Quotable Friday, Vol. 9

“ Nowadays you can go anywhere in the world in a few hours, and nothing is fabulous anymore.”

–Roald Dahl

Roald, as much as I love you, I highly disagree.  We can be anywhere in a few hours…but it is still fabulous. 

Dahl was one of my favorite authors as a child.  I still love reading his two autobiographies, Boy and Going Solo.  I’m pretty sure the above quote is from Going Solo.  In the 1930′s, immediately after Dahl finished school in England, he took a boat to East Africa where he worked for the Shell Oil company.  Going Solo is about these adventures, and the way he tells the story is simply marvelous.  I think he is one of the great influences on my passion for traveling.  You should read it. 

Emotional Animals

 

Today at lunchtime my coworkers and I had a debate on the controversial topic: “Do animals have emotions?”  I say no.  “But Joy, aren’t you a self-described animal lover?” you may ask.  Well, yes, yes I am.  And as much as I’d like to believe animals have emotions, I just can’t. 

Well, Well, Well: It’s Beef Wellington!

My family is a family of researchers (read: nerdy but smart).  So when my sisters began watching the show Hell’s Kitchen, one from her house in Troy, New York and the other from her apartment in Seal Beach, California, they both found themselves curious about the beef Wellington dish often featured on the show.  So, naturally, they looked it up on Wikipedia and Googled it to find nearby restaurants that served beef Wellington.  This is when having a computer engineer stepdad with an alter-ego as gourmet chef comes in handy.  When Rachel (the New York sister) was visiting last week, she requested beef Wellington for our big family dinner.  And she got it alright, along with what could be dubbed as a “Feast of Bread and Starch.”  Oh, and besides being nerdy researchers, we are also mildly obsessed with poodles, which somehow managed to work its way into the evening…Rachel was pretty excited.

Blogroll Exposed!

All right, this is totally a cheap cop-out post, but I bet you’d rather read about this than my thoughts on the book I finished this weekend…ahem, Girls in Pants: The Third Summer of the Sisterhood.  Anyway, this is more of a maintenance post.  Have you guys ever noticed that little list to the right of my main posts, called the “Blogroll”?  Maybe you even wondered what it is.  Simply put, those are my favorite blogs and I want to give you easy access to them if you ever find yourself in a substitute teaching job with endless hours of Internet time on your hands (but no Myspace or Facebook).  On my list, I have:

Quotable Friday, Vol. 8

“That’s what you get someone who has everything. You share their joy, their passion. I really believe it’s like that with God. When our hearts and minds are unabashedly amazed by Him, and we let go in unfettered praise, God gets paid. Too many people spend their time, cocksure, toiling over paying God back with their perfect lives, keeping the list, and in doing so they shut their eyes to the beauty and place and life that God has set us down into.”

–Brian Orme, from the article “How God Gets Paid”

I really loved this article.  It was wordy and took a long time to say what it was going to say, but it was worth it just to read the above quote and to grasp what the author was trying to say.  It definitely speaks to my perfectionist side, the same one that was raised to believe you should never be in debt.  And that’s what I am…in debt to God not only for His forgiveness and salvation, but for the absurd amount of love He pours all over my life like molten gold, making everything precious and glistening.  I like that I can still bring something to God even when I don’t have my ish together…just whispering to Him that I love the sunset He painted will bring a smile to His face. 

Take Me to the Movies! Or Sushi.

 

Hey, I totally love being single but sometimes I miss how when you’re part of a couple, you go to the movies ALL the time.  When I’m flying solo, I just don’t get to the theater.  I’m not one of those brave souls who can go to the movies alone, and I never really want to go with friends because I feel like I’m wasting quality time with them.  But a boyfriend?  Sheesh, you’re always talking and spending time together, so sometimes it’s nice to sit in the dark and drink a Diet Coke and then have something to talk about afterward.

There’s No Place Like Oz

 

Guess what?  I’m going to Australia!  Newcastle, to be exact.

Quotable Friday, Vol. 7

 

Elisabeth Elliot on the topic of feminism vs. femininity:

“And here I must make a confession. Almost everything that constitutes an issue in modern American life I view from the vantage point of ‘peasants’ in a Stone-Age culture where I once lived. I’m always asking myself, ‘What would those people make of all this? Where would I begin to try to explain it to them?’ This exotic perspective does, in a way, throw a clearer light on the basics that helps me assess the issues.  [...] I lived with jungle Indians of South America who expressed their masculinity and femininity in a variety of ways, never pretended that the differences were negligible, and had no word for role. The femininity of woman was a deep-rooted consciousness of what she was made for.   Their power did not lie in being equal with men but in being women.”

Guilty Pleasures

• Greek

 I’m pretty embarrassed to admit that I like this show, but I totally do.  It’s even more embarrassing that it’s made for the ABC Family channel.  But it’s so lighthearted and fun, and has just the right combination of ingredients like bad acting, silly plotlines, hit-and-miss wardrobes, good-looking cast members, and the occasional cleverly-written line to have me adding ”Greek” to my list of addictions, right up there with Golden Spoon frozen yogurt and Vallarta tortilla chips.  My favorite character on the show has to be Cappie, president of the Kappa Tau fraternity.  He’s a total slacker, and not off-the-charts cute, but totally charming.  I’m telling you boys, charm will give you two points on the ten-point scale.   Little known fact: Casey, the show’s main character, is Frasier star Kelsey Grammer’s daughter.  Watch the show and let me know what you think!

Can Joy Produce Joy?

Yesterday I was reading in 1 Samuel; the part when the Israelites were demanding a king.  Up till that time, God had been their king, occasionally appointing “judges” or leaders to guide the people out of a particular crisis.  But they wanted to be like all the other countries, felt like God was holding out on them, and cried out to Samuel for a king.  Then God told a distressed Samuel, “[...] they have not rejected you, but they have rejected me from being king over them” (8:7). 

 It made me think of how God might feel when his people reject his plan for them.  Where have I been rejecting God as king in my life?  So many times I think I can figure things out better than Him, and that is so very, very foolish.  Like our associate pastor said at Fusion on Sunday, “There’s no life to be found in doing things your way.”

Oswald Chambers talks about the “complete and utter joy” we can produce in the heart of Jesus by “remaining absolutely confident in Him” and His way for us.  Jesus pours joy into my life every day like the sun pours light into my room every morning.  I want to give some of that back to Him…to live up to my namesake.  Chambers says that “[sanctification] will be expressed in our lives as a peaceful resting in God, which means a total oneness with Him.  And this oneness will make us [...] a profound joy to Him.” 

I want that peaceful rest, I want to be one with Him, and I want to bring Him joy.