It's been a minute.

I've been...pouting. No. Really, I, uh-  

I've been pouting.

When I got out of the hospital on December 31st, 2020, everyone around me said the same thing: "God didn't bring you this far just to drop you on your keister."

Fair enough.

My prayer life from then on consisted of me waiting for signs.  I watched doors open and shut, reminding myself that sometimes what we see is not what we are destined to take on. Was I supposed to go back into pediatric psych care? Law? I knew family, marriage, and love were off the table.  God had been telling me no to that for years.  Was I supposed to be a minister?  Insane, unreasonable avenues presented themselves and some went away when I started to examine the details, and then there were others that I knew were not the right thing. 

"Look!" God says, "I did a thing!" (Isaiah 43: 19) Unlike when Jeremy Clarkson says that, one has to look and see why God wants us to note His new thing.  What I saw was a clearer view of how I was blessed.  I have a studio, music, and a body of photographic work that has become the stepstool to move me to the next part of my life. 

I have also found peace and a greater degree of discernment.  Forgiving and then walking away from people who need to leave me alone and find their own joy was one part of it. Learning to narrow down that focus and lose the almost comically desperate need to be seen is another part of this. Setting my own boundaries and definitions for what connects me to that which is bigger than me could never happen at seminary or divinity school.  I know that now.  And to my friends who never left and a few who have found common sources of joy: Thank you falettin' me be mice elf agin!

Even though I know as 2026 progresses, things are gonna get loud and crowded at times, God also revealed that life is good when I am sitting in an overstuffed chair cuddling my cat bestie or reading a good book.

Some things I am looking forward to in 2026:
Ovechkin setting records.
​Exploring new ways to move.
Reading.
More sushi! 
Getting my studio in order.
Going back to school.
The best garden ever! 
Fingers crossed I have a treatment team that will help me stay well. 

There are other things I haven't listed.  Maybe I'll write about them later on. Until then, I hope everyone who sees this is prepared to have a great 2026! 

XOXOXO
Warrior Churchmouse, MouseMom, and Marigold the BossyCat

 






​

​This has always been what I would call a very Nashville story. 

Way back when the original Turnip Truck was situated in an old gas station in East Nashville. (Wanna prove your Native Nashvillian cred? What was the store called before John Dyke settled on the Turnip Truck?  I'll put the answer at the bottom of this blog entry.) 

Sorry.  I wandered.  The American music scene lost one of its original, most eccentric voices this week.  Among my people, there has been a decades-old ongoing debate about the true inheritor of Woody Guthrie's mantle. All of the usual contenders are great.  I love Arlo for creating that Thanksgiving radio staple, Alice's Restaurant. Bruce Springsteen and John Mellencamp both have the heart and soul, but all three of these gentlemen lack the combination of hippie energy in the form of approaching the world with love, the antic sharpness of one of God's jesters, and the ability to leave his field of concerns fallow as Todd Snider. 

Yesterday, I met with my new PCP and her staff.  They are part of a faith-based medical group.  I mentioned to my mother that there was a crucifix over the door of the exam room and framed Bible verses on the reception desk.  For me, this is not a big deal.  In fact, it's a comforting reminder that God has my back.  She agreed.  

We couldn't help but wonder about non-Christians who visited this clinic.  Was the religious imagery off-putting?  Did they even notice?  If they did, was it seen as a case of what some social science types refer to as ambient Protestantism in the southeastern US.  In the interest of disclosure, I tend to avoid other kinds of businesses that include fish or crosses in their signage or promotional material. Those emblems seem to hide a multitude of sins I'd prefer to avoid. Yet I was okay with my doctor's office having a cross over the door. 

Should I be okay with this?  I want to be.  I also know one of the perks of living in a big city is there are options for people seeking healthcare. Moreover, there is a part of me that says it should be okay to have faith-based environments among the choices offered.  I want to feel comfortable being open about my faith just as I want other people who desire the opposite to be comfortably free from faith.  I was taught that religionn and politics were not fodder for polite conversation in public. Can there be a middle ground? ​

​There are six of us on the chat and five of us have noticed that our friend has what looks like the ugliest fetish we have ever seen sitting on her desk. In a private side chat, one of my former classmates, Faye, asks me if I recognize it. I tell her I don't and affirm that it looks mass produced. We are all politely waiting for our friend to talk about what she's been doing lately and hope the mystery of the ugly little figure on her desk will be solved.

