"To love anyone is to hope in him always.From the moment at which we... limit our confidence in him, from the moment at which we pigeon-hole him, and so reduce him to that, so we cease to love him, and he ceases to be able to become better.We must dare to love in a world that does not know how to love."
~ from Madeleine L'Engle's Walking on Water
A Little Wedding Shopping...On A Wordless (Almost) Wednesday
Earlier in the day...Hannah and I (behind the camera) out shopping
A buggy full - all 50% off! What girl can resist?
Sarah...always curious. "What's in the box???"
Hannah's shopping blister (and Brighton shoes - which I, the mom, desperately covet)
"This is heavy!" (the object, not the girl...)
Sarah, enjoying our Super Duper Chocolate Fix, after alllllll that shopping...
Twins always share!
M-m-m-m, m-m-m-m, M-M-M-M!!Smell This ~
I want you to do something for me. Do something for yourself. Lean forward....put your nose as close to your computer screen as you can.....and sniff my blog.
Isn't that just incredible? I'm creating a batch of chicken soup; yes, I am creating chicken soup, not just 'making' it. Where's the fun in mere making, when you can create? I took the back of my biggest Henckels knife and crushed that whole bulb of garlic, releasing all those cloves from their paper containment. The aroma was instantaneous and therapeutic. Then I quartered an onion, and sliced a lemon.
Heaven. I'm beside myself about it all.
I'm creating chicken soup because I can. Not because we aren't feeling well; we're fine. Not because it is budget-friendly, though it is. I'm creating soup because the very act of doing it is my version of a life well-lived. Always has been. I am an eccentric, and I own up to it, wholeheartedly. My idea of wealth has never, ever, been that of most people I know. Truly, this is the gift of God, not of works, and so I can't boast. I have been gifted with a perspective that sees things upside down and sideways.
I've heard it said that most people long for eternal life, and yet they don't know what to do with themselves on a rainy afternoon. This...this "knowing how to be", this keeping to simple pleasures, to me constitutes great wealth. I needed to be reminded today. It is strange, how a strong whiff of garlic and lemon can zest the soul. It is strange, how something so elemental and so basic as creating with well-worn cutting board, knife, and fresh things from the market, can remind me of what I value most.
I value the creative moment (I could say "the creative life", but life is lived in moments, not even in days) and I value the time it takes to act and live and speak soulfully. And as hilariously as possible. I value the artful perspective - one that exists wholly, and freely, placing great value on the ordinary.
Often, the thing that strikes me is that all the works of art in terms of hand made furniture, tools, painting, and sculpture - all the artifacts that tourists check off their lists of "things to see in Old Italy" for example - were the every day stuff of life for a simple people gone on before us. We admire it all with wonder, we feel a sense of peace and completeness in these beautiful remnants of history...the wooden spoon and hand made chair...yet we head back home to our silicone spatulas and mass produced minutae and our plastic everythings.
I have plenty of my own plastic things. None of us can entirely escape it, this utilitarian perspective we have, where people and things are thought of in terms of merely useful, instead of beautiful and useful. But I do want to escape the utilitarianism that suggests that wealth is measured by how often one eats out, or the number of conveniences that are owned - as though hanging out the wash, growing a garden, and creating chicken soup are things to be avoided.
Yeah - sniff my blog. In a few more hours, come by for some soup and soulful conversation.
"To affect the quality of the day; that is the art of life." Henry David Thoreau
"If your everyday life seems poor, don't blame it; blame yourself; admit to yourself that you are not enough of a poet to call forth its riches; because for the creator there is not poverty and no poor, indifferent place." Ranier Maria Wilke
I Couldn't Agree More...
"If more of us valued food and cheer and song above hoarded gold, it would be a merrier world."
--J.R.R. Tolkien
(...please see my post, from this past week, about heaven...)
--J.R.R. Tolkien
(...please see my post, from this past week, about heaven...)
Unexpected Pleasures...
Ps 147:16 He giveth snow like wool: he scattereth the hoarfrost like ashes.
Yeah...we did doughnuts in our cul-de-sac 
Crape Myrtle, dressed in white
Our pond area
Looking out my back door, this noon...Long, Lovely Lashes
Why do we girls glue on fake fingernails, put on high heels, or wear anything sounding so weird and awful as "Spanx"? Why do we bleach or highlight our hair, or wear those widget-gadget bras, or, for crying out loud, bleach our upper lip?
Okay. I'll give us the last one. Any gal who needs to bleach her upper lip probably should do so, before the sun gets too high in the sky. But all the other stuff we do makes me wonder mightily at what ails us. At the risk of being the pot that calls all the kettles black, I will confess to one thing: my real hair color is Paula Deen silver. No lie. My first gray hair popped out when I was fifteen years old, and now, at a young forty-two, I am silver-white. I've worn it silver, and I've worn it brunette. I like it both ways, actually.
