Things of Great Beauty.

The Landfill Orchestra.  Oh, my.  Children in extreme poverty with instruments made from items in the dump.
The Landfill Orchestra.


People reading around the world.  Never, ever underestimate the power of the written word.

To Light a Fire


Music for Vespers:  from WNYC

Vespers

My lovely friends who were roommates during college.  Beautiful on the inside and out.

My husband's house during college years.   It's still standing more than 30 years later.

Some of the sunflowers in our garden. They are full of bees!

Part of the harvest of our garden.  From this we got soup, zucchini bread, frozen beans and more.

A sweet little baby happy.  I love simple knitting with beautiful yarn.

Best of all-my beautiful daughter is coming home this weekend after an amazing summer in the Philippines.

The act of creation.

It's hard to describe how happy our little garden plot makes me.  We are all ready planning for next year, thinking what else we could plant and how we could plan better and get more out of our 20X20 plot.

I am thrilled to see these sunflowers coming out!

We have two bean tents that have vines that have cross-over.  The purple beans actually belong to the other bean tent.  The scarlet runner beans are the green ones.  The purple beans are only purple until they are cooked...then they turn green!  Either way, they are lovely.

The yellow cherry tomatoes are the first ones to have color.

This pepper came from this plant.  I'll dice it and freeze it for the winter....there are plenty more on the vine.  I am hoping for serendipitous timing on hot banana peppers, tomatoes, and bell peppers so that I can make salsa.

Behind the pepper are two huge zucchini.  Plenty more are coming.  I bought disposable loaf pans today so I can make and freeze zucchini bread. 

Dave Harrity in Making Manifest says to remember that what you create is something close to holy.  That is what I feel in our garden as I see things grow and become beautiful.  I feel a tremendous sense of peace and yes, holiness as I watch this process.  It's amazing.

A seed only flourishes by staying in the ground in which it is sown. When you keep digging the seed up to check whether it is growing, it will never bear fruit. Think about yourself as a little seed planted in rich soil. All you have to do is stay there and trust that the soil contains everything you need to grow. This growth takes place even when you don’t feel it. Be quiet, acknowledge your powerlessness, and have faith that one day you will know how much you have received.
Henry Nouwen

A Midsummer's Day in the Pacific NorthWest.

 Paul and I rarely get a free weekend.  Since he is a pastor, Sundays are his main gig!  We both work during the week so there aren't many free days to just go out and see things.  We live in such a beautiful part of the country that we try to take advantage of any chance we can do go out.
This Saturday was a free day.  Paul didn't have to preach on Sunday, I didn't have (much) grading to do so we headed out as soon as we could.
But first we had to clean the house.  Then we went out to get a new compost bin.  I  cringe every time I toss a  used coffee filter, knowing that it could transformed into compost and help our garden next year.

Buying this compost bin is part of my  master plan to get Paul to agree to move to a more semi-rural part of our city and let me garden and keep bees.

We drove up to Moulton Falls and and Lucia Falls.  Clear, clean, cold water.  Salmon and steelhead spawn here.  This is about 30 minutes from our house.

We saw this beautiful garter snake eating tadpoles.

We stopped by a blueberry farm to pick 14 pounds of blueberries.  How long does it take to pick that much? About 15 minutes.  We also stopped by a road side stand and bought fresh sweet corn.  Perfect for a summer dinner.

One bowl before freezing.  Cost?  $1.00 a pound.

I stopped by our garden on the way home to water and found this cucumber ready to eat.  There is nothing like fresh food from your own garden.

The sunflowers are starting to really come out.

It was a good day, a joyful day, one that I am glad we had.

So, friends, every day do something that won't compute...Give your approval to all you cannot understand...Ask the questions that have no answers. Put your faith in two inches of humus that will build under the trees every thousand years...Laugh. Be joyful though you have considered all the facts....Practice resurrection.” 

― Wendell Berry, The Country of Marriage

A few things that I like.

This article from Wendell Berry's daughter.Wendell and Me  My favorite line from the article -

I was asked once what it was like to be a Berry child. I answered that it was fine except for the constant humiliation. I believe that I went along with my father’s plans for us very agreeably until I was 12 or 13, the age when I think many children realize that their parents need guidance.

She also wrote about her mother.
My Mother's Agrarian Making of a Home.

Don't know who Wendell Berry is?  Here is one of my favorite poems of his.

The Peace of Wild Things

When despair for the world grows in me

and I wake in the night at the least sound

in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,

I go and lie down where the wood drake

rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.

I come into the peace of wild things

who do not tax their lives with forethought

of grief. I come into the presence of still water.

And I feel above me the day-blind stars

waiting with their light. For a time

I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

Other things that I have liked.

Call the Midwife:  Just over the top wonderful.  The positive portrayal of religious life in community- I love it.

Louise Penney's Inspector Gamache.  I started with  The Beautiful Mystery and now need to go back and start this series at the beginning.  Intelligent and interesting mysteries.

Celtic Daily Prayer  prayers from the Northumbria Community.  I read the Compline Prayers before I go to sleep at night.  Just lovely.

