Lay down your money and you play your part, everybody's got a hungry heart.

I love to read. I'm a huge bookworm and I could sit and read a good book for hours.

Now that I've gotten that out of the way, I would like to share with you the book I am currently reading and some of the thoughts it has provoked in my mind:

"A Million Miles in a Thousand Years" by Donald Miller 


This is the second book I have read by Donald Miller and there is just something I love about the way he thinks, and how he expresses those thoughts to us in his brilliant books. While I am only on page 61 I am familiar with the general idea of the book because of a Donald Miller lecture series I had the privilege of listening to at my home church this summer. Miller is posed with the challenge of making his life into a movie and therefore into a "story" that an audience will relate to and find captivating or, at least interesting. Easier said than done, right? This of course gets Miller thinking about what makes a story meaningful. His conclusion is this:

"A character who wants something and overcomes conflict to get it"  


brilliant, right?

This has gotten me thinking about our lives as stories. What kind of stories are we making? The book opens with this and I think it is something interesting for us all to chew on:

"If you watched a movie about a guy who wanted a Volvo and worked for years to get it, you wouldn't cry at the end when he drove off the lot, testing the windshield wipers. You wouldn't tell your friends you saw a beautiful movie or go home and put on a record to think about the story you'd seen. The truth is, you wouldn't remember that movie a week later except you'd feel robbed and want your money back. Nobody cries at the end of a movie about a guy who wants a Volvo. But we spend years actually living those stories, and expect our lives to feel meaningful. The truth is, if what we choose to do with out lives won't make a story meaningful, it won't make a life meaningful either." (Miller xiii)

It reminds me of the movie The American, which I found to be completely awful. After reading this, I know exactly why I walked away from that movie thinking that it was horrible. I couldn't really be clear as to what the main character wanted and even if I did know what he wanted, it was clear at the end that he didn't get it. I walked away from that movie thinking that there has got to be a lot more to a movie, and in turn, to life than that. 


When I think about my life I can look and see all these little vingettes of me wanting something and attempting to overcome conflict to get it. One of worst/best qualities is that I am stubborn/persistent. Plain and simple. Sometimes I am persistent and I succeed and other times I am so stubborn and I just don't know when to give up. Usually, the thing I don't know how to give up on, is the story I have formulated in my head and am trying my best to live out. While I know that I have a tendency to create expectations of life that are simply impossibly to live out, maybe viewing my life as a story isn't a bad thing.

SO... my final thought is this, if its not so bad to live out a story, maybe the thing one should focus on is making a story meaningful. If someone watched the story of your life would they laugh? cry? root for you? Or would they walk away, like I did at the end of The American, feeling like you wasted their time and money? Maybe this is the key to making our lives meaningful. These are just some seeds of thoughts. I'msureI will have more to say on this topic as I delve further into the book.

Since I've been listening to The Boss a lot here's one of his songs... and it kind of tells a story

like a river that don't know where its flowing, I took a wrong turn and I just kept going

thanks for reading
-ish*

All we are saying is give peace a chance

According to my calendar today is the International Day of Peace. I am quite drawn to the concept of peace and to what it really means. I am sure most people conjure up images of hippies, protesters or John & Yoko in bed. However, I have come to be familiar with what shouldn't be but is, quite a new concept to me. That is the idea of peace as one of the fruits of the spirit, or as one may commonly know it, inner peace.

"When the Holy Spirit controls our lives, he will produce this kind of fruit in us: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control." Galatians 5:22-23

or as The Message translation puts it:

"But what happens when we live God's way? He brings gifts into our lives, much the same way that fruit appears in an orchard - things like affection for others, exuberance about life, serenity. We develop a willingness to stick with things, a sense of compassion in the heart, and a conviction that a basic holiness permeates things and people. We find ourselves involved in loyal commitments, not needing to force our way in life, able to marshal and direct our energies wisely." Galatians 5:22-23

My reading of this or what I am able to draw from this is that peace must be something that is developed within us. Peace is not something that one can demand from his or her external circumstance. To do some more borrowing I will use a quote from Rick Warren's The Purpose Driven Life:


"God develops real peace within us, not by making things go the way we planned, but by allowing times of chaos and confusion. Anyone can be peaceful watching a beautiful sunset or relaxing on vacation. We learn real peace by choosing to trust God in circumstances in which we are tempted to worry or be afraid" (pg. 202).

