What I've Been Into Lately, October edition

The entire family celebrating Kendra's senior Cabaret performance,
October 2013

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From the book pile

to see the book pile from 2011, click here / from 2012, click here

35  The River Why by David James Duncan (Sierra Club Books; 2002. 304 pages) 

Christ Church's book club selected this title for the September reading.  I barely finished it in time for the discussion, and only then because I skipped large portions in the middle.  

What I enjoyed about the acclaimed story was Gus Orviston's relentless pursuit for a beautiful, fulfilling life.  His drive to live the "perfect schedule" (which meant nearly 27/7 fishing the Oregon mountain waters) resonated with my wish-dream of reading and writing all day long every day forever and ever amen.  Gus gets to attempt that life and his discovery that it ends up unfulfilling shouted loud and clear to me the need we all have for providential irritations and interruptions.  That limitations -- whether in our daily schedule or in our complex family relationships -- form us in profound and, even, beautiful ways.

36  The Man Who Was Thursday by G.K. Chesterton (1935. 192 pages) 

Oh, how disappointed I am with myself for finally reading this book and for barely digging into it.  It was a hard month to read...I was working full time hours plus and my reading was more a way to fall asleep at night.  So, the story was imaginative (no surprises there) but other than a vague notion of liking the cunning main character that's all I can remember.  I need to read this again.  When I'm not so sleepy.

38  Opened Ground: Selected Poems, by Seamus Heaney,  (Farrar, Strauss and Giroux, 1999. 464 pages) 

I wrote about this book AND one of my favorite poems here: Tea, Tangerines and Seamus Heaney on a Saturday Morning

39  An Origin Like Water: Collected Poems 1967-1987, by Eavan Boland, (W.W. Norton & Company, New York and London, 1996. 200 pages)

Another Irish poet.  Merely a coincidence. I'd never heard of Eavan Boland before my friend Shannon shared a link on the day Garrison Keillor featured -- "The Necessity for Irony" -- a gorgeous poem by Ms. Boland on The Writer's Almanac podcast.  
The book includes five books from Boland's earliest work and covers a range of subjects -- from what it means to be Irish to what it means to be a woman, mother, and poet.  Beautiful, all.

One of my favorite poems in this collection: 

 "Nocturne"

After a friend has gone I like the feel of it:
The house at night. Everyone asleep.
The way it draws in like atmosphere or evening.

One-o-clock. A floral teapot and a raisin scone.
A tray waits to be taken down.
The landing light is off. The clock strikes. The cat

comes into his own, mysterious on the stairs,
a black ambivalence around the legs of button-back
chairs, an insinuation to be set beside

the red spoon and the salt-glazed cup,
the saucer with the thick spill of tea
which scalds off easily under the tap. Time

is a tick, a purr, a drop. The spider
on the dining-room window has fallen asleep
among complexities as I will once

the doors are bolted and the keys tested
and the switch turned up of the kitchen light
which made outside in the back garden

an electric room -- a domestication
of closed daisies, an architecture
instant and improbable.

In October I enjoyed browsing through the following books:

• Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh (for our book club, but I didn't get too far in and ran out of time)

• Between Noon and Three: Romance, Law and the Outrage of Grace by Robert Farrar Capon: got half way through and decided I didn't want to ruin my love for this author and my favorite title of his so I re-read...

• The Supper of the Lamb: A Culinary Reflection by Robert Farrar Capon

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Movies & TV 

Parkland

We'd have wanted to watch this movie anyway.  It's Playtone (Tom Hanks), it's Paul Giamatti and Marcia Gay Hardin.  It's history and JFK and Dallas and Jackie Kennedy.  But the reason we watched this movie on it's opening night with our friends Bernie and Jodi was because of two seconds in the middle of the movie.  Two seconds captured also in the trailer above: 1:06-1:08.  That lovely blue dress running down the hospital corridor in the mayhem of the President's arrival to a trauma room is our beloved Rebekah Cummins -- Bernie and Jodi's daughter and Alex's girlfriend.  Much of the movie was filmed in Austin and Bekah auditioned as an extra.  She spent an entire day running up a hallway in a blue dress and too-large shoes, running again and again into Billy Bob Thornton.  We'd hoped a bit more of her would show up in the final cut, but that didn't stop her mom from whooping real loud in the theatre when we saw the blue dress running down the hall on the big screen.

