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.
