Living-Deliberately.com

Yesterday “they”, the weather powers-who-be, predicted a major storm headed our way by Sunday/Monday with accumulations of snow and ice. Today it’s shifted to next friday. That’s pretty far into the forecast to count on. They also have snow in next Tuesday’s slot but light stuff. We’ll see.

The kids are all snuggled with the dog watching movies. Red Fox plays dead when he sees us coming, hoping against all that we won’t notice him and make him go outside. He’s pretty safe! He’s clean and loves love. I make him go out for potty breaks but other than that, his little nest in the bean bag is all his to enjoy.

Mt. Laundry has become a plateau. My poor washer and dryer are showing their age and fatigue. Without doing at least half the duty on the clothesline it getting harder for them to keep up. I wish appliances didn’t seem to have such short lives and I often wonder  if there aren’t better (and more affordable) options that can have less environmental impact. We use lots of water and energy; the newer models do better with water but are bigger. And then when they die, even after a heavy duty household like mine, they go to an appliance graveyard where they rot and rust over how many (hundreds?) of years. There has to be a better way.

In following links today I went here, an excerpt and commentary on an interview with NPR  Rod Dreher gave, the author of Crunchy Cons. Interesting stuff; very cyclical.

Seeing fewer comments this week I went and checked out my blog stats. Wow!! I was in for a shocker. Last year I averaged right around 20k for hits per month, with the unique user tally somewhere around 1500. But now, (or yesterday rather), at the 17th of the month, it’s up over 33k for hits and 1772 unique users (just for Jan so far), with the average user coming an average of 3 times.  So thanks guys!

We recently watched four “big name” movies that had been on our Netflix list for what seemed like ages and then they all came in at once. They all were movies that had a lot said about them, showed up in the awards nominations of previous years, and were hailed as quality films. I’ll give them all that. I can also say that they all have stuck in my head until this point, a week and in the case of one, two weeks, later to be written about and thus purged. So as far as “impact” goes, they perhaps all had some, and a couple more than the others.

Ray. David and I just about fell asleep in this. The music made us want to listen to Ray’s music, the real stuff. Jamie Foxx did indeed do a good portrayal. But the writing? Ugh. The story seemed to drone on and on. There isn’t much satisfying about watching someone languish away into addiction, even if it was true. The same story could have been told in less time though it may have been; we watched the version with the extra scenes added in. I still would have cut about an hour off and the extra scenes didn’t amount to that much. At the end, I found the change of the Georgia decision to ban him little solace for the downer the story emphasized.

Capote. GREAT movie. I was intrigued by Phillip Seymour Hoffman’s high-voiced depiction of Truman Capote. He’s one of my favorite actors and the performance was, I think, Oscar winning. It certainly was a risky role for him to take. I know little about the actual Capote so I can’t compare how “lifelike” a job he did. But I do know that he was entirely believable. The story was very tight and well written and moved along. Capote gets tangled around the criminal he’s investigating; it comes to consume him yet there is this cool reserve he tries to hold onto. Catherine Keener plays Harper Lee (To Kill a Mockingbird) and she provides a strong, even voice of conscience. By the climax of the movie the viewer is both fed up (like she is) with Capote’s obsession and rooting for him at the same time. Delicious complexity.

Walk the Line. As far as biopics go, this one was hands down better than Ray, with a similar theme of “watch the brilliant musician struggle with addiction”. Love triumphs beautifully but the ending felt a bit abrupt. Really good acting, good enough in fact, for David to set aside his dislike for Joaquin Phoenix roles and enjoy watching. ;-). I think I realized again though, through watching all four of these movies, how impatient I am with any addiction, and destructive behavior in general, even my own. It makes me angry to watch stupid choices repeat themselves.

Maybe that’s why I need to purge these movie reviews out of my skull. They all share a common theme that I struggle to tolerate. Before I forget, images are from imbd.com.

