NEDA!!

I’m breaking my blog silence…cry for Neda.

And what do you think of France calling the burkas women wear as a religious prison?

Think about how you defend the rights of all humans. Think about it today. “Beyond issues of equality and freedom, the most straightforward argument you put forth is that to waste the potential of half a population, any population, is horribly lacking in foresight.” When we look the other way, we strand 1/2 the population and cut out half of our strength.

20+ years ago unrest in Iran meant old dodgy men in cleric cloaks protesting who knows what. Today, will we hear the cries of the WOMEN! The young strong educated women? Will Neda’s death disappear just as Tianamen Square? “…but people always think that an increase in access to the labor market or to political power for women will damage men.” Jill Ker Conway

Round ball returns II

So, there I was on the basketball floor coaxing and coaching these cute girls and I felt a HUGE moment of deja vous wash over me.  I taught the girls to pound the ball and pass it in bounds…count 3 seconds in the lane…only to single dribble. POOF. A one hour practice was GONE. Poof. Gone. Oh, boy, are we ready for a game? Nope. But, the schedule begins this saturday.

Meantime, I took the big risk that no one else was taking: I challenged the 1st & 2nd grade BOYS to a scrimmage so the girls could get a little competition on the floor. Next thing you know, we had a huge audience of coaches and parents watching the boys v girls. This makes me very very happy.

Now, I was flying pretty high after practice (and I heard my assistant coach also say we were going to ROCK this season), and I also have another parent who will help us with more coaching. I’m feeling good. Then I start to chat with this other coach on my way out of the gym. I had chatted with him and his son the day before. Son is on the K-5 team. But this day, I saw him (and his Michigan hat) with a daughter…she’s tall and got game, and and…um she’s going to play against us this weekend. Now, I’m not so sure of myself with whether we have totally prepared our team for the first game. Oh bother.

Anyway, keep us in mind this weekend as we play for bragging rights in the girls system of basketball!!!

yeah, that’s a smile you see on my face!

Round ball returns

One of the best things to happen to me in the new ministry location is the option to join in ministry for 10 weeks with others through the medium of basketball. That’s right. You heard it.

Saturday morning I attended a coaches meeting, joining with over 50 coaches who will coach boys and girls from K-5th grade. This is one of the most comfortable ministry feelings I have ever had. I was one of 3 women coaching, but we were there and proud.

I met the 1st & 2nd grade girls from my team and their families today. I can tell we are going to have a great time learning and growing together. So, I want to hear you cheer just a bit for our team: The Lady Falcons!!! woooop wooooooop woooooooooooop!!!

So, say a prayer and give us a cheer as we Love God, Love Others and Do it with all our strength:

• Mia B
• Mia G
• Jade
• Lizzy
• Elizabeth
• Leah
• Carly

I’m so excited! 10 weeks of rocking the court for Jesus. SWISH!

My friend spoke at Wheaton College

So, here’s a link to my friend speaking at Wheaton.

http://adam.wheaton.edu/wetn-mp3/chap08-09/khang081013.mp3

If you want to hear it, go to this link. If you’d rather have it in a different format, you can search for their chapel archives for Khang.

On face value, you’ll probably think, “oh, that’s nice,” and mosey on by without a by your leave. HOWEVER, this is the SEX TALK! So, now that you’re interested, you can hear how she does a sex talk at a conservative Christian college.

If you like what you hear, she has a blog site, too–her link is in my blog roll at “More Than Serving Tea.” I must say that it’s a crying shame that she doesn’t post her children’s photos there. Those kids are just precious.

Oh, and, as for me, that was the FIRST thing I loaded on my brand new iPod Nano! I just got it for Christmas from my son and daughter-in-law.

Here it is! How cute is that color!!

So there I was, on my way home in my car, listening to a SEX TALK on my new iPod Nano. Sigh. Modern Milly aren’t I!!!

New Topper

Hi all,

Truly, I will update the site more completely soon. However, you can see from the title at the top and image which license plate that the DMV is going to put into the mail for me.

So, for the next few months I will be varying the graphic at the top to reflect all the Wrigley things in my life…the first image being related to the type of gum my Grannie used to hand me during church. It was always a little surprise to assist us in making it through the church service (usually the sermon).

Welcome to Wrigley North!

There will be some fun going on here this next year…I’ll do the clean up later on in the week. And we are off and running!

  :-D 

Homecoming…

Hi, just a random update…I’ll tidy up the blog site next week.

• Portfolio is done. Finished. Done.
• Going to my high schools 50th anniversary tonight with my sister and friends. Maybe I’ll have a taffy apple?? (will I have stuff stuck in my teeth then?)
• Going to the Empty Bowl Project tomorrow morning. I’ve always wanted to go to one of these.

That’s it! Friends will visit us on Sunday. It’s beautiful autumn weather. Life is good.

By the way: I’m done with my master’s degree finally! WOOOOOOOOOOO!

More later.

Accelerate your soul!

I had a driving day today to get to work. I was looking around in a tense car-jockey moment and saw this on the side of a truck:  Dunlop: Accelerate Your Soul!

I wondered what that means to us mortals. Put the peddle down? Down shift and take off?! Fuel injected soul? Don’t dottle! Soul, move ahead now, and hang on for your life! I kind of felt adrenalized by the logo! A rush of dare-devil fun that comes all the way from your soul. Not just menial stuff.

What DOES accelerate my soul, I wondered? What takes it into flight or soaring past the everyday? Like the moment on a flight when the airplane is up to speed and is about to take off! THAT is accelerated and a nanosecond of a moment between here and heaven. My faith should be accelerated and meeting God in that nanosecond moment that catches your breath and your whole being. Exciting, rediculously eye opening, g-force hammered down SOUL! Maybe that is how it should be described to others, rather than tongue in cheek, or slightly apologetically.

