Autumn Daybook for Harvest Moon! [look. listen. make. do.]

Welcome, Autumn!  Let's celebrate with a few ordinary acts of paying attention to the ways earth's crammed with heaven in this season.  Here's some suggestions to get you started this week, beginning with the Supermoon Lunar Eclipse Sunday (9/27) night.
  

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Look

Under the Harvest Moon
John Atkinson Grimshaw, 1872
source

11 Mesmerising Photos of the Harvest Supermoon above Britain

Rare Super Blood Moon: How To See It (great photo from National Geographic)

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Read

The moon now rises to her absolute rule

BY HENRY DAVID THOREAU

The moon now rises to her absolute rule,

And the husbandman and hunter

Acknowledge her for their mistress.

Asters and golden reign in the fields

And the life everlasting withers not.

The fields are reaped and shorn of their pride

But an inward verdure still crowns them;

The thistle scatters its down on the pool

And yellow leaves clothe the river—

And nought disturbs the serious life of men.

But behind the sheaves and under the sod

There lurks a ripe fruit which the reapers have not gathered,

The true harvest of the year—the boreal fruit

Which it bears forever,

With fondness annually watering and maturing it.

But man never severs the stalk

Which bears this palatable fruit.

Source: Poets of the English Language (Viking Press, 1950)

Possum's Harvest Moon (picture book)

September's Moon Guide at Old Farmer's Almanac

How to see this weekend's 'super blood moon'

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Listen

Listen to Neil Young perform Harvest Moon live at the Ryman Auditorium 

Listen to my always-evolving Autumn playlist on Spotify

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Make

Harvest Moon Cocktail at Tasting Table

Super Moonshine! Make four super-eclipse harvest cocktails

For the Kids

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Watch

What Is A Supermoon Lunar Eclipse? from NASA Tumblr 

How to Observe a Lunar Eclipse at California Academy of Sciences (excellent video!)

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Do

source

10 Fun Campfire Games

High 5: Bonfire Edition at Aesthetic Outburst

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Share your favorite fall things with me in the comments below, on Facebook, Instagram or Pinterest.

Welcome, Autumn Daybook [look. listen. make. do.]

photo source

Welcome, Autumn!  Let's celebrate with a few ordinary acts of paying attention to the ways earth's crammed with heaven in this season.  Here's some suggestions to get you started this week.  

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Read

The Heat of Autumn

BY JANE HIRSHFIELD

The heat of autumn

is different from the heat of summer.   

One ripens apples, the other turns them to cider.   

One is a dock you walk out on,   

the other the spine of a thin swimming horse

and the river each day a full measure colder.   

A man with cancer leaves his wife for his lover.

Before he goes she straightens his belts in the closet,   

rearranges the socks and sweaters inside the dresser

by color. That’s autumn heat:

her hand placing silver buckles with silver,   

gold buckles with gold, setting each   

on the hook it belongs on in a closet soon to be empty,   

and calling it pleasure.

The Heat of Autumn by Jane Hirshfield

What Is the Autumnal Equinox?

They would work up the apples the next day (at Appalachian History) 

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Listen

My always-evolving Autumn playlist on Spotify

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Make

Slow Cooker Apple Butter 

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Watch

Classic Sesame Street film - Making Apple Cider

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Do

Wondering Through the Year, Emily Watkins

Host an apple testing get-together

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It is the summer's great last heat, 

It is the fall's first chill: They meet. 

–Sarah Morgan Bryan Piatt

Share your favorite fall things with me in the comments below, on Facebook, Instagram or Pinterest.

Follow Tamara's board Autumn holidays & occasions on Pinterest.

{pretty, happy, funny, real} daily bread

| a weekly capturing the contentment in everyday life |

I'm still not sleeping well, but Brian and I aren't fighting much at all any more.  We even like each other again and think we might make it to our 25th anniversary in November. Even though we don't know much of our future yet, there is a hope that it will be together.  As the Seder song teaches us to pray: "it would be enough". 