I save the biggie for last. Brokeback Mountain. This one has confounded and frustrated me the most. Last year when it came out, I listened into quite a few of the long and heated discussions about it. I hesitated when putting it on my netflix list. I hesitated even more letting anyone know I’d watched it. Most of the reviews I’ve read about it went similar to this one:

” While “Brokeback Mountain” seems startlingly unpretentious for a movie about homosexual cowboys, closer reflection reveals that it’s not really about this at all. It’s a simple, tragic story about two men in love. Ennis is a man torn by his affection for Jack and his inability to open up emotionally.”

The review’s source was lost in transit from a forum to my email so I apologize for not crediting the author. It makes my point though…feeling the complete opposite, I didn’t see this any kind of “tragic love story”. It was certainly tragic, but for different reasons in my opinion.

The movie opens with two cowboys getting a lonely job guarding sheep on a pretty mountain. They are essentially fatherless, hurting boys, and as the story goes on, we find out that even the years they did spend with their fathers were not nurturing, healthy relationships. They are bored, hurting, raised a culture that would never have allowed for expressing that let alone healing it, and they have lots of time on their hands. What happens is nearly violent, both physically and emotionally, and goes on to impact them in (yes, addictive) ways for the rest of their lives.

Neither was happy in the “relationship”. One romantacized it but his was a character in love with escapism across the spectrum of his life. The other (in an honestly stunning performance by Heath Ledger) fought against it from the start and not unlike the drug addictions in two of the other movies I watched that week, was haunted by a choice that destroyed anything else he cared about. It was consuming and destructive, not because (dare I say it) it was a homosexual relationship but because it only intensified the lonely disfunction that led him there in the first place rather than doing anything to heal him.

I kept thinking, “stick his fiance up there on the mountain with him and instead they’d have had a beautiful memory while he purged his pain.”

Other than that, Brokeback Mountain was just gorgeous scenery and predictable, boring plot. Take away the “queer cowboy” element and what was left was the stunning cinematography and fantastic soundtrack. But I anticipated every plot shift and that got really old fast. In the light of other movie nominees that same year, and Crash, which ultimately won (and never bored me) and I think the outcry that claimed it was some kind of homophobic bash denying it’s “great classic” movie status pretty much unfounded. The parts were played extremely well and Ang Lee’s films are all beautiful. But I’d never put this film in the “classic” category, as quite a few film critics wanted to.

Both Capote and BBM displayed people-as-addictions and the other two films portrayed drug addicts. I found them all the same. All sad. All raw and honest. The hang up with BBM is that I’ve heard few say that this was a destructive force in their lives. Blame the culture, blame the times. I felt myself recoil at the “pity us” stance BBM seemed to want to pull from the audience.

Well, perhaps what I take away from all four is a deeper compassion for those who struggle with addictions that are so much larger than they are, that consume and control them. Being more merciful is certainly an area where I myself need to grow as a person. I’d choose to do that through empowerment rather than pity though, and that may be where the movies and I part.

Andrew: “Mom!!! Tell Wheaton that if he’s going to cuss, he needs to do it properly!!”

Aiyeee wow. My cup runneth over. What a blessed morning I’ve had!

It started with a loaf of banana bread. Just humble banana bread, baked last night in order to have a loaf to bring on a visit I made this morning. It was a new recipe as part of the little ongoing quest I’ve had to find a good yeasted banana bread. Well sistah, I found it. Half wheat, half white, lots of banana, nuts, a good texture, a thick crust, it has everything needed. Soft, chewy, and moist, it was like a slice of goodness on my plate. I sliced it thick, spread it with cream cheese that had formed thickly and disgarded it’s whey overnight, and let a stream of honey rain over the lot of it. The children found it a welcome change from “Porridge Made 50 Ways”; we had smiles and bedhead and bathrobes with banana bread and coffee at sunrise.

We’ve been trying a new experiment with our oldest too.  He’s almost 11 and doesn’t like to go out for morning errands. So he’s been giving staying home a try, provided we all have phone communication and Dad is at work 5 minutes away. I leave him with a list of chores or school work and he knows how to cook well enough to have something going by the time I get home. Today it was “do the bathrooms, the chickens, and get the chili on”. Dad even brought home a surprise guest for lunch and Andrew had all the work done, the house picked up, and his chili is really good!

