Her name was Jan. She sang in an a capella band, with radical feminist roots, which I didn’t even understand. She taught me about money, making a living wage, listening to myself, and the scourge of waitresses. She was smart, funny, fiercely protective and used to make me laugh.

Most of all, she was kind. Thank you, Jan. I needed you and you were there.

I’d like to tell her that, but I don’t know where to find her. She worked with me in a sports bar in Hillsboro Village, back in the day. She has a pretty common name, so finding her in the white pages and on facebook seems to elude me.

If you follow my twitter feed (@roguereverend) you know that I am totally and completely in love with Evernote. Forever and ever, Amen.

Some of you have asked how I use it. Let me see if I can explain. Also, I got these ideas from someone else, and try as I might, I can’t find his original post. I am almost positive that it was a guy named John Mayson, but the links to his blog aren’t working now. I’ve modified a little bit, but not much.

First, you should know that I love GTD (Getting Things Done), but don’t always like David Allen’s categories. But I know that I want an easy way to see my to-do list in my specific contexts, and I want to be able to track information and notes easily.

So I decided to go with only 1 notebook in Evernote. Radical, but true. I started with a bunch of notebooks, but found the storage system very unwieldy. So I switched to tags. I tag everything with only one tag, and I set my tags up to be hierarchical for easier searches.

Let me see if I can do a screen shot:

Notice on the left that there are tags. Lots of them. They are:

0-*Broader Focus*

0-Inbox

0-Random Thoughts

1-Next Action

1-Tickler File

1-To Read

1-Waiting For

2-Lists

2-Richmond Mennonite Fellowship

2-Someday/Maybe

3-Reference/Support

4-Archive

Then there are sub-tags. These are filed under 1-Next Action

Next Action at Anywhere

Next Action at Calendar

Next Action at Car

Next Action at Church

There are also date tags, which are filed under 1-Tickler File. They are specifically made for longer term follow-ups. If i know I need to check on my overdue books in March, I can put that there… Which reminds me. Overdue books in March. Making a note.

2012-01 (January) and so on.

Under the tag 3-Reference/Support I have an alphabet tag (A-Z) and under the correct alphabet, I may have a topic tag, such as Lifehacker.

And under the Richmond Mennonite Fellowship tag I have a sub-tag for each of my church members. Important dates and notes will go in their file. I’m just trying this out, and I don’t know how well it would work if you were in a congregation of more than 35 people, but so far, so good.

Every post gets a tag. If I need to look at it immediately, or if I just emailed it to my Evernote account (you can do this! Did you know that?) it goes to 1-Inbox.

So here’s a screenshot of a note (which, by the way, I made by clicking my Evernote Elephant on the right corner of my MacBook and telling it “Clip Full Screen to Evernote,” then copied it to my desktop).

Please notice that the note has 1) a title, 2) a tag, and 3) a url. By the way, that was a post that I cut and pasted into Evernote from Chrome. And it’s a particularly good post from Jennifer Lutwieler about marketing.

One thing it took me forever to figure out: To delete tags and folders, log on to the Evernote website and do it there (at least on a Mac). Okay, enough of the Evernote primer for now. Be sure to ask me questions if  you want more information!

One night, at a table of 15, a *ahem* gentleman whistled for me. I walked over and asked, “What can I do for you?” He said, “I’d like another pitcher.” I walked to the bar manager and told him about the man whistling for me. My manager offered to kick the man out.

“I’d rather handle it,” I said.

I took the pitcher of beer, slammed it down on the table, and said, “Sir, my name is Lia, and I respond a hell-u-va lot better when you call me my name or Ma’am than I do when you whistle at me.”

He looked apologetic. Then, of course, he paid the tab for the table of 15. And left me a 30% tip.

Still, I think that’s why I don’t like sports.

In spite of this, I watched the Ravens in their bid for the Super Bowl last night. I’m sad that they got beat.

As I sit in a coffee shop reading Dr. King’s Letter from a Birmingham Jail, I am touched (as I am every year) by the way Dr. King turned a phrase, by the visual images in my head, and by the depth and breadth of this call to action.

My favorite word from the piece this year is “somebodyness.” Dr. King writes:

One is a force of complacency made up of Negroes who, as a result of long years of oppression, have been so completely drained of self-respect and a sense of “somebodyness” that they have adjusted to segregation, and, on the other hand, of a few Negroes in the middle class who, because of a degree of academic and economic security and because at points they profit by segregation, have unconsciously become insensitive to the problems of the masses.

And my prayer for today goes like this:

For every time I have forgotten my own “somebodyness,” Loving God, thank you for reminding me that I am somebody. You sent someone or something to remind me of it, and I am grateful.

For every time I have robbed someone of their “somebodyness,” Forgiving God, I ask for your grace and forgiveness. I hope that someone has reminded that somebody of their “somebodyness.”

And may I, Gracious God, be granted the opportunity to recognize and affirm someone’s “somebodyness” today and everyday. Open me the eyes those opportunities and the courage to speak for another’s “somebodyness.”