I am intending before the Father, Son and Spirit, before my tribe, and before you, dear reader, to take each glimpse of what and who and where our future becomes as a morsel of manna.  To receive it as enough, resist the urge to hoard up piles of glimpses and plans that will surely spoil just as that sweet bread did in the wilderness.  I will receive the daily provision of the Father as enough.  And trust that tomorrow there will be enough again. Because our Father is good and does not give his children stones when they ask for bread.  He gives enough in the right time.   

So we are not feasting on dreams and plans here, but we are fed with hope and little glimmers of ideas and sweet encouragement from God's people. 

I walked through a few puddles around the neighborhood today after last night's rain (blessed, blessed returning rain!) and it struck me as I pondered manna and long-awaited rainfall that this is probably the essence of Ordinary Time. We are fed with our daily bread. It's one of the first great lessons we learned and newlyweds, and it's been our theme for almost 25 years, thanks be to God.

It is good and it is enough.

Here's a few snapshots of contentment the past week.

| pretty |

gift eggs

Brian brought this goodness home from work on Tuesday.  A sweet woman dropped them off during Ladies' Bible Study.  Almost too pretty for breakfast -- but not quite.

| happy |

a few happy gifts during a disappointing week

While we get our bearings in the middle of some uncertainty, I'm so grateful for sweet gifts.  
1.  Friday night candle-lit Scrabble, antipasto and wine
2.  Saturday morning coffee on the patio at Thunderbird Cafe
3.  Reading nursery rhymes to my niece and nephew on Google hangout.  It was basically an excuse to look at Richard Scarry illustrations.

| funny |

office pranks

So I have this mug I purchased at Goodwill.  It sits on my desk and makes me happy with it's sunshiny yellow.  I was gone for a bit and came back to the scene of a coffee mug hostage crisis thanks to a couple of rather clever pranksters.  Honestly, I might have sat at my desk for a whole week or more without ever realizing that thing was actually hanging over my head. Well played, friends.  Well played.

| real|

Texas unfiltered

This is kind of funny, too.  On Saturday, with a whole day free, I got it in my head that we should drive to San Marcos to the mega, gigantic, infamous retail outlet complex I'd heard so much about.  Now, it's taken me four years to even consider this sort of endeavour, but on a recent trip through the Austin airport some kind soul welcomed us back home by stealing our extra-large, crammed-full-of-most-of-our-worldly-possesions suitcase.  We're not exactly closet wealthy, so a week's trip means the majority of our good clothing and personal items were in that suitcase.  Anyway, long story short, outlet shopping seemed a proper way to see the sights and replenish our wardrobes.  Long story shorter:  we drove in bumper-to-bumper traffic on I-35 for close to an hour in 100+-degree heat with the sputtering air conditioning in our secondary vehicle (since our daughter had our better vehicle on a road trip to visit her sister).  We crawled inch by inch through the chaotic parking lot of the outlet arcade finding no parking, no shade and, unbelievably unhappy people.  Well, we did the only natural thing to do in that sort of situation and headed right back out the exit to the nearest country route we could find.  We ended up discovering an off-off road thrift sale in a 75-year-old deaf man's yard.  His name was Ernie, and he told us he felt it was time to start letting go of his life-long habit of collecting old things.  We stood and sweated in his yard and his garage, looking through his things.  Then I took this picture, and we ran back to our air conditioning and sped on down the road.  This, my friends, is my kind of shopping day.  I'll have to figure out another way to clothe ourselves.  

Have you captured any contentment this week? 

 I'd love to hear about it!

| Join in at P,H,F,R to see other wonderful people practicing contentment. |

Orange [#AUGUSTBREAK2014]

August is a good time for paying attention to the daily things, don't you think?  Today I was looking for orange and didn't have to go further than my own home.  [#AUGUSTBREAK2014]

 "Orange as the perfumed fruithanging their globes on the glossy tree,orange as pumpkins in the field,orange as butterflyweed and the monarchswho come to eat it, orange as mycat running lithe through the high grass."