Beyond that, though, I've pretty much sworn off of being a mute, helpless slave to false, air-brushed magazine images. I don't even fall for the picture of the girl on the front of the hair color box anymore. It is all a clever lie, far as I'm concerned. My hair never looks like the girl's on the box.
I have had my own acquaintance with deep bondage. I've had those moments when something just came over me - when I leave the house, and come home looking shocking, with either a very sudden tan, or unnaturally perfect fingernails. I remember that time, more than ten years ago, when I stepped into my bathroom, and an hour later, stepped out with Miss Piggy Eyelashes...
I got glue in my eyes, and actually glued the first few lashes on upside down. (I will nev-er get the hang of doing anything whilst looking in a mirror!) The whole process of pulling the upside down eyelashes back off was quite painful, causing those little tears that spring to one's eyes when something smarts horribly. Hence, the super glue became somewhat liquefied, and seeped into my eyes.
In a daze, I steadied my hand on the sink, where a few of Tim's whiskers lay, unbeknownst to me. When I retrieved that hand to firmly (and I do mean firmly) press a lash down, I ended up with Tim's whiskers and one three inch long hair of my very own, super glued to my eyelid.
Folks, you can't make this stuff up.
Finally, one exhausting hour later, I was done, or so I thought. I casually walked through my house...and my children stopped one by one to gape and stare. It was then I thought that the lashes might be a teensy weensy bit too long. So back into the bathroom I went, to cut them down with my tiny hair cutting scissors. Not an easy task, especially when looking into a mirror.
Tim came home, and I proudly batted my eyes all evening long. I would get close to his face and look deeply into his brown eyes, just to see if he would notice anything unusual. Well, he didn't notice the eyelashes ("Yipee! They must look real!") but he did think, quite understandably, but mistakenly, that I was urgently burning with love for him.
In truth, I was exhausted from the physical and emotional eyelash battle of the day, so I fell asleep early, while trying to read a book in bed. My head was buried face first, deep in my pillow, where Tim found me. He rolled me over, kissing my face tenderly. I tried to respond...
...but couldn't get one eye open. I am not even lying to you.
I casually turned my face away, and manually ripped my eye back open, then turned back to deliver my kisses. He stopped cold, stock still. He peered. He drew very close, and, as though reaching for a loathsome spider, took his thumb and forefinger and plucked this hairy foreign object from my cheek. He looked it over intently, wondering what it could possibly be. Slowly, a horrified expression covered his face, when he found many such hairy things all over my pillow.
"Confess ye your faults one to another..." I had to confess, I had no choice. Then came a long lecture about how he hates anything false on me. Other women can wear the wonderbras, the corsets, the padded bottoms on the underwear, but not his wife, he declared. Other women can surgically enhance themselves, but not me, he proclaimed. I am allowed to primp and pouf, adorn and make-up myself, hair-spray and dress myself to a wildly reasonable degree, but no more of this silly fake stuff.
Meekly, I repented from my moment of craziness. What else could a girl with gooey, strange looking eyes do? And when I am in a more reasonable frame of mind, I can see that Tim's right about me. God made me exactly as I am, and He knew what He was doing. Insecurity tends to make a woman wildly UNattractive, anyway.
As I said in the beginning, I think I am more or less permanently released from utter bondage. A little super glue in the eyes would teach any fool. Please remind me of this fact the next time I'm in the drug store looking at the cellulite creams, the body bronzers, the clip-on hair pieces, the...
Okay. I'll give us the last one. Any gal who needs to bleach her upper lip probably should do so, before the sun gets too high in the sky. But all the other stuff we do makes me wonder mightily at what ails us. At the risk of being the pot that calls all the kettles black, I will confess to one thing: my real hair color is Paula Deen silver. No lie. My first gray hair popped out when I was fifteen years old, and now, at a young forty-two, I am silver-white. I've worn it silver, and I've worn it brunette. I like it both ways, actually.
Beyond that, though, I've pretty much sworn off of being a mute, helpless slave to false, air-brushed magazine images. I don't even fall for the picture of the girl on the front of the hair color box anymore. It is all a clever lie, far as I'm concerned. My hair never looks like the girl's on the box.
I have had my own acquaintance with deep bondage. I've had those moments when something just came over me - when I leave the house, and come home looking shocking, with either a very sudden tan, or unnaturally perfect fingernails. I remember that time, more than ten years ago, when I stepped into my bathroom, and an hour later, stepped out with Miss Piggy Eyelashes...
