as the ruin falls...

by C.S. Lewis

All this is flashy rhetoric about loving you.
I never had a selfless thought since I was born.
I am mercenary and self-seeking through and through;
I want God, you, all friends, merely to serve my turn.

Peace, re-assurance, pleasure, are the goals I seek,
I cannot crawl one inch outside my proper skin:
I talk of love - a scholar's parrot may talk Greek -
But, self-imprisoned, always end up where I begin.

Only that now you have taught me (but how late) my lack.
I see the chasm. And everything you are was making
My heart into a bridge by which I might get back
From exile, and grow man. And now the bridge is breaking.

For this I bless you as the ruin falls. The pains
You give me are more precious than all other gains.

chicken parmigiana & faithful disillusion

Couple of things to share with you tonight---a LUSCIOUS recipe and an article I found simply beautiful.

First, I've become addicted to two blogs: The Frugal Girl and The Pioneer Woman.

I love the frugal girl because, really, I think that I (and most people, really) can live on a good bit (read: A LOT) less than we actually do, and this mom of four has made an art of it. Her blog is filled with recipes & ideas that are tailored to those looking to save, and I love it.

Now on to the Pioneer Woman. I'm fairly certain that my dear friend Meredith is actually her ghost writer because A) she is a city-girl-turned-cowgirl, B) she is married to someone who castrates calves for a living, and C) she is so GOOD at all things cooking. AND she is hilarious.
Just like my Mere.

The Pioneer Woman, aka Ree Drummond, has a plethora of recipes on her blog that are easy and look SO good. I've only tried one because once I made it, I loved it so much that I kept making it and have gotten too distracted by the tomato sauce this recipe produces to try any of her other ones.

That is the recipe I would like to share here with you today.

And I give you......


Chicken Parmigiana. (I janked this picture from her blog)

If you love parmesan and if you love tomatoes, and if you're a chicken eater, you cannot miss this recipe. I'm telling you...it is GOOD.

The best thing about it is the sauce - trust me.

Since this post is already going to be extraordinarily long, I will simply link the recipe here instead of posting it.

Go make it, and let me know how you like it!!

I also wanted to share an article from Jill Carattini, c/o A Slice of Infinity at RZIM that I read the other day.

I think a lot about things that I see and feel vs. what is actually reality. Really, the more I think about it the more I understand that there's more of a dissonance between those things than I realize unless I slow down enough to seek truth and digest it.

Some days, the understanding that my illusions aren't reality breaks my heart; other days - more often than not, really, it is my only hope.

So partly because it speaks to the things that are on my mind and in my heart and partly because it quotes W.H. Auden, I just loved this and wanted to share it - if you do read the whole thing, read it slowly and deliberately. It's just so good.

Faithful Disillusions
Jill Carattini

"We are perpetually disillusioned. The perfect life is spread before us every day, but it changes and withers at a touch."

The author of this comment did not have the dashed hopes of a person weary of contemporary political promises; nor the disappointment of a child after his once-adored Wii lost its thrill; nor the dispirited outlook of a modern youth disenchanted with rampant consumerism and the daunting purposelessness of life.

No, long before video games existed, long before Generation Y was disillusioned with Generation X or X with the Baby Boomers before them, disillusionment reigned nonetheless. Indeed, it was a social commentator in the late 1920's who made this comment about his own disillusioned culture, words which in fact came more than a decade after a group of literary notables identified themselves as the "Lost Generation," so-named because of their own general feeling of disillusionment. In other words, disillusionment is epidemic.

As humans who tell and hear and live by stories, the possibility of taking in a story that is bigger than reality is quite likely. (Advertisers, in fact, count on it.) Subsequently, disillusionment is a quality that follows humanity and its stories around. Yet despite its common occurrence, disillusionment is a crushing blow, and the collateral damage of shattered expectations quite painful.

With good reason, we speak of it in terms of the discomfort and disruption that it fosters; we frame the crushing of certain hope and images in terms of loss and difficulty. The disillusioned do not speak of their losses lightly, no more than victims of burglary move quickly past the feeling of loss and violation.

