Words

My bracelet came yesterday with my words- this year’s

And the past four years

I love to look down at it!

Snow Day!

Okay, so not so very much snow.  But a snow day nonetheless.  An all day event that I was to attend was cancelled and I took great advantage of a surprise day to do with what I wanted. And what I wanted was to be “snowed in.”  And so I was.

I made this:

And this:

I read some of this:

I took a nap with a boy who knows how to sleep

I mastered a few piles in my office which felt like it looked about like this:

Listened to some Appalatin

And lots of other things I love to do like talk to my son, hang out on pinterest, get caught up on laundry.

A great gift, this snow day!

A snapshot of today

"One Today"

Richard Blanco

One sun rose on us today, kindled over our shores,
peeking over the Smokies, greeting the faces
of the Great Lakes, spreading a simple truth
across the Great Plains, then charging across the Rockies.
One light, waking up rooftops, under each one, a story
told by our silent gestures moving behind windows.
My face, your face, millions of faces in morning’s mirrors,
each one yawning to life, crescendoing into our day:
pencil-yellow school buses, the rhythm of traffic lights,
fruit stands: apples, limes, and oranges arrayed like rainbows
begging our praise. Silver trucks heavy with oil or paper -- bricks or milk, teeming over highways alongside us,
on our way to clean tables, read ledgers, or save lives -- to teach geometry, or ring up groceries as my mother did
for twenty years, so I could write this poem.
All of us as vital as the one light we move through,
the same light on blackboards with lessons for the day:
equations to solve, history to question, or atoms imagined,
the “I have a dream” we keep dreaming,
or the impossible vocabulary of sorrow that won’t explain
the empty desks of twenty children marked absent
today, and forever. Many prayers, but one light
breathing color into stained glass windows,
life into the faces of bronze statues, warmth
onto the steps of our museums and park benches
as mothers watch children slide into the day.
One ground. Our ground, rooting us to every stalk
of corn, every head of wheat sown by sweat
and hands, hands gleaning coal or planting windmills
in deserts and hilltops that keep us warm, hands
digging trenches, routing pipes and cables, hands
as worn as my father’s cutting sugarcane
so my brother and I could have books and shoes.
The dust of farms and deserts, cities and plains
mingled by one wind -- our breath. Breathe. Hear it
through the day’s gorgeous din of honking cabs,
buses launching down avenues, the symphony
of footsteps, guitars, and screeching subways,
the unexpected song bird on your clothes line.
Hear: squeaky playground swings, trains whistling,
or whispers across cafe tables, Hear: the doors we open
for each other all day, saying: hello, shalom,
buon giorno, howdy, namaste, or buenos días
in the language my mother taught me -- in every language
spoken into one wind carrying our lives
without prejudice, as these words break from my lips.
One sky: since the Appalachians and Sierras claimed
their majesty, and the Mississippi and Colorado worked
their way to the sea. Thank the work of our hands:
weaving steel into bridges, finishing one more report
for the boss on time, stitching another wound
or uniform, the first brush stroke on a portrait,
or the last floor on the Freedom Tower
jutting into a sky that yields to our resilience.
One sky, toward which we sometimes lift our eyes
tired from work: some days guessing at the weather
of our lives, some days giving thanks for a love
that loves you back, sometimes praising a mother
who knew how to give, or forgiving a father
who couldn’t give what you wanted.
We head home: through the gloss of rain or weight
of snow, or the plum blush of dusk, but always -- home,
always under one sky, our sky. And always one moon
like a silent drum tapping on every rooftop
and every window, of one country -- all of us --
facing the stars
hope -- a new constellation
waiting for us to map it,
waiting for us to name it -- together

Stone of Help

This morning for some reason this great song that has followed me from my childhood through to my adult life came to mind, and I hummed it as I was getting ready for church.  When I checked my facebook, I saw that my niece in Ohio had posted some of the lyrics on her status.  I got to church and glanced through my bulletin….and it was the first song we would sing!  I think I needed to hear this song today!

I never hear it that I don’t think about an important time in the life of my church, and  my life.  When I began going there, my church had just gone through a very painful time and was in the process of being evicted from the building that that church had worshipped in since the 1800s because they had called a woman to pastor. 

In the weeks that led up to our moving out of the building,  I think that the thing that sustained us all and kept us from being bitter was a series of shared stories. Each week a different church member would share with us a story of a time when God had sustained them, and as Samuel did in the Old Testament, each  raised an Ebenezer stone as sign and symbol of God’s faithfulness thus far.  On the day that we marched with joy through the neighborhood to our new building, our basket of Ebenezer stones was carried and held high.  We sang,”Come Thou Fount” as we crowded into our new space, and several years later the stones were embedded into the outside wall so that we can touch them as we walk into the church, ever a reminder of God’s faithfulness. 

Perhaps I needed a reminder of that faithfulness.  Perhaps I needed to ask God to bind my wandering heart to God’s.  Perhaps I just needed to let something dear that binds my child faith to my adult faith roll around a bit in my heart.  But here, on this Sunday night, I raise my Ebenezer.  Thus far, God has helped me.

