Flannery O'Connor Quote

"Our response to life is different if we have been taught only a definition of faith than if we have trembled with Abraham as he held a knife over Isaac."

I need to learn more every day about living in faith, and not just talk about it.

I grew up in 'a faith' and am glad for that foundation. But I came to a place of wanting to know faith for myself and not just live what I understood from what I was taught. So over the years I still continue to grow in my faith, God guiding me along many trails. And the bunny trails always lead me home. God asks me to make myself at home in Him, and I do ... I am.

But oh ... the trembling with Abraham ... I've often sat with that story, and my imagination can't go far enough ... I can't really imagine it! In my own small story, maybe God's brought me to a similar small place, for small me, with a small faith.

A faith that grows from a willingness to die to myself, to whatever's important to me ... I think my personality trusts there's a hidden sacrifice ram in the bushes; something better on the other side. Like trust in redemption and resurrection to something new and whole.

Icons

Today is Pooh Day: AA Milne, author of Winnie the Pooh and other books, was born in London in 1882. I've always loved the Pooh books and always will.

As a kid I had a record of Pooh stories and loved the voices. If I find we still have that recording I'm going to have it put on CD since we're currently transferring albums or just some songs to CD.

I collected some of the earlier stuffed animals. I've put them on a shelf in our bedroom above the sliding glass door. They are the first things I see in the morning and I call them my "prayer buddies".

Icons are used as aids to devotion. I think of icons as windows showing views of truth. So to me, my Pooh animals are icons. When I see Pooh, I think of Heather - we often joked about the similarities. So I might pray for Heather. Dawson has always been a Tigger - so bouncy, bubbly and into everything. If I had Owl I'd name him Travis since we've always thought him creatively smart. I'm a mixture of Eeyore, Kanga, and Piglet.

Though their images may remind me to pray for our family, in reality, they visually bring me to God-consciousness and I often start my days, "Good morning God!" and go from there ...

Bloodless Martyrs

Yesterday's calendar date was the Feast of St Ant(h)ony: Anthony the Great, Anthony of Egypt, Hermit, Abbot, and the "father of monks". He died in 356 on January 17th, at the age of 105.

I'm reading Water from a Deep Well: Christian Spirituality from Early Martyrs to Modern Missionaries. I love using the calendar day stories to bring greater depth of living to my days, making ordinary days into the extra-ordinary. It was interesting that I was reading about the desert fathers around the days associated with some of the calendar's Desert Fathers.

Anthony is one of the earlier Desert Fathers and we know his story because his friend Athanasius, bishop of Alexandria (the one instrumental in Augustine's conversion) wrote his biography. It became popular and influential well into the Middle Ages and is still in print today.

Anthony heard the Gospel words, "Go and sell what you own and give the money to the poor ... and then follow me" and felt they were meant for him. Much of his story is like Jesus' temptation in the desert, because Athanasius wrote, the devil "who despises and envies good, could not bear seeing such purpose in a youth," and thus set to work to destroy him.

The Desert Saints were called "bloodless martyrs". Christianity was born in the hostile world of the Roman Empire, and for 300 years Christians periodically suffered persecution and deaths. Constantine in 313 granted Christianity legal status in the empire and it became popular and fashionable. So now, rather than an evil empire, those wanting to seek serious Christian discipleship were facing a worldly church.

Solitude did not remain solitude, when thousands of other Desert Saints followed. People became fascinated by stories about Anthony and admirers found him. Though begging them to leave him alone, he became an adviser to hundreds, exhorting them to die daily and take up the cross. (Years ago I read the desert disciple sayings in The Wisdom of the Desert. I also read From the Holy Mountain: A Journey Among the Christians in the Middle East, where the author took earlier writings and journeyed, visiting many old sites. And then in the news, maybe last year, was the fear of the Muslims destroying some of these sites, including the monastery built around Anthony's place in the Egyptian desert.)

Anthony longed for martyrdom, hoping to identify with Christ, by exposing himself to danger, like ministering to those in prison and sometimes leaving the desert to combat Arianism. But he realized a person can die daily by serving Christ in ordinary ways with great love. Because he had given away all he had (and taken care of his sister), he wove mats to support his needs.

These Desert Saints call us to seek some solitude, which might separate us just enough from modern culture to allow us to recognize, expose and combat our vulnerability to seductive powers; to ruling appetites that seem to dominate our life.

"All good athletes train hard; they do it to attain a perishable award, but we're after an imperishable one. So I do not run aimlessly. I'm giving it everything I've got. I'm staying alert and in top condition, so that after telling others about it I don't miss out on it myself" I COR 9:25-27.

Anthony once said, "The man who abides in solitude and is quiet, is delivered from fighting three battles - to those of hearing, speech and sight. Then he will have but one battle to fight - the battle of the heart."

Health quote

"It's no longer a question of staying healthy. It's a question of finding a sickness you like."

I just read this quote and it made me laugh - sort of. You see, I disagree with it and definitely have some thoughts on it I'll share.

For most of us it is estimated that around 95% of our body is basically healthy, so why not work to keep that part healthy!

That's what a cell biologist acquaintance of mine realized. She used to give her time to lab work discovering things to help???? cancer cells. And she does have a discovery attributed to her name. But now she's giving her time speaking around the world hoping to help keep the healthy healthy.

A thought question - what's healthy versus vitality?

