Poem Sunday

From all that dwell below the skies

Let the Creator's praise arise;

Let the Redeemer's name be sung

Through every land, by every tongue.

Eternal are they mercies, Lord,

Eternal truth attends thy word;

Thy praise shall sound from shore to shore,

Till suns shall rise and set no more.

~Isaac Watts

The bluebirds have returned once again to start a new family in the birdhouse outside my kitchen window. How timely.

Valentine's Day is not about "I love you." It's about "We love each other."

Happy Valentine's Day, y'all.

the sofa, a blanket, a mug of tea...and thou

Often, Life is like old Pharoah. Demanding more bricks with less straw.

But sometimes, yes, sometimes....Pharoah sleeps.

And the brick making gets cancelled because of snow. Oh yeah.

An Incontrovertible Reality

I was standing outside the church building relating a story to a friend. Kathryn was there, and Julia. Who is quiet. Like her parents. They were standing with us, probably because they are smart girls who find the conversations of mature women to be entertaining or at least informative. It was a personal story, requiring language that would only be used in the presence of other females, but there were, of course, other small groups standing out there too which included men and children.

I was speaking in a low tone, but the moment I uttered the Embarrassing Word, Kathryn winced and flinched. I defended myself.

"I was speaking softly,” I said.

“People could hear you,” she remonstrated.

That’s when Julia spoke as only Julia can.

“It seems so much louder when it’s your mother.”

For Aslan breathed...

"Nor indeed would the other boys at Edmund's school have recognized him if they could have seen him at that moment. For Aslan had breathed on him at their meeting and a kind of greatness hung about him."

~C.S. Lewis, from Prince Caspian

This is what I want for 2011.

Not the greatness, but the difference.

It's that time again

There is something about the turning of a year that infuses life with Hope. Expectation. Purpose. It makes the probably impossible seem possible. In a flurry of lists and commitments we reinvent our lives. And sometimes, oh, sweet sometimes, the ideas that spin out of our brains swirl with such centrifugal force that some of them stick to the wall.

(I hope I didn't lose anybody with that paragraph.)

There is nothing quite like that blank slate feeling. It reaches every corner, every crevice of experience. And makes me think I will blog again.

It's a bit serendipitous, I think, that after the holidays, company, the resumption of school, and the flu x 3, I would finally sit down to blog exactly 1 year to the date from the last entry in Shades of Green. It would appear that I planned it that way but, if you can take my word for it, I didn't. I haven't kept track of the date at any point since January 1 except for Eleanor's birthday (Jan. 7).

So it is with great surprise and no small feeling of divine mandate that I make this entry in Shades of Green on January 24, 2011, though no one will know or read it on this date. That's okay. It is a Beginning Again, and as such, marks a small, purposeful step on my road to better things. There are already several Beginnings Again here on Eddings Hill. Time will be our judge.

There is a cherished family story that Ro-Bear has often related about his dad as a young boy. I will relate the story itself at a later time, but the point of it is summed up in this great nugget of wisdomly advice from the playground: Do it and then talk about it.

Well then, okay.