By the way, it's a good movie.  It's not the movie to see if you're hoping to rehearse the conspiracy theories.  It's the story of the human-ness of all the supporting characters in such a sad, sad day in our nation's history.  The young resident called on to try to save the President's life.  Lee Harvey Oswald's good brother.  The guy who ended up taking the world's most famous home video (before home video had a way of being famous). The President's secret service men who would not leave his side even after he was in a coffin.  The priest called in to the hospital room to give last rites.  (Unexpectedly, Brian and I both started crying at that scene.)

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In my ears 

Arcade Fire full album preview: Set to the 1959 film Black Orpheus, Arcade Fire has released their entire upcoming album Reflektor, available October 28th, for your listening pleasure.

Also, here's a nice review of the new album from John J. Thompson at Think Christian: Arcade Fire's Reflektor: reinvention on the dance floor

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Art I'm Loving (Follow me on Pinterest here.)

Hannah Price: City of Brotherly Love Photography Exhibition

This series of portraits by a young Yale School of Art student fascinates me -- and challenges me deeply.  I wrote about it at Think Christian this month:  Hannah Price and responding to catcalls with grace

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In the kitchen

This banana bread recipe for all the old bananas in my freezer.  My daughter shared it with a friend at school who said, "This is my happy."

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Random thing making me happy 

This sequence of events to surprise Kendra the night of her Cabaret performance.

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On the Blog (Get This Sacramental Life delivered by email.) 

Top 5 posts in October

5.  A poem for my brother Todd on his birthday

4. 7 quick takes: scooter surprise, my takes on a priest's authority, tiny stories outtakes and more!

3.  7 quick takes: grandparent outtakes, Kendra's Cabaret surprise, delicious apples from Georgia and more!

2.  when did you first notice the one you love? [tiny stories #5 with my grandparents on the day of their 67th wedding anniversary]

--- October's top post ---

1.  the meaning of your name [tiny stories #4]

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So, what about you? What's in your book pile? 

What art, film, song has captured your imagination? 

What are you pinning or cooking or planning? 

Share in the comments, won't you?

For more “What I’m Into” posts, head over to Leigh’s blog

What I'm Into Lately, May & June 2013

May 30: discovering the pottery wheel is the perfect antidote to the stress of moving 

In the fall, I stopped posting my Monday Mixtape posts in favor of a more personal weekly series promoting independent art-makers.  That series Buy More Art has been fun and I'm looking forward to starting the series back up in August or September.

Still, I miss being able to share with you the daily bits of song and story and craft I'm enjoying that was the original intention for Monday Mixtape.  I stumbled onto a fun blog link-up hosted by Hopeful Leigh.  I think I've found the happy second generation of Monday Mixtape -- so ingenious it birthed two spin-off series:  a bi-weekly Buy More Art post and a monthly What I'm Into Lately.

I don't know about you, but happy mediums make me -- well -- happy.

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From the book pile

to see the book pile from 2011, click here / from 2012, click here

12  One Hundred Demons, written and illustrated by Lynda Barry (Sasquatch Books, reprint edition 2005) - May was moving month (again) so I stocked my nightstand with easy reads.  For many reasons, this book probably would have never made it home in my library tote had I not seen it quoted in the daily asterisk*.  Plus, I liked the idea of reading a book categorized (by the author) as "autobiofictionalography."

