my name is katie and i am not hip.

So, one of my youth told me that last night's youth group was "kickin," which I had to assume meant fun. Then I was facebook chatting with another youth and they wrote "lmao" and I had to ask Kyle was that meant (laughing my ass off). Also, I now use twitter, but still don't really understand it or its appeal.

Moral of today's story: hanging out with teenagers makes me feel old and super lame... please tell me I'm not over-the-hill and culturally irrelevant at the age of 25 :)

i've been thinking.

That more people should read Romantic poetry. It's not sappy. It's not mere descriptions of flowers and trees or gushy love poems. It has to do with the soul. Romantic poetry is about the soul's longing for beauty and for meaning... its an intensely personal inner monologue, that has universal appeal. For who hasn't looked at a beautiful scene and tried for a moment to allow the view to transform and fill them? Who hasn't sadly looked back at youth as a time when fulfillment seemed simpler and attainable? Who hasn't felt the ache to feel something big and beautiful and uncontained? Who hasn't longed to be somehow connected to something beyond one's own skin? William Wordsworth in particular sings of all of this with words so lovely they seem to have more than meter and voice... they seem to have an actually melody. Everytime I read this poem, the song of it floats off the page and washes over me.

For I have learned
To look on nature, not as in the hour
Of thoughtless youth; but hearing oftentimes
The still, sad music of humanity,
Nor harsh nor grating, though of ample power
To chasten and subdue. And I have felt
A presence that disturbs me with the joy
Of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime
Of something far more deeply interfused,
Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns,
And the round ocean and the living air,
And the blue sky, and in the mind of man;
A motion and a spirit, that impels
All thinking things, all objects of all thought,
And rolls through all things. Therefore am I still
A lover of the meadows and the woods,
And mountains; and of all that we behold
From this green earth; of all the mighty world
Of eye and ear,--both what they half create,
And what perceive; well pleased to recognise
In nature and the language of the sense,
The anchor of my purest thoughts, the nurse,
The guide, the guardian of my heart, and soul
Of all my moral being.

Sometimes, I wish I could spend my life being an advocate for poetry. Not a teacher or professor. But an advocate standing on a corner with a sign held high, or holding a sit in, or promoting legislation and giving speeches at rallies. "Save Poetry," I want to shout. We need it more than any of us know.

can't wait to meet this little guy.

So, I am so excited to say that I am going to be an aunt to Ashton Reid Parker, who I am already convinced is the cutest thing I have ever seen. My sister Mary Beth is expecting her first baby at the end of January. She found out that he's a boy this week and sent me the ultrasound pictures. Unfortunately, the pdf is too big of a file and I can't post it here. The pictures are amazing. I was in awe of his legs and hands and beautiful tiny body. It's hard to believe there is a whole person living inside my amazing sister. I just think pregnancy is so miraculous.

I am lucky to have a friend, Alakecree, who is training to become a doula. Basically, that means she will be similar to a midwife, in that she helps women through pregnancy and birth. She provides non-medical emotional and physical support through the process. Alakecree's occasional e-mails and links to videos and articles, remind me how truly incredible our bodies are. It makes me sad that most of what we hear about is how scary and painful giving birth is. A while back Alakecree showed me this video of a woman singing during the early stages of labor:



Isn't that lovely? Here, birth in an opportunity for peace, for celebration, and for worship. Instead of thinking of it being painful or gross, this video helped open my eyes to how beautiful the process really is. How in birth we experience an act of creation, and the wonder of our own life giving abilities. I am so excited for my sister and all she is experiencing, and all that she will experience in the coming months. I know pregnancy isn't all peace and singing, but I can say thank goodness women don't have to be the Betty Drapers of the 1960s anymore. [For those of you who don't watch Madmen, in last week's episode the character Betty Draper went through a horrifying birth. She was forcibly restrained and screaming for her husband (who was happily drinking and smoking in the waiting room), then she was given an enema and Demerol and had frightening and bloody fever induced dreams. And finally, she woke up in a drugged haze with a baby in her arms to whom she had no recollection of actually giving birth to. I could have a whole rant about the way men have made women feel ashamed of their bodies through the medical establishment, but I'll save it for another blog.] Anyway, YAY! Birth doesn't have to be like that. It is a beautiful celebration of life giving us more life.

Don't worry, I don't have baby fever. I don't intend to have any of my own anytime soon. I'm just so excited that my sister is going to bring a little person into the world, and just amazed at the miracle of life --- it is truly miraculous. Also, it means I get to be an aunt and have a little cutie pie to spoil and love (and give back to his parents). Ashton, I can't wait to meet you and welcome you to the world.

just in case you haven't seen it.

If you are in ministry, especially youth ministry, you've probably seen this already. But if you haven't yet experienced the amazing power of Ignatius and Flame Ministry, you need to watch this:



hehehehe.

It gets me every time. Probably because I've spent a lot of time in youth ministries and young adult ministries, and so much of it rings true to what we present as the "cool" Christian culture. Lots of hair gel and graphic design -- but no depth. I watch it and laugh (hard), and pray that Church can be something better and more authentic.

I'm using it for my youth group this week as a starting point for talking about what ministry is and what they envision youth group to be. Should be fun.

I'd love to hear your reactions :)

the day.

"The day is like wide water, without sound,
Stilled for the passing of her dreaming feet."

I woke up thinking of these lines by Wallace Stevens. These words make the day seem still and endless, like anything is possible.

offensive.

I find this commercial offensive. Or at the very least very poor advertising.