I got glue in my eyes, and actually glued the first few lashes on upside down. (I will nev-er get the hang of doing anything whilst looking in a mirror!) The whole process of pulling the upside down eyelashes back off was quite painful, causing those little tears that spring to one's eyes when something smarts horribly. Hence, the super glue became somewhat liquefied, and seeped into my eyes.
In a daze, I steadied my hand on the sink, where a few of Tim's whiskers lay, unbeknownst to me. When I retrieved that hand to firmly (and I do mean firmly) press a lash down, I ended up with Tim's whiskers and one three inch long hair of my very own, super glued to my eyelid.
Folks, you can't make this stuff up.
Finally, one exhausting hour later, I was done, or so I thought. I casually walked through my house...and my children stopped one by one to gape and stare. It was then I thought that the lashes might be a teensy weensy bit too long. So back into the bathroom I went, to cut them down with my tiny hair cutting scissors. Not an easy task, especially when looking into a mirror.
Tim came home, and I proudly batted my eyes all evening long. I would get close to his face and look deeply into his brown eyes, just to see if he would notice anything unusual. Well, he didn't notice the eyelashes ("Yipee! They must look real!") but he did think, quite understandably, but mistakenly, that I was urgently burning with love for him.
In truth, I was exhausted from the physical and emotional eyelash battle of the day, so I fell asleep early, while trying to read a book in bed. My head was buried face first, deep in my pillow, where Tim found me. He rolled me over, kissing my face tenderly. I tried to respond...
...but couldn't get one eye open. I am not even lying to you.
I casually turned my face away, and manually ripped my eye back open, then turned back to deliver my kisses. He stopped cold, stock still. He peered. He drew very close, and, as though reaching for a loathsome spider, took his thumb and forefinger and plucked this hairy foreign object from my cheek. He looked it over intently, wondering what it could possibly be. Slowly, a horrified expression covered his face, when he found many such hairy things all over my pillow.
"Confess ye your faults one to another..." I had to confess, I had no choice. Then came a long lecture about how he hates anything false on me. Other women can wear the wonderbras, the corsets, the padded bottoms on the underwear, but not his wife, he declared. Other women can surgically enhance themselves, but not me, he proclaimed. I am allowed to primp and pouf, adorn and make-up myself, hair-spray and dress myself to a wildly reasonable degree, but no more of this silly fake stuff.
Meekly, I repented from my moment of craziness. What else could a girl with gooey, strange looking eyes do? And when I am in a more reasonable frame of mind, I can see that Tim's right about me. God made me exactly as I am, and He knew what He was doing. Insecurity tends to make a woman wildly UNattractive, anyway.
As I said in the beginning, I think I am more or less permanently released from utter bondage. A little super glue in the eyes would teach any fool. Please remind me of this fact the next time I'm in the drug store looking at the cellulite creams, the body bronzers, the clip-on hair pieces, the...
Spiritual Construction
There are several Biblical references to my ability to build things I cannot see, using tools that are spiritual, not natural. I can "build Him a throne", in a manner of speaking, with my praises. I also am building some sort of spiritual edifice - a certain quality of spiritual endeavor made manifest - and it is being built right now, while I am alive and able. This thing I'm constructing is the ultimate creative outlet, and will be unveiled and tested in both time and eternity. This life is my one chance to love Him with my decisions and my days, this is my time to choose to depend on the grace of God. This is when it counts! In Heaven, it will all be a foregone conclusion. Everyone there will love Him, the food will be great, and the devil cast down. It is now that I am building with either gold, silver, and precious stones, or wood, hay and stubble. Every person's work will be made manifest, of what sort it is. (And the "work" is to believe Him!)
But my real point today, is that I have just discovered an unbelievable fact - one I've never read anywhere, in any book. The fear of the Lord creates a spiritual storehouse. My fear of the Lord, choice by choice, day by day, is building for me a storehouse, with my name over it, for my future use in any time of need.
Isaiah 33:6 says, "And He will be the stability of your times, abundance of salvation, wisdom, and knowledge..."
No matter how much you give away, it is a fact that such gracious abundance calls for storage! We need "room enough to receive", if only to be able to then give it away. In fact, when God is pouring out upon us, there often doesn't seem to BE room to receive. Things held in storage, whether it be grain in time of famine, or cash in times of recession, what is stored up can make for a certain stability in uncertain times. Isaiah 33: 6 tells me that the Lord will be the stability of my times, He will be to me an abundance of knowledge and wisdom and salvation.
All this abundance must be received and contained somehow. It has a spiritual "container". Let me, if you'll indulge me, tell you exactly what the container is. The rest of the verse in Isaiah 33: 6 reveals it:
"...and the fear of the Lord is Zion's treasure."