Elizabeth Goudge.  I know I am late to the game with this author but I just read The Scent of Water  and really liked it.  Her books show her faith and are very delicate.  They aren't for everyone but I really enjoyed this book.  I'd like to read more.

One Year In.

It's been a year since we've been back in the US.  I've kind of lost my blogging voice.  In my other blog (that is now shut down), there was always so much to say.  China, language learning, culture, our sweet foster son, the international school, Bible studies that were held in our home.
Now we are back in the US and have a new and different life.  We have had many changes- our daughter has gone off to college, we left our beloved foster son in China where he is awaiting adoption, we live in a part of the country that is new to us.  None of the changes have been easy for us. It's been good...but it's been very hard. There is has much to process but the processing has been very internal.
I came back from China thinking that it would be easy to find a new ESL job.  I thought that with an MA TESOL and experience overseas, employers would snap me up.  What it didn't know was the ESL is a saturated market in Portland....and there are plenty of people with the same or more experience than I have. So I have a job in a small language school that I like but don't love.  The pay is low. It's what I want to do, but not the circumstances or hours that I want.  I am thankful but it's hard to be lowest on the totem pole at age 51.
So I haven't been blogging but I've been journaling like crazy.  I've used two books to help me reflect.
The first one is God in the Yard by LL Barkat.  This is a great series of quiet reflections as a woman steps out into her yard every day for a year to be still and reflect.  I really enjoyed the questions that she asked and the many things she made me think about.
Now I am reading Making Manifest by David Harrity.  You an buy this much more cheaply at http://www.heartsandmindsbooks.com/  David Harrity is part of this online publication http://thisisantler.com/ and I am not quite sure how to describe this book!  Here are a few lines from it.
God is making and remaking, creating and revising-in creation, through Incarnation, and into new creation; God is reimagining the whole of this created world. The heart of God began beating in the Incarnation and has pulsed in the world since Creation.  The Incarnation.  Word made Flesh.  God has come; Language has skin, Construction is the ultimate result of our words.  Christ, then, is God's ultimate poem, God's ultimate workmanship- poemia in Greek, which is where we also get the English word poem.  Poetry is the richest use of our human language: carefully crafted words rendering powerful experience, telling the story of human condition...Our words, designed- fleshed out.
The subtitle of this book is "On Faith, Creativity and the Kingdom at Hand."  It is part devotional, part creativity work and part poetry writing.  It's very challenging to work through.

What else have we been into?  Well, bird watching for one!  At and around our feeder we have a flock of goldfinches that comes regularly and maybe two pairs of Grosbeaks.  We also have the usual chickadees, varying kinds of sparrows, mourning doves, hummingbirds, rufous towhees, robins, Stellar Jays and more

Here is a badly shot picture of a kestrel on our fence, hoping to snack on some songbirds.

.

We've enjoyed going up the Columbia Gorge and seeing views like this.

We also have a garden plot across the street from our church.  It's been wonderful to get our hands dirty and see the tomatoes and peppers grow and the beans start to crawl up the poles.

Banana Peppers

Tomato and Pepper plants with marigolds to keep the bugs away.

Elisabeth is in the Philippines for the summer, working at Kids International Ministries.  Before she left, she gave us this.

It included her passport, itineraries, contact information and a picture in case she was kidnapped.  Very comforting.  You can follow her adventures at Elbe Goes

So bit -by-bit, we adjust. We think, we pray, we read, we talk.  We second guess our every decision and then feel sure we are making good decisions....until we aren't sure.  The first year back in country is a year of adjusment...but I think it will take more than a year until we feel sure and centered again.

What I am seeing these days.

This sculpture outside the Portland Art Museum.  It's all language symbols-fantastic.

Eagle Talon marks in the sand.

There were five eagles on the edge of the water.  They let us come pretty close...but not too close (see talon marks above!)

This charming little Rufous Towhee and his mate visit us regularly.  They are very fun to watch.

We have a community garden plot this summer across the street from the church.

Hilltop nursery-family owned and amazing. Can you see the top of Mt. St. Helen's in the distance?

Flowers on the campus where I work.

Life is full and busy these days. Elisabeth is getting ready to go to the Philippines this summer.  She is blogging at http://elbegoes.wordpress.com/ about her trip.  She will be regularly updating throughout the summer.

Paul continues to preach and teach at our small Chinese church.  I continue to teach ESL at a small program in Portland. Some days are happy and some days are sad.  We miss China and our life there.  We miss our foster son.  We miss our daughter.  

We also have days where we are blown away by the beauty that surrounds us.  It's just kind of a mixed bag right now.

Weaving Silence- a Celtic Prayer

I Weave a Silence 

I weave a silence onto my lips
I weave a silence into my mind,
I weave a silence within my heart.

I close my ears to distractions,
I close my eyes to attractions
I close my heart to temptations.
Calm me, Lord,
As you calmed the storm,

Still me, Lord, keep me from harm,  
Let all tumult within me cease
Fold me in your peace.

                                         

Found originally here http://godspace.wordpress.com/2013/05/11/celtic-spirituality-what-is-the-attraction-2/