Does your faith need a new gear?

Shift it into a new gear and just think about the adrenaline. The boost. The journey and the landscape will most certainly change. And the wind whipping around your hair will bring new wisps of change. Refreshment? Rest? Adventure!

dealing with the worst blow

In the crazy mixed up and wacky summer we’ve had, we have also had to deal with a harsh blow to our family. Our daughter-in-law’s father died after an only 4 month struggle with melanoma. It was one of the hardest things we have ever had to go through. We love our daughter-in-law, and we watched along the sidelines while she was crushed under this blow.

There were insightful moments and true times of care. People were generous. We received and helped her to receive. Of course, you never know how to go through this. It’s a new thing. It was change. It was sorrow beyond what we could bear.

She has been carrying this sorrow as best she can. I think she is doing quite a good job of dealing with it a bit at a time. She doesn’t give herself enough credit for how she has done incredibly well at working through things. She and her mom went to one grief support group meeting. One person dominated the whole thing. So that idea is out. I have had small tidbit moments of encouraging her to work through her grief as her own person…not just working on it with her mom. There is so much out there that says that young people given the right support can do very well with working through the stages and finding the healing that suits them well.

Last week she told me that she is going to read the wildly popular bestseller, “The Last Lecture.” I have been wanting to read that book, too, but had put it on the back burner until my classes were done. So, she bought two copies and we are going to read it together. This is new territory for us. First, I’ve never had a daughter, so I don’t ever dream of fashioning her into my own daughter. Second, we love her to bits, but I don’t often get my own time with her. Finally, this will be my first time to support someone so close up with love, understanding and life support with their crushing grief. I am looking forward to what God will do with our conversations.

So, in the spirit of going full out with authenticity, I will walk through reading the book for myself…and we are going to walk together for exercise and read this book for each other…to guide our discussion. I want to bring authentic faith into the discussion, too.  Going to take some faith steps in that whole area, because it won’t be easy and the theology answer man will not always be with us.

she has the books…so we will meet soon to discuss…

Love of Jesus fill us
Holy Spirit guide us
Will of the Father be done.

Are men qualified to be ordained?

Hi all, final papers and articles written for my current class have kept me from the writing trenches here on Rocky Road! But, in the meantime, if you didn’t see this on the *Jesus*Creed* site, link to it now. It’s a great argument against men being ordained!

http://eugenecho.wordpress.com/2008/04/26/10-reasons-why-men-should-not-be-ordained-for-ministry/

I’ll be back as soon as possible…Here’s what I have to finish this week:

• One article tonight on engaging the stakeholders, protagonists, supporters, antagonists, detractors…in supporting your program or ideas.
• Tomorrow night: I begin a 10-page paper on student-athletes and staying academically driven…
• THEN, a couple of reflections papers on “how my semester” went.

That’ll be it for this spring semester…summer session begins June 9…I need a vacation people!!!

Click on the article. I dig it!

Rocky Road

Perhaps I’ll rename my blog “Rocky Road.” It fits my life.

So, this is my diet this week: regular breakfast of oatmeal…lunch of salad and veggie burger and brown rice…then when working until 9 or 11 p.m….one night no dinner (one light beer later), one night oatmeal from my office drawer…one night we ordered chinese…

I closed out my extra hours last night by stopping the grocery on my way home. Spousy needed bananas for breakfast…and I picked up our favorite ice cream: Rocky Road. mmmmmmmmmmm. I gave myself a bit of permission for that. And it was good.

Working with multiple cultures–multinational for sure, but also multi-corporate and multi-software design cultures–has been new and challenging after so many years. It would be so easy to get pulled back into entrenched old school ways. But, today is the day we bring others forward with us. And, as they say, we are moving the cheese. By doing so, it challenges the social and power structures. No easy task with a multinational motley crew. How do I see Jesus in this? Good question…still looking for a way to redeem us both in the process.

So, with permission from my supervisors, I treated my “dream team” of Japanese men to lunch yesterday. I was exhausted with questions and explanations and translating over and over. But, we pressed on. Found one Japanese restaurant closed. Found a fusion of Japanese Thai. It was NICE! It turned out that there were tons of people representing many many cultures there…many Asians. They enjoyed seeing so many people from Asia. They noticed that everyone used chopsticks. It was a joy to them. We ordered a variety of things to taste. BEST: the crab rangoon was unbelievably good. We all loved it. It was a favorite and brought us all to one page. Then, I paid the bill. Of course, they were uncomfortable. But it was my choice to do it. I Insisted. And we returned to our office to continue the grind of the project with happy stomachs.

Updated 4/25 1 PM: Also, while we were enjoying this nice fushion restaurant…and it was NICE…I heard music playing somewhat in the background: Your Cheatin’ Heart.

I don’t know what today will bring…it’s coming on fast. And every Friday they have to report to their bosses about all their “progress.”  They need to show the numbers of pages per day, etc. In reality, the project is VERY slow in its initial phase and I don’t know how sad that makes their bosses. It will pick up over the next couple of weeks. Yet, we had a good shared time over a meal. We drank tea.

Meantime, after the huge blow up of a phone call on Wednesday night, the one where I was accosted by the men from Texas on the phone with myself and the men from Japan, we are now hearing rumblings of apologies and apologies. The layers of cross-cultural journey are very deep. By today, I am likening this journey of mine, while reluctant, as a cross between The Office, Lost in Translation and LOST!

For today, rest your chopsticks on the plate appropriately. Offer the olive branch to your cross-cultural neighbor and find a way to see Jesus when you look into their eyes.

From the Rocky Road…that IS my life. Sing with me “life is a highway!!!!” that song just makes you dance!