Saradactyl.com

Lens Cleaner

If any of you out there wear glasses you know how tricky it is to keep those suckers clean. You can only handle peering around a finger smudge for SO LONG before you finally given in, spray a little lens cleaner and wipe them clean.

That being said.......... I hate it when people have an insatiable appetite affirmation. You know - NEEDY people. Can't-pick-out-which-color-underwear-to-put-on-without-someone's-input people. I like to think that I am not that person. After all - I go around wearing all different kinds of underwear without anyone's input at all. I eat when I'm hungry, and do laundry whenever I feel like it. I talk to God, and I bought a new lens for my camera - all on my own. ALL without anyone dictating what or when or how or which.

But truthfully - I am cripplingly needy.

How many times does someone have to tell that I'm a talented photographer in order to make it true? How often do I need to hear someone tell me to write a book before I actually DO IT?

I'm sitting here at 10:36pm on Sunday evening with a murky swamp stewing in the pit of my stomach. I made the fatal mistake of looking at some photography portfolios tonight. I was hoping to come away inspired and refreshed - but instead of enjoying the artistic points of view, I found myself comparing THEIR work to MY work. And all kinds of questions plagued my cerebellum: "What kind of equipment are THEY using? Is that a polarizing filter? My flash isn't as fancy as theirs. And oh my GOSH I totally suck. WHAT WAS I THINKING!!??? I can't be a photographer!!!!! I'm only one person. And I don't have a ladder. When is my new lens going to get here? Where..... how.... wha.....?"

*sobs quietly in fetal position*

Get a hold of yourself, woman! This thing is way out of control. Seriously. Here's the deal: no two photographers are alike. I know this. Logically? I know this. I bring something unique to the table, because no one else has my eye balls. And lucky for you, no one else shares my brain. So whether by talent, sheer force of will - or both - I WILL do this thing. I CAN do this thing. Now shut-up, and quit your whining.

I've been walking around with foggy lenses that got all mucked up by greasy pride, and sweltering perceptions of my own inadequacy. I get so caught up in what I'm not, that I lose sight of who I am. And I'm not just talking photography here, people. Hells bells - I ain't perfect, and Lord knows I come with my own traveling side show of circus freaks and stinky socks. But to poo-poo the talents that I have by declaring them Not As Good As Whomever's - is by default poo-poo'ing the One who gave them to me.

Not cool.

So in order to wipe clean the smutzy state of my lenses - I must come back to the truth: Christ, and the offering up of himself, is who purifies my conscience from dead works in order to serve the living God. Sure sure sure - I have talents and gifts that are uniquely mine - but it's on 'Mt. Me' that we see developing a slippery slidey slope into a miry swamp of pride and self-absorption. That's a risky place to be - because once you're in it? It's hard to see anything else.

Unfortunately, that's where I find myself tonight. Fact is? It ain't about me. I'm just a clay jar. What am I choosing to fill myself with - negativity toward myself and others? Or will I fill myself with treasures to show that surpassing power belongs not to me, but to God?

"But he said to me, 'My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.' Therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me."

I love how dramatically CRISP everything is when you're viewing life through squeaky clean lenses. Don't you?

Well that was....

...unproductive. An ENTIRE day off I had, and how did I spend it? In bed. Oh - and waxing my eyebrows, and polishing off what was left of the pint of Ben & Jerry's Dublin Mudslide. I had really good intentions for this day, but I guess some hours need to be purely devoted to absolutely nothing. And at the end of the day - I can sleep well knowing that I gave it my all.

*nods sagely*

What did YOU do today?

Well, that didn't work.

Raise your hands if you're surprised. Anyone? Anyone? No one! I blogged ONE day about the whole 21 Day Challenge thing and it fell swiftly along the path which evidently is paved with good intentions. Go figure. Eh.

Springing Forward
In more ways the one, my friends! This time change. Dude. Seriously, EVERY year I balk about the stupid DST stuff. Why not just leave the time the way it is? I know we have good reasons for changing it and blah blah blah, but who do we think WE are that WE can say - "Screw you, sun! Screw you, rotation of the earth! I reject the reality of what time it REALLY is. You say it's 6:30 AM? HA! What do you know. I say it is 7:30 AM. Therefore? It is. You like apples? YOU LIKE APPLES? Well. How d'ya like THEM apples?"

Which brings me to
I LOVE PLAYING APPLES TO APPLES. I haven't played since the amazing earth shattering trip to Nashville, TN - and I'm jonesin'. I'm jonesin' bad.