The book collects 20 cartoon narratives originally featured in Salon's Mothers Who Think site.  The title was inspired by the author's discovery of an Asian painting exercise (called, uh, One Hundred Demons) which connects each story as a series of "demons" Lynda Barry wishes to rid from her life.  For example, old boyfriends, lost childhood friendships, embarrassing family moments, and even the 2000 "hanging chad" elections.  Barry's drawing is awkward but funny, her writing voice sad but sweet.  

13  Help, Thanks, Wow: The Three Essential Prayers by Anne Lamott (Riverhead Hardcover, First Edition edition 2012) - I didn't plan to read Anne Lamott and Lynda Barry together in the same month but, in retrospect, they'd make interesting companions in real life.  Maybe Barry should offer to illustrate some of Lamott's stories.

Like this excerpt:

"Some of you were taught to pray at bedtime with your parents, and when I spent the night at your houses, I heard all of you saying these terrifying words: 'Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the Lord my soul to keep. If I should die before I   wake ... ' 

Wait, what? What did you say? I could die in my sleep? I'm only seven years old ... 

'I pray the Lord my soul to take.'

That so, so did not work for me, especially in the dark in a strange home. Don't be taking my soul. You leave my soul right here, in my fifty-pound body. Help."

I should probably admit that Lamott's theology irks me quite a bit.  I suspect that's kinda what she's going for. For example,  her affinity for referring to God in the feminine pronoun makes me a bit nutty (Seriously, girlfriends, we want God to call us by our very own particular name, don't we?    This doesn't have to mean we can't see the male and female both in His image, friends.  Let's return the favor and call God by the name He's chosen for Himself, "Father".)  

But the woman can write, Anne Lamott, he can write.  (sorry, couldn't help myself). And the idea of breaking down our prayer life to three essentials is a beautiful meditation: Help, Thanks, Wow (or wowowowowow, in the reverberating sound the author helps us imagine).

I'm glad I read this book.  I'm glad Anne Lamott is a writer and someone who loves God and people.  

14  A Homemade Life: Stories and Recipes From My Kitchen Table by Molly Wizenberg (Simon & Schuster, 2010) - This is a library book that I read and want to buy.  Partly because I want to try the recipes at a leisurely pace.  Partly because I loved the way the blogger-turned-author wove memoir with how-to, literary and easy-to-read at the same time.  I'd like to write a book with the same feel someday.  Since I only bake twice a year, I'll have to figure out something besides recipes, though.

Mostly I want to own this book because it's simply beautiful.

An excerpt from chapter 1: 

My father woke up each morning wanting that day. You could see it on his face. He was the one at the end of the table, laughing so hard that his round face split open like an overripe watermelon and his fillings shone darkly like seeds. He laughed so hard that he gagged a little and pulled out his handkerchief to wipe his mouth. He knew what he had, and he loved it. 

He could have taught me a lot of things. We'd hardly begun. But I have his recipe for potato salad, and when all else fails, it's a place to start.

15  Kristin Lavransdatter by Sigrid Undset (Penguin Classics, 2005 edition) - I began the first of this trilogy, The Wreath, with the book club in our church. The idea being we'd read together one part of the trilogy for each month in summer.  When I picked it up at the library, I was a bit overwhelmed by its heft, and it took me a few chapters to warm up to the characters, setting, and tone of Kristin's story.  After missing the book club gathering -- but completing the first nove -- l I'm still a bit ambivalent.  While I've begun to appreciate the setting (admittedly painted in my mind a bit like an Elsa Beskow postcard) I've continued to be more aggravated than engrossed with the relationships between the main characters.

"Set in fourteenth century Norway, Kirstin Lavransdatter portrays the clash between feudal violence and christian piety, traditional imperatives and the individual conscience" says the book jacket.  "It's sort of like a 14th century Norwegian Jane Austen story" says I, describing the title to a friend last week.

I'm glad I read The Wreath.  As much as I'd like to feel the accomplishment of completing all 1124 pages, I'm not sure I can go the distance with the Daddy's-girl-marrying-the-scoundrel protagonist for two more.  

