walking together

Art of the Day: Van Gogh, Undergrowth with Two Figures, June 1890. Oil on canvas, 50 x 100.5 cm. Cincinnati Art Museum, Ohio.

Have a magical weekend, everyone.

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Helping each other through struggles

Van Gogh: The Life

May 29 at 12:39pm · 

Art of the Day: Van Gogh, The Good Samaritan (after Delacroix), May 1890. Oil on canvas, 73 x 60 cm. Kröller-Müller Museum, Otterlo.

sixth summer book

She was the blogger of Mundane Faithfulness. I knew she died of cancer so when
I got her book from the library recently, my heart was so hesitant. God is good is
her theme. I got to know her: her disorganization & messiness in her house, her childhood that was filled with fear from a dad who had anger, her becoming a lover of Jesus, then meeting her Jason. Jason writes about all this a few weeks ago here. 

 She has hard questions at the end of each chapter: 

   " Imagine God speaking to you , pointing out moments of grace in your life. What would He show you?"

     " When you pray for God to lift you out of fear and dread, do you truly believe He can and will? Why or why not? What is an example of when He did, and what is an example of when you felt He didn't? How did He show you His goodness in both answers?

GOOD QUOTES:

The imagined fears and worries often break us more than reality.

Fight with kindness.

He's my dad... but he is not the Author of my story.

Your story is the one that could set us all ablaze. ( Dan Allender)

How lucky I am to have something that makes saying goodbye so hard. ( Winnie-the- Pooh, Milne)

My day started with a kit to swab the insides of my mouth to send back to see if I might be a bone marrow donor for my #3 oldest brother. My afternoon had no call about an interview my daughter had for a job at a restaurant when she would hear by today  plus my oldest son turned down a very low paying teaching  job as he waits to hear back from other schools to teach math to middle schoolers. They are trying to trust God's goodness. 

My evening ended with Kara's story. 

I need truth tellers all around me to speak the goodness of grace that will meet me on both sides of the tender veil. 

fifth summer book

I have a first edition small hardback of Mimosa and the paperback. 

I just finished the book tonight with awe at the ways of God. 

" The very trials that befell her were turned to means of strength for her,

by them she proved her Father. For ' if the will be of Godd He can make a 

stepping stone of the devil himself to set forth the work." 

rare photo of Amy in the video

onto the week

The weekend was filled with delicious cooler days with less humidity. 
It felt like we were up North. There was plenty of time in Saturday and Sunday
to rest and have things come up without feeling like I was tipping over. Maybe 
it is the weather that lifts the soul. A friend told me about a counseling session 
and being told that in the busyness, her soul is not right. "A well-ordered soul,"
was my response. My daughter had a philosophy class this last semester 
and had a wonderful discussion on the subject as her professor arrived late
and did not have a well ordered soul. (rushing makes us very frustrated with 
everyone in our path!!) So my friend and I left the coffee shop pondering
" a well ordered soul" from Plato and Aristotle , no less.




Good things to read on the net that I am catching up on this week: 

The Story Warren: 
Julie's on books for parenting that aren't parenting
Liz's on her library

Art Middlekauf

Three Educational Idylls

Five Important Differences Between Charlotte Mason and Classical Christian Education

                                Poetic Biblical Lessons

the weekend is here

wish I was here

a something in a summer's day

Emily Dickinson wrote those words. Maybe she meant to look for God's new mercies. 
They are new every morning. I spent a year training myself to look for them as the 
days unfolded. I forget now to notice unless I am really praying for his mercy for 
a particular prayer - asking- pleading-telling God my needs when I know He knows-
waiting.....and Emily finishes her poem:

Contented, known, before	30
The heaven unexpected came,
To lives that thought their worshipping
A too presumptuous psalm.  photo found here There are many words here to prick the   and awaken the heart like the beauty of this photo: unexpected. Unexpected Grace... our hearts yearnings. Christ's business. He gives and wows us even when we have a presumptuous psalm.  I have prayed some of those presumptuous psalms.  Thinking upon Emily's words and heaven unexpected came.

fourth summer read

"My mother took care of her own mother the way she took care of her children, tirelessly, thoughtfully, with a firm grip, and a great deal of love."

" And I learned something, I'd thought that no one but me could save the people I loved, but that isn't true." 

"Life is short and we do not have much time to gladden the hearts of those who travel with us. So be swift to love, live without fear. Your Creatorhas made you holy, has alwaysprotected you, and loves you as a mother." 

" A cold hard wall grew up between us. For years we stood on opposite sides and glowered at one another." 

The Geography of Memory by Jeanne Murray Walker 

JEREMY'S SONNET

                   Write me a sonnet with the wind in it, please.
                                                               --Jeremy
Because we both heard separately the bark
of the hungry storm last night--he there, me here--
the wind tossing itself through the dark
between us, he wrote and asked.
                                                               So wind, appear,
I say, because he wants you.  Flap and nip
and yowl, Chinook, Samoon, Diablo.
Today your sizzling breath, your deadly flip
of freezing squalls tomorrow.
                                                           As you blow
through flutes, blow through these words.  Let me draw
you in and out, be near, be quiet, be our slow
breath, be us, be nothing but the bright ah!
you are.  We want your presence, though we fear it.

In the end, just these rags.  And breath and spirit.

good blogs for summer reading

1. Rest is the sweet sauce of labor.   - Plutarch
Nancy Kelly , a dear friend , writes on Plutarch. My middle school students loved Plutarch 
and I was stunned. How did something so hard strike their imaginations? Good history does. I am convinced this is necessary. Read here. 

2.Nulla dies sine linea*

*”Not a day without a line,”–the motto of the Art Students’ League in New York.

Lanier Ivester is like a blond Audrey Hepburn in her style and elegance that is embedded

in her writings. Read about Elizabeth Goudge here.

3. Great lists of summer reading by another dear friend, Liz at Living Books Library are found here and here. 


4. A dear friend is leading an online book discussion at The Rabbit Room.
Julie lives a few miles from me. Join in on the Slow Church ( you have to log in). 
Read here. 

third summer book done

I got this book out of the library when my daughter asked if I had read it. 
1949: hot summer essay E.B. White wrote and it gives a looming picture
of the Big Apple. It is very short and as always White's giftedness with language
comes off the page to the heart.

“A poem compresses much in a small space and adds music, thus heightening its meaning. The city is like poetry: it compresses all life, all races and breeds, into a small island and adds music and the accompaniment of internal engines. The island of Manhattan is without any doubt the greatest human concentrate on earth, the poem whose magic is comprehensible to millions of permanent residents but whose full meaning will always remain elusive.” 
― E.B. White, Here Is New York

second summer book done

                                                 Her name was Frances Blogg. 
                                               Her husband was G.K. Chesterton.