Sweet Southern Yoga is my new favorite thing.

Linda is more of a ray of sunshine than
the actual rays of sunshine.

Linda Leseberg is like a steaming bowl of bread pudding. She's sweet and warm, and fills you up with happy satisfaction. My kids know her as Yoga Linda, as in yogalinda.net, and Brody almost squirms completely out of his car seat to wave excitedly at her when he sees her driving her spunky VW around town, a smile on her face even behind the wheel. 

    She is the heart and soul of the Camden, Arkansas yoga community. When I first heard of her classes, I wasn't sure what to think. My friend attended a Saturday class and told me I should check it out, said there were hardwood floors and stained glass windows. She also said it was "Jesus Yoga." Come again? I've done yoga for a long time, and Jesus was never part of the program nor did I see how He could be. The reviews were all SO good I had to give it a try.

Froggy pose?

     And so I wound my way through the streets of historic homes and parked in front of the beautiful old Jewish Synagogue where Mason and I would spend the most happy hour of the week raising our hands to Jesus and swinging to "Amazing Grace" in a perfectly modified sun salutation under the glow of stained glass menorahs. 

     I realized that morning on the mat that I, like many Americans my age, was used to a certain "flavor" of yoga. In fact, I thought yoga only CAME in one flavor. My yoga experiences consisted of the same main ingredients EVERY TIME: 

Recipe for yoga

1 gym

19 young moms with braided hair and bird tattoos

19 pairs of Lulu Lemon stretchy pants

1 grandma who can do a double deluxe back bend

20 designer yoga bags purchased from Saturday Markets

2 men, one tall, sleek and very agile, the other elderly yet attractive with salt and pepper hair

22 glass water bottles lined up against the wall with the cell phones and Earthing flip-flops

Hardwood floors

Essential oils

Exotic music tinkling from Bose speakers

Lots of sacred foreign words I never remember no matter how much yoga I do

Chanting chanting chanting followed by meditating

*optional: gongs, bowls, and little jingly finger bells

     

     Linda wrote her own yoga cook book, and it's the yummiest yoga experience I've ever had. The whole experience is the perfect union of world cultures: yoga, in a Jewish synagogue, to rousing Southern worship music. In her sun salutations, she asks the Holy Father to bless us, Holy Spirit to direct us, and Holy Son to forgive us. Frankly, I've never had yoga with a southern accent, and I'm not sure I can ever do it any other way after being verbally hypnotized by Linda's lilting drawl. Her voice alone makes me feel like I'm napping lazily in the bottom of a sunny row boat in June. 
     Sometimes the front doorbell rings itself, and she jokes that the spirit of the old rabbi has come to say hello. I know it's all in good fun and the the old rabbi is probably still alive in a Little Rock retirement home. But I think that there's a bit of truth to it, that the sacred Sabbath happenings of yesteryear have left their shadows on the walls all around the gorgeous mural, that all those whispered prayers and pleadings and praises, once left in the air above the altars, can never really be erased. 

     And now whenever possible I sit at Linda's feet for an hour of smiles and encouragement and sunshine. I carry my sister's Yo Bagga Bagga bag, sewn so lovingly when I was sick and broken. As Linda's CD player belts out contemporary worship music and the occasional classic Elvis gospel tune, I bury my forehead against my sweet BFF AH'ndrea's yoga mat with my grandma's necklace dangling against my collarbone, and I laugh and cry and thank Jesus for inspiring someone to invent yoga. And it all feels very RIGHT and natural, not at all as confusing as it may sound. A perfect, harmonious juxtaposition of ideas melded together by a smiling Southern Sage. 

      

Saturday praise and worship class is free, Tuesday evening is really great, and Linda's membership is only $40 for a month with great family discounts. You will leave feeling both loved and flexible, guaranteed. And may I say that it's a beautiful thing for suburban yogis like me to try ALL the different flavors of yoga. You might find that your favorite is sweet tea, or strawberry bread pudding.

Beautiful 1938 Jewish Synagogue

Stained glass spills light onto the serene mural by Terry, our local famous artist

Real life frugal living!

"Use it up,

Wear it out,

Make it do,

or do without."

This gorgeous vintage Dodge is still good enough for Mr. Broome to haul leaves and
 branches every day of the year. Runs great.