And yet, practically speaking, disillusionment is the loss of illusion. If we are to think of it in terms of theft, it is the equivalent of having one's high cholesterol or a perpetually bad habit stolen. Disillusionment, while painful, is evidence which shows the myths that enchant us need not blind us forever, a sign that what is falsely believed can be shattered by what is genuine.

In such terms, disillusion is far less an unwanted intrusion than it is a severe mercy, far more like a surgeon's excising of a tumor than a cruel removal of hope.

The crucifixion of the Son of God is something like this. The death of God? There are no categories with which to understand it. For those who first held hope in the person of Jesus, it was the same. The death of the one thought to be the Messiah? It was an event that leveled them with disillusionment.

New Testament scholar N.T. Wright describes the force of this dissonance: "There were, to be sure, ways of coping with the death of a teacher, or even a leader. The picture of Socrates was available, in the wider world, as a model of unjust death nobly borne. The category of 'martyr' was available, within Judaism, for someone who stood up to pagans...

The category of failed but still revered Messiah, however, did not exist. A Messiah who died at the hands of the pagans, instead of winning [God’s] battle against them, was a deceiver."

For those who loved Jesus most, it took time to see that it was not hope but their hopeful illusions that died with him on the cross. Everything they thought God was, every hope for a messiah wielding power and control, every image of God winning the battle, everything they thought they knew about religion, painfully, but mercifully died on a shameful, Roman cross.

We, too, bury our illusions with the body of God. And it is no simple journey. The powerful words of poet W. H. Auden describe what is often the case in a world filled with illusion:

We would rather be ruined than changed; We would rather die in our dread Than climb the cross of the moment And let our illusions die.
Yet if we will allow it, this death can be far more than loss.

While advertisers count on our moving from one dead illusion to another, the death of Christ tells a different kind of story, a demythologizing story, which cuts through the storied layers of illusion we continually create about ourselves, the world, and others. Within such a story, disillusionment is the precursor to nothing short of resurrection. And faith is the audacity to confront our illusions with a cross.

In the words of author Parker Palmer, "[F]aith is the courage to face into our illusions and allow ourselves to be disillusioned about them, the courage to walk through our illusions and dispel them. Faith...[is] a disillusioned view of reality...that lets the beauty behind the illusions shine through."

Burying our illusions with the body of God, we mourn our losses and lament over the graves of dead dreams and expectations, hopes and visions. We stand in painful, faithful disillusionment. But so we stand aware that we may be equally startled by what emerges from the tomb.

"once upon a spring break dreary..."

"...while I pondered weak and weary, over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore,

While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,

as of someone gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door.

'Tis some visitor,' I muttered. Only this, and nothing more."

It's spring break, and there is a fire in my fireplace. In this case its sole purpose is ONLY to keep me warm because I refuse to turn on the heat mid-March. This is where I've spent most of this Monday, and it would be utter perfection were it December, January, or even early February.

This is more of the springbreak I had in mind. You like that? I googled "springtime frolicking" and this is what I found. Pretty good, isn't it?

While it IS dreary, and while I AM weak and weary (nonstop sneezing & sniffing due to today's relentless mutiny of allergies to my sinuses), the rapping of fun friends on my chamber door and the volumes of forgotten lore (or time to read books I want to read) is welcome here in every season.

Speaking of good books, this is the one I want to read next...

Has anyone read it? It looks really good to me.

While I was writing this post, someone decided if I wasn't for cozy fires in March she'd gladly take my spot...

Hope you're all having a good start to your week!

conversations & soundbites

Two posts in one day! I am on FIRE!!

I just sent this out in an email, so this is probably redundant, but I love it so much I need to share it here too.

Let me set the stage for you: We are about to go to lunch, and I have an Alabama Power envelope in my hand (it is, in fact, my power bill).

One of my students, B: “Whaaaaaaaaaaaaa???? PAY that power bill, Miss Hardin!! Gotta keep those LIGHTS on!!”
Me: “I try to keep them on, B, I try.”
B: “Can I come home with you and spend the night, Miss Hardin?”
Me: “Uhhh…”
B: “Can you cook?”
Me: “Yes.”
B: "Well, you know, I don’t have nothing going on this weekend. I’m free. Are you sure you can cook?”
Me: "I’m fairly certain"
B: “You seem like the kind that goes to McDonalds everyday and then says you cooked it.”
Me: “I don’t claim to be able to cook anything as immaculate as the big mac B.”
B: “SEE????? You got the whole menu memorized!!!”