16  Memories of a Catholic Girlhood by Mary McCarthy (Heinemann, reprint 1957) - My friend Micha recommended this memoir recently.  I'm intrigued by the memoir as a genre, fascinated by the different forms it can take.  For example, Ms. McCarthy sets up Memories of A Catholic Girlhood acknowledging the various ways truth can be reshaped in writing the story of one's life; an author might forget the particular details and need to create them in order to fill in the blanks of her story or she may just want to change the details because it makes the story more fun.  In this author's case she followed each chapter of her story with a chapter setting the record straight.  At first I found this admirable, but at some point I began to resent the interruptions to the flow of reading her story.  In either case, her writing -- especially her description of people -- delighted me throughout.

I happened to listen to the Writer's Almanac podcast on June 21 which, unbeknownst to me, is Mary McCarthy's birthday.  The brief bio they chose to highlight her work included a professional spat McCarthy held with playwright and memoirist Lillian Hellman, famously declaring on a televised talkshow, "Every word she [Hellman] writes is a lie, including 'and' and 'the.'"  

I now better understand Ms. McCarthy's apparent compulsive need to differentiate between truth and fiction in her own memoir.

17  Jayber Crow: A Novel by Wendell Berry (Counterpoint, 2001) - I wrote this full review a few weeks back:  The Book Review In Which I (politely) Disagree With the Mad Farmer

I also made you a quote print.  

Hope you like it!

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Movies & TV 

We splurged a little bit with back-to-back blockbusters to kick off the summer:  Iron Man 3 and Star Trek Into Darkness.  I guess I should confess that I've never watched even an episode of Star Trek.  But my family are all  mid-level Trekkies so I figured it was time to jump on ship.  You know what?  After the stress of moving and finishing school, a night sharing popcorn up and down the theater row watching a variety of good-looking species save other planets and each other is a pretty good thing.  

A few evenings when I was too tired to do anything else, I vegged out with a Freaks and Geeks marathon on Netflix.  I don't know how I missed the show in 1999 (oh, I know!  I had four kids under the age of 8 and probably fell asleep by that time of night).  I'm so glad my son suggested I might like the series; best suggestion my kids gave me since my daughter told me I might like this little band called Mumford & Sons.  I was only 9 in 1980, but all the highschool cousins and schoolmates I idolized were the exact age as James Franco, Seth Rogan, Jason Segel, Linda Cardellini and Busy Phillips' high school characters and the story lines are spot on.  The  clothes, the hair, the sound track, the new microwaves and Ataris all take me back in the best of ways.  

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In my ears 

Pretty much every weekend goes to working on getting settled into our new little house.  I thought a funky, soul-ish playlist was in order.  I give you my Saturday Working Around the House playlist:

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Art I'm Loving 

[Loie Fuller Dancing]

Samuel Joshua Beckett (British, 1870–1940). [Loie Fuller Dancing], ca. 1900. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Gilman Collection, Purchase, Mrs. Walter Annenberg and The Annenberg Foundation Gift, 2005 (2005.100.951

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On the Blog (Get This Sacramental Life delivered by email.) 

Top 5 posts in May & June

5.  Summer of desperate rest

4.  Final week of photo stories to Practice Resurrection + final 2 print giveawayf from PJeanArtMachine!

3.  7 quick takes: Mother's Day! Father's Day! New drivers, short shorts, stand-up comedy and more!

2.  A poem for my husband on his forty-third birthday 

...... and, drumroll for most popular post in May & June......

1.  8 lessons from 9 months doing stand up in Austin, TX [guest post by Andrew Murphy] 

Must be the secret to blogging is getting your kids to write posts for you?  Thank you, again, son!

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Favorite pin/In the kitchen...soon!  (Follow me on Pinterest here.)

