Mark Scandrette

I compiled an executive summary today for a friend who wants to make a donation to ReIMAGINE. He wanted to hear about our organizational goals for the year– and see some numbers regarding our proposed budget. As we bring on more staff with ReIMAGINE my role is quickly changing– and I am scurrying to get skills that I haven’t developed previously. I’m such an idealist that it is sometimes hard for me to take dreams and translate them into tangible goals. The goals never seem to measure up to what I imagined in my head. Although I like to imagine Jesus wandering around saying wise things and eating with marginalized people, he also had a clear sense of mission and a strategy for getting his message out. There were specific towns he intended to visit. And he sent helpers to those places to develop connections ahead of time. This all happened with a great deal of intentionality. I find myself suspicious of measurements– and yet we have to have some way of evaluating our effectiveness and determining our priorities. Is there a way to be both soulful and strategic?

The last thing we did in Seattle was going to a park overlooking the city and then getting a cup of coffee at Cafe Fiore. Very robust yet smooth flavored espresso. Both the espresso and the drip coffee had what I would describe as a foamy mouth feel.

We drove in bumper to bumper traffic from Seattle to Portland– to visit our friends Paul and Elizabeth. Paul is a Greek Orthodox priest serving a large parish in Portland. We always enjoy comparing notes about faith. Paul and Elizabeth grew up Evangelical Christian and after four years at a Baptist College decided that the ancient path of the Greek Orthodox tradition fit their sensibilities better. While we are together we often talk about the differences we find between the traditions we were raised in and what now makes sense as a spiritual path. I think alot of it has to do with personality. It might be easy for someone like me to look critically at more traditional or all american expressions of faith– as if people who find themselves in that realm have a more syncretistic relationship to culture. And yet how much of my own spiritual quest is marked by my particular personality? We all fit the archetype for something.

We weren’t in Portland long, but did get a chance to visit Powells Books– a bookstore covering an entire city block. They still didn’t have Ken Wilbur’s A Theory of Everything.

It was a long drive home. I spent the morning in the car planning our family budget for 2007– noodling with the numbers and trying to figure out how to be the most intentional and sustainable about how we manage our finances. I use to attend more closely to these things, but haven’t been as fastidious in recent years. We’ve been talking about money in our community and sharing our incomes, expenses and budgets. More people cried the night we talked about money than in any other meeting I’ve ever participated in. People embarrassed about debt or wealth– and lots of questions about how to relate to money. Should we act like it doesn’t matter? I believe that attending to one’s financial life is an important dimension to the spiritual life– noticing patterns of need, provision and abundance. I tend to feel like I am never quite comfortable about money. If we don’t have enough I worry. If we have a surplus I feel guilty. I do think it is helpful to talk more openly with one another about earning and spending.

This morning my family gave me a poster by Nikki McClure. McClure is a Olympia Washington based artist who creates paper cut images using an exacto knife. I really like the themes in her work, which I first saw at Little Otsu on Valencia street. We’ve also seen her books and calendars in galleries here in Seattle. A brief description of her work from her website:

“Her work depicts the virtues of hard labor and patience, which is inherent in her process as well as in the images themselves: weathered hands washing dishes, people sweeping, mothers caring for their babies, and farmers working the land. But there is also a large element of celebration, of taking the time to roll around in the grass and get wet from the early morning dew. The need for all of us to lay down on the ground, grab hold of the earth, look at the stars and dream. She magnifies the importance of simple things, like the change of seasons, slowing down the world for a moment so we can actually taste it.”

I feel like her images provide a gentle reminder to slow down, breath deeply and enjoy the goodness and beauty of the common place.

It was a feast day today for the Scandrette/Lairds. My sister Jen made orange rolls for breakfast and we drank Victrola Holiday blend French press coffee. We went for a walk together around Green Lake. For a late lunch we set out a spread of lovely appetizers including carmelized onion and blue cheese crustini, mini apple chicken BBQ sausages and hot smoked wild Alaskan Salmon with sweat mustard– all washed down with a crisp champagne. For dinner we had a pork loin I smoked outside for 5 hours over freshly cut apple tree branches. I marinated the pork loin for two days with port and spices and garlic. Lisa made her famous carrot casserole and I made mashed potatoes with a port reduction gravy. The pork was juicy with a strong but mild smoky flavor. A good day of feasting and sharing as a family. We are all pretty tired tonight– Lisa and the kids get real excited about opening gifts– so we were up sitting around the tree at 6:30 a.m.

Yesterday we drove up to the mountains to go sledding in the snow. When we lived in Northern Minnesota I got all the snow and cold I needed for the rest of my life– and begrudgingly went along with the Scandrette/Laird tribe. But it was great and the mountains were beautiful. On the way home we stopped at Victrola Cafe in Capitol Hill– for a great cup of coffee. Thanks to Aurora for recommending this place. It was very much like Ritual Cafe back home. Earlier in the day Isaiah and I went out on a date and visited Caffe Ladro in Fremont and did some shopping at the Fremont Sunday Market. Isaiah likes to look at the Sunday Newspaper funnies.