a simple pleasure : live today

Live today! Live fully each moment of today. Trust God to let you work through this moment and the next. He will give you all you need. Don't skip over the painful or confusing moment - even it has its important and rightful place in the day.

Silence & Solitude...disciplines of Jesus

Teaching children about the natural world should be treated as one of the most important events in their lives. - Thomas Berry

I just watch a 10 minute clip by Rob Bell titled Noise. It's about silence and how often we are not. (conviction!)

I am also currently reading a book titled Last Child in the Woods by Richard Louv. It's basically about how people, specifically children, do not spend enough time outdoors with nature but rather too much time indoors with electronics. (again, conviction!)

Louv goes as far as to label this, lack of outdoor experience and exploration, "nature-deficit disorder (NDD)," which is not a legit medical diagnosis or anything of that sort. Although I think there is much truth to this NDD. He argues that encouraging children to interact with nature could very well be good therapy for depression, obesity, and ADD.

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the ah-ha moment...

While the sun decided make an appearance this afternoon and the gray storm clouds disappeared for a bit, I decided to take advantage of this break in the rainy weather by taking a study break and go for a run. I quickly changed into running shorts, grabbed my keys, sunglasses, and iPod and hit the pavement. As I approached the turning point on the towpath, my playlist came to an end and my music stopped. I ran the last lap without my music...it was nice. Then, just as I began to turn around and switch my music back on, everything I just read in Last Child in the Woods and Noise hit me like a brick wall!! Even I, someone who enjoys being outdoors as much as the next person, could not even detach myself from my noisy environment. Upon this realization, I was inclined to turn off my iPod and walk the rest of my route on the towpath taking in my surroundings and reflecting on the revelation the just occurred to me.

It was pure awesome-ness!

[NOOMA Noise. Rob Bell. 2005]

good tunes (tracey chapman and kina)

mary elizabeth & elizabeth mary

my friend Mary posts on facebook:

So I always was told Mary meant sea of bitterness but in Hebrew it's really sea of strength or strong waters which makes more Sense to me since Mary gave birth to the living water. Also, Elizabeth means God's promise which is also cool since she was John the baptists mom and John made the way for Gods promise, living water. All in all, I think Mary Elizabeth is a pretty cool name ! Thanks ma :)



I found this really cool since my name is Elizabeth Mary :)

The Mystery of Marriage

What moment in a man's life can compare with that of the wedding night, when a beautiful women takes off all her clothes and lies next to him in bed, and that women is his wife? What can equal the surprise of finding out that the one thing above all others which mankind has been most [creative] in dragging through the dirt turns out in fact to be the most innocent thing in the world?  Is there any other activity at all which an adult man and women may engage in together (apart from worship) that is actually more childlike, more clean and pure, more natural and wholesome and unequivocally right than is the act of making love? For if worship is the deepest available form of communion with God...then surely sex is the deepest communion that is possible between human beings.

The Mystery of Marriage by Mike Mason

I will wait for you...

P4CM Official Poet Janette...ikz shares a beautiful piece during Lyricist Lounge 4 on "Waiting". Check out www.P4CM.com for more poems and the date of the next Lyricist Lounge.

swept away

I want to be swept off my feet...

I want to be showered with hugs and kisses,

love notes and, every once in awhile, flowers.

...flowers drawn and colored on loose leaf paper will do, if that's all we can afford.

I want to be admired by you...

I want to catch you sneaking glances at me and when you think I'm not looking.

I want you to hold me extra close in the midst of a hug just to smell the scent of me.

I want to be surprised by you...

I want you to stop by where ever I am just to say "Hi" or "I love you."

I want to be swept off my feet...

I want to be adored by you...

I want you to roll your eyes at my girly quirks,
followed by a "that's why I love you" look.

I want you to find me irresistible...
I want you to scheme ways to get next to me.
I want to feel your caress when you're near.

...I want to be swept off my feet...by you.