And it seems to be on all the time.

The first time I saw it, I actually said out loud, "seriously?" It seems to want me to say, Oh, look how clorox products have helped women do laundry for decades! As if all we've done in the last century is do the wash, and I will find that thought comforting. I hate that its blatantly directed at the female viewers, and the way it tries to cleverly joke that "maybe even a man or two" has done the laundry-- God forbid.

I believe that more than a man or two has done laundry. And I believe they are quite capable of doing it. This commercial is targeted directly at me (the adult female), and wants to create some comradery about how me and all the other ladies do the laundry and most of the boys are left out of the Clorox club. Look how happy we are wearing all those cute vintage clothes while we throw in one load after another! What a wonderful club we are a part of because we have a uterus! Well, here's news: I don't care to be in that club, thank you.

I actually don't mind doing the laundry at all, but every time I see this commercial I feel like never doing laundry again. It's not terribly often that the raging feminist in me comes out, but this add seems to do it every time... It makes me want to come up from the basement and announce to the world I am capable, I can do more than wash clothes, I don't want to miss out on history taking place because I'm stuck down there doing the laundry. I'm also offended on behalf of men everywhere. I know that you also purchase laundry detergent, and I'm sorry that Clorox has assumed only a few of you are capable and worthy enough of joining the magical Clorox world.

So, that's my rant for today. :) Am I the only one who hates this commercial?

different light and life.

I stumbled on Adrianne Rich's "An Atlas of the Difficult World" today. A poem I have loved in the past but not read in at least a year.... And today, it seemed a completely different poem. Parts of the poem refer to the foggy bay, the reaching redwoods, the vast shimmering Pacific. Images that were once almost imaginary, creations in my mind's eye that could be envisioned, but not experienced. But now, living in Berkeley, spending afternoons in San Fransisco, watching the sun slice through layers of fog, casting shimmery shapes across the ocean and sand and towering pines -- the poem takes on a new familiarity. Coming to this poem today felt like finding a sweater packed away for many months, that is rediscovered, and is suddenly treasured with new love and need during a cold season. Its a poem I can wrap myself in. She writes:

Within two miles of the Pacific rounding

this long bay, sheening the light for miles

inland, floating its fog through redwood rifts and over

strawberry and artichoke fields, its bottomless mind

returning to the same rocks, the same cliffs, with

ever-changing words, always the same language

--- this is where I live now. If you had known me

once, you’d still know me now though in a different

light and life. This is no place you ever knew me...

These are not the roads you knew me by.

But the woman driving, walking, watching

for life and death, is the same.

I connect so deeply with finding oneself in a such a different world and new life, yet experiencing the familiar language of the inner life that has always been your own. A feeling of existing in a new world, with an old self. Being unchanged yet changed in the same moment. And Rich captures it like few other writers could. With poignancy, with certain beauty and a tinge of sadness. She embraces her new world with such tender attention, and yet with her love of newness, there is a hint of longing to be recognized, and to be seen as the one you've always known yourself to be. I love the poem's rich descriptions of experiencing life in a strange yet known landscape -- they seem intimately familiar and deeply personal. The more powerful part of the poem, still, is the final section. It is the most quoted, most well-known part for good reason:

I know you are reading this poem

late, before leaving your office

of the one intense yellow lamp-spot and the darkening window

in the lassitude of a building faded to quiet

long after rush-hour. I know you are reading this poem

standing up in a bookstore far from the ocean

on a grey day of early spring, faint flakes driven

across the plains' enormous spaces around you.

I know you are reading this poem

in a room where too much has happened for you to bear

where the bedclothes lie in stagnant coils on the bed

and the open valise speaks of flight

but you cannot leave yet. I know you are reading this poem

as the underground train loses momentum and before running up the stairs

toward a new kind of love

your life has never allowed.

I know you are reading this poem by the light

of the television screen where soundless images jerk and slide

while you wait for the newscast from the intifada.

I know you are reading this poem in a waiting-room

of eyes met and unmeeting, of identity with strangers.

I know you are reading this poem by fluorescent light

in the boredom and fatigue of the young who are counted out,

count themselves out, at too early an age. I know

you are reading this poem through your failing sight, the thick

lens enlarging these letters beyond all meaning yet you read on

because even the alphabet is precious.

I know you are reading this poem as you pace beside the stove warming milk, a crying child on your shoulder, a book in your hand

because life is short and you too are thirsty.

I know you are reading this poem which is not in your language guessing at some words while others keep you reading

and I want to know which words they are.

I know you are reading this poem listening for something, torn between bitterness and hope turning back once again to the task you cannot refuse.

I know you are reading this poem because there is nothing else left to read

there where you have landed, stripped as you are.

The poem up until that section seems to be a mirror in which we see Rich, or at least in which we view a particular way of experiencing the world. But then she suddenly turns the mirror. We stop gazing at someone else’s reflection, and begin viewing ourselves. She sees each of us, our needs and intricacies are both particular and universal. I read it and feel my own hunger and thirst for poetry and art. I feel at home in the fact that she speaks directly to me and to others in our wide need to find beauty, and to make meaning. In this moment, Rich isn’t just writing a poem because she needs to, but she is writing to us, the readers, the dreamers, the hungry, the broken, the passionate and the tired, because we need her to write. We need her words. We need her mirror. And more than anything we need the blessed gift of somehow feeling seen. And that is what this poem does… it does not merely help us to see, but it sees us, looks up at us from the page and loves each of us ferociously. Loves us, whatever light and life we have landed in.