Open Letters

Dear Madison Avenue (and all the advertisers you represent):

I am so sick of hearing about debt-loss, weight-loss, and online dating. Give it a rest. Stop telling us about new cars as we contemplate how to get over our addiction to foreign oil. Stop telling us about how diamonds will make our relationships mean more. Do you think the gaining diamonds and new cars might have something to do with why there are so many commercials for debt-loss and online dating?? Please, we want a great taste test campaign, which is better, Coke or Pepsi (while Pepsi wins on taste tests, Coke wins in the long run!!), or a "Where's the Beef" campaign like Wendy's ran in the mid-eighties. Give us something to laugh about. We'll return the favor by drinking Cokes and going to Wendy's.

Yours,

Sarah Louise

Dear the rest of the world:

Don't tell Madison Ave that I don't need commercials for Coke or Wendy's, since I buy their stuff anyways.

Yours,

Sarah Louise

Dear man at the party the other night:

No, I do not want to date an a--hole or a bastard without guts. I don't think those are my only choices. I think there is another alternative and while he seems to be an endangered species in the wild, I have met the married version: a godly man who balances confidence with humility. I will give you this: when you're dating a jerk, you know he likes you, because he generally treats all other people like crap. When you date and/or are scoping out a nice guy, you have to figure out if he likes you because he's nice to everyone. So while I prefer nice guys, there is less confusion on that particular issue if he's a jerk.

Yours,

Sarah Louise

To the women of the Open Door,

You missed an amazing day at the Women's Gathering. What, honestly, (besides a babysitting job with twin four year olds) was more important than hanging out, chilling with your chicks, hearing someone talk honestly about being a woman, not wanting to lead, but doing it anyways. Hello, I took a vacation day. Katrina took a vacation day. Honeys, I hoard those like GOLD. I will not not work on a Saturday unless it is for GOLD. This was gold, much fine gold, and honey on the comb.

I laughed a lot. If anything, you missed hearing me laugh, all morning. You missed amazing worship. And the food--for $20 bucks, I got all that teaching, hanging out, plus breakfast, lunch, and afternoon tea. (Have you been to a restaurant lately? You can drop $20 easily on just drinks and tapas!) The chicken salad was amazing. Bellefield's basement wasn't Mrs. K's, but the company of women made up for that. As women, we need these role models. We need to have the conversations about milk vs. meat. We need to talk about how Sex and the City offers a great example of comraderie with women but a poor example about how to live a dating life. We need to have those conversations where we talk about what our gifts are and how we think they aren't important and have someone say, yes, yes they are. We need all those hugs. We are a young church, ladies, and we need the wisdom of women that have grandchildren. Um, you ain't gonna get that at the Open Door, at least not yet. You missed out, and I mourn that decision of yours.

However, I had a blast. I laughed, I cried, it was better than Cats. I sang out, I searched my soul, I encouraged friends, I met new people. I learned how to talk like a Southerner:

• "Scared as a long tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs."

I learned that the antithesis of the Proverbs 31 woman is the Proverbs 7 woman. And I was reminded that the Proverbs 31 woman was imagined up by a MOTHER, giving advice to her son on what to look for in a wife. So of course she's perfect!! (Yins with MIL's can talk about that one amongst yourselves...)

I learned that if Jesus says "Go fishing" you should bring tartar sauce, because there's gonna be a feast. And we laughed over a carpenter giving advice to a fisherman, that the paraphrase of vs. 5 was "Man, you are a carpenter and I am a fisherman, I know all about fish and there is nothing there to catch, but if you say so..."

I learned that a great follower is a leader who hasn't accepted the promotion.

I heard poetry, which I'll share with you:

• "allow poetry to slip in the back door." (William Stafford)
• "He moves your bones and the way is clear." (Wendell Berry)
• and one by Kathleen Norris that I didn't write down...
  

I learned that all women are alike in this: we worry about our hearts and our friends. We get lonely and we get loved. We own lots of shoes. And I re-learned this one: women go to the bathroom together. If you thought going to relieve your bladder was going to give you one second alone, that one second was going down the back stairway. I shed tears. And I remembered, as my tears hit the bathroom floor, that God keeps each one in a bottle.

I re-learned that in Pittsburgh, it's not six degrees of separation, it's one, or 1/2. ("I know your church has 2000 members, but do you know so and so?" "Oh yes!")

And then I re-learned something about myself: if I'm with friends, I can stay out late. (Yes, little miss introvert, after a day with 200 women and some time at home deciding WHAT to wear for a birthday party, went out for tapas at 8 pm and stayed until 11 pm, when she went to the Sharp Edge for a Mystery Brew and some Mediterranean Nachos. We stayed there until 12:20, A.M.!)

Sarah Louise writes about Kathleen Norris, Pt. 2

I own every book of Kathleen Norris' that I've read in hardcover. I have not read Dakota, or Little Girls in Church, so I own them in paperback.

I have given Dakota as a gift, which is rare for me (that I would give a gift of a book I've not read.) I have given Cloister Walk as a gift, I'm pretty sure.

The Cloister Walk, which was Kathleen's second memoir (Dakota being the first) was recommended to me by a co-worker at Fox Books, Gene. I think in an earlier life Gene was a pilot. He was a very thoughtful man, when I knew him, and I imagine he still is. He read a lot of great books, and he was good at recommending the right books to the right person. (Pretty important in retail books, as in librarianship.)