He missed out a bit though….our visit this morning was with an older couple in our church, grandparents a few times over who love children, and the wife is a wood carver. I didn’t get to see her studio shop but I did see her scrapbook of the crosses she’s carved. I don’t think words can describe them….they are magnificent. As a woodworker’s daughter I am already predisposed to have a soft spot for the warmth of wood; the scent of sawdust is a reassuring comfort. But to see wood carved this way….it reminded me of “even the rocks cry out”. I was blessed by their openness and hospitality and when a day holds something as sweet as that, one doesn’t expect anything better.

Ah! But there was more. Our next stop was around the corner at church for the Akathist, a short prayer service. Prayers in Orthodoxy are sung and in this small group, everyone participates. Yes, those of you who have known me for years and know “Tia doesn’t pray out loud” would be shocked to hear it but not as much as I am….even as I do it I’m amazed there is a single sound leaving my lips! I marvel even more at how safe I feel in that little room.  But the selection today was (I think) called the Akathist to the Theotokos and focused on the comfort of sorrows, extremely applicable to my life and a balm to sing.

Immediately after that, before I could get angsty about if I’d done everything right, Jane invited me to her shop. It’s an alteration/sewing shop called Martha’s Needle. She reassurred me it was kid-friendly and off we headed. And WOW!! More childhood comfort…I’m very at ease in a sewing room. Some of my earliest memories involve stray threads beneath a sewing machine. Jane’s shop is an artist’s studio as she is also a quilter and doll maker.

This is Jane and Eustiss, a doll she made and who really seems to have his own personality (and indeed, his own Jane-voice too!). I used this as my Project 365 photo today.

This photo doesn’t do the quilt justice. In the blue bands there are lines upon lines of scripture embroidered. The details are amazing; the texture kept calling my hands out to touch it and then my mind would pull my hand back. These pieces of art caused my mouth to gape in awe.

The thread reminded me of my mom and was a good example of the depth and color of my day. Next door to Jane’s shop is an ice cream shop. The smell of waffle cones enticed us and she walked us over to see the Polish owner’s large collection of pigs. Turns out the ice cream is all homemade with natural ingredients! “Oh and he’s got about six kinds of chocolate right now”, Jane whispered to me. A pint of Rocky Road, the good kind, with real chunks of marshmallow, and a pint of Death By Chocolate later and I had to pack up my tired toddler and head home.

David and his lunch guest left while I was driving home; snow flurried onto my windshield and cows huddled in clusters.

I’ve been thinking of the concept of implosion, of what happens when all the energy is focused in the center. I think for most of the previous year I felt like I was imploding….my only focus was on our own family and our four walls. Rarely did anyone accept an invitation over though we did have several invitations out. That aided an environment where we were “consumers” but not able to give back. The voices around me were largely encouraging me to have as my only focus my own children and being a housewife. Good things surely, and necessary as they are my primary charge. But as it became my only world, we weakened rather than strengthened.

Implosion: To collapse inward violently. Does that sound like depression to anyone? It describes what I felt in July and August of last year very well, though not so much did I think I was depressed as I felt a crisis of my entire identity, most especially my spiritual self and what the purpose of even having one was.

I feel now like I’m experiencing a wonderful metamorphasis of the soul. Waking up after a long winter of some kind,  and though the winter held it’s beauty as well, it wasn’t meant to last as long as it did.  And something interesting is happening. As the focus shifts from our own four walls, a feeling of strength is rising.

Well, I’m rambling. Like I said, my cup is running over. It’s been a good day.

It was somewhere after a long day of schooling the kids, done with a sort of “movie hangover” headache from a: staying up too late to watch all of Walk the Line and b: not taking the time to purge the FOUR movie reviews swimming in my brain today into some kind of written form. Still after the afternoon tidy, thus repairing the kitchen from said long day of schooling the kids, and after a somewhat reassuring phone call from a friend, I was sweeping, knowing I was headed next to marinate the meat for dinner.