"Treasure" here, means a literal treasury, a bank account, a savings of all good things, a magazine of weapons, an armoury of ammunition, garners of supplies of every sort. The Bible says the fear of the Lord itself IS the laying-up place...it IS the treasury. When I choose the fear of the Lord, it "builds" the container into which certain things are laid up for me, lovingly set back, happily stored away in anticipation of future need. My fear of the Lord, which can be manifested in my life in a thousand different ways, creates and constructs and contains the very storehouse of resources that will give steady supply and stability to my times when all other supplies begin to run out.
O fear the LORD, ye his saints: for there is no want to them that fear him. The young lions do lack, and suffer hunger: but they that seek the LORD shall not want any good thing.
He hath given meat unto them that fear him: he will ever be mindful of his covenant.
Oh how great is your goodness, which you have laid up for those that fear thee; which you have wrought for them that trust in you before the sons of men!
All the grace God could lavish upon me would mean but little, if I didn't have a way to receive it. All the provision I could be given might go to waste if I didn't have a way to contain and organize it and make it useful. God wants to be the stability of my times, and my times are very unstable right now, were it not for God's abundance to me. I would quickly become emotionally and financially and spiritually bankrupt without a means of receiving and containing the answers to my many needs.
There is no overflow without there first being a container. Without a "cup" to pour into, without a treasury to lay supplies into, all provision becomes so much more stuff in the street.
This is precisely why the Lord says, in Psalms 34:11 ~
Come, ye children, hearken unto me: I will teach you the fear of the LORD.
This fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, indeed! FIRST, the Bible says, build your barns, and sow your fields, and THEN build your house. The fear of the Lord is the barn, into which you'll store your grain, seeds of all sorts, your plows and rakes and fertilizer - all that pertains to your harvest must have a place to be kept safely until the moment of its use. The fear of the Lord is the storage-place of believers.
But my real point today, is that I have just discovered an unbelievable fact - one I've never read anywhere, in any book. The fear of the Lord creates a spiritual storehouse. My fear of the Lord, choice by choice, day by day, is building for me a storehouse, with my name over it, for my future use in any time of need.
Isaiah 33:6 says, "And He will be the stability of your times, abundance of salvation, wisdom, and knowledge..."
No matter how much you give away, it is a fact that such gracious abundance calls for storage! We need "room enough to receive", if only to be able to then give it away. In fact, when God is pouring out upon us, there often doesn't seem to BE room to receive. Things held in storage, whether it be grain in time of famine, or cash in times of recession, what is stored up can make for a certain stability in uncertain times. Isaiah 33: 6 tells me that the Lord will be the stability of my times, He will be to me an abundance of knowledge and wisdom and salvation.
All this abundance must be received and contained somehow. It has a spiritual "container". Let me, if you'll indulge me, tell you exactly what the container is. The rest of the verse in Isaiah 33: 6 reveals it:
"...and the fear of the Lord is Zion's treasure."
"Treasure" here, means a literal treasury, a bank account, a savings of all good things, a magazine of weapons, an armoury of ammunition, garners of supplies of every sort. The Bible says the fear of the Lord itself IS the laying-up place...it IS the treasury. When I choose the fear of the Lord, it "builds" the container into which certain things are laid up for me, lovingly set back, happily stored away in anticipation of future need. My fear of the Lord, which can be manifested in my life in a thousand different ways, creates and constructs and contains the very storehouse of resources that will give steady supply and stability to my times when all other supplies begin to run out.
O fear the LORD, ye his saints: for there is no want to them that fear him. The young lions do lack, and suffer hunger: but they that seek the LORD shall not want any good thing.
He hath given meat unto them that fear him: he will ever be mindful of his covenant.
Oh how great is your goodness, which you have laid up for those that fear thee; which you have wrought for them that trust in you before the sons of men!
All the grace God could lavish upon me would mean but little, if I didn't have a way to receive it. All the provision I could be given might go to waste if I didn't have a way to contain and organize it and make it useful. God wants to be the stability of my times, and my times are very unstable right now, were it not for God's abundance to me. I would quickly become emotionally and financially and spiritually bankrupt without a means of receiving and containing the answers to my many needs.
There is no overflow without there first being a container. Without a "cup" to pour into, without a treasury to lay supplies into, all provision becomes so much more stuff in the street.
This is precisely why the Lord says, in Psalms 34:11 ~
Come, ye children, hearken unto me: I will teach you the fear of the LORD.
This fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, indeed! FIRST, the Bible says, build your barns, and sow your fields, and THEN build your house. The fear of the Lord is the barn, into which you'll store your grain, seeds of all sorts, your plows and rakes and fertilizer - all that pertains to your harvest must have a place to be kept safely until the moment of its use. The fear of the Lord is the storage-place of believers.
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