Monday Mixtape: [hopes-for-2011 edition]

Every Advent I try to slow down in the cyber world.  I try to slow down in the real world, too, but that's a harder goal, altogether.  By the time January comes, I seem to forget why I liked blogging in the first place.  

And then, long about January 4 or January 10, I decide I don't care and begin posting again.  Today -- in the mix tape format --  I post my list of hopes for personal renewal in 2011.  I hope you'll participate by sharing your own list; use the comment box, share a link, send a carrier pigeon -- any little thing will do. 

Here we go....

the prelude

track 1: home

(source: Molly Irwin)

1.  drink more tea, preferably out of these dishes in a newly painted kitchen

track 2:  music

The Long Surrender by Over the Rhine

I. Can't. Stop. Listening!

2.  Listen to more real albums -- all the way through each track -- in a stereo, preferably with the volume way up and nothing else to do.

track 3: poetry

Jagged With Love by Susanna Childress

3.  read poetry out loud, preferably with someone else listening (even the dog)

4.  read more books instead of more facebook, preferably starting with all the books toppling out of my nightstand [see Shelfari widget over there on the sidebar -- such a marvelous Christmas bounty!]

track 5: writing

The Glen Workshop, 2011

5.  take writing class through the Glen Online, preferably begin to write stuff about which I earnestly care and believe:

• art in the church and the spiritual discipline of art-making

• my story of woundedness as a pastor's daughter and as a sexually-abused child

• my story as a woman fighting to take in deeply all the means of grace - including the hilarity of the world around me (like the cute little old woman with dangly earrings talking her stumbling husband down the stairs after a church potluck yesterday and my sister and I trying to figure out if we should help him out and how my sister whispered to me and I whispered back like I was her mother because I was so nervous that little old man was going to fall down those stairs)

track 6: all the other stuff

6.  get my nose re-pierced 

7.  lose weight, buy a new dress, and generally look hot at my sister's wedding in July

8.  figure out how to get money and time to attend every single conference and retreat I'd like to attend in 2011.

9.  love and adore and serve my husband while he tries to figure out what he's supposed to be when he grows up.

10. listen to my two sons' new EP over and over and over again, visit my 17-year-old in Washington, D.C. while he serves in the House of Representatives as often as possible, read or watch Le Mis immediately so I can totally dig my daughter's role in the school production in February, pray about homeschooling my 13-year-old daughter next year.

11. give myself to rousing a sleeping worship liturgy at Union Center Christian Church, by loving, shepherding, and serving its community of saints.

postlude

Forgive Thy Brother by Scott Erickson

12.  in all things -- job, ministry, relationships, parenting, personal ambitions, recreation, prayer, personal disciplines....

.

..be motivated by love