raquel allegra

I noticed this designer a couple of seasons ago, and I'm hooked on everything she does. I want to wear all of these clothes every single day.






I love the colors, the soft look of the fabric, its flow and statuesqueness. The clothes pictured here aren't her latest designs (although I love them too), but they just speak to me. Don't you love looking at them?

A burning thought for this evening:

Part of being truly classy is being able to get over it when you see people who aren't.

a musing

In the last decade, I have become conscious of the fact that people who lack imagination have an extra capacity for hurting my feelings.

I do not have words to fully explain this. If you have an imagination, you probably understand perfectly already. If you don't, I can't help you.

It must sound snobby, but I feel so sad for people who don't have one. It is not an I'm-better-than-you kind of feeling; it's an I'm-so-truly-sorry-you-have-to-live-that-way feeling. I want to reach out to people whose imaginations are dead, but their misunderstanding responses hurt me almost as much as thinking what their lives must be like.

God must have a perfect imagination. Even the most brilliant human imagination would be nothing compared with His. Perhaps that's why He never hurts me in that odd way. I know we cannot all be the same, but I think that, when we were created in God's image, we must have been meant to have some of His amazing, imaginative creativity. No doubt, many still have a tiny touch of what that must have been like. When Christ's kingdom comes on earth, and we are whole, like Him, as we were meant to be, maybe we will all have good imaginations again.

drum-roll, please.

I can't hold it in any longer. I've tried all my life to enjoy baseball. I've tried many different self-manipulative strategies over the years to make myself like it: I've pretended, in hopes that real feelings and interest would come, I've liked it for the sake of friends who love it, I've eaten more than I thought possible at games just to keep from death by boredom. Once, I even made it a part of my old favorite rain-or-shine pastime: flirting. That was loads of fun, and the bat boy gave me a ball, but all this to no avail.

Like every normal American, I have some wonderful memories having to do with being taken to baseball games, that I would not trade for the world. But (as I am finally able to admit to myself) when I go to games, I enjoy everything but the game: the junk food, the jumbo-tron, the people-watching, the company of whoever I go with, but I could care less if there is baseball going on along with all that. In fact, I'd rather there not be. It distracts from conversation since those interested always have to pay attention to the game at all costs. And when, heaven forbid, I happen to be with someone who is watching baseball on TV, I find myself breathlessly looking forward to the commercials. At the end of summertime, when football and basketball are long gone and all that is happening is baseball, even my favorite sports radio station gets almost completely boring!

So, it is with unbridled relief that I announce, after nearly three decades of effort, farce and staunch denial, that I don't really like baseball! Football and hockey are wonderful, basketball keeps me entertained, and even golf is at least surrounded by beauty but, in my oh so relevant opinion, baseball in and of itself, without food and good company, does not quite make the cut to being called "interesting."

a thought for the morning

Once again, my brother Stephen concisely articulates an idea that I've often thought about in a very blurry, non-verbal way, but never could have said:

"Given the universe we live in, its richness of detail and endlessly changing variety, given the quantity and quality of the characters, the Mandelbrot fractal of a shape their relationships make and how each of us fit into all of it, with our five plus different ways of sensing the world, I can only conclude that the reason any of us (even occasionally) find ourselves bored has to be some deep-seated and profound blindness that is, in a way, more mysterious than anything else."

Just for the record, I don't know what a Mandelbrot fractal is, but I think the blindness he speaks of must be because we are fallen creatures, who have sinned. We are not quite what we were meant to be, so it is too difficult for us to fathom the wonderful universe and even more, the God who made it. I am so excited that that will change when we get to Heaven!

These thoughts bring to mind something C.S. Lewis said in The Weight of Glory:

The faint, far-off results of those energies which God's creative rapture implanted in matter when He made the worlds are what now we call physical pleasures; and even thus filtered, they are too much for our present management. What would it be to taste at the fountainhead that stream of which these lower reaches prove so intoxicating?

In this essay, which I always think of when I am trying to figure out Heaven (I did a post about that once), Lewis also speaks of the peculiar craving that beauty awakens in us; how beautiful music or a sunset, while we enjoy them so much, still leave us feeling that something is missing, or that we did not enjoy the beauty as much as it could have been enjoyed. I cannot remember exactly how he put it, but he speaks in the end of how, when we are with the Lord, we will be able to fully understand and appreciate the beauty and complexity of the universe. He calls it "getting in."

Every time I think about these sorts of things, I am so overwhelmed and happy. Happy that God is so good and that He will one day allow us to enjoy Him fully.

Memory of the Day ~ my swing

There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. For the law of the spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set you free from the law of sin and death.

These words remind me of my dad's voice, and my old swing he made for me for my 7th birthday. My mother painted my name on it, in curly yellow letters, with flowers all around them. Daddy would swing me and quote Romans 8, bit by bit, having me say it after him, until I had it memorized.

Swinging and learning that scripture from my dad is one of my most engrained memories from childhood. The swing was attached, next to Kristin's blue-lettered one, with long yellow ropes to a branch high on of one of the huge oak trees in our front yard. That branch has long since been chopped off and probably burnt in our fireplace. The swing wore out completely, and what remains of it might still be in the garage. But I remember the first half of Romans 8 as well as any line from Disney's Robin Hood or That Darn Cat, or any other of the childhood movies we obsessed over with our friends the Shenks.

Thank you, Daddy. :)