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Random thing making me happy 

The Daily Office online from Trinity Mission (+ my back patio, the neighbors in our back house and my chipped orange mug from Goodwill)

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Looking forward to in July

• my girls are home from individual mission trips and have promised to share some of their stories here on the blog in the next couple weeks

• unpacking the last dozen boxes sitting around our house & filling up my great-grandmother's glass-cabinet bookcase that just arrived to us from New York!  

• FAMILY VACATION IN NEW YORK!!  Counting down the days...

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So, what about you? What's in your book pile? What art, film, song has captured your imagination? What are you pinning or cooking or planning? 

Share in the comments, won't you?

For more “What I’m Into” posts, head over to Leigh’s blog.

What I'm Into Lately, April 2013

field of bluebonnets at Cedarbrake Retreat Center, Belton, TX

In the fall, I stopped posting my Monday Mixtape posts in favor of a more personal weekly series promoting independent art-makers.  That series Buy More Art has been fun and I'm looking forward to taking it up a notch this year with giveaways and interviews and more all-around hoopla.  

 I stumbled onto a fun blog link-up hosted by Hopeful Leigh, and  I think I've found the happy second generation of Monday Mixtape. The problem is that I keep being super busy at the end of the month and don't get to actually posting my list until the link-up is closed.  Still, I share my March 2013 with you all.

I don't know about you, but happy mediums make me -- well -- happy.

from the bookpile  to see the book pile from 2011, click here / from 2012, click here

8  Here is New York, by E. B. White and Roger Angell (Little Bookroom, 2000) - Picked up this slim (58 pages) hardcover from my library on a Monday morning about 10:30, poured some iced tea and read on my front porch rocking chair until I'd finished, maybe an hour later. And what a delicious hour it was!

Long-time contributer to The New Yorker magazine, beloved children's fiction author -- Charlotte's Web is most well known, The Trumpet of the Swan is my personal favorite -- co-author of the influential Elements of Style and prolific essayist, Elwyn Brooks White wrote the loving sketch of the Big Apple originally on assignment for Holiday magazine in 1948.  He turned the essay into a book in 1949 and it was re-released with an introduction from his stepson (Roger Angell) in 2000.  

To write the essay, White came back to Manhattan after moving his family to Maine.  I wonder if this might be part of what makes the brief work what The New York Times calls "one of the best 10 books ever written about the metropolis".  Maybe it was the coming home again, walking the streets, observing his former preoccupied neighbors, sweating out each sentence at the typewriter in his non-air conditioned hotel room.  The perspective he'd gained going away from the city and coming home again seems to lend itself to a warm, nostalgic -- but not overly-romanticized --perspective on this greatest of all cities.

Or maybe that's just my homesick heart reading into his words.

A favorite passage:

"I mention these merely to show that New York is peculiarly constructed to absorb almost anything that comes along (whether a thousand-foot liner out of the East or a twenty-thousand-man convention out of the West) without influencing the inhabitants; so that every event is, in a sense, optional, and the inhabitant is in the happy position of being able to choose his spectacle and so conserve his soul. In most metropolises, small and large, the choice is often not with the individual at all.  He is thrown to the Lions. The Lions are overwhelming; the event is unavoidable. A cornice falls and it hits every citizen on the head, every last man in town. I sometimes think that the only event that hits every New Yorker on the head is the annual St. Patrick's Day parade , which is fairly penetrating -- the Irish are a hard race to tune out, there are 500,000 of them in residence, and they have the police force right in the family.

The quality in New York that insulates its inhabitants from life , may simply weaken them as individuals. Perhaps it is healthier to live in a community where, when a cornice falls, you feel the blow; where, when the governor passes, you see at any rate, his hat. 