Merry Christmas,Girlfriends!

Today in most Christian churches, I’d bet that you likely heard something about Epiphany.  What I doubt any of us heard much about today was Women’s Christmas. Only in the last week have I ever even heard of Women’s Christmas!

Jan Richardson explains it this way:

Originating in Ireland, where it is known as Nollaig na mBan, Women's Christmas began as a day when the women, who often carried the domestic responsibilities all year, took Epiphany as an occasion to enjoy a break and celebrate together at the end of the holidays.

Whether your domestic duties are many or few, Women’s Christmas is a good time to pause and take a break from whatever has kept you busy and hurried in the past weeks or months. As the Christmas season comes to a close, this is an occasion both to celebrate with friends and also to spend time in reflection before diving into the responsibilities of this new year.

Jan has written a beautiful guided reflection for Women’s Christmas that you can do alone or with a group. 

Mark your calendars, girls.  It’s on next year.  Merry Christmas to us all!

What I Am Loving Today

This little heater was my Christmas gift to DH who is ALWAYS colder than I am, year round.  This enables him to close our room off and make it nice and warm and toasty when he is sleeping during the day. (he works nights)  I turn the heat off at night but leave the little faux flame glowing and it makes me feel snug as a bug when I settle in .  I sort of wish I had seen Alicia’s little stove in white before I bought this one, but the black suits my childhood phone. (GLendale 4-5569, party line) Anyway, I love this cozy little stove today.

And my room is NOT bright yellow- just the exposure of the picture.

One little word….

New year, time for a new word.  As for my year spent with Memory, I feel like it was a pleasant companion and I am glad for our time spent together in earnest.

My word for this year is Silence.  Today, as I have done for two years prior, I once again moved from one year’s list of hopes to another the dream of making a silent retreat at either a monastery close to home or a hermitage at a convent a bit further.  I think the monastery is calling to me and I am not sure why I haven’t made that happen.  But it is the silence that calls.  Not silence so much as in the absence of sound.  At the monastery there are the lovely prayers of the hours and the sounds that a  place of silence makes.  I think the silence I crave is more of a barrier between me and sounds that distract me.  And those might not be so much sounds as my own lack of inner quiet.  I want to make friends with some sense of emptiness, where words or music or even thoughts come at my invitation.  So, silence.  Welcome 2013.  This poem is  a nice welcome into silence.

New Year Resolve

by May Sarton

The time has come
To stop allowing the clutter
To clutter my mind
Like dirty snow,
Shove it off and find
Clear time, clear water.
Time for a change,
Let silence in like a cat
Who has sat at my door
Neither wild nor strange
Hoping for food from my store
And shivering on the mat.
Let silence in.
She will rarely speak or mew,
She will sleep on my bed
And all I have ever been
Either false or true
Will live again in my head.
For it is now or not
As old age silts the stream,
To shove away the clutter,
To untie every knot,
To take the time to dream,
To come back to still water.

Nailed It!

You know sometimes when you know you have picked the right present for someone?   Like, 48 colors of nail polish for one of my daughters……..

On the birth of our Lord!

The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light!

Merry and Bright

I have enjoyed our Advent theme as we journey from darkness to  light together, each week adding more light into our worship space. 

I am grateful for a sense of light that I am carrying in my heart. In spite of much sadness in our world, our country, our family, I am more confident than ever that indeed the light DOES shine in the darkness, and the darkness has not put it out.  (John 1:5)

June Apples

Rather than calling the roll all of the time, I tell my DH and kids that I am having dinner with the Mean Moms, or lunch with the 4 Season Friends, or am headed to dinner with the Weenie Moms.  Pretty much, those key words spoken, they know exactly who I am with. There some friends who are in more than one group. And some friends are not really in one of my “groups” (or “gangs” in the case of the Mean Moms.

Tonight I had dinner with my Apples in June friends.  I’ve linked to this video in the past. The first time I heard Carla Gover sing it I cried all the way through.  I’m older now, and my gatherings have become less hurried, the kids are older, we find more time to talk about who we are and how we are making it. Especially with the Apples In June friends, we cut to the chase and dispense with the small talk.  And sometimes, just their company and the chance to lay down my load does indeed make me feel “magical, wild, and free”. More often than not, I just feel rich and fortified.

 

Nap Nook

Our sweet little pug dog Odie went blind a couple of months ago. It happened overnight and nearly broke my heart.  I have adjusted, realizing that he is not in pain and that this will not shorten his life.  At first he was very befuddled and hesitant to move about, but he is slowly getting back to his little impish self.  Early on, one evening I couldn’t find him.  Luckily he is such a loud snorer, I could follow the sound and found him behind the bathroom door tucked into DH’s clothes that he left there after his shower.  Since then, this happens several times a week.  I guess he wanders around and finds a soft place to land that smells like his favorite person in the world.  Now, I don’t have the heart to gather his laundry until after Odie is tucked in for the night in our bed.  Anything that makes him feel more secure is okay by me. 

Welcome Back Old Friend!

