Puppies, Cookies, and Grace


I've heard some incredible teachers and preachers in my (short...ahem) time on this planet. I've heard them use majestic metaphor and substantive simile. I love the depth that has been illustrated for me, time and again, by solid thinkers in The Faith - some are well-known, some, like my own husband, little-known.


Try as I may, my mind won't work majestically. I sigh and I try, and therein lies the problem. When I tune into my life as it really is, in all its quotidian acedia (oh, do look the words up - they are delicious to say, but bitter to live) the revelation of grace can come honestly. Like the revelations to be found in puppies and cookies.


It is no secret that I adore my puppy. He is a teacup poodle named Rambo, and he is aptly named. Just you try to touch me or especially my husband, when we are holding our 2 pounds of fuzzy furry...the itty bitty silver bullet....the Rambo Beenie. He will snarl and lunge like a warrior-rottweiler.


In fact, my puppy sometimes acts appallingly, and I still smile. I delight in this little dog no matter what. Not long ago, I examined this anomaly. You see, I am known to be ever-working to improve myself, and therefore take unbridled delight in only a few things. But I take disturbing delight in my poodle...everyone finds it disturbing, because his misbehavior has no affect on me whatsoever.


I decided this is because I have no fear for this animal's future. God bless all those who believe that puppies have eternal souls: I do not. Therefore, no amount of spoiling on my part will send Rambo's soul to the Lake of Fire. In essence, this dog is "eternally secure", in that his future is fully known to me: he will live in the lap of luxury and love, and one day die. That will be that (and yes, I will grieve terribly). Nothing in terms of Rambo's ultimate destiny is up in the air. He can't misbehave his way into Canine Judgement. He can't bite hard enough to hurt a toddler.


I am utterly free to delight in my dog.


It was then, when I stopped to consider these majestic metaphors, that I realized: the Lord delights in me! He knows the plans He has for me. He has forever settled my ultimate destiny. No amount of "misbehavior" on my part can shake Him from His love for me, in Christ Jesus. Far from being antinomianism, (and unlike Rambo) this kind of good news actually makes me want to "heel" - to follow close by my Owner's side forever.


Poodles and antinomianism and eternal security aside (after all, a mind can only take so much splendor) I also began to wonder why baking cookies for the kids wasn't so much fun anymore. In fact, I was just pondering this tonight. Used to be, a batch of cookies was a day-maker. Making a couple of sheets of home made chocolate chip cookies had the potential to bring inner healing to four children who, on some days, were fraught with naughtiness and discord.


Ah, but now they are All Grown Up. They are adults, three of them, with jobs and net spendable income. They can buy these treats for themselves, anytime they want. They can work for them.


As it is with the free Gift of Grace. It is precisely when we think we have matured our way "past" it, that the gift begins to lose its luster. The fun is taken right out of living in it. The truth that used to make our day and heal our hurts, now is something we can earn for ourselves. If we can get it for ourselves, it must be pretty common and obtainable. When God offers it to us, His grace is reduced (in our minds) to merely The Nice Gesture. A Nice Gesture is entirely unable to change us.


Hear me - hear me well! Don't rob God and yourself of the delight and fragrance that should characterize piping hot, fresh from the heart of God, sweet grace. You will never be able to work for it, you cannot obtain it on your own, all ideas of any righteousness of your own are a dangerous illusion.


This is where the metaphor breaks down, as it isn't dangerous at all for my children to make their own cookies. See why I sigh? My metaphors just aren't majestic enough.


Oh well. It is what it is. Puppies and cookies and grace.


LORD, my heart is not haughty, nor mine eyes lofty: neither do I exercise myself in great matters, or in things too high for me...




A Little Fluff of Spring!



He is already singing. Full-throated trilling, warbling, chirping and tumbling, quivering notes of joy. I've named him Bocelli, after the famous Italian tenor - but I'm sure I'll end up calling him "Bo" for short.


This little guy on You Tube isn't mine, but to hear what Bo sounds like, you can listen:


My Valentine's Day Present

You won't believe what Tim gave me for Valentine's Day. He gave it to me today. He gave it a day early because he is an Atchley, and Atchleys can't stand waiting until "the day" - be it birthday, Christmas, Mother's Day, whatever - and...well....because he loves me.


Oh, look! Look at this beautiful thing ~





He's a Variegated Scottish Fife Canary. He is a little traumatized from the ride home. I'm told this is normal, and as long as I feed him scrumptious things like apples and raisins, and keep him out of drafts, and maybe even play some bird song CD's for him (I do have one playing right now, in fact)...

...I'm told he'll sing again within the week.

I can't wait.

A Quote, Too Good to Miss...

"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...)