I am not defending New York in this regard. Many of its settlers are probably here merely to escape, not face, reality. But whatever it means, it is a rather rare gift, and I believe it has a positive effect on the creative capacities of New Yorkers -- for creation is in part merely the business of forgoing the great and small distractions."  (pp. 24-25)

9  The Secret Keeper: A Novel by Kate Morton (Atria Books, 2012) - I think I've  I've been craving fiction and didn't even know it until I started reading novels again. Somewhere along the line I stumbled onto Katie Noah Gibson's blog, Cakes, Tea and Dreams, and began filling my "to-read" list with suggestions from the many, many books she's able to read each month.  (How does she do it?!?)  The Secret Keeper is one of those books.

Turns out I started with a new release from the New York Times bestselling author of The Distant Hours, The Forgotten Garden, and the House of Riverton.  Morton skillfully uses flashback storytelling to set us in several English eras -- from pre-World War II through the Blitz to the early 1960's and present day -- to draw us into the rich settings her characters inhabit.  

More than that , I was intrigued by the story.  In 1961, sixteen-year-old Laurel watches her mother kill a man.  Even though her parents come to realize Laurel witnessed it, they never speak about the incident again with her or give a proper explanation.  Now as Laurel's mother reaches her 90th birthday, swings in and out of dementia and approaches death, Laurel becomes obsessed with learning the truth of the story before her mother dies.  The story is good, the characters compelling and the plot twists delightfully surprising.

Perhaps most fascinating is the way Kate Morton reminded me my own desire to know the unspoken stories in my family tree, the urgency to collect memories from the Rememberers leaving us all-too soon.



10  The Midwife: A Memoir of Birth, Joy, and Hard Times by Jennifer Worth (Penguin Books, 2009) - I've told you this is my newest favorite television series and thought it time I read the trilogy that launched the PBS drama.  Honestly, I was a bit hesitant to read the original memoir because I thought it might reveal too many differences between the true-life story with what is shown on television.  To my delight, screen-writer Heidi Thomas has written each episode (so far) true to reality.  Where I discovered creative license, it was the sort that enhanced the story and made perfect sense.

Probably the largest difference in the book is the greater amount of detail Ms. Worth shares about the pockets of depravity in post-war London's poverty -riddled East End.  In my opinion, PBS sketches the realities with a soft touch and that serves the viewer well.  In her writing, Worth describes in more harsh detail the prostitution, workhouses, abuse and crime she saw first-hand bicycling her way among the labyrinth of over-populated, under-resourced tenements.  It was good for me to know these realities, because I don't want to be too fragile to know the truth about poverty, misplaced bureaucracy, and human suffering.  But I wouldn't have been able to watch it on television.  (I should mention that both the books and the program contain depictions that would could trigger stress for those who've experienced trauma -- especially pregnancy-related suffering.)

More importantly, knowing better the jagged details sharpened my appreciation for the nun-midwives and district nurses of Nonnatus House.  Their gracious, dogged determination to be the hands and feet of their Savior to the suffering women and children (all people, actually) in the heart of a mid-twentieth century Dickensian world teaches me incarnational love, just as it drew Jennifer Worth (nurse Jenny Lee in the program) to the Gospel.

I'm adding the next two books of the trilogy to my library hold list at this very moment.  You should, too.



11  Coming Home by Rosamunde Pilcher (St. Martin's Paperbacks, 1996) - After I described my first experience reading a Rosamunde Pilcher novel last month my mother told me she was one of her favorite authors.  How'd I miss that all these years?  She mentioned she might be willing to loan me a couple of her favorites (hint, hint, Mom).

So I've read two warm stories by this author now and, by far, preferred Winter Solstice to Coming Home.  For one thing, the first title is a bit shorter read to the 977 paperback pages in the latter (which I stayed up until 4am reading...ugh!)  I'm not opposed to reading many pages, but I felt like at least one-third of Coming Home could have been removed and I'd have enjoyed the story more.  Or maybe I've become a lazy reader.  I mostly just wanted to know when the main character Judith (love that name) discovered true love, true friendship, and true home.  I didn't need to go down so many dead ends with her to appreciate the good parts of the story.  