No such luck. She says she's still doing work on community gardens and co-ops as a response to the spread of urban food deserts.  While this is good news, some of us are getting impatient with the weird ;ittle thing staring at us from far side of her desk. Finally Ben, who has never had the strongest of filters, breaks our silence about it.

"Claire, what the heck is that thing?"

Claire, who has always been the sweetest of us, but can also be a little out of the flow at times, starts to pick up various items as Ben responds, "No.  Not that.  THAT."

She finally grabs the small, brightly colored stuffie that looks, to me anyway, like a bad Chinese bootleg of a Maurice Sendak Wild Thing doll. 

"Oh. This?"  She holds it in front of her computer camera for all of us to see. We hear a voice from another room as her nine-year-old granddaughter calls in to her:  "Can I have my Labubu, Nainai?"

"Not until your parents pick you up," Nainai, er, Claire addresses someone off-camera. "How many times did I tell you to quit teasing your little brother with your Lulu?"

There is a sigh from off-camera.  "It's Lah-Boo-Boo, Nainai! Gah!"

Claire orders her to go play a game with her brother, which is met with another, "Gah!" but the girl complies. 

"That's a Labubu?"  Faye asks.

"So you've heard of them?" Claire sits the one we've been examining back on her desk.  

"Kids these days. Do those things have a backstory? Do they do anything? To think I used to complain about my grands' Horror High and Bratz dolls."

I do not have children and will sometimes play the childless cat lady card. Besides, I didn't want to ex[lain the happy little pile of plush gargoyles and assorted stuffed monsters who occupy a corner of my studio. 

XOXO,
​Jas

​September 24th came and left without the hundreds or maybe thousands of people who expected to be taken up to heaven.  I'll admit to checking in to Facebook that day as unraptured and still in Tennessee. I do feel a little bad about that, but just a little because, like many people in the Southeastern U.S., I know people - Heck, I'm related to some of them-  who talk about the rapture in wistful tones. To them, the world is a terrible place and their lives are so relentlessly hard that what comes after has to be an improvement. 

My usual response is that Heaven is probably pretty great compared to, say Gallatin, Tennessee. However, their lives are already considerably better than most of the people in the rest of the world. They are arguably living better than a lot of my clients in Gallatin. Their response is inevitably some variation of, "Heaven!" and "They can come, too!" 

Yeah.  Heaven.  About that...

How do I write this without sounding crazy?  I'm not sure I can.  Either you'll believe me or you won't. 

In 2020, my heart fired a warning shot in late November. Then it responded to my reaction of, "Well, that was interesting. All tickety-boo now!" with my valves and some other chunks of it dying in my chest and me dying on the table and then spending a little over a week in a coma developing the annoying habit of coding so often that the critical care staff and the slightly resentful cardiologist took great care of me; but it reached a point where I'm pretty sure they were saying, "Her again?"

What was I doing while this was going on?  Binning two years of math, engineering, physics, astronomy, and nearly all of the German I'd learned. Frolicking around unencumbered by a body and seeing people arriving and departing the hospital in ways that didn't require street clothing or a designated driver. I made a friend and saw that Heaven is real, God is real, and Jesus is real. (Get over it!) You know how there's that one weird kid who doesn't want to go home from camp at the end of the Summer?  That was me when they woke me up. 

I think about this when people talk about how they wish the world would end and they would be taken up.  Many of these same people have families, tribal affiliations, well-defined roles in their lives, and there's that sense of purpose tick-tocking away in their brains. I would be lying if I said I understood why they were and maybe still are anxious to doff all of this and ascend. Will they be okay or will they have nagging feelings that some things were left incomplete?

