A red red Rose

Christmas Pictures!

2010-01-14T10:20:00.001-08:00

Better late than never!
Oh, Did I mention that Lucy is walking!!!!

Christmas wishes and Christmas letters

2009-12-16T17:52:00.000-08:00

Since I have the incredible luxury of a blog, I thought I would take this opportunity to say how annoyed I am at myself for not being able to spout off a beautiful Christmas letter on command. I want to wish everyone well, I want it to be from the heart, I want to tell them without being or sounding smug or self-congratulatory or deprecating what a pretty amazing year we have had, what with Lucy and trips to New Mexico and trips to Michigan and entertaining so many good friends here, what with Mike's Princeton Review job which takes him all over tarnation and what with my ever-involved and kind of addicting job at FWCD teaching a language that has been dead for a millenium and a half (well, maybe we should say semni-somnolent at least); what with Lucy's first words (Hi! and yesth!) (which we of course claim as yes) and her first teeth and her first smiles ane her first rolls and her early lack of baby fat rolls and her squished up nose and her coy ways and the way her dad is so good with her and the way that she does a routine dance number when I walk in the door and the way that I am in charge of a co-op (heaven help them!) and the way I always forget to do things for these 11 good natured women who are constantly having to forgive me and how they do and teach me how to accept forgiveness and how to give it.
Seriously! I have no idea how to put all of that into a letter or the 11 thousand other things that happened this year that I think may amuse my friends and relations or may bore/annoy them. So, part of the problem is that I don't communicate with my Christmas card list very much (if ever) thoughout the rest of the year and so am unsure of what tone to take. Noel, c'est la guerre! ; >
Feel free to give your thoughts, o blogosphere!

Pumkpin Carving

2009-10-25T12:26:00.000-07:00

Lucy enjoyed her first pumpkin carving yesterday. Dan and B hosted a fabulous pumpkin event at an nearby park and we all came to carve our hearts out. Her Aunt Maddie made a crazy hair pumpkin and her papa made Lucy's look like her fun pumpkin outfit. For a girl who is longing for Fall, yesterday was a piece of heaven!

Lucy takes the high ground

2009-10-22T09:06:00.000-07:00

Lucy loves being on Mike's shoulders. I think it lets her get a better look at all things she could get into so she can make an informed decision about what she wants to destroy next.

Some time in the Grass!

2009-10-22T09:05:00.001-07:00

Food Glorious Food!

2009-10-22T08:59:00.000-07:00

Some fairly recent adventures in good eating.

AA (code name for Aunt Alisha)

2009-07-31T18:12:00.000-07:00

Alisha spent a few weeks visiting Dallas earlier this summer. We all really enjoyed having her here. Here are a few shots of her very photogenic self hanging with the family and playing with the birds at the Fort Worth Zoo.

Lucy and I and the new curtains

2009-07-31T17:07:00.000-07:00

I have been working on new curtains for our bedroom to help Lu sleep during her daytime naps. I love the curtains, but so far the naps are still patchy. The curtains make our room look golden any time of day. Love it!!

Isn't Lucy growing by leaps and bounds?!

Too Long!

2009-07-08T19:22:00.000-07:00

It has been way too long since I have posted pictures of Lit' Lu. Since summer began Lucy and I have been to Michigan, Chicago, Oklahoma and New Mexico. Here is a shot of our little one preparing for yet another long trip. Good thing she made peace with her car seat before we set out!

Maddie and I at the Baptism.. a month ago!

2009-04-17T09:06:00.000-07:00

Little Feet

2009-04-17T08:57:00.001-07:00

Baby's have the tiniest everything. I am always amazed by her little feet and toes. They are such wrinkly little things.

Aw ... a new little Christian!

2009-03-30T17:21:00.000-07:00

Little Lucy was baptized! We are so excited about it. Mike's parents were in town for the occasion and Emily flew down for the weekend to make the family complete.
Here are some pictures:

Even Cute When She Cries!

2009-03-04T10:33:00.000-08:00

Diapers!

2009-03-04T10:18:00.000-08:00

Hey, Mom! Check out the cool diapers you got for little Lu! We love you!

Ash Wednesday

2009-02-26T10:43:00.000-08:00

Usually the dust and ashes of Ash Wednesday are a sober reminder of the end of our bodily lives, a physical sign of the ephemeral quality of so many things that we set our hearts on. The ashes provoke a meditation on the end of all earthly things and the supremacy of the spirit.
On Lucy, they brought other thoughts. Not being so far from her beginning, the ashes served a hope and a promise. (She told me all of this with her eyes.) If out of mere ash and dust something as incredible as a human person can come to be, what can we not hope for from Our Maker? Ps. 139 esp vs 14. There is power in beginnings so small, glory in a Creator so mighty and good. Amen. Hurray for this Lenten Spring to open us more completely to His Goodness.

Lucy, the Philosopher

2009-02-26T10:13:00.001-08:00

Morning Calisthenics

2009-02-26T09:39:00.000-08:00

It is hard to wake up for this, but good health is no accident.

Follow me everyone! Reach for the sky! Got to loosen up those joints.

...and One and Two and.....
Don't forget to lift those legs!

Bicycle in the air.

Aunt Maddie begins her Fabulous Dallas Career

2009-02-17T15:05:00.000-08:00

Keep a sharp look-out, Sweetheart! Aunt Maddie will teach you everything you need to know about fashion.

Time with Memere

2009-02-17T11:17:00.000-08:00

We had a long weekend with Memere. Lucy and Grandma were fast friends. Here they are enjoying some QT while Mom and Dad have some Time
out. : >

"I love this lady!"

Three generations!