     It's funny how disposable so many things were in our city life. Phoenix has a population pushing 7 million, and that population brings with it lots of amenities. We were a 20 minute drive from Broadway shows, major league baseball, science museums, zoos, world class golf, ice skating, indoor and outdoor water parks, tantalizing restaurants, and all the shopping we could ever want. I personally never thought twice about losing a shoe, or inadvertently breaking a dinner plate. It was no big deal to run to the skate shop for repairs to Mason's longboard, or the bike shop for new tires on the mountain bikes. School shopping was easy, sitting in the dressing room sipping my Jamba Juice while the Nordstrom sales ladies fetched sizes and colors and whisked the too long skinny jeans off for alterations. And with a Target on every corner, we never wanted for Burt's Bees lotions or furniture polish or batteries. Running out, wearing out, breaking down, getting lost were very inconsequential happenings.

     Not so in a small town. The rest of America cannot even imagine how hard it is to get little things like shoes or lawnmowers or (sorry to keep beating a dead chicken in every article) organic free range eggs. Our little town is hours away from Sam's Clubs and malls. What we do have is so limited that I recently ran into a friend who was wearing a dress that I had tried on from the clearance rack at the Stage store that afternoon. I knew exactly where it was from, and so did anyone else in town who wore my size and had a penchant for yellow. You know you're backwoods when the Duck Dynasty guys seem "big city" to you. Monroe has a mall and Five Guys burgers. Willie and those guys can buy new bandanas any day of the week without spending hours on Amazon.com.

     Replacing anything in our small town takes a lot more effort, and I've seen a wonderful shift in the attitudes of my family as a result. I used to nag at my kids for treating EVERYTHING like it was replaceable, like money grew on trees and nothing had real value. But I see now that it wasn't their fault. Everything WAS easily replaceable. Now I love to see how my little Mr. Brodes hoards his Trader Joe's snacks, knowing that he has to sit in the car for 6 hours to buy more in Dallas when those are gone. And how my girls find new ways to mix and match and accessorize the school outfits we bought so many months ago, knowing that Nordstrom and TJ Maxx and Tilly's  and Target are unreachable from here. We all reuse and recycle and upcycle everything now. 

    It makes me wonder if it's really healthy for anyone to be raised in a big city like that where there's no need anymore to squeeze that last little blob of organic toothpaste from the bottom of the tube. It doesn't seem like a perfect way to raise kids. It sort of numbs your natural instinct toward frugality and robs one of appreciation for what they have. I'm glad my girls rush home from school and head outside to find the neighbors for an afternoon on the trampoline instead of hunting for new shoes at the mall.  The simple life wins this battle for sure.

     

A treasured collection of toy planes.

Sunday afternoon in Arkansas

National Guard keeping our streets safe 

1 Kings 19:11&12

11"And he said, go forth, and stand upon the mount before the Lord, and behold, the Lord passed by and a great and strong wind rent the mountains, and break and pieces the rock before the Lord;

but the Lord was not in the wind: and after the wind, an earthquake; but the Lord was not in the earthquake. 

12 "And after the earthquake, a fire; but the Lord was not in the fire: and after the fire a still small voice."

Ouachita 164

Lights out in Camden at the Old Walmart parking lot

Small town Camden survives a huge storm

FULL DISCLOSURE: I am NOT a local, nor am I from anywhere around here. I'm an outsider from the other side of America, staying for a couple years in this lovely little spot of the country. My family is new to the South, new to storms and small towns. This is my outsider perspective from my first-hand experience.

Camden, Arkansas is one of those towns that sometimes struggles to keep going. The proportion of middle-class incomes to poverty is sadly skewed and too many people are barely holding on. It's a little town full of the sweetest, most honest and humble people in the country, but too many of them have worry lines from the corners of their eyes to the tips of their toes. Holding on, raising kids, looking for work, struggling for good health and trusting Jesus to make all the ends meet.

    So Thursday night was a punch in the gut for our little town. I couldn't sleep at all, mostly because I had subscribed to FIVE, yes five separate storm alerts, and the iphone under my pillow kept buzz buzz buzz buzz buzzing to flash me FIVE individual tornado warnings and watches and thunderstorm upgrades. I've never heard nor do I have words to describe the air-sucking, mountain-shattering ungodly winds that pushed and bullied our helpless house and the miles of black forest outside. Around midnight the frenzy paused, then a pile of papers was catapulted from the headboard inside our air-tight room with all the windows closed. Paper flying across the room without a visible cause. I wrapped up in my husband's grandma's hand-stitched quilts while God commenced with His version of the Grand Finale at the Fourth of July fireworks show. Lightning crackled and sizzled across the whole horizon followed by thunder on the decibel level of a nuclear blast, inverted geisers of water drowning the ground, and above it all the tops of massive oaks and phone lines flipping through the neighborhood like terrible tumbleweeds. We don't have a shelter, and I'm trained in rattlesnake safety but unfamiliar with tornado warning protocol. In hindsight I should've stuffed the kids under mattresses in the hallway, but Jason assured me that everything was fine. 

