We have a Little Surprise Coming in May!

Yep, that's right folks. A little one will soon join our family. Just thought I should should share our excitement with you!

Unabashed Science Fiction

During some seasons in my life, I am too busy to read fiction. The spring has me pouring over gardening books, attempting to learn a little more about companion planting, extending the (short) prairie summer, or new varieties of my favorite veggies. The fall has me cleaning, canning and storing for winter. But there comes a day when the busy-ness slows and I remember I own fuzzy slippers and mittens. The fall turns to winter, the day turns to evening.

Last winter I read lots of wonderful books - My Name is Asher Lev, Things Fall Apart, The Cellist of Sarajevo, and The Birth House, to name a few. Even this summer, while the plants were doing the hard work of growing, I got in a few new ones - particularly The Forgotten Garden, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and Organic Manifesto. But this fall, I'm excited to announce, it looks like I'm settling down with some long lost science fiction.

I read C.S. Lewis' Out of the Silent Planet a week ago when I was visiting my parents and loved how easy it was to enter into Lewis' world of Malacandra. It was like jumping into a century old travel narrative, detailing flora and fauna I had yet to imagine. I loved it. And I loved that it was accessible and fun. Yesterday I went to pick up the second installment of Lewis' Cosmic Trilogy - Perelandra:

Voyage to Venus. I just couldn't help myself.

I know (youth) science fiction isn't pretentious or cool. I will never be able to flaunt my recent book interest as others do with Dostoevsky or Heidegger. However, I am still confident that books are meant to be read and enjoyed rather than flaunted anyway.

While I was at our beautiful public library picking up Perelandra, I noticed Ursula

K. Le Guin had since released another novel in her Earthsea series. My dear friend Paige sent

me one of her novels (The Tombs of Atuan) a few years back after reading it for a Children's Literature Class. It's a strange novel (unlike anything I read as a child), but fascinating. Within a month of so, I had read the other three novels in the series.

The newest Earthseas novel was just waiting for me. I picked up The Other Wind, contemplated picking up another, more sophisticated, book before heading to the counter, but resisted. There is an entire wall of nerdy science fiction and fantasy novels at the library. I just had two of them, right? Nerdy or not, I was

taking them home.

What books have you been secretly enjoying this fall?

Staying in for Book Club

This morning I stumbled across the David Suzuki Foundation's Book Club. Put forth by their Community Leadership department, this simple resource provides internet-based reading guides. I found is easy, accessible and helpful. I thought you might like it, too.

This is how the website describes the idea:

Books – those fertile storehouses of ideas – can inspire conversation and debate. They can also move people to action that can change the world. That's why the David Suzuki Foundation has its very own book club, and you can be a part of it – on your own, with a friend, or in a group.

I don't necessarily need to be part of a "club" to read the books, right? I'll think of it as an annotated Amazon list. I can read with the discussion questions in mind, get updated emails about new, thoughtful books out there, and read at my leisure.

It is a little daunting, the idea of reading "to change the world." This is typical David Suzuki foundation language, isn't it? It's not worth doing unless the entire world will be changed. It's noble, don't get me wrong. It's just an exhausting pursuit. Instead, I will read to change my ideas, be more informed and subsequently a more responsible community member. If the world changes, that will be an unexpected bonus.

The first book? Thomas L. Friedman's Hot, Flat and Crowded: Why we need a Green Revolution and how it can renew America. I'm looking forward to it.

Signs of Spring: A Softening

Winter is a weighty burden. The short days, the dry air and the chill compound and press down as we wait. And we wait. We wait until we can wait no longer. And then, quite suddenly, the morning air smells of moist earth and the sparrows resurrect. The cold is being pushed back and, in its place, the warm breezes of Spring are settling in. All of creation lets out a sigh of relief. We almost didn't make it this time.

With Spring comes a softening - and not only within the landscape. As neighbours visit over fences and children stomp in puddles, a spirit of leisure descends. We take the time to walk to the store rather than drive. We choose to read outside, despite the barely-above-freezing temperature. Spring on the horizon. May we be bolstered by this hope growing around us.

The Discipline of Thinking

This may sound strange, but lately I've been having trouble thinking. No, not the kind of thinking that analyzes the last episode of LOST or decides what to make for dinner. I find myself mentally stumbling when I'm forced to think about the ideas that are the undercurrent of our whole lives - ethics, theology, philosophy.

This is what I've spent the that last five years doing, learning to think and, in response, act. I've read and discussed, read and discussed, and then lain awake at night thinking about what has been discussed. I was trained to be a careful student of life, noticing threads of intertextuality throughout the scriptures that necessarily informed the arenas in literature and history too. Books were no longer merely text on page, but rose into the three dimensional displaying a spectrum of color. Books lived and demanded to be interacted with.

Daily I was reading. Weekly I was writing. Monthly I was leading seminars. I was forced to be disciplined thinker and it made college, and life, so very rich.

However now, I don't have the same pressure to thoughtfully think about key issues. Conversations about the warrants of Liberation Theology, Aristotle's Nichomachean Ethics or Colonialism and modern Mission don't come up in the grocery line, or even over dinner. The days come and fade, and this discipline of thinking has started to fade as well.

I'm not quite sure what to do. I don't want to be that over - critical, slightly annoying college student who has something to say about everything (for I was/ have been that person for far too long), I want to be realistic about my stage of life. Is there a way to continue developing this skill, even if there is no class to join or peers to debate with? Is there hope for thinking after college?

To be an Auntie

When I was back on the Island for the Christmas holiday, I got to make the wonderful acquaintance of my new baby niece. She was born hours before I boarded a plane back to the prairie and I can't wait until July when Jordan and I make the long drive to visit again. As I wait patiently until then, I must be satisfied with pictures and little chats detailing all the cute things that my new niece does.

In other words, I am a very excited Auntie! I can't wait to tell her fairy stories, bake cookies with her, or go on adventures together. What could be a better job then to be an Auntie?

February: The thick of things

I am a horrible blogger.

I do, however, like the option of writing something, sometime, if I wanted to. So my blog still stands after months of silence.

It is the beginning of February on the cold Prairie. It seems that there has been months of silence here too. The quiet, slow, days seem void and my eyes are dulled. In past Winters, the hope of Spring has been a helpful nudge on days (and months) like these, but I feel caught in a whiteout with no apparent way forward.

Since graduating last April, life has taken a turn. School is the only thing I've ever really known, but it is over, and it can't be changed. Many of the friends I "went to college with" have gone, one by one. Even the school I attended has changed, with new students and professors. Nothing is as I knew it. So I am forced to be left behind or be changed myself.

I feel in the thick of things, this February. I'm waiting, and I've been waiting, but I don't know what for. This silence was liberating at first, but now it feels numbing. Waiting needs expectancy yet I feel like perhaps I have lost my original purpose.

I know I need to "wait for rain" as Kathleen Norris would say. I know there are signs of life all around me. And I know that the quiet and solitude are ways to kindle a great fire inside. But for today, I just feel a little lost in the fog of my prairie life.