Hat Head

2009-02-17T10:58:00.000-08:00

The Art of Diapering 1.1

2009-02-07T17:02:00.000-08:00

Um, trickier than I thought.

Okay, It's like this.

I think I got this.

Lucy Meets the World

2009-02-07T16:12:00.000-08:00

Little Lucy Claire Austin came singing into this world on January 24th at 7:17 in the evening. One burning moment before it was just Mike and I, hand-in-hand dancing through life as best we knew how; the next, we had become a family, a little nucleus of new life, the shapers of a tiny child's whole world. The little life-changer weighed a mere 6lbs and 14oz and to this day, 2 weeks later, is still aspiring to that towering height of physical mass. Such a wee little thing has turned us into parents and changes our lives forever. We are thrilled.

2008-05-28T17:59:00.000-07:00

2008-04-24T14:41:00.000-07:00

The third panting stanza rises from the monstrous waves of the sea on the wings of a dove to another white vital sign of the Lord, the living sign of the Eucharist.

The f's in the opening lines sound vicious almost ferocious. The line break leaves your catching your breathe before, that is right, a chasm. Perhaps it is the chasm of th eunknown or maybe the gapping space that can open beneath your feet in a such a moment of abandonment as the speaker has just experienced. When you give your all to God, He takes it. Then there you are with nothing. The desolation that can fall on the heels of assent is often what tries to prevent us from giving our yes in the first place. The enormity of the speaker's gift crashes in on him. There is no place to hide that is not given over. The hurtle of hell opens and the speaker gasps for air in the next line, which expresses his breathelessness and his distress. (like the Gusher song, Coming Up for Air)(How little is it to ask for a place to exist?) Yet, it is indeed a great deal, since the poet is also looking for an exsistential answer, a place to fit in the universe, a One to orientate himself to, a Where for his Whatness.

His question allows him to move from the unformed chaos of ocean metaphors, to the lightness of bird images. The speaker moves on the wings of a bird, with the precise homing sense of a pigeon, the speed of an eagle from one height to another. The stanza ends solidly with a "towering" mountain image, spiritually speaking . For, now the speaker is reaping the glorious benefits of his purification with a subsequent ascent into a towering new graces, briallantly alive with a new life in God. His rush upwards is not like the laborious movments you might expect when going from the ocean to the sky, or from a state of unknowning into the clarity of love and knowledge. It doesn't seem to take any time at all. It is over in a flash. Did you catch how he moved? He fligns his heart. Doesn't it remind you of a spring fling? A fling of the heart? I may think of flinging a frisbee (and he is evoking that too) but what he wants us to remember is the love in it-- the total last gift of the heart. It is a fling of the heart to the heart of the host-- both the host of God's angels and the sacramental whiteness of the sacred Bread of God's Body.

The frown of his face
Before me, the hurtle of hell
Behind, where, where was a, where was a place?
I whirled out wings that spell
And fled with a fling of the heart to the heart of the Host.
My heart, but you were dovewinged, I can tell,
Carrier-witted, I am bold to boast,
To flash from the flame to the flame then, tower from the grace to the grace.

Laced with fire of stress

2008-04-23T08:12:00.000-07:00

I did say yes
O at lightning and lashed rod;
Thou heardst me truer than tongue confess
Thy terror, O Christ, O God;
Thou knowest the walls, altar and hour and night:
The swoon of a heart that the sweep and the hurl of thee trod
Hard down with a horror of height:
And the midriff astrain with leaning of, laced with fire of stress.

Here is the second stanza--- aflame with fearfulness of letting go. I love the diction, the words of struggle and restriction like -strain, stress, walls, hard, down, lightning, night; words of intimacy and emotional impact like swoon, leaning, heart, heardst me, knowest (in a secret surprising way); words of a willed resignation and oblation like "did say yes," altar, confess, fire.

Is this stanza too unruly? Un-English? I think that is a fun question and I would say it is unruly and perhaps de-structured linguistically but not to destroy but to enter into the whirl of the passionate moment of resignation amid trial, to feel the unsettled omnipresence of the Divine within the "horror of height" a battle of the spirit against an inner resistance. Despite the disorderliness of the emotional state presented here the speaker still has a yes to say that is "truer than tongue."

Did you catch the nautical reference at the end of this one? Augurs well for his main subject of a ship-wreck and puts the speaker with those Fransicans saying yes before the viod of the sea. If you feel a little sea sick too, grammatically speaking, I think that is part of the plan as well. His tale will not be for the faint of heart in any sense.

Some other favorite poems-- just for the curious.
https://www.cs.drexel.edu/~gbrandal/Illum_html/hound.html
http://www.bartleby.com/101/679.html
http://www.netpoets.com/classic/poems/054001.htm

Poem of the Day

2008-04-22T13:16:00.000-07:00

I thought of Frost's Mending Wall as a very viable option. I recently heard a very fun idea about a movie based on that something in us that doesn't love a wall ... and that nameless force working it own will in the poem.

However, Hopkins' rather long poem about the valiant struggle and happy memory of the death of 5 Fransicans won the day. Here it is in full text:

I love the child-like wonder he brings to his consideration of man's place in the universe.

First with the physicality of his creation description and then with the sweetness of wanting to hold the finger of God like a very small girl whose hand is too small to hold the giant hand of an adult and can just grasp their finger.

I might do a stanza my stanza meditation on it for Poetry Month.. we will have to see waht tomorrow brings.

http://www.bartleby.com/122/4.html

Hello, friends, old and new!

2008-04-22T11:11:00.000-07:00

This is the incipient posting of a budding blogger.

For poets, poetry, language, hope and the glorious unguent call of the ever-giving present.

Also to keep you all up-dated with fun and fabulous things in my life like....