     And so he thought until he went out for his Friday morning walk and found the world torn apart in our poor little town. Now the community who barely keeps up has been working to get back the power, and mend the windows and doors and roofs of our homes and schools. Camden was blessed to have very little injury considering the destruction. This was a tiny storm on the scale of storms, but a huge hole in the wall of a home you could barely afford is, well, HUGE to the family that had nothing extra to begin with. God bless our little town as they rebuild and help neighbors rebuild, all with smiles and faith and a humble can-do attitude.

Laci's shirt says "Got Hope?" She sure does after TWO big oak trees hit her house right over her bedroom after midnight. She walked out unscathed.

The house is under there somewhere

Laci's tree

Standing in a yard full of trees, his mind is really on Lockhead Martin and his young family who survived wi

Brynna in front of a giant root-ball

Where's the roof?

Oh, it blew across the highway

Camden Fairview HIgh School

Camden Fairview High School Principal Burton talks about optimistic plans to repair and rebuild

The backside of Cardinal Stadium

Every yard has at least 6 people working together, friends and neighbors helping each other

Hundreds of workers labor in dangerous and cold circumstances to give the town power and to
clean up all the debris.

Twisted boat

No power, no problem. Thank heaven for Chelle's catering truck
so we could have tummies full of catfish.

Still smiling after a long day of work. 

The pioneers didn't have iPhones and they were pretty happy.

Melinda and her sweet strawberry-blonde granddaughter after church.

The beautiful actress Gweneth Paltrow made a fun comment on an interview several years ago, and it has stuck with me. She said that when she was young and had a question that needed answering, she would call and ask her grandparents. But today the wisdom of our grandparents has been surpassed, and kids just ask Google.
     I've sat at many family events in recent years where almost everyone was staring at little devices, watching videos and Googling the longest chicken racing contest or whatever. My kids don't have "devices" with the exception of an old-fashioned cell phone to call for a ride after golf practice, but it's amazing how savvy they are about the world because of Google. They're very tuned into who the latest artists are, what clothes are trending, who won the Voice last week and so on. We're all so attuned to this global chatter with texting and tweeting and Facebooking and YouTube. It feels like our world is really big and we're all up on the important happenings of the world.

     Yesterday my daughter had a sweet 13 year old friend over for the afternoon, and I noticed a trend that I have been aware of since leaving the city for the South. While too many people even in small town America are overly plugged in, the culture in general seems to shun electronics. Slow internet and a lack of cell towers adds to the situation. Little Bailey wasn't savvy about any of the celebrity happenings or trends or songs. Instead she repeated again and again a little phrase that made me smile: "My family does (this), and my family does (that), and my family doesn't believe in doing (this or that)." Here is a smart, savvy teenager in designer jeans with a bright mind whose culture is still instilled the old fashioned way, via her family. Her parents are actually parenting, and her grandparents who live across the street are actively grand-parenting. I had another friend last week actually ask what I meant when I said that I would Google the restaurant. I had to explain that it meant to go look on the internet for information. It was a totally new term for my friend. She doesn't text more than once a week either, doesn't even have a touch screen phone, so I've had to learn how to have actual conversations. And I'm beginning to wonder if this savvy city girl has replaced the knowledge of my parents and grandparents with a handy little device. I haven't had to call my dad to settle a Scrabble controversy, or ask my mom for a recipe for a long time. Maybe I should.

The girls won a Nabi at the Lockhead Martin Science Night. 

Guns and camo make great gifts from Santa.

It's funny how hunting season leads right into Christmas. I didn't realize that this could create a humorous scenario until yesterday. Brody opened door number 16 on the  Trader Joe's chocolate advent calender, purchased on our last short vacation into civilization. The small square of chocolate was embossed with an ornate reindeer, a swirling caricature of antlers poised atop his head. Brody held the chocolate out at arms length, made a little gun with the chubby toddler fingers of his other hand, and shouted "SHOOT that deer! Ready, aim, fire. POW!" The he smiled and told me that he got 'im. Oh my! Welcome to Arkansas. I still had a bit of deer roast wedged in a back molar from Sunday dinner which had eluded my cinnamon floss, so I could only giggle at the irony of it all.

