{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. |

{pretty, happy, funny, real}: finding contentment during sleeplessness

| a weekly capturing the contentment in everyday life |

I haven't been sleeping well lately.  It's pretty typical this time of year when all of my kids are flung hither and yon, getting situated into new places for the fall.  Ticking one more year off the calendar of parenthood unsettles me, interrupts my sleep, makes me restless, sad, and, often, anxious. And it's our baby's last year of high school.  My last year to send a child to high school.  And our son is getting married in less than 5 months.  All joyful things, but seriously messing with my mama mojo.

There are other things going on, too.  As Brian nears ordination, we're ready to think about what's next, maybe even where's next. This is definitely unsettling in a way that's hard to put into words.  Literally.  Every time Brian and I try to have a heart-to-heart conversation about planning our future we end up sputtering half-finished sentences, unable to conclude anything.  I end up near tears, and then we can't speak again for hours.  The question feels impossible to answer. So, yes, I'm losing a bit of sleep these days.

My daughter brought us gifts from her summer in NY, books that seem to match us each perfectly (thank you Broome County Public Library book sale!).  For me, she chose Garrison Keillor's selection of Good Poems for Hard Times.  Last night, awake around 4am, I read this unseasonal, but completely recognizable lament from a favorite poet:
Ice Storm
Jane Kenyon

For the hemlocks and broad-leafed evergreens
a beautiful and precarious state of being. . . .
Here in the suburbs of New Haven
nature, unrestrained, lops the weaker limbs
of shrubs and trees with a sense of aesthetics
that is practical and sinister. . . .

I am the guest in this house.
On the bedside table Good Housekeeping, and
A Nietzsche Reader. . . . The others are still asleep.
The most painful longing comes over me.
A longing not of the body. . . .

It could be for beauty-
I mean what Keats was panting after,
for which I love and honor him;
it could be for the promises of God,
or for oblivion, nada; or some condition even more
extreme, which I intuit, but can't quite name.

I lose sleep unable to name what's next, and who I will be next.  What's my role in our future?  We'll celebrate our 25th wedding anniversary this fall, Brian's ordination to the priesthood, our son's marriage & college graduation, our youngest child's high school graduation -- just to name a few milestones ahead of us in the coming months. I am deeply longing for something I can't quite name.  

While I lose sleep at night, I feebly practice contentment each day. Here's a few snapshots of the past couple of weeks.

| pretty |

estate sale goodness

Can you believe my luck?  I could have purchased several more! I figure if I'm going to paw through some dearly passed lady's stuff, the least I can do is rescue (and read!) her books.   

| happy |

boys' lunch

a day on South Congress with Elayna

Sabbath dinner with our godson Emmett (and his sweet sister, Lucy!)

a trip to NYC with his girls

Brian and his kids this summer

I gathered a few snapshots from a some of the moments Brian got to spend with "his kids" this summer. He is so good at giving them his time and care.  I love this about him.

| funny |

new talent at open mic

Andrew hosts a weekly open mic in Austin.  He had a request for a time slot from one of Austin's newest comics.  Of course we couldn't miss her set!  You can watch it, too, at this link.  (spoiler alert:  She kills it!)

| real(ly?!?)|

our 4th anniversary in Austin

It's hard to believe, but it's true.  August 11th marked our arrival to Austin four years ago.  Here's a reflection I wrote on our one -year anniversary and one I wrote on our two-year anniversary.  Also, I never get tired of reading the posts the whole family pitched in to write back in 2011, during our week trip from upstate NY to our new home: Murphys Take Austin (Tamara-Day 1, Days 2&3,  Days 3&4, Andrew-Saying Goodbye, Brian-Day 5, Kendra-Day 6, Alex-Day 7, Natalie-Settling In onday morning thoughts: dancing bear act, crash helmets and a Doxology

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. |

7 quick takes on 7 links I can't stop thinking about this week

source

Truth is there are links of things -- unspeakable things being spoken all over this world -- that I'm thinking a whole lot about these days.  I just can't.  I can't link them here.  If you're online at all (which, presumably, you are since you're reading this post) you've already seen unspeakable posted in headlines linking all across the internet -- right next to videos of cute baby elephants and photos of the beautiful cups of coffee and homemade pies. 

We've made the unspeakable not only printable, but viral.  And we are such liars -- no matter what our ideas are about life and death and flourishing and human rights for the ones we deem human and death for the ones we deem unworthy -- we lie.  We celebrate life and death, seemingly on a whim.  We lie with our double standards and our own propped-up notions of being gods in this universe that rains down meteors declaring the glory of God while we scroll headlines about unspeakable things. 

That's really what I'm thinking about this week, but the following list is a close second.  May the peace of Christ our King (who only speaks Truth) rule over your own minds and hearts this weekend.

| 1 | Superheroes, Just for Each Other by Peter S. Goodman at The New York Times

"I am no superhero. Neither is my wife. But we have a bond that somehow enables us to save each other from basic human weakness. This is its own kind of superpower."