I’ve started praying the “Jesus Prayer” while doing my more mundane chores…stuff like washing dishes, sorting laundry, and sweeping. It goes, “O Lord Jesus, have mercy on me, a sinner.” It’s an easy line to remember, a way to “pray without ceasing”, and has a nice rhythm to it. I’ve been contemplating how I can view my life, the way I spend my days, almost as it’s own monastic order….to live deliberately, in service and contemplation without viewing that as somehow incompatible with a joyous, sometimes boisterous and busy life as a wife and mother. It would seem to me, that if God gave me one and is calling me to another, that there is some way for them to harmonize. Praying through work is one way to do that.

So I was sweeping orange cracker crumbs off the green floor, cat food bits and bits of lace from Celia’s crafts, when the words, “count it all joy” interrupted my prayer line. Did someone say it? Was it an answer to the prayer? I don’t know. Maybe? I went and looked up the rest of the words,

“My brethren, count it all joy when you fall into various trials, knowing that the testing of your faith produces patience. But let patience have it’s perfect work, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking nothing.” James 1: 2-4

Ah. And so you know? I don’t think there is a scripture verse that I can call to mind that describes better how I want to be. Someone who sees a purpose in trial, a joy rather than a nagging complaining. The idea that I could become “perfect”, so content and complete that I lack nothing.

It makes those cheese cracker crumbs look a little different. Less trivial. And certainly the hard day of school too. If this is my work, if “how I spend my days is how I spend my life”, then sweeping crumbs and teaching little ones to read, cleaning clothes and marinating meat becomes, dare I say it, my kingdom work? If finding time to pray is my trial, then it can be my trial that helps produce patience, which has it’s own goal in helping me become complete. The hope of that brings me joy, which brings me back to the beginning of the verse, “count it all joy“.

Imagine it….the humble tasks that make up our day, that we are tempted to groan and grumble and complain about, can actually be part of a beautiful work in our souls. I don’t know what else to say but, “may it be so!”. What a way to transcend the mundane!

I’m sort of taking inventory this morning in an effort to get back into the swing of things. My  mind is full of conversations…..ones I’ve had, ones I need to have, ones I wish I could have.

The weekend brought interesting and fun dinner guests, the packing up of the christmas decorations, 3 People magazines and 1 Mothering, 2 church services, 1 movie, not-very-good Mexican food, and many conversations.

Today should bring Mt. Laundry, our biggest school day of the week, and rain. We started with Eggs Benedict for breakfast and the continuation of unseasonable warmth. Little bedheaded boys are starting to rise, late for a change, and wanting their muffins and eggs drenched in Hollandaise sauce, our version of sunshine even when the sky won’t cooperate.

I am sure that this “initial post” on a blog normally devoted to the meanderings of my dear wife may not enlighten a single soul. I hope, in fact, that what is read already resonates with you in the variety of senses in which it could taken.

I have been meditating a great deal on the Christian meaning of peace lately. I suppose because I have for many years believed that peace was more or less an assurance that the emnity between God and a specific individual, namely me, had been reconciled. The chasm was no longer there. If I thought it was there I was delusional or lacked faith. This is the only view of Peace I could expect and perhaps accept.

These days, as I contemplate the Beatitude of Our Lord “Blessed are the peacemakers for they shall be called the sons of God”. I recognize foremostly that while the previous understanding is truly Glorious. its transcendent posture leaves the here and now aspects of “making peace” undeveloped. Now, I know that the Scriptures are replete both with command and admonishment on how one ought to conduct themselves. One might suppose that simple adherence to these things would bring peace whether that be in the home, office, church or world. Though, historically, Biblical morality has not prevented wars,disputes or divorces. Sinful men and women have spent a great deal of time justifying belligerent activity in the name of the Lord.