        Below are some real life photos of the real life toy aisles in the stores of our small town. I didn't photo all the camo chapsticks, basketballs, panties, dishes, Christmas ornaments, dinner plates, and blankets, so just let your imagination fill in the gaps. Duck Dynasty has a whole collection of skin care items in lieu of the Burt's Bee's gift packs my yuppie Wal-Mart in Arizona carried. It all begs the question, what kid WOULDN'T want their own Deer Blind and Assault Rifle? Makes it easier to shoot the reindeer down. 

This will go great with all the antlers my boys think they're hanging up in the dining room.

I couldn't find a Rainbow Loom, but there were 100 different guns.

Barbie is so yesterday!

Sunday dinner, thankfully no shiny red nose on this one.

Home sweet home.

A cold but pretty day outside my neighbor's window. Brrr...

Home Sweet Home

There’s a place that I can run to
And it’s never far away
Inside that warm fire’s burnin’
Every time I see your face

Home sweet home
Always comin’, runnin’ to the arms I love love love
Home sweet home
So thankful for the hearts that make it up
1 2 3 4 5 6…..

Homes ain’t built by bricks and mortar
It ain’t bound by walls and floors
Leave your lonely at the fencepost
Walk your love right thru my door
Children gather round the table
Little voices in their seats
Sayin’ grace for what’s before us
Life is good enough to eat !

When I was a little girl
I sent my wishes up to heaven
Prayed someday they’d all come true
They stirred around up in the starlight
They feel down and became you, you , you, you, and you, yes!

-by Katherine Nelson
http://www.katherinenelson.com/

Mr. Brodes waiting for the cousins to join him for dinner.

Former vegan's sweet little ballerina kills her first deer!

Daddy didn't let her pull the trigger, but she spotted the
herd and picked the target deer.

When I was a city girl, I ate an earth-friendly, responsible, fair-trade, organic, local, non-hybridized, sustainable and indigenous diet which was appropriate for my genetic ancestry. I first read "Supersize Me" as a young mom and swore off McDonald's for nearly a decade. Once you catch the healthy living bug, it turns into a buttery slope into veganism, then RAW. My husband remembers well the summer when I converted the whole family to vegan rawness, throwing out all the milk and bread and replacing it with a kitchen full of seeds, nuts, veggies, and legumes at various stages in the sprouting process.He kept the local pizza place in business for a few months until I got hungry and bloated and tired of running a full-time sprouting operation. I ate a COOKED organic cracker with CHEESE one day, and that was the end of raw veganism. The mostly meatless organic lifestyle continued for the next 16 years, and I attribute our family's great health to the blessing of healthy food. But moving to a small town in Arkansas immediately cut off my supply of roasted tomato hummus, fresh raw goat milk, and non-GMO corn chips. I went into a tailspin this Fall, dropping literally down to 104 pounds because I couldn't get organic free range chicken or heritage grains at the only grocery stores in town. Wal-Mart at least carries organic kale and the occasional pomegranate for the Lockhead Martin employees, but that's about it.

     I made a conscious decision to eat some meat as long as it was humanely sourced and free of harmful chemicals. We raised our own little flock of backyard chickens for a while, but it was hard to enjoy slathering barbecue sauce on Roosty and Rosie. When I made the choice to practice appreciative and responsible carnivorism, I never dreamed that my sweet little ballerina would be sitting in the deer stand all day in 26 frosty degrees with my husband searching for dinner one Saturday. She volunteered to go with him, filled up the thermos with cocoa, washed her lavender scented curls with anti-human-smell shampoo, tossed her camo outfit into the dryer with some dirt odor wafers, and hit the woods for a long, cold, dark adventure. She came home covered in blood and pine needles, doing a little dance and singing something about she can bring home the bacon. She said "who needs Jack the Giant Slayer when Chloe the Deer Slayer is in the house?! Boo ya!" Somewhere deep down a few remaining vegan cells in my brain sort of screamed out silently about the cruelty of reveling in the loss of such a beautiful life, but it was short lived. A million small rodents and bugs and other critters are inadvertently slaughtered with the grain harvest on our huge family farm every year, and this beautiful deer lived a clean, organic, peaceful life before dying quickly under the oaks. I have a deer roast in the fridge waiting for Sunday dinner, and my daughter knows completely the cost of acquiring what will be a delicious meal. Good job Chloe and Jason!

Chloe being a girly girl in her pre-Arkansas days.