conversations.from: human
conversations.value: a description for a book titled Outside the Lines about Gibbon's, Contrary, Concrete with the genre: Children's Books, Literature & Fiction
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: Contrary to grownup advice, most kids know that drawing (or doing anything, for that matter) outside the lines can be a whole lot of fun. Concrete poet the author and illustrator Rebecca Gibbon's rolling, swinging, skipping, bouncing book of "poetry at play" pays delightful tribute to this concept. Each of the author's 22 poems traces the patterns of the games they celebrate: "Catch" requires a dizzying feat of visual agility, as each word appears all the way across the page from the next, like a ball zooming from player to player. "Paper Airplane" follows the flight pattern of a newsprint jet until it winds up in the peeved teacher's hair. And "Slide" climbs slowly up the steps "all the way up to the tippy-top," only to plummet down the other side: "ooh what / a ride / I slide / and glide / I slip and / slide and / slide and / slide and / then I / stop." Gibbon's watercolor and colored-pencil illustrations are playful and appealing. Young readers will be tickled to discover that poems not only don't have to rhyme, they don't even have to stay within the lines! (Ages 4 to 8) --Emilie Coulter
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Reverse the sentences.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: Young readers will be tickled to discover that poems not only don't have to rhyme, they don't even have to stay within the lines! (Ages 4 to 8) --Emilie Coulter." Gibbon's watercolor and colored-pencil illustrations are playful and appealing. And "Slide" climbs slowly up the steps "all the way up to the tippy-top," only to plummet down the other side: "ooh what / a ride / I slide / and glide / I slip and / slide and / slide and / slide and / then I / stop. "Paper Airplane" follows the flight pattern of a newsprint jet until it winds up in the peeved teacher's hair. Each of the author's 22 poems traces the patterns of the games they celebrate: "Catch" requires a dizzying feat of visual agility, as each word appears all the way across the page from the next, like a ball zooming from player to player. Concrete poet the author and illustrator Rebecca Gibbon's rolling, swinging, skipping, bouncing book of "poetry at play" pays delightful tribute to this concept.Contrary to grownup advice, most kids know that drawing (or doing anything, for that matter) outside the lines can be a whole lot of fun
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: the first three paragraphs for this book
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: Outside the Lines
  I had a science teacher who had wiry, muscular arms—not large, but defined—and shoulders that looked like they could carry or handle anything. I admired them. She looked strong and exuded a quiet confidence and capability. I asked her about them once ("What did you do to get them?"), and she said she did twenty-five push-ups every day and lifted some weights. Somehow I convinced my parents to get two ten-pound weights, and I started using them daily, doing curls, shoulder presses, and butterfly presses while standing in front of a mirror in the living room.
  Even though my parents didn't fight me on it, they often expressed their disapproval. "Your arms are going to look like a man's arms," my father would say to me. "Why do you want to look like a boy?" my mother would ask, exasperated.
  For some reason, I was cognizant about muscles early on. Not only was I aware of them, I was drawn to them. Now, of course, I am obsessed with Michelle Obama's beautiful arms and the way she transformed my view of the First Lady by being unabashedly a woman of power and beauty. I have always liked the idea of looking and feeling strong.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: five more paragraphs
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: In other words, to queerly pursue the friend zone is good and right, because that is an experience that rounds out who I am as a person. A queer spirituality fills in the gaps; it shapes me in ways that one single relationship cannot, even if that one relationship is marriage.
  Even in college, when I lived with groups of girls, though we became close and I felt known and loved by them (some of them were even my bridesmaids), I never quite felt that gelling, that ride-or-die feeling, that feeling of totally belonging. I always felt a little off, a little queer. In seminary, I had a few close friends and many acquaintances, and I was generally social. Still, there was no group or community setting where I felt totally at ease, as if I totally fit.
  And then I became a mother. I joined mom groups, because motherhood was so lonely and isolating that first year. It was confusing, disorienting, and it goes without saying, exhausting. To be together with other mothers and children on a regular basis for playdates sustained my emotional and spiritual sanity. Even if it was just two moms with our gaggle of babies, at the very least another being with an adult body and mind was nearby, and I could actually have a conversation with someone over two feet tall. There were other children to play with (read: entertain and distract) my children, and this was lifesaving. And the playdates brought the continuous profound reminder that I wasn't alone. When I let myself be taken care of and loved, something new opened up within me. I discovered that when my children were cared for, I felt that care, too. I was bewildered by this new sensation—to be seen, heard, cared for, and loved so deeply by friends.
  Perhaps something about having children softened me and made me live in community a little differently. Strangely, paying attention to my child's incessant needs also let me recognize my own neediness and then be okay with feeling needy. That's something I never grew up seeing as okay. Being needy was for babies, for children, and maybe for our parents toward the end of their lives. Trying to demonstrate some semblance of unwavering strength closed me off to the world, but motherhood opened me up again.
  I think the shift started, millimeter by millimeter, when June was born. Having a baby, having her, softened me. It broke me a little. It gave me first-hand knowledge of the fullness of joy and the emptiness of clinical depression. It made me appreciate my body, and femaleness, in a new way. It committed me to becoming the kind of person I want June to know and remember and be proud of. It committed me to being a person I want to parent her. It made me brave.[2]
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: the last four paragraphs. Start with the sentence 'Love keeps coming and coming and coming'.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: Love keeps coming and coming and coming. Love and light—this is what our lives need these days, and by God's grace, it's what I've experienced especially these recent few years, not only from the day I had children, or from the day I got married, but at significant points throughout my life that felt like huge ruptures in my world. It was love, always love bursting through what seemed like a hardened winter soil. Queerness took root, and it was the love of my community, the pursuit of a desiring God, the love of a queer Jesus, and the presence of the Holy Spirit that gave space for it to grow in the warmth of both sun and storm.
  A queer spirituality transgresses the boundaries of how we live, move, and breathe through this world. It is truly embodied, and rooted in flesh-and-blood bodies, bodies that are surprising and show up as icons and words. It is also rooted in the body of Christ, in God-with-Us, in the continuous blurring of transcendence and immanence. That blurring feels like the essence of lovemaking, making love; any kind of crossing over is an intimacy, a mixing and mingling. It is also simultaneously rooted in the body of Christ, for queerness can't happen apart from the body.
  When we embrace queerness, we make meaning through our bodies and with other bodies. We see, we speak, we work, we love, we discern, we prophesy, we dream, and we make meaning. And we do so in community, necessarily entangled and intertwined with each other.
  I offer this short prayer written by another dear friend, Emily Scott, for National Coming Out Day this past year, because it fundamentally and thoroughly expresses what I feel in my bones, and that is gratitude.