Peacing making, I presently surmise, is an activity borne out of desire to be in Christ. It has to be sacrificial and atoning and all that without the desire or acceptance of compensation. No pat on the back from any for the patience and constancy of attention we must give (in and through Christ). Peace must be ironically violent in its engagement of all hostility, prejudice, and ignorance. I hope as time goes by I will be able to flesh out all I mean.
This is what I am thinking about. I believe this does not stray too far from the theme of this blog. If it does, I will secretly change the name to Living Peacefully and take over the site ;-).

I dreamed last night of a quilt. It was a patchwork, each square interspersed with a deep crimson red. The squares beside each red one held names and an embroidered image….a bee here, a Chinese symbol there, a book and sewing needle in another. I woke for a few minutes as the sun rose, when I typically start my day but with no urgency on this weekend morn, and realized that my mind had been compiling a fellowship of souls.

After a year of wandering, borrowed and confined living spaces, and a stack of declined invitations, we find ourselves in a home with a history of children and hospitality. In the early 1900’s eight children were raised within these walls and from there it became a home for clergy; after that a guest house for travelers. It is a beautiful history to become a part of, knowing that the walls speak good things, that people look at this house and smile. We want the door to be open, the home lights through the windows to glow warmly, and for faces to make laughing memories around our table.

I’ve been reading The Rule of St. Benedict and have paused all week on one line. “Never give a hollow greeting of peace or turn away when someone needs your love.” It has, for all intensive purposes, stopped me in my tracks.

Even now I struggle to put all the thoughts those words send spinning into something articulate enough to share. Memories come….of the days after our daughter’s death, when I’d refuse to answer the question, “how are you doing?” because I knew the asker was in no way prepared for the rawness an honest reply would give. Of the times I’ve let my shyness be my god and send me to the other side of a room so that I could avoid having to speak with someone who intimidated me. Or worse, the times I let pride be my god and avoided them out of arrogance and feelings of superiority.

There is more than memory, or entanglement in memory anyway, as I feel what the other side is like…to know what it feels like to genuinely be interested in what another has to say and then to realize that it is not mutual. More recently, to discover that while I may have very much loved and wanted to be led by someone, they did not even recognize the worth of my soul enough to mend a repair they themselves caused, nay to even recognize such a rent had been torn. How hollow their greeting would seem now…..

Into the spinning comes determination. Fresh renewal in hope that change is possible, and let it begin with me Lord. If the eyes are the window to the soul, I can direct mine into their’s. I can let love transcend words and connect on a deeper level. I can choose the eternal realm over the temporal one and give time. Time, which is surely our culture’s first idol, the primary reason we rush past the needy and choose hollow, shallow investment over depth. Time spent with another leads to an ingrained blending of lives, of souls, that can never really be teased wholly apart.

Which brings in those thoughts of listening with risk, of willingness to be changed by another’s impact upon my life, of allowing for my mind to change, of letting them become a part of who I am and I, a part of them.

Trying to define humanity is difficult. A person. A species. One definition comes to be by what we fail at. “Subject to or indicative of the weaknesses, imperfections, and fragility associated with humans .” Our human frailty. I found that interesting. It’s not our success or strength that makes us human….it’s our need. Our fragility. Our interdependence upon one another.

And I come back to that quilt in my dream, each connected to another. Each square, each soul, with a story that has delighted us in the telling and hearing. We’ve marveled at the vibrancy of the stories around us, of the accepted invitations that prevented the shallow from remaining and has instead helped us to hear needs and how we may meet them, to share ours and have them met, to each of us know that we are not alone. By listening, through time, with honesty and real love, we grant what surely every human craves…..the acknowledgment, visibility, and worth of their soul. Can there be any better way than that to follow Christ?

My head was kind of foggy as I pulled myself downstairs today to start breakfast. I was having a hard time remembering what David and I had talked about the night before. When I dropped a fork, it startled me and I jumped easily. Praying was scattered; I couldn’t stay focused even on a singular sentence. And while going through different blogs this morning, I commented on one, and as I reread it after posting, I wondered if it even made any sense.

