rock, rounded smooth into marble-like pebbles. When the tide goes in and out they bounce off each other and make a ricochet sound that then echoes around the entire Bay. It’s my favorite place . . . until we get to the next stop.
Before Lincoln City is a small inlet called the Devil’s Punchbowl. Here surfers brave the crashing waves and my husband is strangely compelled to take hundreds of pictures of the churning water crashing into the rock. Here is where my friend and I saw a one-legged seagull! And where we’ve eaten our lunch countless times, enjoying the sunshine, or cowering in our car from the pounding rain.
And then Lincoln City and D Beach, a touristy spot where parking is hard to find and the beach is cut into two by a small, flowing stream. Our favorite lunch/dinner spot is here, the salmon and pasta is to die for (their cheeseburgers aren’t bad either). Here we sat the day after my brother’s wedding, just soaking up the sunshine, stifling a giggle as the baby niece fell head first into the stream and came up looking so surprised. No tears though!
Farther north is yet another favorite beach, at our usual hotel, with the most amazing breakfast spot!, and also quite populated on a sunny day, but we love it.
And on our way home, we’ll stop at Bethany Beach, park east of the highway and troop through the tunnel cut into the rock to get to the sand, just to gaze at the glittering ocean.
Hubby and I have recently discovered Pacific City, where you can drive your car out on the sand. A huge tourist attraction, but a fabulous beach nonetheless.
In Washington we live right by the water, even closer than I did in Oregon and hubby did in California. He often takes me to a pier/beach on the weekends where I just sit and watch the waters of Puget Sound, lapping, crashing, soothing.
My writing teacher lives on the edge of the Salish Sea and that’s my dream someday. A place to go for refuge where the water is bigger than the land. That’s a Good Thing.
Coming home from my cult year in Indy, I was broke. Well, truthfully I had 28 dollars to my name and I was exhausted. My family had sent me money all year, but many of us working in Indy had schemed to find ways to make enough to live on. That 28 dollars was what was left from working twelve hours at the polls for a primary election in the inner city of Indianapolis. I was not going to spend it on just anything after working that hard to earn it.
So I knew I needed to find work. I had also been writing for some publications published by IBLP, and this experience had really stoked my interest in writing for a living. But I knew that to write was almost impossible for a 20-year-old without a college degree, so I decided I wanted to work in publishing somehow; to learn the industry from the inside out. I was praying that I could find a job in publishing before I even left Indy.
Within two weeks of returning home, my prayer was answered. I applied for a job in the local paper that my Mom found for me. It was a start-up publishing company who were scanning old public domain books into text for digital publication (yes, in 1995!). The rest is history.
My Mom gave me her sewing room (a small 8 x 6 room with windows overlooking the valley below) to use as my office. I had a wooden desk, a Costco office chair, a metal filing cabinet, and an electric typewriter. No computer. No Internet. And 28 dollars.
From that small office, real/brilliant, inc. has become a small corporation, a powerhouse brand that I’ve lived on for the past 15 years. Yes, this August will be my 15-year anniversary. I still can’t believe it.
And of course, very little of it was because of me. Sure, I showed up and did the ordinary marketing and the ordinary work, but all the extraordinary things that have happened the past 15 years are God’s work. He is a very good manager, in case you’d like to hire Him. 
The first day after Ages Software hired me, I needed a computer. A very dear friend heard about my plight and drove her personal computer out to our house. Diana’s computer got me through the first three months of my new job until I had saved enough for my own, albeit, used computer. Dave S., our trusted neighbor and friend, went with me to look at a used laptop in a nearby town. He ran the initial diagnostic tests to make sure it worked okay. Suddenly, I was in business! Dave’s son, Nathan, helped me sign up for my first Internet account, Juno, and didn’t laugh too much when I chose sensibility as my user name. And my friend, Russ, helped me fix that computer a few times when I really needed it to work and it wouldn’t. And Gary L., another friend already in publishing, introduced me to my next freelance client, Harvest House Publishers, soon after I had started work for Ages Software. And everything I have done since those first two years would NEVER have happened had it not been for the help those people gave me.
I used my Mom’s sewing room as my office until 2002, when I moved into my own townhouse with a spare bedroom for an office. And then once I got married, my office space has expanded exponentially (as have all my books and files and cabinets and tables and computers!). I still miss that small office, stacked full of tables and computer equipment. I miss the view of the Willamette valley from its windows. I miss opening those windows on a cool spring day and listening to the sounds of the outdoors while I worked.
It was a Good Thing. I am still reaping the benefits today. God is there for those who seek Him.