 

 

I’m sitting in a coffee shop. The best one in Richmond. And there’s a woman sitting close by, with one of those voices that just carries. I can tell you all about her conversation. CSAs, fresh peas, getting a chicken from the farm…It’s one those new subtleties of class: I can afford to buy grass fed beef, eat only food raised organically, and am willing to drive all over town for the freshest, greenest seafood. It’s not that I mind listening to her be superior about the way she eats, it’s just that I can’t hear the thoughts in my own head because she’s louder.

It made me think about the fact that I usually think ugly thoughts about the people sitting around me, wherever I am. The lady next to me on the plane. The car next to mine. The cart behind me in line at Target. Do you do this?

I’d like to stop. I’d like to be nicer.

I watched the first episode of Enlightened last night. Laura Dern plays Amy, a corporate up-and-comer who makes some very bad choices (affair with married coworker, among them), has a breakdown, and goes for treatment in Hawaii. She comes back, enlightened, with a message from God, that everything is a gift, even the bad stuff.

I didn’t love the show, but I love the concept. Everything is a gift to us, even the bad stuff. The nutty lady who talks too loud and showoffy about her superior food choices? A gift. The fact that I can’t hear my own thoughts? Also a gift. And my ability to snark? You guessed it. A gift.

When I began making progress in running, I personified my negative voice (her name is Nancy) and each run I make I say, “Nancy, you are welcome to come on this run with me, but you are not invited to speak.”

And now, from my newest read, Born to Run:A Hidden Tribe, Super Athletes and the Greatest Race the World Has Never Seen, I just figured out to personify my exhaustion. Still working on a name for her, but she is the one responsible for the lead boots I wear sometimes, and for the voice that says, whiningly, “I’m just too tiiiirrrrrrred.” Dear exhaustion: shut up.

Go, Lia. Go, Lia. Go!

Whut?

We wrote 3. Then I was stumped. Apparently, I’m really bad at writing affirmations. Even when I would write one, she’d say, “Hmmm. That’s good. But we can make it better.”

Towards the end of the exercise, I turned to my friend and said, “You know, I don’t believe any of these.” She replied, “The point of affirmations isn’t to believe them. It’s to change your thinking from where you are.”

I can affirm that.

They yelled things like, “What are you running from?” and “What are you afraid of?” My favorite, though, was, “You can’t run from your problems!” This one tripped me up so much (literally) that I fell right there on the bricks.

This morning I’ve been thinking about a hate letter I received from an anti-LGBTQ Christian. He wrote, “You put your soul in danger of eternal damnation for welcoming unrepentant homosexuals into God’s house. You blaspheme the Name of God.”

Then I read about the Alabama immigration law and its effect on churches. This community of believers are complacent, at best, about the loss of their Christian brothers and sisters who are in the United States illegally. The church supports the new immigration law, and seems to only be worried about their own liability. It’s a sort of “we’re glad to have you in our church as long as you don’t get us in trouble” take on Christianity.

Compassion, hell. It seems that everybody has to have somebody to hate.

My prayer for the morning has been:

Loving and compassionate God, I know there is indifference in my heart, please replace it with compassion. I know there is prejudice in my being, please root it out. I know there is cruelty, please heal me so that I may love others better. Amen.

But even on the days where it seems like there is no grace, I am convinced that there is. You still have God. You still have family and friends and loved ones. It’s just harder to remember…

Today, I hope for the grace to remember.

That’s one of those questions that pastors get asked a lot. And I have my theories about it, but I really don’t have any answers. But if pressed, I’ll probably say something like, “Well, it’s a time that we do tend to get sick more, because we’re inside so much, and there are cold and flu bugs going around.”

So this week I tried this one: “Well, we just have all these expectations that things are going to go right during Christmas, but really, it’s just another time. We’re only disappointed because of our expectations.”

That seemed to resonate.

Mary, in the Magnificat, gives us a good example of how to manage out expectations.

First, notice that she faces the things that are happening to her with a lot of grace. I mean, come on! Giving birth in a manger? Having God’s baby? Really. If I found out that I was having God’s baby, I wouldn’t be particularly happy. I’m not even sure that I would say yes.

Second, there is a sense of humility about Mary’s response, “for God has been mindful of the humble state of his servant.” Try to picture her as a whole person, not just the mother of Jesus, and wonder, do you know anyone who is this humble? Perhaps this humility is not a character trait, but is rather a response to God’s choosing her.

Third, notice that Mary is grateful for what she has. “My soul glorifies the Lord and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior.”

Fourth, she focuses not just on her own well-being, but on the well-being of those around her. “He has brought down rulers from their thrones but has lifted up the humble. He has filled the hungry with good things but has sent the rich away empty.”

Yes, Mary expects great things. But they include hardship. Having the Christ in Christmas doesn’t ensure that anything is going to go great. But it does ensure that God is going to be in it—as God always is—prodding us on to be our best, to love others, to serve others. And reminding us, over and over of God’s great love for us.

It’s easy to be the petulant children, angry about whatever is ruining our Christmas. But lets remember Mary, whose unplanned pregnancy, fear of Herod, judgment from others, near loss of her spouse, all these things could have caused her to curse, rather than praise. They could have caused her to complain, rather than celebrate. They could have cause her to cry, rather than be grateful.