When I was waiting for the cow parts to get in so the Great and Powerful Oz aka my thoracic surgeon could get me going again, random people would come into my room and tell me what they thought my mission was going to be once I was well again. Some of them charged me for it, weirdoes. It amazed me how many people felt the need to tell me what I was supposed to do once I got out of the hospital.  

A couple of years later, a nurse recognized me and referred to me as "the lady who died and came back."  Then a lot of those awkward encounters made a lot more sense. It serves as a qualifier of sorts that I carry like my library card and some spare cash for farm stand peaches. I pull it out whenever someone speaks wishfully of Jesus coming back and the world as we know it ending, but I don't use it and I should. 

Friends and relatives sit next to me on the benches at Drake's Creek Park or watch their kids play on the swingset at Haebeggar's Roadside or they look out at the beautiful, wooded hills that surround Nashville and they talk about how they can't wait to leave.  

I'm not.  Even though I know my time here is a matter of running the clock out with no promise of connection or accomplishment, I still feel the urge to do good and make art and enjoy music and movies and books and observe humanity in it's beautiful, heartbreaking, hilarious glory, whether it's from behind a pulpit or a lectern. To ask for anything else is to look at what God has created for us and say, "Eh. No thanks!" 

Even if I don't say it out loud, my experience has qualified me to at least think we're lucky we don't get exactly what we want. 

So quit looking for that divine Uber to come get you and carpe diem already! 
XOXO,
​Jas

Late last night there was what could best be described as an attempt at blogging by committee.  My blog is too Jesus-y.  The name is stupid.  I need to tell the Hobbit story and recount my standoff with That Guy and so on.  Some stuff I am on the same page with them.  Other points? Whose website is this? 

I will address the name change.

Zen Dixie was actually what I settled on after every other name I picked out was taken.  Even it turned out to be used and discarded by a musician who did not respond for almost a year to emails from the lawyer who did what official lawyerly duties needed to be done.  There was also the short-live art gallery that tried to take over the name at one point, did a hashtag flood on Twitter, and employed one of my writers. (Yes, ma'am.  I saw that.  Not sure what point you were trying to prove, but you do you.)  Anyway, after years of use and overuse, missing the deadline to renew the registered trademark*, and just needing the make what changes I could, I decided to rebrand my online self.  

I originally wanted to go as "Mouse."  Big surprise that it was taken years ago. Then I tried "Churchmouse.com" Nope.  Somebody has been squatting Churchmouse.com and they only want 24K for it.  Let me get three of them, they're small.  Churchmouse.net looks like a fun site and Lyn seems like a nice person. I should add the domain and hosting for ZenDixie are paid up for the next few years, so changing seems a bit problematic beyond the title on the home page. There's the social media stuff to be considered as well.  Mice and Churchmice seem to be all over the place. I'll deal with it when I deal with it. 

So I was feeling cute and decided to be "Xena, Warrior Churchmouse."  Steeeerike three!  Platforms suggested "Warrior Churchmouse" and a search even brought up an illustration I drew for the website I used to write for.** Fine.  I'll take it. So I'm "Warrior Churchmouse." 

Peace,
​Jas

*I did that myself in a year and a day.  Either L. was being very kind or he really was impressed I handled the whole thing with the USPTO without help.  Ahdunno.  I'm still proud of that. 

** Her design is inspired by George Harriman's wonderful Krazy Kat.  Somewhere there is a drawing of Evgeni Malkin as Krazy Kat and Ignatz Mouse beaning him with a brick. This was me venting after Malkin knocked Jordin Tootoo airborne and spent no time in the penalty box for it.  BOTH of 22's skates were in the air!  Get your eyes checked, ref! ​

​Today was the culmination of a week of death by a hundred duck bites.  Little irritations,  more accurately called first world problems made me feel hopeless. There were also a couple of things that were big deals.  My now former PCP tried to block the refill of medications that are keeping me alive. I have been scared and exhausted most of the week. I reached a point where it seemed like the most logical thing to do was throw decency into a mental ashbin and be an utter toad.

