On Minimalism

I think minimalism is my natural inclination in many ways.  I have always preferred the compact version of pretty much anything.  I have a horror of storage units and even daylight basements--all that extra space removed from the essence of home is unsettling to me.  I've always like turtles--so compact and their home always transported neatly with them.  I much prefer campers to trailers.  I love poetry for it's essential compactness--no excess, just that economy of words.

I've always loved staying in a condo on vacation with the airy, uncluttered feel--lightly filled space with just what you need and nothing more.

BUT I was raised by a mom and grandmother who had lived through the Depression.  Anything, everything, could come in handy one day.  Throwing things away is wasteful.  You never know when you might need it.  As soon as you get rid of it, THAT"S when you'll discover you need it.  And so goes the tape that plays in my head, recorded throughout childhood.

Cleaning out Mom's condo after she died really went a long way toward mitigating that narrative.  It took FOREVER.  SO MUCH STUFF.  And much of it had little or no sentimental value and was rarely used.

I have found the paring down process easiest in stages.  After finishing (mostly) sorting through Mom's things, (with Cara thank heavens!) I came home and did some paring down.  Then The Flood happened, when water flowed through our house while we were in Disneyland.  About 1/3 to 1/2 the contents of our house were packed into a storage unit in the driveway.  When it was time to bring them back in, we thought VERY carefully and what we did and did not re-integrate, and got rid of a lot more stuff.

I've continued to pare down different areas.  Recently I did a major closet overhaul.  If I didn't LOVE it, I didn't keep it.  Now getting dressed is so much easier--no more pawing through all those clothes I kind of like but never actually wear.  And my closet is so much more visually appealing.  And you look at your closet every single day, so that's no small perk.

And now.....we are (almost for sure) moving to a condo in Fairhaven.  Not a teeny tiny apartment style, though we did look at some of those.  We'll still have 1200 square feet (about 1,000 less than now), 3 bedrooms and actually 2 single garages (!)  So it might no be that hard to fit what we have into our new space.  But I am, nevertheless, using this as an opportunity to once again carefully evaluate each and every item in our home, and make sure it brings enough joy with it to come along.

Upside down is Good

“What is truly profound is thought to be stupid and trivial, or worse, boring, while what is actually stupid and trivial is thought to be profound. That is what it means to fly upside down.” 
--Dallas Willard

Thoughts on Les Miserables--the grace scene

What the priest does in response to Jean Valjean's crime is wrong. He lies to the police and puts himself and his household in mortal danger by opening himself up in vulnerability to this stranger not once but twice. He has already shown him unmerited kindness, which was repaid with betrayal, theft and violence. His act is wrong in the sense of cultural norms, societal justice, conventional morality and safety. It is naive and foolish. And yet we all know instantly, as we watch or read the encounter, that it is absolutely right. The collective gasp in the theater, once the impact sinks in, is telling. The movie version with Liam Neeson made in the 90's seems to me the most powerful portrayal of this moment but the impact is tangible whatever the medium. The priest does a ridiculously unwise thing and we immediately know it is breathtakingly right. It is the Kingdom of God at work.

Ballad

When the water quietly found it's way
from inside the tubing
where it belonged
to outside the tubing
where it didn't belong

it began to escape
heady with freedom
bent on reaching that
forbidden territory

carpet

but soon just one floor
one story
wasn't enough
and with no one
 to object
it began the descent

through the vents
new horizons
on walls
in walls
down walls

what's this? more carpet

and a cool garage floor to fill

until--
the fatal mistake--

rushing headlong into the great outdoors

one step too far
one adventure too many
one toke over the line
sweet jesus

discovery.

And for now
we live
at La Quinta.

Christmas 2013

I love the sight of these tiny shoes by the door :)

I

Snow Day!

School was cancelled so Ava spent the day with me.  A beautiful snow and no wind--so rare and so fun!

 Then back inside for hot chocolate and books by the fire!

Tree Hunting

This was a VERY quick process this year because it happened to be VERY cold the day we had planning to get our tree.  With an icy wind blowing the decision became easy.  Ava waited in the car until it was time to do the actual cutting.

Listen....

Listen to your life. See it for the fathomless mystery it is. In the boredom and pain of it, no less than in the excitement and gladness: touch, taste, smell your way to the holy and hidden heart of it, because in the last analysis all moments are key moments, and life itself is grace. - Frederick Buechner

Fall family times

Late in September Eloise came to spend the night with us.  Lots of cousin love!

Ava is now 7--such a milestone age!  We celebrated with her friends at Birch Bay and then spent the night there.

 We celebrated Jon, Kaci and Ava's birthdays at our house later in the month.

Cara, Doug, Ron and I celebrated in Mom's memory on her birthday (the 18th) at Dos Padres.

Handprints

Ava and I made a Thanksgiving card for Nicole, and Kaci sent us one she made with Eloise.

I love these precious hands and the precious girls they are attached to!!

This makes so much sense....

“The faith passes, so to speak, through a distiller and becomes ideology. And ideology does not beckon [people]. In ideologies there is not Jesus: in his tenderness, his love, his meekness. And ideologies are rigid, always. Of every sign: rigid.

“And when a Christian becomes a disciple of the ideology, he has lost the faith: he is no longer a disciple of Jesus, he is a disciple of this attitude of thought… For this reason Jesus said to them: ‘You have taken away the key of knowledge.’ The knowledge of Jesus is transformed into an ideological and also moralistic knowledge, because these close the door with many requirements.”

“The faith becomes ideology and ideology frightens, ideology chases away the people, distances, distances the people and distances of the Church of the people. But it is a serious illness, this of ideological Christians. It is an illness, but it is not new, eh?” -- Pope Francis

Weezy Time

I went down and took care of Eloise during conference time.  So fun to hang out with her!  She loves the park near her house.

New Ways of Thinking

It's all so much bigger than I thought.  It's more complex, though not necessarily complicated.  It's deeper, and wider and fuller than I realized.  God, and in a connected way, Truth, are so much more than I knew.

And I didn't just wake up one day and realize this.  It's been a gradual dawning...piece by piece, truth by truth, depth by depth.  I treasure simplicity, and I still believe in the simplicity of truth, but the edges are fuzzier and the depths...well it turns out they may be limitless.  Things don't wrap up as neatly as I thought, into tidy packets of certainty, but what I've lost in terms of surety and clean edges I've traded for breathtaking wide open spaces filled with seemingly endless possibilities.

I absolutely love

Friday Harbor!

We enjoyed a getaway on a groupon there in early October.  We stayed at the Earthbox Inn and had fun exploring the town and beach.

Some of the parks were closed because of the government shutdown, but luckily Lime Kiln Park is a state, not federal, park so it was open.

 We went to a lovely Thai restaurant before heading home.

 Ava got a rock skipping lesson from an expert....

 One of the great things about islands is that getting there and back is half the fun!