Process vs Product

I am really in the thick of reorganizing our home. I'm now tackling our bedroom where a lot of my sewing stuff and yarn has been stored. You know what I'm finding? A LOT of unfinished projects, many even going back to my college days - a lot of textile art done to a certain stage, but not a finished product. (That's why at quilt shows there can be so many fine, very old quilts - because someone finished the quilt top and tucked it away in a box, but never finished the quilt.)

I've researched it, talked on it, and written about it - so I'll ask you, "Are you a process person, or a product person?" I am a process person. I love learning about how things are made. I've done it with cooking too, which I've written about in my book Hearth & Home. Like how were things made before we had canned cream of mushroom soup and instant Jello and pudding and Bisquick?

So I have tried my hands at a lot of stuff. I know how to quilt. I know how to tat and do hardanger. I want to know how to make fine lace ... but now I know myself! I've read about the lace process and I could very easily start buying all the materials to do it - all the pretty bobbins (but oh, the choices!), the pillow, and patterns ...

The tools, the materials, the skills, the mechanics, the designing ... these are what attract me. I guess you could say they represent the process. I love the journey more than the destination. I think this idea is part of my attraction to Heirloom art - art done by hand. You can buy handmade items, but to make them yourself, for me, is a spiritual experience. I'm creating, and I feel a comradery with God's creative Spirit in me.

Anyway ... I've collected so much stuff! And I can do lots of stuff. But once I've done it, it doesn't mean I'll keep doing it. I've stuck with some things that I love to do the most, like knitting. I'll take periods of time where I'll do a lot of sewing. Having done my weaving again, I'll probably keep doing it.

What's best to do is take classes. Someone else will own the tools and provide the materials for you to learn the process and finish a product. AND THEN you'll better know whether it's something you want to invest time and money into.

Like I've always wanted to try making stained glass ...

Nice Birthday Surprise

Monte and our close friends, the Johnsons, surprised me today. Monte made reservations at a nice Evergreen restaurant for lunch. So after church Jim and Marty, Monte and I, and our friend Kathy all met at The Bistro. It was Marty's birthday this past week too.

We were a wild bunch and had the closed-in porch to ourselves overlooking a snow-covered meadow with pine trees, and snow-capped Mt Evans (having the highest paved road in the US) as our view. We had a lot of fun with our waiter, and Kathy's request for a carafe of coffee just for herself was met by his needing to visit every five minutes to refill cups. The meal was great.

They all came home with us, since we live so close to that restaurant, to see the changes in our house, which they loved. And Kathy hadn't seen Monte's new office either.

When they left, Monte was wanting to use his new camera Dawson and me got him last fall before one of his geology trips. So he started taking pictures of me. Then me of him. Then we tried some pictures with the camera on a tripod and him running to join me on the couch.



So with me putting iPhoto pictures in a folder on my computer for printing for Heather and Bill to have in a wedding scrapbook, and then going to church, and then laughing over a great meal with good friends, and then the two of us having fun taking pictures of ourselves, and then relaxing reading ... That was my birthday; a nice day.

IT'S MY BIRTHDAY!

Another birthday, another year! Life is good.

Since we've been going through things this year in the process of doing finishing touches on our home, I organized all the pictures and looked through old photo albums. I sat with my mom's album she made 53 years ago and read her entries - all in white ink on black paper. It's a scrapbook of her time in and around Salzburg Austria. That is where I was born. My dad was over for military help after WWII. I need to tell her I enjoyed her writing and am glad she made this memory keeper.

Talking of memories - I'm remembering birthdays as kids. It was always a special day for us. No chores and always our favorite foods. You know what I always wanted? My favorite cake is Spice Cake. My favorite supper was Mom's homemade Macaroni and Cheese.

My kids love my Spice Cake with a boiled brown sugar frosting. Since I'm going to be making it later this week for Heather and Bill's wedding open house we're hosting, I'll wait for my cake. Maybe I'll make Macaroni and Cheese for supper. It's liked by my family too.

So Happy Birthday to me . . .

Next to the Bible

On this day in 1673 John Bunyan was sentenced to prison. He was imprisoned for the offense of preaching without the permission of the state.

Today, in the center of Bedford England, stands a statue of Bunyan carrying a tinker's burden on his back and a Bible in his hand. Near the foot of the statue is a little bronze plaque with the engraved words of the prosecutor -

"At last we are done with this tinker and his cause. Never more will he plague us: for his name, locked away as surely as he, shall be forgotten, as surely as he. Done we are, and all eternity with him."

While imprisoned, John Bunyan wrote Pilgrim's Progress. it is translated into more languages than any other book save the Bible. CS Lewis, who wrote Pilgrim's Regress (a great book), said of Pilgrim's Progress, it is "a literary and spiritual masterpiece". We have Pilgrim's Progress in cartoon form and audio as well.

Loreena McKennitt - The Lady of Shalott (LIVE)

The Lady of Shalott

Monte wants me to say something about the poem "The Lady of Shalott" by Alfred Tennyson. It speaks of her weaving, though she's tapestry weaving which has it's own style of loom. I could do it on my rigid heddle loom, I think. It is a style of weaving I want to move into. I did a similar style of tapestry weaving years ago, but on old rusty barrel rings.

The weaving picture is by William Maw Egley. The Lady in the boat is by John William Waterhouse.

There's a site that has the poem and beautiful art work. The Lady in the boat reminds me of the scene in the book and movie Anne of Green Gables, when Anne is dramatizing the poem and her boat slowly sinks.

http://www.pathguy.com/shalott.htm

Loreena McKennitt has put this poem to beautiful music (like I posted earlier of her putting "Dark Night of the Soul" to music).