I got my little crew into the car and squinted into the sunshine. My list of things to get done on grocery/scouting day was even longer than usual but I felt heavy and not in a hurry. The van took the curves and hills and we headed towards town.

Wheaton piped up from the backseat, “Mom!! I forgot my old-gah!”

“Well you’ll be okay without it, won’t you?”

“Noooooo….I need it.” Usually we are so pressed for time that I’d make my six year old tough it out without his blanket. But in that second, as my eye watched him in the rear view mirror and my foot hit the brake to slow down and turn around, I realized it….if I could have had it, I’d be curled up somewhere with a blanket too. I’ve been hurting and too much in “action” mode to let it in.

In a crisis, I’m your girl. I’ll quickly make order of the chaos. Get the practical stuff going. Act first and ask questions later. And then when things are quiet, when the others who freaked out initially are composed and ready to act themselves, into the background I go….to process.

Which means I have a bit of a delayed reaction to some things. It catches even me off guard sometimes. I certainly didn’t see this one coming. But it all made sense at once…the grogginess, the 3-day migraine, the constant feeling of vulnerability. When I get into a “place” like this, I often sort of crave a quiet monastery-like room, some “infirmary of the soul” to hide for a few days, to sleep it off, to think it off; some room with sparse, natural furniture and food brought to the door, and few words. Very few words.

My little boy got his blanket and we headed back into our day. I was surprised, but not really by much, when once we were in town I turned the car toward the church. I noticed this week that I feel safe there; a realization that should have alerted me sooner to the fact that I was feeling a bit threatened in other areas of life. I expected it to be empty and it just about was. But there was someone there who mercifully prayed aloud for me when my words couldn’t have come. Who listened and offered a few kind words; stark contrast to the hateful ones still resonating in my head, ringing in my ears. I had a few moments of healing and then life clamored back in.

But that was okay. There was a laugh and the day went on. In the ocean we swim under the waves. I’m going to swim under for a time now too, let the depths muffle the noise above, and feel myself held by waters healing my wounds.

I was going to put this on the school blog but changed my mind. Maybe it will help moms who use all kinds of different education models!

It worked today. I’m not sure how long it’s going to or if it will in anyone else’s home. How’s that for a disclaimer?

Basically, you pick a few things that need doing and offer your kids a choice:

The ground rules: no computer games until school and chores are done. They each have two afternoon chores.

So…. “Andrew”, I say. “You pick your chore. Do you want to bring in firewood or go bring down all the dirty laundry from upstairs?”

Andrew says, “Oh I’ll be getting that laundry!” (wood requires 3 trips and he’s not fond of the repetition).

After he’s brought it all down and I’ve check the banister to make sure it isn’t lined with dirty socks and underwear, he gets option 2.

“Do you want to bring in the firewood or tidy/wipe down the bathroom?”

He chose the firewood. Celia’s options were to wipe down the bathroom or sort the dirty wash (she chose the bathroom), and to tidy the living room (they built tents today) or sort the laundry. That time she chose to tidy.

Stuff got done fast and everyone was happy. I did the dishes and sorted the wash. I guess the other ground rule is that Mom does what’s left to do ;-). If any readers give this a shot, let me know it goes at your house. Tomorrow I’m going to make a list of stuff that needs to be done to work from.

Good stuff on Fr. Stephen’s blog today. Read it all here, and here’s a few quotes:

”

My contention was (and is) that the popular preaching of American Protestantism, had winnowed the gospel down to a few graphic images, easily preached and repeated. Those images were a caricature of the substitutionary atonement and a simplified version of Christian initiation (”accept Jesus as your Lord and Savior”) that came to be the stock of popular American evangelical preaching. Just think, American campuses were inundated with the “four” spiritual laws. Imagine trying to convey the Orthodox faith in four anything.

