Setting

Here is the current view, up into the orchard, from our front deck. We enjoy migrating birdsong and protection from the sound of traffic beyond that patch of woods in view.

This is the view of our dwelling as you approach from the lane. Welcome! The orchard and woods is off to the left. Farmers fields are down below, beyond the Right scope of the picture. 

Since I was 18, I have been a towndweller. Then in my time abroad, excepting London, I landed in many a rural spot. So now we've set up house again in a rural county...and to my amazement, this picture below is almost exactly the scene from our back deck, except...

...it was taken from just over the hedge on our compound in Kenya this spring! That brought home the appreciation I'd gained in my experience in so many homes in the last 2 years: that while many aspects of our lives are un-translate-able, they are also very, very much the same.

Look Back

click here for PICTURES

Here are some photos from a big day on a beautiful hill, behind the creek, behind where I grew up. We heated our house from the trees on this hill, hunted raspberries, and awed in silence each chilly Easter sunrise. Now it seems to have been dubbed Wedding Hill.

Once and again

Here I am again at the easel; and long I've stood, pondering how to pick up the brush. How am I to name a painting before I've touched the canvas? Email and internet give everything a 'Subject', a challenge that I like and dislike that at the same time. My life and thoughts don't have a title or a label under which I can archive them. We're all just painting and doing the best we know how, breathing gratefully borrowed breath from the Spirit of God who compels our brushes.

So like it or not, I renamed my easel: a name chosen for its layered meanings, not the least of which is the covenant into which I have newly entered, symbolized by two silver rings made by my now husband. This gives a profoundly new shape to my life, certainly a growth ring in the trunk of my tree.

So I welcome you here, under the shade as I let the sap run, leaf out, turn color and sway branches in the wind...

Wren

It's winter now, and I've migrated through to the East coast of N. America via Cameroon, Central Africa. The views have been stunning, my senses invigorated! And now the return to familiar trees has made a bird like me to feel that I have a home. I've been preening flight-worn feathers and taking in the view.

Then unexpectedly this week, a call came to take wing again, this time to Haiti, wondering was I available to join the flocking there? and my adventure feathers fluttered at the chance to take flight...

But deep within, instinct knew that it's not the season for me to fly. My flight pattern has landed in these trees, in woods I know well and woods that know me.

There are times to flit and fly. And believe me, I thrill at wind under my wings. And taking flight is my first response. But in the favor of wisdom, I choose now to perch, ...for I have reasons to sing.

Today, I picked out a little stream-side perch and I plan to chirrup and celebrate there like the British bird that so moved me 7 months ago. Already my brother and his nuthatch flew by to sing me a tune!

So sing I will! on behalf of those flying, along with those who are suffering, for the joy set before us, for the gifts along the journey. Sing!

wrensong

here's one I saw:

a tiniest bird, not but 2 inches from beak to tail and perched a meter from where I was passing, was caroling with all its soul. I stopped, awed into silence. This fruffy little tuft of a guy sang and chirruped like a lark or a wren and s/he put out sound that would have carried to the back of a large auditorium. It was utterly glorious.

Volume

6 litres of saliva a day
is approximately what your salivary glands produce.

Sometimes it seems the same volume of thoughts flood my brain or even 6 litres of words in so many conversations a day

and I lay on my bed, spent, spinning.


I am learning, as I walk along the sidewalk pavers and under trees spilling from fenced front English gardens, to voluntarily relax my involuntarily tensed mental muscles that are fervently driven to 'make sense' of the world..to say,

hey,
let's not wind up tight trying to work out imponderables, like wringing out a towel that's still wet but just can't be wrung any tighter- it's no help!

let's gawk a little longer at birds. let me put my whole self into this moment of gratefulness- not just a mental calculation of thanks or compartmentalized pleasure- but all. here. now. that's what this heart was made for.

In the past 11 months, I must say, a lot of water has spilled over the dam and I've not fully realized or absorbed the experience yet. This forward rushing current- the brain wrung tight over language acquisition, cultural bridging, relationships everywhere- has me still in that same mode: looking forward, quickly back and then to the action-filled present.

But, I have the space in my life for this lesson now. This time will surely pass into another season less spacious. So I welcome this walking lesson. The tilt-back of stance, the round-me gaze, my ear cocked...I hope with all my heart the lesson sticks.

I think for me, this may be part of the 'renewing of your minds' that Paul urged us followers to be open to?

twins

The palate of variety , in a city like London, is almost endless...but the other day, my twin sat down beside me on the bus. And in my peripheral vision, I watched her act out...me!

Presumably my age, she got on the bus, took to the upper level and sat in the front seat, even if it meant doubling up with someone. She settled in and thought about her day as we made the first few stops, then pulled out a book- parallel texts in French and English (something I also have out of the library). She opened to where she thought she'd left off and read a bit, with occasional looks out our front seat panoramic window, interested in the life on the street. It wasn't long however until she became preoccupied with the thoughts piling to the front of her morning brain that her gaze out the window became persistant and the book lay open and forgotten in her lap. I smiled. Her stop came, she closed the book, replaced it in her bag and set off for the day.

I had thought my twin was in Virginia. In fact [she] sat right down beside me!