summer mornings

Just sharing moments from these slow summer mornings that have been such a restorative time for me.

 I like the warmth of the sun on my feet as it pours through the window beside my bed.  The heat of sunlight, which eventually grows uncomfortably warm, is one of the two things which usually wake me. The other is less pleasant: the neighborhood's rampant overpopulation of wild roosters that have no sense of time whatsoever. Trouble in paradise...

I like the rich aroma of coffee when i squeeze the bag. Most mornings I drink cold coffee out of the fridge, but eventually I get around to brewing for the following day and squeezing the bag is the best moment.

I like to turn off the porch light and open up the front door. The night is over and a new day is here. If there is a breeze, it builds for a moment and sifts through the screen door at my heels as I walk away.

I like the fresh start of washing my face. Its like a baptism into the day- washing away what remains of the night. Its simple and refreshing- well, usually. The bathroom side of the house sits broad to the morning sun, so sometimes the water that sits in the pipes (exposed on the side of the house) comes rushing through the old fixtures much warmer than expected. Not always the refreshing splash I have in mind, but I try to think of it as a sort of hot springs effect...

Slow, warm, unhurried mornings have been a great blessing this summer. These are just a few of my morning moments.

beautiful industrious ( welcome to the feast)

At the beginning of the July, I declared it a personal month of simplicity, contentment, wholesomeness, and simple pleasures. This is a month of intentionally setting aside cravings, letting my graspings subside, and recovering the art of rest. I am using up what I have; choosing to be grateful for it, creative with it, and ultimately enjoy it. I am taking time to go walking on the beach thats so nearby- going out with thanksgiving, celebrating that I am sufficiently recovered as to be able to do such simple but pleasurable things.  I am staying home if there is nothing I need to go to town for, and have enforced an almost total shopping ban on myself for the month.

This may sound like a sort of fast. And in a way, it is: letting the hold of things slip off me, allowing entitlements to ebb away, and bleeding out cravings. But in a greater sense, I see it less a fast and more as a feast. It begins as an abstaining from dwelling on what I don't have, but that aspect is quickly swallowed up in a feast of remembering -or discovering- what i do have. The lean fast  is soon eclipsed by the fat and happy feast. A time of laying things down has given way to celebration and gratitude. The really good things that cannot be bought- things like contentment and a quiet heart- begin to really brim up and overflow in these times when lesser things are subdued.

I feel like I am rediscovering the gift God has given me to rally beauty from all around me and to beautify and cultivate pretty much everything I encounter. I have exerted this beautifying agency on forsaken plaques, old clothing, uninteresting food, sidelined makeup products, grimy jewelry... restoring, altering, and re-imaging. A kind of tiny redemption- recreating value where its been lost. Its such a joyful mode of expression for me... I almost feel like its a kind of dance. It flows beyond inanimate objects into the keeping of my person, into conversations, the eyes I see people through, and my ongoing interactions with God Himself- who is the Beauty and the Feast above all feasts.

Staying home more than usual has me rummaging in drawers and dragging these projects out of dark corners. Beauty has proved industrious. Just in the past few days I have taken to sewing projects- quite the undertaking since I have to do it all by hand. I have taken in and changed the whole cut of a dress; sewn a wide headband from the scrap fabric; altered a pair of denim shorts; converted a cheap trucker hat into a very girlie beach hat; restyled a teeshirt, and made changes to a bathing suit! Things that didn't fit have been brought back into circulation, other things cleaned out to simplify and  have found themselves for sale on eBay:) Then I took to painting a plaque and other household items, before turning to fashion. In that area I set to recommissioning formerly set aside makeup, and experimenting with hairdos to reemploy accessories or products that had been left to the wayside. Fresh beauty in my wardrobe and style- not through shopping, but through industrious creativity!

All of this has been a breath of fresh air. A real feast for my heart. A restoration of my soul where hardly expected- after all, I didn't know when I embarked that this ship's month long voyage would make landfall so quickly on feasting shores. I have learned more in this time than in many a fast before. My eyes are open and I am awake to the bounty provided all around me. I sense the presence of the One who invited me to this feast, and who ultimately is The Feast, and I have a lasting impression of His joy over me as I partake in this most unanticipated abundance.

crafty like a fox

A little something I made over the last few days.

i see beauty

I see beauty.  Sometimes its the Himalayas. Sometimes its the little things. 

One afternoon I was thinking of those small passing beauties and decided to record a few. I carried my little camera with me for a half an hour and took a snapshot every time something caught my eye and pulled me in to find beauty. Below is a few moments from that experiment.

Small beauties. Like the color of late afternoon sun filtering through a beverage.

A glowing edge of cloud front 

The scuffed bottom of an ill kept pool that looks to me like an inadvertent portrait of the moon

The curious batting of a bewhiskered inquirer

Radiance as close as the fabric of my shirt

Bits of sunset clouds reflected in my sunglasses

Sometimes life is difficult. Painful. More than we can take. But there is beauty. Maybe it seems too trite to talk about aesthetics in the same breathe as suffering- as if they could cancel each other out. Certainly not. Beauty doesn't negate the difficulties. But it does testify in the midst of them. It is like the pale orange creeping up from the horizon when the sun has not yet risen: it promises us that this darkness is not the whole story and that a dawn is breaking yet. 

a corner of my heart

A corner of my heart will probably always belong to Bangor, North Ireland. I have wonderful memories with friends there and in Belfast...we have history North Ireland and I. The very sound of the local accent there lights up my heart- hands down my favorite accent in the whole world.

I have long heard of a band called Rend Collective, but never really looked closely. As I was looking at some worship music this morning, I ran across a bio mentioning that the group hails from my own precious Bangor. They immediately have moved into the corner of my heart set aside for the North Irish.

If you aren't already familiar with the group, you may still be familiar with this song- one of their most well known. If not, enjoy this foot stomping celebratory introduction:)