Oh, sorry
As I was SAYING.... as much as I hate the time change, with it brought about a little bit of Sara Change. Sara's Light Savings Time, as it were. It brought about the end of my 4 month moratorium on church and fellowship and community. In the wise words of Derek Webb:

There are those that are called into community together. If you divorce the people of God, if you divorce local community from the gospel, it ceases to be the gospel. There is no other context for your faith as a Christian than to be in a community with other people. I've heard a lot of people say to me over the years 'It's just me and God and that's all I need.' Well that's not the gospel in scripture. If you are going to be among those who claim to love Jesus than you will be compelled, and I will be compelled to love the things that Jesus loved. And He not only loved, but came and gave himself up for the church. And that makes it our concern as well. 

Isn't that just a real kick in the pants? If it's not for you, then it certainly is for me. And not that I have necessarily MADE it my goal to divorce local community or the people of God.... it just kind of happened that way. And that's probably the scariest thing about it. It might be better if it was something I INTENDED to do... but to just let it happen? To let it fall by the wayside? It's a scary place to be in. So I'm in the second-week-in-a-row where I've actually been to church. So in spite of my internal clock being all wacked out and screwy - my spiritual clock has been rewound and is springing forward as if that is what it was meant to do all along. And it was. It's good to be back home.

Crazy week
I hate going to the doctor. And that's why I'm going THREE times next week. *eye roll* It just worked out that way, I guess. Does anyone else get "The Nervous Gas"? Every time I think about being in an abnormal situation, or going to the doctor, or doing something COMPLETELY out of my comfort zone - I get the toots. Which has made me realize ALL THE MORE how much my future husband will truly love me SO MUCH that he will be wiling to put up with my random exhibitions of symphonic neurotic isms. [happy sigh] Y'all pray for that dude.

Mini-Chocolate Covered Bunny Easter Rant
Why are we celebrating Easter this upcoming weekend??? Uhhhhh.... didn't "The Real Easter" happen at Passover? Would it not be all that more significant to point to Christ as the sacrificial lamb Who has rescued us from hell and certain death, oh at say.... PASSOVER? WHY are we still submitting to the traditions of the old school tyrannical "church"? It's bad enough that we do it at Christmas, but do we have to bastardize Easter, too? PLEASE understand that I KNOW this is how we chose to establish the national holiday, and we really DO need to be sensitive to that percentage of people who will not come to church EXCEPT on "Easter Sunday". I KNOW that the "day" doesn't really matter. We're to celebrate Jesus's life, death, and resurrection EVERY day - but it just REALLY REALLY REALLY upsets me that we have to rip off the PAGAN holidays and claim them for our own. Aren't we supposed to be....... separate? Different? Aliens? I feel like in many ways the church in its search for relevance has conformed to the feasts and rituals of a pagan nation. AND IT IS NOT RIGHT.

Alright... so. Will I put on a Sunday dress and go to church next Sunday morning? Yes. Will I take the holiday given to us because it's "Good Friday"? Probably. Will I eat Peeps? No - because they gross me out.  But on the inside I'm ALL THE MORE crying out for some kind of change and resolution to how we go about recognizing and celebrating these holidays.

So, y'all get right on that - would ya? hehe.

Day 2:21

2007 sucked. In going through some of my more recent archives, there is a dark undertone to everything I've said. Grief. Death. Loss. Those three things have kind of been the underpinning of the past several months. For the second excerpt, we're continuing on that same theme (whoa - could this... maybe... possibly... be, like... continuity? *gasp*).

Welcome to Bizzaro World. Welcome to Grief.

Yesterday, I wore my dress as a shirt.
Yesterday, I wore my necklace as a bracelet.
Yesterday, I ate a sub for lunch and had coffee for breakfast.
Yesterday, I did my hair before I got dressed.

I woke up, and tripped head long into Bizarro World. For its regular inhabitants, the bizarre is normal; the normal - bizarre. It's normal to eat hot ice cream, and take a bath in dirt. Even their speech patterns are different. To an outsider, it sounds a lot like they're saying - "Sucks to be here, it does!" Which translated roughly into English means , "This is a wonderful place to live!". In Bizarro World, everything opposite; backwards. Wrong is right, good is bad, happy is sad. It's the world as the world shouldn't not not be.... but is.

Grief is a lot like that. Everything that SHOULD be right with the world - isn't. It isn't normal for women to die young and leave their babies behind. It isn't normal to lose a best friend, or for your parents' marriage to fall apart. It isn't normal that a widow should be left alone with no one to care for. Death. To the outside world, NOTHING about this seems normal or right. But to us who have known and have believed and were persuaded - we're well-versed in this thing called grief. We know that nothing TRULY lives until first it dies. It sounds poetic. It sounds... right."

© Sara Parkes - 6/21/07

Day 1:21

The book won't really be a devotional, but sometimes it kind of accidentally happens that way. I have found on a pretty consistent basis that when I share the absurdities of my life, God makes sense out of the convoluted situation in such a way that typically there is SOME kind of spiritual or life application that springs up out of no-stinkin-where.