Oh my!  Just the sight of this and I can hear the steady ding ding ding and see the rotating patterns on the wall.  Somehow I had forgotten about angel chimes!  I loved them.  Not so much on putting together the sharp and bendable little tin parts, but oh so worth it!  Okay, I’m ordering one now.  And I hope it comes….tomorrow. 

Some major Alicia link love

I wrote this post a little over a year ago. Refresh your memory. You need to read that post to go to the next one.

It is fitting that I mark my return to Wednesday Link Love with a new link to the wonderful Alicia’s blog and this beautiful post. Go there now and read it.  Really.

And then, of course you will want to read the next 7 weeks of posts and look at the pictures.  I have always found her blog to be a sensory treat, with her beautiful photographs of her lovely home and the beautiful things she makes and the sweet creatures she shares her life with.  Today’s post is just so beautiful and so lyrical that I have to insist that you also hop over and read it too.  And when you are finished reading it, go back and read the last  paragraph all over again.  It is pure delight.  I love the blogging world and the amazing women I have come to “know” because of it. Okay, just read this passage one more time.

Sometimes I have to go out by myself to get some stuff done and then, alone in the car, driving my old familiar routes out to the post office, the fabric store, over the little mountain whose village-like view I like to treat myself to in every season, I usually cry a little bit, thinking about everything that came before, how hard it was, and how hard some things are, and how tender life is, for everyone. Everyone you meet. December, with its fog and dark trees, and delicate branches waving in the cold, and its white berries hanging heavy from wire-thin black branches waving in the cold, makes me feel soft and tearful. I wind the car through the trees. The cold air smells of cedar. The route is old but I am new. I hurry to return home even though I'm trying to go slow, to let myself go slow enough to feel it all, to settle into every mile of this journey. Every season of this life. This glowing, golden gift

Primed and ready

Last year my friend Beth encouraged me to join in on a 12 Days of Christmas Art Swap that she has been participating in for several years. It was so very fun that I have looked forward to being a part of it again all year.  Each of the women in the swap make 12 gifts with the only rule being that it has to be able to fit through a mail slot.  Each of us was assigned a day and given the addresses of all of the participants.  I am Day 7.  The person who is Day 13 makes one for each person to open on the day that is their own gift day so that you have a gift to open each of the 12 days.  Mine went postal last Friday, and AFTER Day 7 I will post a picture of what I made. 

I bought a special box to hold my  gifts in as they arrive, and 8 of my little gifts are already poised and ready to be opened on their given day.  It is so fun to have something to look forward to every day.  I’ll be sharing what the gifts are as they are opened, but I can already tell you that every single one is a treasure!

It’s beginning to look a lot like……August

There is just something very wrong with having to run the fans in the house as I decorate for Christmas.  In Kentucky.  On December 3rd.  I saw a dandelion popping its little yellow head up when I walked the dogs tonight. 

I put Christmas afghans on the arms of our living room chairs tonight in good faith that there will be a chilly evening when we want to hunker down beneath them while we drink our hot chocolate.  Holding out for some “cozy”!

Dark into Light, Rich into Richer

Today we entered into our Advent journey- a journey from darkness into light. 

A friend reminded me today of an old practice that I have fallen away from.  For a long time I had a standing “date” to meet a good friend online each night around 10 and we would chat about our day, often mentioning what “made us rich” that day.  When my girls came along, this also became a part of our night time ritual.  I would ask, “What made you rich today?”, and one of the girls was the scribe and we kept track of it in a little notebook.  Somewhere in this house I feel sure those notebooks that we filled with riches are still floating around.  While I can’t put my hands on them right now, I can tell you with certainty that you could look through every page and you would be hard pressed to find mention of anything that money could buy.  There were plenty of cardinal sightings and visits with friends or books we were reading.  But never once a mention of “stuff”.  How I hope that my girls never reframe their understanding of wealth.

That said, this is my list for today:

• Walking into the church and finding it lovingly prepared, the stage fully set, to guide us through the journey of Advent together. 
• Dinner tonight of wonderful Ethiopian food shared with a large group of church friends and our Eritrean refugee family in a local restaurant.  It was toasty and cozy inside and the food was great and the conversation interesting, and we were all beautiful at that big table.
• A brief street corner visit with neighbor friends.
• Feeling well fed and well loved and ready to rest to rise to meet a new week.

Thanks be to God for the wonderful gifts of this day.

Oh, it’s cryin’ time again……

Last night I got weepy looking at a site I used to make our Christmas cards.  All of those sweet families, all different configurations of family, all looking so happy and so dear to each other.  And the sight of my own design, with my own dear family tipped the balance into a full fledge cry.  Yes, it’s that time of year.  Everything I see, every person I see, every song or snippet of conversation I overhear are all conspiring to make me tear up.  I’m just a sap that way.  And something about the season of Advent just makes me take my heart out of its protective shell and hold it right out in the palm of my hand for all the world to touch.  And in some tiny tiny tiny way, isn’t that indeed what God did for us at Christmas?

So, would you care to join me for a little sap?

Finding my way back…..

I’m not even sure if anyone even still stops by here…..but I’m working in the direction of becoming more regular with posts.  It has taken me all week to tinker with the layout!  I’ve gotten kind of rusty.