I'm listening to Essie Jain right now. And her song called Glory is making my heart swell. I'd really like to write, and if you decide to read this, please listen to it while you do so.

It's nearing the end of our gestation period on this little pasture on planet Earth. I'm not sure if I can piece my emotions together. I'm neither sad nor happy, regretful nor content. I don't want to leave my animals. I don't want to stop working with David either. I've developed really incredible relationships with the people, creatures, and nature surrounding this house. It's just magic. I hate to leave before I feel ready. And it's funny, thinking about the connections I've made with so-called inanimate objects. How can people say a structure that was built by something known to have a consciousness not have one itself? I'm going to miss the shed... it's creaking door and flickering fluorescent light. I'm going to miss the sturdy posts of the clothesline and the wooden paneling in the kitchen, the chalkboard walls and the left-over pink scalloped paint above the basement door.

Living here has reinvigorated a side of me that fell asleep for a while. I don't know that it had ever been awake during my first twenty years, but in a past life for sure. And that's the beautiful curiosity of it all. Something about this house, this land, is sacred. The people who dreamed here before me left something for their followers to learn. And even though this house will soon fall to the ground, new people will arrive. They'll somehow need this land and it will teach them something too. Hopefully I'll leave bits of knowledge in the soil. I probably left them there this summer with the thousands of peach pits in our garden. (You know this place was once a peach orchard?) And Thadeus, buried at the edge of the yard will swiftly decompose once the frost melts. We buried him beneath a large tree that a family of deer walk by daily. In spring this tree will decorate herself in pink feathery flowers and with the first handsome gust of wind they'll blow right away, with them fragments of our darling kitten.

I can't say I've come full circle yet, but living here and experiencing the things that this house had to offer, showed me a different side of life. And that is why I'm not entirely sad. I know there is another plot of land that I am meant to call home. There are more blades of grass to ponder (or eat if I were an Alpaca) and there is a more quiet place for our animals to join us one day. I still need to grow carrots and potatoes and cabbage and peas. And I have yet to drink fresh goat's milk or bake a cake with eggs from healthy hens. There are so many things in store. Some will be challenging and I might want to give up. But I do know this will pay off in the end. Staying true to our convictions is the only freedom we seem to have in this world. And on that note, wish us luck in our transition.

:)

 

 

A nice bath for our dirty little lamb.

quotes from The Imitation of Christ by Thomas a Kempis

It is good that we sometimes have griefs and adversities, for they drive a man to behold himself and to see that he is here but as in exile, and to learn thereby that he ought not put his trust in any worldly thing. It also is good that we sometimes suffer contradiction; and that we be thought of by others as evil and wretched and sinful, though we do well and intend well; such things help us to humility, and mightily defend us from vainglory and pride. We take God better to be our judge and witness when we are outwardly despised in the world and the world does not judge well of us. Therefore, a man ought to establish himself so fully in God that, whatever adversity befall him he will not need to seek any outward content.

A clean, pure, and constant heart is not broken or easily overcome by spiritual labors, for he does all things to the honor of God, because he is clearly mortified to himself. Therefore, he desires to be free from following his own will. What hinders you more than your own affections not fully mortified to the will of the spirit? Truly, nothing more.

 it's so OLD!

I have never read this book, but now I'd like to. It's an excerpt from a book Jamie is using to help organize his writing (and his thoughts). It's called Anatomy of the Psyche Alchemical Symbolism Psychotherapy by Edward F. Edinger. Neither of us is deeply religious in the average sense. No church or celebrations of Ash Wednesday. But we are spiritual in our separate lives. In our minds. So if you're reading this, keep yours open.

There was once a point in my life (which I think was really lacking!) that I associated the WORD God with the troubles that religion has provoked. I probably would not have taken these paragraphs seriously. But my opinions on that word have changed. I still don't associate God with a title for a benevolent man in the sky. I'd rather not write about my opinion of God though. That's up to you. (I admit though, that I find  the branches of trees absolutely fascinating and could stare at them for hours. Among other things.)

Oh. My. God.

 

I want this house. I found the link on a blog I can't actually read, called Rosa e Chocolate. I really admire its writer's embroidery skills. 

Alma from Rodrigo Blaas on Vimeo

This video she posted is amazing as well.

ps. can you tell I'm really bored with scanning my drawings into the computer?

This came out of a mini-lesson on watercolors with my neighbor's children. I'm really going to miss them.

...and I drew this for Paige last summer

My cousin Paige drew this very perfect portrait of me just a few weeks ago. My eyes are blue, my hair is almost black, but as she explained, my clothes are ones she made up. I suspect they are very similar to Cinderella's pretty blue dress.