photo credit for "inside": Zosia
Tuesday, August 31, 2010
inside::outside
photo credit for "inside": Zosia
Another New Beginning
I've shared our tradition of taking a picture on the first day of a new job. I can't say that when I posted about Ben's new job a month ago I ever imagined that I would be in front of the camera just a few short weeks later. But, the holy spirit works in unexpected ways, to say the least. As I was talking with the pastor and religious education director at our church, I couldn't help but feel that I was exactly where I was supposed to be. And as the chapel minister at our parish, I will be working among some incredible people, with a congregation that we have been in love with for some time now, working with children and families. And, it's quite part-time, which means that preaching the gospel to my faith community will not interfere with my ability to live it with my own wee ones (I won't even have to find childcare, a huge blessing). Here's to another new beginning!
(For the legalistic, I will confess this photo wasn't actually taken on the first day of my job... with two babies in tow to a friend's house, a daddy who picked them up on his lunch break, there simply wasn't time for the ceremonial photo. So a shot the day after on my way out to play with the kids will have to do.:-)
Sunday, August 29, 2010
Celebrating Summer's Bounty
We have been busy celebrating summer's bounty around here. Every now and then we'll catch a cool wind that reminds me that autumn is right around the corner. And while I must admit that autumn is my favorite season, I still find myself grasping at the last few weeks of summer, trying the live them as fully as possible.
Some ways we've been celebrating the bounty:
- Weekly meals centered around Ben's homemade pesto.
- Darting out to pick tomatoes from the garden before every meal.
- Dressing all three girls of the house in summer dresses.
- Playing at the pool with friends.
- Iced coffee and tea.
- Allowing the children to get inappropriately wet wherever we go.
- Setting up a picnic blanket and making a makeshift "home" on our summer adventures.
- Popsicles (frozen mango juice is our favorite!).
- Spending hot days in our shady home organizing every corner of the house.
- Feeling entirely comfortable leaving the house barefoot.
Thursday, August 26, 2010
Wednesday, August 25, 2010
waiting calm
By waiting and by calm you shall be saved. In quiet and in trust your strength lies.
Him, reading aloud the morning's hours. Her, captivated by the colorful narrative of Isaiah, compelled to join in the exercise. This line has captured their imagination, and they dwell on it together. I shuffle through the room quickly, basket of laundry in hand and tears springing to my eyes.
How often do anxiousness, now waiting, business, not calm, fill my heart? I pile the laundry onto our bed, start haphazardly folding, start listing the things that need to get done: stamps at the post office, dinner to a new mom, dishes unloaded and reloaded. There is always more to do, and yet my spirit craves calm, waiting, quiet.
The verse stays with me through the day, rising to my lips. A domino-effect pileup of mishaps making dinner. Spilled milk, full trashcan, babies under my feet. By waiting and by calm you shall be saved.
A missed nap, a fussy car ride, a disagreement over parenting. In quiet and in trust your strength lies.
And as I settle into the joy that such realization offers, I am surprised that the sacred words that have gently ushered me out of sorrow are still on my lips.
Yes. They are still true in my joy.

Tuesday, August 24, 2010
inside::outside
Monday, August 23, 2010
Three...
Monday, August 16, 2010
Left for Dead
And we are left scratching our heads and asking, "My, but isn't the spirit of life resilient?"
Saturday, August 14, 2010
Wednesday, August 11, 2010
Joyfully Embodied
I shall establish my dwelling place among you
and shall not reject you;
-I shall walk among you;
I shall be your God and you shall be my people.
You are the temple of the living God,
as God himself has said.
- I shall walk among you;
I shall be your God and you shall be my people.
Leviticus 26:11-12; 2 Corinthians 6:16
Ah yes, even as I struggle to understand the glory of the body, I am surrounded by little beings who live that glory every day. There's nothing like cold fountains on a hot summer day to bring out the sheer joy of embodiment.
Tuesday, August 10, 2010
Conversation
I left with a tight chest, my breaths shallow and my shoulders raised. I'm sure that my pulse was racing. Years of people-pleasing has left me with few coping mechanisms when people, quite simply, are not pleased. I talk it over with my sister, my best friend, who is a very good listener (yes, I suppose that might be why she is a therapist). Her advice is plain: sometimes these symptoms, the elevated pulse, the tight chest, they are your body's way of telling you something. Yes, of course. I have lived my whole life with this body, through this body, as this body, really, and yet spend most of my time silencing rather than interpreting it. I know that Paul's question is for me: "Don't you know that you yourselves are God's temple, and that God's spirit lives in you?" (1 Corinthians 3:16) No, honestly, I don't always know that. And what then is this temple, this body, telling me?
I know that in the short term, my body was asking me, quite urgently, to walk away from that conversation. Which I did. But in the long term? In the next conversation, the next relationship? I really don't know. And so I left one conversation to enter another, this one with my own body. I am left listening, calmly and quietly, as if for the softest whisper.
Friday, August 6, 2010
Raw
Now, our milk, meat, and eggs will all be produced locally and humanely-- quite a positive step, if you ask me. And did I mention it's delicious?
Our farmer didn't have to invite me twice out to her scenic farm... I'm already planning a visit. She already has five children. Do you think if I'm really sweet I can get her to take me in too?
Thursday, August 5, 2010
Wednesday, August 4, 2010
Tuesday, August 3, 2010
New Beginning
It feels a bit like the first day of school. Ben even requested that I give him a haircut last night, isn't that cute? And there is certainly that buzz of excitement: a new workplace, a new work community, a new project. He's thrilled, and that sort of means we all are. And who could complain about the new dress code? A t-shirt and shorts? Yes please!
Monday, August 2, 2010
Ascending
What could be more energizing than climbing over 800 stone steps through a maze of waterfalls, rock formations, and tunnels? Why, doing it with two small children, of course! Some demon (ahem... baby) possessed Ben and I to race up the last steep staircase-- him carrying Lily, me carrying Zosia-- and I kid you not, there were people at the top who seemed concerned for our safety/horrified by our zeal. But the prize for the day goes to our "big girl" who climbed just about the entire mile and a half by herself, her right foot first on each step. I don't think anyone was complaining that there was a bus that runs from the top back down.
Sunday, August 1, 2010
Moosewood!
Are there any places you have dreamed about? Perhaps they're from books you've read, movies you've watched, stories you've heard? They can gain a sort of mythic status, these places, growing larger than life in your imagination.
Well, ever since I've been introduced to many of the Moosewood cookbooks, Moosewood, the famous vegetarian restaurant in downtown Ithaca, has been such a place. We have cooked our way through Sundays at Moosewood, Moosewood Restaurant Cooks at Home, and Moosewood Celebrates, falling in love with their creative, healthy, delicious meals. Modified recipes from these pages have made it into our family cookbook, this blog, our thanksgiving table, to mention a few. Even now that we are not a vegetarian family, we still regularly cook from these books.
And now, Moosewood is programmed into our gps, because we actually got to visit! Can you believe it? And it was just as I had imagined: simple, tasty, fresh. It was just like eating supper at a good friend's house, complete with a breezy patio with white Christmas lights. The only thing more heavenly than the Chocolate Ricotta Mousse was the drive back to our cabin through miles of farmland with Ben and jazz music.
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