Then there is the boy in my homeroom class who I am CERTAIN has tourettes. He is OUT OF CONTROL, is constantly in trouble, and ALWAYS has on his baseball gloves. I'm fairly certain he is one of my kindred souls. Just to set the stage here – his tendency to yell out random words has been in overdrive today, so I thought I’d share some of them that I have heard…you should know that he yells them out in absolutely no logical context whatsoever. And for some reason, he pronounces all of his e’s as long e’s, which gives him an interesting accent.


Pimp slap, pimp slap, COKE!
SHORTS!
New socks!
Goatees and crew cut!!
Jackhammers!
AmNESIA!!!
Pepsi, pepsi, COKE!!
I have monsters under my bed!
Lemon shrimp!
COKE!
You’re uncle WILLY’S son!
Space invaders! Butt ugly MARTIANS!
Chinese checkers!
PAPER BOMBS!!!!
Penguins!!
Crayola Crayons!!!
SEAWEEEED IN MY POCKET!!
Sweet n’ low!
No strings attached!
Chocolate payday on the flo!

He's in my room for some of this, during my planning period, and my principal appears in the hallway right as I chime in and yell out, "BABY OX!!!!!"

Glory.

Happy Friday, all.

what I'm reading

My dear friend Meredith sent me The Divine Conspiracy by Dallas Willard in the mail, and as soon as it landed on my doorstep I dove right in. At the rate I'm going, it will be 2012 before I finish...it is demanding to be read very slowly, thoughtfully, and deliberately, and I'm finding that after one page I need to stop and chew on the words for a day or two before I read on. So make that 2018.

It is very, very good so far, though. If you want a whopper of a book to give you plenty to ponder, pick this one up.

One more day till the weekend, and I get to see this friend and this movie in just over 24 hours...

Yesssssssssss.

Also, a few golden online spots for your reading and viewing pleasure...

Quirk Gallery

Whisker Graphics

You Are My Fave

A really good article on the season of lent

And for you Bachelor enthusiasts....I Hate Green Beans will have you in stitches.

Hope everyone has a wonderful, sunshiny (hopefully) weekend.

a second career?

I was having a conversation with my friend Shauna a few weeks ago about what vocation we would choose if we did college over again and HAD to pick one other than what we do now. We decided she would blend her love of science with her love of writing and have a medical Q & A column in Seventeen magazine. Her pseudonym? Shonorrhea. Her tag line? "Ask me, don't catch me."

I couldn't narrow mine down or come up with any satisfactory commixture, until recently, when I decided that I want, nay, NEED to play the recorder for NPR's studio. The recorder has always had a special place in my heart, as many of you know. Besides rapping Birdman in the classroom, I can think of nary a task I would feel more at home fulfilling than this.

This is Piers Adams, the current guy on the job. Very swift on the recorder, that one.

Tell me you cannot see me in this picture.

Only mine might look more like this.

I dare say it's meant to be.

calling all babies and baldies!!

If you have a baby girl, or if you're just BALD, then BOY do I have something for you this Christmas.

Allow me to introduce to you the Baby Bangs! headbands: What I should have gotten for my sweet niece, Nita, this Christmas...

"The wispy hair strands have been arranged in the cutest most adorable elfish coiffure!" - Baby Bangs! Web site

As I have several friends who are are either expecting or have babies, be they little girls OR boys, I started browsing the selections on the site. When I saw that they are going for the steep price of $29.95 per band, I decided I could make a craft actitivy out of this, easy.

Why do Locks of Love when you could give a sweet baby some BANGS?? So, I'll gladly cut my own hair to make Baby Bands! for all my new and/or expectant mothers out there - Meredith, coming right up. Kate? Consider it done. Meaghan? Mary Reeves' is in the mail. Heather? Jones is all set. Emily? Sarah Beth won't know what hit her. Emily & Hunter? Don't think I forgot about William. Anna Katherine? Sarah & Matthew? Laurette? And of course my niece Nita. How TENDER to have one of these jewels made from your aunt's hair!

Don't worry - I have enough hair for all of you.