To divulge some personal information without getting into the nitty-gritty of it, the external circumstances of my life in the past year have really been anything but peaceful. My dear old dad always told me that while I cannot control what happens to me I can control my reaction. Now that I feel at a much more peaceful place, I look back and the real unfortunate part of my not-so-peaceful circumstances is that I kept trying to control people and things in order to make my insides feel better. Guess what? It didn't work. In fact, it produced a great deal of anxiety and worry in me that was completely needless. The more I tried to control things and push them in the direction I wanted, the further away things went. That produced more anxiety within me and the further away from peace I flew.

Finally, things ended up hitting a bottom I was pretty much afraid of hitting all along. The only thing left for me to do was to restore my inner peace. I cannot even begin to describe how emotionally draining it is to continue on a quest where you are trying to control the people and circumstances around you. All I can say is that it will never bring permanent positive results and it will never make you happy.

So, in the spirit of International Day of Peace try to remember the power in having inner peace. No one can take that from you. It may seem easier said than done, but trust me, as someone who will openly and freely admit that I have some pretty major control issues, It can be done! Maybe if we concentrated on restoring our inner peace we would be capable of restoring peace in our beautiful but very broken world.

To remind myself of the value of maintaining my inner peace, I have this dovely little friend:

It wouldn't be right if I didn't leave you with a song,

You may say I'm a dreamer, but I'm not the only one.

*ish

It's him or me, that's what he said...

I like cats.

After listening to the song,"Man of the Hour" by Norah Jones I felt inspired to do a blog post dedicated to my one and only man of the hour...

Heathcliff Huxtable a.k.a Cliff McGriff

Delighted to meet you!

"So I choose you because you're sweet, and you give me lots of lovin' and you eat meat" 

"You never lie, and you don't cheat, and you don't have any baggage tied to your four feet" 

"I know you'll never bring me flowers but flowers they will only die, and though we'll never take a shower together, I know you'll never make me cry... you never argue, you don't even talk..."

Give your pets some extra lovin' today, because really who is always there when no one else is?

*Lyrics in Italics, from "Man of the Hour" by Norah Jones. Listen Here

*ish

Honorable pet mentions go out to: sweet pea, rickety, fif-squad, olly, yimmy the babe, dody & tugan. My apologies to those I may have forgotten.

Come a little bit closer, hear what I have to say, just like children sleeping, we could dream this night away

While watching the movie "Eat, Pray, Love" (which I recommend to rent or see on a cheap Tuesday) I rediscovered what may be one of my first ever favourite songs, "Harvest Moon" by Neil Young. I'm not quite sure if this is an actual memory or one that has been planted in my head by my mom but I seem to recall hearing the song and swaying to it in the kitchen dressed in a favourite nightgown. To this day the song still has a soothing effect on my soul. Hearing the song and the topic of my first post got me thinking a little bit about my childhood. I shared a special memory with a great friend, fussyjussy and she insisted that I make it my second post. So, here goes...


At age 8 I decided that I would like to play t-ball. My brother was registered that year as well and while he continued to play the sport for over 10 years I "retired" after my one year. Previous to this I had been a Blue Jays fan and enjoyed watching baseball on t.v. and was therefore pretty excited to play. My Dad took me out to buy the necessary equipment and I think we even played catch a couple times. I was all set!


I arrived at my first practice with my new cleats and glove, ready and eager! Quite early on in the practice we began to practice catching ground balls. The coach threw one my way, I crouched down and positioned my glove to catch it, just the way he had taught us. At the last second, the ball hit a snag in the field, coming up to hit me square in the mouth, thus beginning Ish's infamous Fear of the Ball. I kept with it for the season even though I was literally terrified and ducked every time the ball came even close to my general vicinity. Fortunately, the other girls on my team were NOT afraid of the ball and my team wound up in the championship game at the end of the season. This is where my memory really begins, picture it, Mississauga 1995...


Its the bottom of the ninth inning and the bases are loaded. My team is ahead by two runs and there are two outs with the other team at bat. The batter from the opposing team steps up to the plate about, to make the hit that will make or break the game. She swings and wouldn't you know it, the ball comes straight for third base... the position I happen to be playing. According to my dad the parents on my team heave a collective sigh/wince as they fully expect the game to be over and lost here. However, to everyones surprise, including mine, I do not cower, I hold my glove out, catch the ball and run to third base to make the out to end and Win the championship. Sweet Victory indeed...


To this day I still have our trophy (somewhere) and like to remind myself that Yes I can pull it together at the last moment, usually when it happens to matter the most. and so can you... 


Once again, thanks for reading. Enjoy this song and dream your night away.

Oh and just an fyi, this years harvest moon falls on the actual first day of autumn. Delightful...


ish.