march....
the month known to come in like a lion and out like a lamb...
This is one of my favorite pictures from this month showing a rainy afternoon when Anna really wanted to climb a tree and read up in her perch there. If there's a will, there's a way!
"Until God opens the next door, praise him in the hallway...."
(such good words for us to remember in this season we have found ourselves in...)
(such good words for us to remember in this season we have found ourselves in...)
"I don’t want to get to the end of my life and find
that I lived just the length of it. I want to have lived the width of it as
well." – Diane Ackerman
spring traditions...
Anna's first 5K- the Hot Chocolate Run in Seattle where we greeted everyone with a kiss-
March 2, 2014
March 2, 2014
One friend commented about my unicycling with the kids lately
(and with the fact that I still need their helping hands to hold me up!):
"May we and our children hold each other up with laughter forever."
(and with the fact that I still need their helping hands to hold me up!):
"May we and our children hold each other up with laughter forever."
Recently, I
heard someone relay a story about hearing Anne Lamott speaking on a book tour
here in Seattle. At the talk, she referenced Ram Dass when he said he thought
that "when it was all said and done, we're all just walking each other
home."
So thankful for friends who continue to
walk me home....
"How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our
lives."
--Annie Dillard
favorite (and most joyful!) birthday email from Loretta Ross on my 41st birthday: “Oh Emily. What a great day it was when you were born. I bet all the angels ran over to the edge of heaven, sat down, giggling and dangling their legs, and said, "We want to watch this little one all the way home." Happy Birthday!”
"We have to be braver than we think we can be,
because God is constantly calling us to be more than we are." ~Madeleine L'Engle~
"I want to cultivate a deep sense of gratitude, of groundedness, of enough, even while I'm longing for something more. The longing and the gratitude, both. I'm practicing believing that God knows more than I know, that he sees what I can't, that's He's weaving a future I can't even imagine from where I sit this morning." -Shauna Niequist Bread and Wine
In Ann Voskamp's Lenten devotional that we are using off and on again this year, there is a reflection focusing on the story when Jesus turns water into wine. She ends with this challenge: "Today, think of one way that our Lord has turned your water into wine? What has He made surprisingly sweet, rich, in your life? Draw it out of the barrel today, and use it: revel in a relationship, ponder Grace, notice your health, give thanks for the sun, stars, trees of the field, wind on your face. Drink of everyday miracles. He has revealed His glory. Do you believe?..."
Anna in 2005 with cherry blossoms in DC and
Anna in 2014 with the cherry blossoms here in Seattle-
oh how the years go by!
"One of the many things I love about Celtic spirituality
is its earthiness. The spiritual life can become too much about seeking the
spiritualization of all things, of seeking to be lifted from the ordinariness
of daily life. What the Celtic monks teach us is that our earthiness is so very
good. They wrote blessings for all the tasks of daily life, so that waking, and
milking cows, and leaving on journeys, are all celebrated as gifts of our
humanity.
This season of Lent might tempt us to seek lofty goals
and rise above the very ordinary life we find ourselves in. But then we are
called to remember once again the ashes marked on our foreheads, the dust and
earth from which we emerge and to which we shall return, and we might discover
that the grace of this season isn't so much a sublime encounter with angelic
beings, or being lifted from our lives into a state of endless rapture,
as it is seeing our lives with new eyes.
as it is seeing our lives with new eyes.
The return to God called forth from us for this season
doesn't demand a long journey to the heavens. It is perhaps even more demanding
than that. It invites us to plunge ourselves right into the heart of our lives
here and now and to bless this as holy: the dog having an accident on the rug,
the child up sick in the night, the terrible ache and exhaustion we feel from
so many hours working, another dawn and dusk, bouquets of spring tulips, a warm
embrace just when we needed one, this fragile earth upon which we stand.
This is the call of the monk in the world, a phrase which
arises from the belief that the holiness of the monk's path comes precisely
from this wonder and awe we might open ourselves to right in this moment,
whatever this moment might bring.
It is, as David Whyte writes in his poem, not the expected ascent to heaven,
but the falling "in love with solid ground." It is the man throwing away his shoes as if to enter heaven and finding himself astonished, opened at last, fallen in love with solid ground." -Christine Valters Paintner http://abbeyofthearts.com/abbey-blog/
It is, as David Whyte writes in his poem, not the expected ascent to heaven,
but the falling "in love with solid ground." It is the man throwing away his shoes as if to enter heaven and finding himself astonished, opened at last, fallen in love with solid ground." -Christine Valters Paintner http://abbeyofthearts.com/abbey-blog/