-- from Colors Passing Through Us, Marge Piercy 

Farewell Gifts

I wrote about our friends giving us a fond farewell with so many abundantly-spilled-out gifts, right?  I thought I'd share a few excerpts and photos here in this space.

First of all, there've been worker-bee type gifts, getting our house ready to sell:  (several of these were the same horse-bee-angel people I told you about helping us move into this same house three years ago!)

Then, there were the two, extra-mile friends (and their little cutie-pie) who helped us organize all of our crap gently-used items for a big, ol' moving sale.  Plus, all the wonderful people who showed up to support us in the blazing heat and bought stuff (and I'm thinking more than a few of them bought stuff just to be nice.)

I didn't take a picture of the garage sale. Pretty average stuff.
 But this dinner to celebrate with our generous, kind-hearted, helper friends
 was way above-average Chinese cooking!

All along, behind my back, the Worship & Arts team I've been privileged to serve with for 13 years and lead for the last three were putting together the World's Most Perfect Farewell Party.  

It looked a bit like this:

With amazing works of culinary art that looked something like this:

After that, these people gave words, songs, laughs, and other assorted gifts with jaw-dropping generosity.  They made me laugh and they made me cry.  Sometimes both at the same time:

But, mostly, they made me cry.  Like when Coleen read an essay of the last eight years of our family's friendship.

"Let's go to Cleveland" we all said. "Test the waters of a Murphy/Gravelding mini-family vacation. If it sucks, at least we've seen the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame."...So we all chuck our anxiety-filled rejection issues about close friendships and decide to go all-in."

Scott's song-words in "Laughter and Lament":

"Seems like yesterday, church bells, Boston, October morning...
So swift the news came, left us feeling stranded without a warning.
But this family is bigger than a couple of thousand miles...So we'll put on our good brave face...and smile.

It's not phony you see, just a little hard to accept...Your stepping out, even letting go of dreams you've kept.
Cue the heartstrings, enough sad things...choking words too many or too few.
Strike up the band, let's join hands...maybe a praise chorus will do.

Everybody sing where you are...Tomorrow we may be too far
From each other and one another.
Everybody listen when we go...Hear the journey God only knows
The laughter and lament as we ebb and flow...."

Andrea's song, "Piece of You":

"We have shared each other's sorrows
Validated hurts and fears
Loudly applauded days of triumph
Bared our souls and witnessed tears

But we both know every great story twists and changes
Unexpected bends in the road
when today becomes little more than a memory,
I want you to know, I want you to know
There's a piece of you written upon me."

Brett's poem, "The Table":

"The anchoress has walked without a camera, with one hand plunged in

Puget Sound and the other in your exploding right.

She cries 'Glorious! Incandescent!' as she feels the spinning hole spin.

           The light

That burned her wings is showing mine within

The Mirror of Day's silver backing, Night.

It issues shimmering from shivering kingdom culverts. Before me

Tonight in light of its veilless valence I am able 

To see each molecule vibrate within this glow-glory

            table.

And I in trance substantial tell its story

Of insatiable realness, exorbitant and stable."

There was so much more. Dawn and Debbie's unassuming hilarity, Pastor Sal's words of affirmation, Christine's unknown challenge to me from Proverbs 31, Margaret's superb selection of readings from L'Engle.  And presents. Oh the presents!  Money to purchase art, hand-crafted jewelry, photographs and drawings.  I am a woman welled-over with gratitude.

And there's more to say.  But not today.  Today I need to sleep for a few hours and then pack my four courageous, kingdom-culvert children plus one speckly dog into two cars and follow my husband to Austin.  We're still licking our wounds a bit, I'll admit.  Still in mourning over lost dreams.  Still shaking our heads at the lunacy of leaving behind these once-in-a-lifetime kind of friendships.

But I'm thinking long about Louisville or Little Rock, we'll throw our black armbands out the window and holler at  the big Texas sky.  Or maybe, as the lyrics in my friend Scott's song:

"Just maybe you will be singing this song
When the whole Murphy clan grabs Austin by the hand and says,
'Baby, here we are'..."