The book is off and running. Interviews have been posted. And finally I have had some time to write. Writing can quickly seem like a last priority as I have spent the last month gearing up for a new year at the university I work at and with hosting a release party at my home this past weekend.  But it is a discipline I love, so it was not a matter of if I came back, but when...

At the party I wrote something to share with the crowd that came, but it was namely a gift for the women who have touched my life in the last five years. I decided to share it here so that everyone could partake in a little piece of Saturday night.

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My husband gave me a cast iron pan for Christmas.  It's back-to-the-future at our home as this past winter we established our little urban farm.  We are trying to do as much as we can on our homestead which includes seven vegetable beds, six chickens, and making as much from scratch as we can (including body scrub and chicken stock).  As spring manifests itself I finally mustered up the courage to experiment with the new skillet. I figured that I can try to join the ranks of thousands of years of fabulous cooks.

We seasoned it (a process I will not detail here). We made bacon in it.  We roasted a chicken with maple syrup and balsamic vinegar. It was great.  However, I began to notice as we cleaned it that the seasoning (a coating) was coming off.  I frantically ran to my anxiety engine (I mean Google) and typed in various versions of "cast iron skillet coating coming off."  As I read through various sites' responses, I was caught off guard by the secret society I had unknowingly entered into.

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As I listen to my washing machine that is about as old as I am rattle and shake, I too woke this morning a little rattled and shaken.  The past few weeks I have written a bit on self-care: How it makes you aware; it brings you to a deeper place within yourself and it makes you care.

You see, when you know you are loved, then you can't help but love your neighbor. You know the shame you carry, your guilt, the dark parts of your soul and even with that you can still experience love.  However, there are people wandering around this morning that have a lot of love lost.  Instead of recognizing their own fear and shame they are trying to conquer it and run over others.

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I'm still processing what happened this past weekend. I can't put everything into words and I don't think I'm supposed to. But the word that keeps coming to mind as a descriptor is belonging. The woman caught in the act of adultery set the stage for our retreat. She was alone, living up to a society's definition of who she was supposed to be. Ripped out of bed -- the man playing the victim no where to be found -- dragged to the new teacher in town. "What say you?" They demanded.

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I sat down to write today and couldn't find a good starting place.  So I'll start there. I knew the concepts of what I wanted to write about this week: Self-care = intimacy and that I have found intimacy with myself and God through contemplative prayer. I am on a journey of getting to know the self that God wants me to be which is all tangled up in the world around me.... so yeah, I'll just go ahead and jot all that down in a quick blog.  (insert ironic laugh here)

I thought of writing about the fake intimacy that Facebook and the world of technology provide; of the addictions that are haunting our families and communities because people can't find places that will help them become who they are supposed to be. We have become so enmeshed in what family members and friends want from us. The subconscious expectations from youth stomp on our heads so much so that our feet become anchored and can't move. But then I thought, there I go again, going off on technology and using it in order for this message to be heard.

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Yesterday I was in a conversation with a woman about food.  This is a topic close to my heart these days (see previous blogs) as we are establishing an urban farm in our backyard -- complete with chickens.  The baby chicks arrived this week and soon they will outgrow their cardboard box and move into their new coop built by my husband and our friends and family. We are trying to live out of an awareness of being more conscious of where our food comes from and how it gets to our table.  But before I tell you about that conversation, I must set the stage.

I forget how weird I am until these types of social encounters present themselves.  The setting of this particular casual talk was in a wealthy Southern California backyard patio baby shower.  I was co-hosting at this house (not mine) for one of my dearest friends as she welcomes her first baby boy.  It was a delightful day and great time, but at different times during the day I was caught off guard by how overwhelmed I became.  Talk of bottles, boppys, pack-n-plays, breast feeding blankets, nipple cream, clothing, diapers, and all-things-baby started to get to me.  The world revolves around this little one before he even takes his first breath ... that's a lot of pressure.

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