I've been thinking about the definition of marriage a lot lately -- and not for only the reasons you might think.  Brian and I will be celebrating our 25th anniversary in a few months and I've been contemplating a blog series on the subject.  We'll see about that.  In the meantime, this is a sweet essay about the mutuality of strength in marriage.

| 2 | Instead of Facebook, a book of faces my post for Think Christian

"Christians, after all, live in a story of delight and deformity, every mark a reminder of what was and is and is to come. We follow the God who became disfigured to heal our disfigurement. Artists like Bruce Gilden push against the fallen instinct to shield ourselves from the uncomfortable realities around us and within us. The subjects in Face give us a gift by exposing - up close and in full color - their vulnerability. To meet them is to know their stories, raw and unfiltered."

I was grateful for this assignment from the editor at Think Christian.  Bruce Gilden's work challenged my (unintentional) preoccupation with a filtered image-driven world.

| 3 | 3 questions I ask myself before buying something & Ethical Shopping Guide at Art of Simple 

"Don’t get me wrong—sometimes shopping for the right thing, the thing you need, can be a fun endeavor. I’m down with that. But I’ll also venture to say that shopping for the heck of it, to stave off boredom when nothing is needed, and to add it to the clutter at home, really is a first-world diversion." 

Super helpful information during the season of back-to-school shopping. 

| 4 | Hope for when you regret the past. Tell Auntie Leila. at Like Mother, Like Daughter

"Not that there isn’t always much to be grateful for, and for sure many are suffering much worse things than I (or you, even) … it’s just… the defeat of it all… way back when; some of which may not have been our fault. Sometimes we suffer misfortune, and what could be termed crop failures of the soul, if not the actual physical farm. Floods and droughts, real and metaphorical, events not necessarily of our own making. 

And some things very much of our own making. 

And sometimes the bitterness is hard to overcome. Especially when we get to that place where we see that things might have worked out, if we had known then what we know now!" 

I was mentioning to a friend the other day how few blogs I've found written by women who have done this hard work of mothering for long enough to write from a long view. I am so thankful for the Like Mother, Like Daughter blog. In a season of watching my chicks fly the coop, I confess I've read just about every post. If you only get to read one post, though, read this one.

| 5 | How to read "Go Set A Watchman" at Modern Mrs. Darcy

"If you choose to skip this book, I understand that decision. I do think that serious students of writing or literature will be enthralled by the ties between the two works. The comparisons are rich, and many."

 Will you or won't you read it?  This is the question I've been asking my book-loving friends.  The answers are mixed.  I think I'll wait a couple of years at least -- let the dust settle a bit. When the time comes, though, I'll definitely be taking Anne's advice.   

| 6 |  Editing Suburbia by Jenni Simmons at The Curator

"After reading Saverin’s Atlantic piece, I don’t love Pilgrim at Tinker Creek any less—it is still some of the most beautiful writing I’ve ever read—but I do look at the book differently. Now I know that part of Dillard’s story is missing. It would be more compelling to know that a housewife wrote such a phenomenal book, admitting her suburban reality instead of the typical dismissal of suburbia, deeming such a common life boring or uncool."

I didn't realize this little bit of creative omission in one of my favorite books by one of my favorite authors.  I'm so glad I first learned of it through Jenni's gracious insight.  

| 7 | Top 10 Online Recordings to celebrate Wendell Berry's 80th birthday at Englewood Review of Books & Wendell Berry Earns Highest Humanities Award, Lectures on Economy and Imagination at Sojo.net & A polite disagreement with Jayber Crow and the Mad Farmer my post for Art House America blog

So many good things about the Mad Farmer this month -- and, yes, I'm including the bit written by yours truly. A good and contrary man.  America is blessed to have him.

.....

Hoping for a good and content weekend for us all, friends.

Peace....

*Linking up with other 7 Quick Takers.*

{pretty, happy, funny, real}: a couple weeks late but contentment all the same!

| a weekly capturing the contentment in everyday life |

For some reason I forgot to post this a couple Thursdays back.  It's semi-old news, but still full of contentment!

| pretty |

CSA

At the risk of sounding like a broken record, I can't stop talking about our CSA veggies.  I mean, have you seen anything prettier than this? 

| happy |

we're having a wedding!

It's getting real. This just showed up in our mailbox, and I'm pretty sure we'll be available January 2nd (just kidding). It's been pretty fun to be a fly on the wall this summer while Alex and Rebekah dream and scheme all sorts of wedding plans.   

| fun(ny) |

this girl's camp skills

We miss her, but we're so happy that she's living in her element all summer.  Each morning I scour the daily photos posted by Mapleridge Ranch.  Every once in awhile I get a delightful glimpse of our girl doing what she does best.  

| real |

weekly worship at Christ Church

"Might flames of fire actually fall from the sky and transport us into a new dimension of intimacy with Father, Son and Spirit -- and please, God -- with each other in the room -- and Lord, have mercy -- with hurting, desperate neighbors so in need of miraculous healing, let diseases and demons and death be gone.  And the silence is a sort of time outside of time in which we anticipate and imagine and listen for our orders.  And, hearing no new instructions, we take up again the mantle of praise and we sing -- what our Church mothers and fathers taught us -- the truth that we did not make, but instead makes us:   

1. Praise God, from Whom all blessings flow;

1. Praise Him, all creatures here below;

1. Praise Him above, ye heav’nly host;

1. Praise Father, Son, and Holy Ghost."

A reflection I wrote a few  weeks back on real (vs. idealized) worship services:  Monday morning thoughts: dancing bear act, crash helmets and a Doxology

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. |