outWORD by Matte Downey

Anyone out there ever made a mistake? If you admit to being a member of the human race, it is likely that you have made some error during the course of your life. Mistakes come in various forms: sometimes I forget my wallet at home, or spray bathroom cleaner on the mirror because it looks like the glass cleaner, or burn the burgers because I lose track of time. These are relatively harmless mishaps and easily remedied and forgotten. But there are those mistakes that affect others in a detrimental way, and those are not as easy to forget, forgive, or rectify. This week I did something thoughtless than put people in jeapordy. What do you do when that happens? First of all, you thank God that no one is hurt. Then you repent. Then you vow never to do anything that stupid again. Then you try to figure out what snapped in your brain to cause this lapse in judgment. Then you watch as people take a step back from trusting you. Then you re-evaluate your worth as a human being and question wheth...

Carrots pulled from the damp earth, unwashed... simplicity Young summer peas still crisp and sweet and tiny in their pods...innocence Kohlrabi peeled and turned upside down to resemble an ice cream cone...imagination Variegated leaf lettuce with curly edges and ribs of deep red running through it at random...diversity Strawberries with their pitted skin and raspberries with their cocoons of sugary syrup and tangy green gooseberries with their straw-tassled ends...integration Choke cherries and frost-ripened concord grapes that turn your tongue various shades of blue and purple and make your eyes blink rapidly as the sour liquid pops out from the skin...the bittersweet that leaves its mark Small bush berries that come in both red and yellow and are known to me only as "olebassum"...mystery And a whole row of red poppies setting the rest of the garden aflame...burning passion All topped by my mother's homemade creamy sweet and savory dressing that makes even wilted lettuce...

Unsure of what to write about today, I opened my thesaurus at random and stuck my finger on the left hand side of the page, thinking it would be a good exercise for me to expound on whatever I happened to point out. And the word was... MODERATION . So here we go - some thoughts on moderation. I detest most forms of moderation for they are the antithesis of passion. Moderate people are easy to live with and moderate opinions are easy to accept. There is a certain amount of safety in moderation for you will never come close to excess or abstinence. Lukewarm is another word we can talk about. Neither hot nor cold. Lukewarm water, lukewarm tea, lukewarm beer, lukewarm Coke...ugh! I used to equate moderation and balance, but a friend set me straight on that inaccurate assumption. I like balance, for it means you can take two extreme items and ultilize them to maintain stability. If you were to mush the opposites together and place the mixture in the middle you would get nothing mor...

I am reading a work of fiction about an artist who comes from a devout Jewish background, and though he practices his faith and observes all the traditions with the utmost sincerity, his choice of art subjects (like the crucifixion or nudes) has caused the Jewish community and his very own family to disown and speak against and at times shun him. It seems that the sacred, or what we have come to acknowledge as such i.e. having to do with religion, is threatened or afraid of being tainted when it comes in contact with the unsacred, or secular. While there are hints of this separation in the Bible, especially in the history of the nation of Israel, it manifests itself in a completely different form in the life of Jesus. In fact, the 'sacred' traditions, offices, and places seem to be threatened by Him! Pitting the sacred and the secular against each other seems to me to constitute a rather inadequate and two-dimensional worldview. Perhaps one of the reasons is that as an artist I...

I have prayed some interesting prayers. I am not thinking about the time I asked God to cast a demon out of a black cat or which lotto numbers to play or even the time I asked him to go back through time and affect a certain situation. No, the instance that came to my mind today was a prayer I uttered about a year ago that sort of took me by surprise when I heard myself express it because I wasn't sure it was a very godly desire - it sounded so selfish and oddly egocentric. This was the prayer: God, I ask you to move on me and in my life in such a way that people look at me, and when they do, especially those people on the edge of faith in some way, they can see your love and power and your undeniable nearness to humanity. I wanted to be a signpost of sorts - but since that concept seemed to have a tinge of attention-seeking at its core, I left that prayer unattended and went on to petition other matters of importance like healing for those bruised and broken (even sometimes bitter...