My further contention has been that what was once true of Upstate New York is now descriptive of an entire culture. America is the Burnt Over District. Most Americans, if they have heard a version of the gospel, have heard a very truncated, often caricatured version.”

and:

“When I first read Vladimir Lossky’s Mystical Theology of the Orthodox Church (when I was in college), I wept. I do not recommend it to others as the book to start with in exploring Orthodoxy. But I wept because it was the first time I had ever heard the good news that actually sounded like good news. I wept because I was discovering that everything I had always hoped was true was not only true but was actually the Orthodox faith. What I heard in Lossky was my first account of union with God as taught in the Fathers. It wasn’t the mystery of it, but the simple goodness of the teaching that God became what we are that we might become what He is. The imagery of union with Christ was largely new to me (having been raised in Southern one-sidedness).”

Maybe the “Unseasonable Weather” days are past. Today, after making grits, sausage and eggs in the dark due to a growing migraine, I looked outside and saw it was snowing. Huge clusters of snow that fell rapidly, thickly, and stuck. Maybe an inch of it in a half hour and it hasn’t stopped.

It’s dry and good for packing, as my bedrobed children ran out to discover. I’m heading out to visit someone and for church and can hardly wait to see the pastures around blanketed in it. Snow brings out the kid in me, the tendancy to giddily rejoice in it!

We stood in the pouring rain and yet it was a beautiful time! Thanks to Jane, there are nice photos I posted on my project365 blog. What a wonderful blessing every hour of this day has been!

Yesterday was the most serene day I’ve had in a long time and as far as I can tell, it wasn’t that way for any grandiose or unusual reason. Just another day in a new year during an unseasonably warm week in winter.

I woke early and ready, feet into slippers, porridge and sausage cooking, coffee brewing.  Time for chores before children were active, a safe egg from the chickens. Rhythm and flow. Breakfast and through the morning there was time alone with each child, learning, thinking, exploring. One of my darlings made the mental connection and read, really read, for the first time! Another of my darlings left the liquid substances he’d been drawn to all week, alone and in their containers.

Dad was home for lunch: thick wedges of wheat bread dipped in olive oil and herbs, and a variety of  roasted veggies, with slices of cheese on the side. Baby napped, momma cleaned, rhythm and flow. The storm clouds outside started to roll away. A friend dropped in to take a picture with Celia; we made preparations to leave for church for our first vigil service.

The place on the drive into town that I call “my beautiful” was breathtaking. The clear air made wavy rows of mountains visible for miles and they were all bathed in various patches of amethyst- toned sunshine as the sun set behind us. The hills below peeked bright green here and there between tan and washed barren trees.  I would have stopped the car but I was first in a long line and those drivers, nearly without a doubt, did not plan on stopping in the middle of the road to take in the view!

We picked up Daddy and some dinner. Somewhere on the road I took inventory of the day and marveled at how calm and happy I felt. I was amazed, but quietly. We went to church, dim and candle lit and found ourselves nearly swooning under the magnitude of the realization of what it must have been like for John, to put out his hands, baptize his maker, and to stand witness to the manifestation of the trinity. Have we never really contemplated this so much before? The repetitiousness led to deeper understanding, more vivid realization, and then they sang, “We magnify Thee! We magnify Thee! O Christ the Giver of Life, Who for our sake this day was baptized in  the flesh by John in the waters of the Jordan.”

We went home and had a long night’s sleep, followed by playful children all over our bed n the morning, anxious for pancakes and sausage. I made a short trip to the store and on the drive back, saw some kind of hawk or eagle (not good with bird ID but it was large and light and had a sort of high cry) flying parallel to my van, alongside me, not far from the driver’s window. I felt light when I saw it and….not alone.

And that is a miracle to me! You see, we were excommunicated this week. There is much, much more to it of course, and I can’t talk about it, but that is crux of it. And I feel no anger, no bitterness, not even consumption with it. I am, honestly, hurt and disappointed, but it is quite amazing to go through something like this an feel absolutely no ill will toward a single participant! My home is clean, we are expecting guests for dinner, we experienced wonderful worship and adoration and awe an eve ago, and I thankful for all of it. Calm and hopeful for the future is what I feel, and strangely free.