In my copy of CW, I just discovered a letter I started to Kathleen. It is in pencil, on the back side of drafts of my mother's kindergarten worksheets. "Thank you for sharing your words with the rest of us. A Catholic co-worker admonished me for months to read CW. I started and soon went out and got my own copy of the hardcover. When Amazing Grace was released, I bought it in the first week." (Aside: now, remember that I am a book slave--um, when I worked in retail I really couldn't afford those hardcovers.) (So this is a high compliment of KN's writing.)

I remember that week that I bought AG--I was depressed after an exhausting relationship. My copy of AG is water marked and missing its dust jacket because I read it in the bath. In it, I have a bookmark that I made of a quote by Father William McNamara. "We must be overwhelmed by the leonine surprise of his personal passionate prescence." I also have a folded up copy of the brochure that advertised that KN was coming to the Seminary, where I saw her recently.

I am exhausted like that now. The retreat was a battle of prayer. It was heart surgery. It was letting go of crap that, personally, was very hard to give up. At one point, on Saturday, I had a fight with Emily and I ran to the comfort of my car, where I found my headphones and listened to some praise music, and read Lamentations 3:22-24, "great is thy faithfulness." At another point, later that afternoon, I so wanted to just grab my car keys and run. Instead, I fell asleep. But I stuck it out, and at the end, Emily and I were dancing with glee for the work that had been done.

I am going in to work late today and Friday, as my life has expanded beyond the time I had. Ever grateful am I that I have that kind of flexibility. Tonight I'm hosting friends who are missionaries in Thailand. The group will be small. (But it will include their two sons!) I invited many people that I knew would not be able to come, as I knew they had Wednesday obligations. But this is an important event for me and I would rather invite them and have them RSVP "non" than have them hear from someone else I had the event and didn't invite them--and I wanted them to know they were important to me--because sharing food is one of the most intimate things we can do. Asking someone into your house, to share food with you, is intimate. So, I know that when these folks RSPD'd "non" it is not personal, but it still hurts. Ach, any rejection does, if our hearts are tender.

I have some pictures, wanna see?

It takes awhile (a while?) for them to download. These are pics from Sunday, when I went for the second week in a row to the Southside Works. I went again to the Cheesecake Factory. I had their baked potato soup. Last week, my movie started at 1:51. This week, it started at 1:15, so as soon as my food came, I asked for the check.

(Um, I just deleted all my pictures. Note to my fellow bloggers: "Recover post" LIES! Like a big dog.) Scuse me while I SCREAM! (Save, save, save. Whenever you add something, save!)

Okay, I'm back. Did I mention that I took this morning off so that I could continue cleaning house, not so that I could blog? But I made a lot of progress while the photos downloaded last time, so let's TRY. THIS. AGAIN. (As you were, smiling...)

Hey, it's not called Pink Sneakers for nothin'--and I am wearing jeans on both legs. D'ya see the mark on the right ankle strap? That's from when I kissed the pavement (yes, flat on my face) at Auto Advantage (that'll teach me to recycle my oil!) and tore my favorite brown pants. Tar-get fixed all, though.
This is my "view," the picture I must take again and again, just like Suse. I still think she wins, though. But notice the pink pavement...
Flowers by where I park my car in the summer at work (in the shade!). Mama would be proud.
More Southside Works. The captions were funny, before, but oh well.
More of my favorite fountain...
...makes the world go round (which is a song from my favorite musical, Carnival, which few folks have heard of. I wonder if Babs and Andrea know it?) (Sorry, couldn't find a link for Andrea. But all her post titles are songs from musicals. I think it's a brilliant technique and am quite jealous.)
Why did Arnold S. have to marry Maria Shriver?
So there would be a bullet-proof Kennedy. I wonder if Babs' cell phone still rings to the theme of the Godfather?

The date stamp tells me I've been working (on and off, you understand, and I can see large pieces of carpet now) on this post since 7:53 am. Ay, caramba!

Sarah Louise writes about Kathleen Norris, Pt. 1

Kathleen Norris has short hair. Short short. In all her publicity photos, her hair is at least shoulder-length, framing her face, so you are surprised when this ordinary woman (who has been sitting in a chair on the stage) gets up and introduces herself as Kathleen. You thought she might look less...well, she's wearing drab colors, but she has these silver shoes. They don't match her hose, which is dark. When you hear she lives half the year in one of the Dakotas (North? South?) and the other half in Hawaii, you somehow think of Kansas and Dorothy--are Kathleen's shoes magic too? If she clicks her heels three times and says "There's no place like home" would she land in Hawaii or in the Dakotas? Kathleen surely has some sort of magic, because she has the audience in the palm of her hand. When she reads her poetry or the poetry of other great poets in the American oevre, the audience humms in approval as she finishes. It reminds you of the crickets in Mouse Soup. She talked twice: at 2, she talked about words and how they matter. At 4, she reads her poetry and the poetry of other Americans.

....stay tuned for "Sarah Louise writes about Patricia Maclachlan" (author of Sarah Plain and Tall.)

A few scraps:

• The retreat was AMAZING! Not really sure how I'd begin to write about it...
• The conference was too: for you Pghers, Dave Crawley sat at my lunch table! "Hi, can I sit here?" he asked. "My name is Dave." (We know who you are...)
• Am exhausted and bed must be gotten into. Tomorrow is a full day, including a Mary Kay facial at 4!