 

On Suffering...

"In the narrowly constructed hallows of my psyche - Suffering is the name of my book-not a subcategory-having come face to face with a grief too heavy to bear. When you're waist-deep in mire, inching along toward perceived normalcy, it requires all the strength you can muster. Do we really believe God to be who He says He is? Do I really believe God to be who He says He is? I've heard it said: "Trust is a beautiful act of worship." That it is.

"Then Job arose and tore his robe and shaved his head and fell on the ground and worshiped. And he said, 'Naked I came from my mother's womb, and naked shall I return. The Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord.' In all this Job did not sin or charge God with wrong." Job 1:20-22 

Our lives here on earth are just.... breaths in the wind. It's a very flawed glimpse of a holy eternity, and we get so caught up in the subcategories that we often forget our books are being penned by a Sovereign Hand."

© Sara Parkes - 6/22/07

Well, crap.

This weekend I have tripped into some kind of bizzarro alternate universe filled with opposites, margaritas, and conundrums. Yesterday was March 1st. But time literally stood still, and in MY mind I had convinced myself that March 1st was like..... next week. SURE. I have ALL the time in the world. Which means.... my rent was late, and I failed to do the first day in the 21 Day Challenge.

Welcome to my brain. 'Pull up a pile of clothes and sit down.' (1,000 extra  points if you can tell me what movie that's from...) SO - I'll be RETRO posting this as yesterday's (3/1/08), and will have another post for TODAY (3/2/08). That way I can keep things straight. Yo.

So, what will I be doing for these 21 days? 21 Days of going through past and recent blog archives to see if i can make a book that no one will publish and only my friends and family will buy. You know - the pity buys. And I probably won't even get those.  I hear a lot of, "Dude. You should write a book." But when it comes to actual interest in BUYING my book - I'm very skeptical. In spite of that, I WOULD write a book anyway - it's just I have several things that get in the way:

1. Lack of continuity. I do best with shorter "article" type writings. I can't wrap my brain around how I could possibly weave together a novel with the same characters, same events. Chapters? Eeep. It scares me. I know that it CAN be done, but the thought of it has overwhelmed me to the point of doing nothing. Then I remembered these little books that I picked up - written by Laurie Notaro. Talk about lack of continuity. She writes kind of the way I blog, and it made me realize - Hmmmm. Maybe I could do that, too.
2. Over-saturated market. Walk into any Barnes & Noble and the sheer VOLUME of books available is simply overwhelming. It's always seemed kind of presumptuous of me to think that any thing I have to say could be important enough to publish. I've been waiting for that one STAND OUT idea that would make even the teensiest ripple in that over-populated ocean. Sooooooo - I actually CAN self-publish and self-promote. At least for now. I'm not opposed to that. AT. ALL. *shrugs* Make it available on Lulu. Even if it's only a kick-back of a few dollars, it would be worth it just to get my name out there.
3. Laziness. I've grown accustomed to writing at my own pace, my own subject matter, whenever-the-hell I feel like it. My job, while it is something I enjoy and is highly gratifying, is emotionally draining. At the end of the business day, I just feel like I have nothing more to give. Truthfully, it's when I'm at the end of my SELF that those lucid dude-maybe-I-should-blog-this moments actually occur! It's just a matter of making myself do it. So, I will.
4. I'm petrified. Not so much of failure, honestly. My life is a shriveled house plant of under-watered failure, and I've grown fond of its face. It's where I'm most comfortable. What REALLY scares me is that I might actually succeed. Be published. Book tours. Oh I'm scared. REALLY scared. It's one thing to put myself out there ... you know, HERE. But an entirely different thing to consider "it" being out there for the world at large. The truth is, I know God gives dying-grace to the dying, and He gives successful-author-grace to the successful author. In other words - let's cross that bridge when we get there, shall we?
5. I'm unoriginal and mediocre. Let's be honest here. Sometimes I have an interesting take on things, but there really is nothing new under the sun. Coupled with the fact that my writing? Is really .... meh. So-So. Friends and family probably beg to differ, but that's only because I pay them to think so. There are TONS of people out there who FAR exceed my skills, and aren't nearly as adept at butchering the English language as I am. I'm constantly putting myself in my rightful place, lest said butt get too big for said britches. But you know... there are plenty of unoriginal and mediocre authors who are very successful in the marketplace. (*coughnicholassparkscough*) Why NOT me?

So. How is this thing supposed to work? Well... for the next 21 Days, I'm committing to compile my existing writings into small-book form. Like maybe 10-12 chapters - 120ish pages. I've been blogging for YEARS. Surely, I can come up with at least that much material. I'll be posting excerpts from my findings and posting them here, as well as printing out the material and filing into really cool brown and blue polka-dotted folders.

*nods*

Here we go..... hang on to your butts.