Still, I haven't lost my fascination with WWII-era London, the English coastline, or four-o'clock tea time.

on the big screen 

To the Wonder, directed by Terrence Malick, starring Ben Affleck, Olga Kurylenko, Rachel McAdams and Javier Bardem

I happen to enjoy Terrence Malick.  He forces me to slow down and relax when I'm watching his films.  When I do that I realize that I actually see the world in much the same way: a series of impressions -- light, sound, movement, contrasts and connections.  Several times, in the theatre with my husband, I caught myself wanting to be cynical-- really, how many times do we have to watch this woman dance across a field, raising her arms to the sun?  But, I think Malick knows that and insists on barraging us with what almost felt like a 112 minute lyrical dance with an occasional pause for a snippet of plot line.  Still, the story we're absorbing through  the moving images tells the truth.  Whether the relational brokenness of a romantic couple or the prisoner receiving the sign of the cross through thick glass windows or the lonely priest asking more questions than hearing answers we are all as the voice-over whispers "thirsty".

I'll be processing this film for awhile.  Pretty sure it's going to show up on the blog again.

p.s., I found it quite lovely that this was the last film Roger Ebert reviewed before dying on April 4.  You can read the review here:  To the Wonder: Movie Review & Film Summary at Roger Ebert.com

in my ears/ on Spotify
Fitz & the Tantrums - my boss played this in the office Friday and it's just totally fun.  Has a bit of an early-80's pop/disco vibe with a dash of R&B.  Also, I heart the lead singer's hair.

on the blog (Get This Sacramental Life delivered by email.) 

Practice Resurrection - a new series for Eastertide

Second week of Eastertide with CIVA, Caravaggio,Ordinary Time, yours truly and the Gospel of John

your photo stories to Practice Resurrection (week 1)/(week 2)/(week 3)

Take Up Something New: prayer walk (Reverend David Murphy)

Third week of Eastertide with bread as art, fisherman as fisherman, me as a poet and the Gospel of John as our text

Practice Resurrection: full on forgiveness

Take Up Something New: the secret to braiding bread (a guest tutorial from Leila at Like Mother, Like Daughter)

Fourth week of Eastertide with Jean Charlot, Rain for Roots, and the Gospel of John

Take Up Something New: move across the country or the world (W. David O. Taylor)

Fifth week of Eastertide with Van Gogh, Gungor, Jenny & Tyler, Page CXVI and the Gospel of John

We are a forest kingdom

Take Up Something New: plant a flower garden (Laurel Rudd)

art I'm loving
Lisa Kairos, encaustic

favorite pin (You can follow me on Pinterest here.)

In memory of the beloved ragamuffin Brennan Manning who went home this past month.  

random thing making me happy

FPiA preliminary round at Cap City Comedy Club, Austin

Our son Andrew made it through the preliminary round of Funniest Person in Austin. Semi-finals begin the second week in May and we've got our fingers crossed!

what i’m looking forward to next month
We're moving -- again.  About five miles southeast of where we live currently.  Downsizing, simplifying, saving money -- that's what the plan is anyway.

Also, I've loved collecting your photo stories each week of Eastertide and am excited for the few remaining weeks before Pentecost.  I'd love for YOU to join us...

Three easy steps to play along our Practice Resurrection photo story series:

1. Take up something new. (one day or fifty days doesn't matter, just one thing that's new or, maybe just unique with this season)

2. Take a picture and write a description in 36 words or less.

3. Share the photo and the 36 word or less caption with me via email or facebook message by Thursday morning each week of the series. 

AND, the blog turned 7 years old on April 10!  In honor of the anniversary of that first post (the profound title:  Hello!) I gave the blog its very own facebook page.  I'd be so pleased for you to head on over to This Sacramental Life on facebook and "like" me.

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So what about you? What’s in your book pile? 

What art, film, song has captured your imagination? 

 What are you pinning or cooking or planning?

                                          Linked up with Leigh for the monthly “What I’m Into” post