The email with a video link that was meant to encourage me by revealing that I failed at the usual human things most humans do because God wanted my undivided attention did not make me feel encouraged. He wants me all to himself according to this person and the video they sent.  Really? With all the billions of considerably more appealing people than me on the planet right now?  Fine.  I'll be the worst girlfriend ever. So I left a snotty comment om the diocese's Facebook page. 

I screamed, "I hate you!" at a video of the president when he talked smack about Memphis.

I flipped off someone for winking at me and giving me a thumbs up.

So how did God repay this horrible behavior? I went to pick up what I thought was going to be single bottle of something I probably already had.  The delivery drawer slid open and almost got stuck with the armload of my much-needed prescriptions. All of them were labeled 0.00 on the price line. 

As I drove home, I thought about a story we used to tell at the Episcopal Student Union:

One day I felt angry and neglected.  I called upon God and asked, "Why don't you love me?"

He told me to go to my refrigerator and open the door. It was full of food that fueled and nourished me.  Then he told me to go to my closet. Was it not full of clothes to cover, protect, and sometimes even delight me? 

What was the question again?

I called a friend who is a priest and told him what was going on and that I really did not deserve to be loved and yet there was the proof of my sparrow's care (Matthew 6:26) sitting in a pile on my kitchen table.  He reminded me that God sees the whole picture.  He was there through five years of sickness and transplants and blindness and knows that I am perfectly imperfect.  All he asks in return is faith in the promise and the price he paid for me. (John 3:16)

"I'm so awful."  I snuffled as I choked this out.

"Well, that's a gift, too," he said, "If you didn't feel disturbed, that would be cause for worry."

He's right. Even though I stubbornly hang on to scraps of guilt, I know how blessed I am. I know he's right.

Peace,
​Jas

I can always tell when she's feeling content.  After morning Boops and Third Breakfast*, she climbs on top of the oven range and goes to sleep.  This week was tough for many people who mean a lot to me. For some, it is finding the right words.  For others, it's more complicated. T-Rex (you'll meet her soon) lost her brother and I have been getting things squared away as I rebuild my life and start to move forward. 

At first, I considered this the consequence of mindless acquisition to fill spaces left by people and ideas and roles that no longer fit into my life.  This always starts with going through my books. The picture above is of my kitchen and shows one of three cases in there that will be culled through soon.  Did anyone else read From the Mixed Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler and want to live in a museum or a library when they grew up?   The old Nashville Children's Museum next to NATs would have been fine with me except for the shrunken heads.  They were scary and would have to go!**

But I digress.***

It's Sunday.  I've decided to rest. My mother and I went to online church, ate breakfast, and are enjoying the morning quiet. Later on, we're going to shell the big bag of October Beans I bought from an Amish farm stand, enjoy some fresh peaches from the same place. Marigold loves it when everyone is home and the house is peaceful. So do I. She's even happier when I cook, but today's fare consists of the chicken. kale, and gnocchi soup I made yesterday. She can work out her disappointment if any arises on her collection of tinsel balls. 

My own collection of tinsel balls is shrinking.  Rediscovering my shelves of books about archaeology, anthropology, and folk studies that now sit with the growing reading list of theological texts I need to familiarize myself with has given me a sense of recovering who I was. It sits unimpeded by so much that no longer applies. It also gives me reason to think a little harder about why I am here.  The common answer is to  trust that God has a plan.  Taking things one step at a time can sometimes feel daunting. Am I here to go into the ministry?  Was I really called?  Is there something else I am supposed to be doing?  Why am I still in Nashville?  Is there someone I am supposed to minister to? Am I just here to shell October Beans? 


Enjoy and rejoice in the Sunday you are given,
Jas


*We feed her canales of cat food.  Give her the whole thing at once and it dries out and goes uneaten. She loves delicate princess portions and eating from the spoon if my mother is serving. 

**Bad future anthropologist! No fedora for you! 

*** Okay, say it with me:  I am old. I am Southern. I am allowed to wander and think in paragraphs. If it's good enough for Wendell Berry and Robert Penn Warren, it is good enough for all y'all ​