Something Rare and Fine

Hello all. My hurty back is acting up again, so I will be (mostly) away from the computer for a few days. I will leave you with the lyrics to a Carrie Newcomer song I am listening to over and over:

the gathering of spirits

let it go my love my truest,
let it sail on silver wings
life’s a twinkling that’s for certain,
but it’s such a fine thing
there’s a gathering of spirits
there’s a festival of friends
and we’ll take up where we left off
when we all meet again.


i can’t explain it. i couldn’t if i tried
how the only things we carry
are the things we hold inside
like a day in the open,
like the love we won’t forget
like the laughter that we started
and it hasn’t died down yet

chorus

oh yeah, now didn’t we
and don’t we make it shine
aren’t we standing in the center of
something rare and fine
some glow like embers
like a light through colored glass
some give it all in one great flame
throwing kisses as they pass

chorus

just east of eden
but there’s heaven in our midst
and we’re never really all that far
from those we love and miss
wade out in the water
there’s a glory all around
and the wisest say there’s a 1000 ways
to kneel and kiss the ground

chorus

"Wait a Minute, Wait a Minute Mr. Postman"

I love the beautiful Scribe Template, but whenever I have to tweak things a bit, I feel like a chimp with a screwdriver. Or maybe not quite as smart or proficient. I realized there is no link to e-mail me from on the blog, and though I don't love how it looks, after a half an hour of messing with it, there it is. Please feel free to write me-- I have tested it and it works.

Now that I have been humbled by digging around in the codes, I am off to shower and head out-- we are bound for the library and then for a big U-pick farm nearby with a farmstand. Sandwiches in the cooler, CDs in the door pocket, and no schedule. My perfect Saturday.

If you want to read about a grander adventure, check out what is going on over at Walk Slowly, Live Wildly.




Of Farmer's Market Love

I knew my readers would share the Goodwill love with me! I have found so many wonderful things that I don't dare go unless I am prepared to purchase!

I got to spend an hour or two at another of my favorite places last weekend. John and I took the boys to Asheville to see some friends and took the opportunity to go to the Western NC Farmer's Market. Ever since my first visit, sometime in my childhood, I have loved this place. Long before we began to ask where our food comes from, and how it is treated, and how we can support the communities we live in or near, I instinctively loved the bins full of gorgeous produce, that moved in turn from the greens and berries of spring through the squash and beans and tomatoes of summer toward the pumpkins of fall. I loved the conversations over scale and cash register-- the neighbors meeting up with each other, the light through jars of honey and the peaceful saunter through the buildings.

I had visited our very local farmer's market with my sister, and stocked up on butter and beans and the first of the summer squash, so my spree was mostly visual. I bought what must be the last of the strawberries and a cloth sack of grits. (After a long learning curve, I can make lovely creamy grits.) But everywhere there were still delights-- herb plants growing in profusion, buckets of sunflowers and foxgloves, and something else. Something about feeling a foundation of reason and sense and mindfulness grow under what I had already appreciated and respected without being able to help it. And if our travels this summer take us back up that way, I'll be there again.

Goodwill Hunting

Wow, that pun looks even more hideous in black and white, but I cannot resist. What is definitely not hideous is this black and white number-- the sort of skirt I have wanted for a long time. $4 baby! It and some other goodies were found on a trip to a little Goodwill store less than ten minutes from my house, with my sister last week.

I love thrifting anyway, and thrifting with my sister, and two little guys who were perfect angels, was pure bliss. The boys racked up on books and a fisher price tape player with its own microphone, and Kim and I were able to try things on for each other, using that sisterly honesty and the occasional enabling nudge.

The damage? $24 for two skirts, one with the store tags still on, two pairs of capris, a shirt for each boy and a teetering stack of children's books. And a morning of fun in a clean, beautifully kept store. And the satisfaction of giving something cast away another life.

My skirt, after a wash, a line dry, and a steamy iron with lavender spray, traveled to church yesterday morning. The boys are discovering the wonder of their own voices played back. We are working our way through the books. And my sister and I are scheming about our next visit. (We could not help but notice a few beautiful sweaters on the racks.) Another satisfied customer.

Quiet

Long time, no post. I suppose I have been taking my friend Tonia's advice, to "Live first. Blog later." A little rundown of the last couple of weeks:

--Bliss to have my Joshua home all day, so we can putter around with Sam, be mostly schedule free, and share that uncluttered summery feeling.

--Reading some wonderful books, The Graces We Remember: Sacred Days of Ordinary Time by Phyllis Tickle and Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life by Barbara Kingsolver. Leading me to haunt the Farmer's Market now, and plan a garden for next year.

--Enduring the first fist of classic SC heat and humidity, and drought, which is taking a day off this day of grace, as we bask in overcast skies and 75 degrees.

--Rearranged my paper-crafting area and have been dipping my toe in, making a few cards, enjoying the paper in my hands and ink on my fingertips.

--Continuing to hang laundry, turn off lights, use the attic fan when I can and generally try to set my foot a bit more lightly on the Earth. Conviction on every side about the connections between ecology, human rights, and health. And how it is all coming down to stewardship for me, graciously receiving the gift of this life.

I read the above and feel that nagging feeling, that I'm not doing it, I am not flying that "I'm so busy" flag, the commodity of my spent time like a measure of affluence or importance. Even for this slow-living, stay at home mama, who really doesn't want anything else, I feel it.

But in the stillness of early morning, or late night, I am grateful, for time: time to breathe, to wait for the bread to rise, to wait for the shot to click the shutter, to wait for the pace of the child, to listen.