Tea and Rhythm

My days begin and end in steam. The dark winter mornings are slow - after long nights nursing the stove I pour a blue and white ‘willow’ cup full of coffee and watch the cream swirl in to the thick darkness. The ritual opens my day, before sunrise, before food and music, and morning prayer. There is something sacred in the quiet moment, a tiny retreat before stepping out into the day; a chance to greet the dawn from my own interior cloister. That lonely cup is my cell, and in it I learn everything there is to know about the new day.

When the day truly begins, with morning prayer and the early meal, we fall into a pattern for our hours - ora et labora - clean, tea, wood, tea, play, lunch, read, tea… the itinerary changes. This week I clean, split-wood, write, read all about Wilma’s fat cat and pet rat as they argue over a mat, tend the stove, and sew. The consistency is in the breaking, in the moments of tea and quiet, or tea and chatter, in the time spent at our little table - or on chairs before the roaring fire - refreshing our tiny community.

Evening tea is reflective. After supper-time, after evening prayers there is often, but not always, a later cup. For it I leave my willow-ware resting on shelves and hold one of my own again. The softness of my own small creation sleeping gently against my hand is soothing to the ever-shifting palm-lines; I can feel each moment of it’s creation - as though there ought to be a mark for this, and every other pot I’ve birthed, and perhaps there are, so tiny they stay hidden. Secret remembrances to each and every earthen-child. My daughter sleeps while I sip memories - “Before I formed you..” The coyotes howl together in the distance, and I think of all the ways to know the not-yet-born.

Monday Love

This morning has been lovely. I’m only now getting my life back in line, after the joyful, fun, celebratory disruption of Easter Week. It’s still Easter though, and I’m still drowning my coffee in

cream each morning and rejoicing in the sunlight. This morning though - bright, blue, and warming quickly - I am finally falling into my old rhythm. I have a list of things to do in blue chalk on my table, a sleeping toddler - who is more and more content with her milk-free nights. Half a grapefruit, and my writing. Today, I am making final comments on a friend’s draft, before sending it home to her, writing the long overdue letters, reading Chesterton ( I promised to give him another chance!), and running again, if I can get my stroller through the driveway! I have yellow roses on my table, tulips on the shelf, and the long-living Easter flowers still laughing on the altar.

I don’t write well on bright days, but I edit nicely. My brain is outside, under the trees or slopping in the mud. It’s eight-thirty in the morning, and I’m happy with how I’ve lived those first 4 hours. It’s such a blessing to begin the week this well, I’m grateful and glad.

My life this week. briefly

1.

Spring is on the way! Mud season has begun, I think..which means I need to get propane for the freezer again. Ugh..why is life so full of .. Life? Our driveway is a mess! And mud-season is the season for intense yard clean-up..it should be interesting.

2.

Yarrow has been nursing more, sleeping more, and being a fussy little mess more these days, which has distracted me from everything! Especially as she really doesn’t want to be sleeping alone. And, getting to the halfway point of Lent is making me crabby and full of unfulfilled longings for things I can’t have ‘til Easter - especially cream in my coffee!

3.

I need to touch up my hair and take a bath..or should I write..or workout..or clean..hmm, maybe I’ll just clean. Again. Cleaning gives me such a sense of peace and order..until Seth comes home and starts living in the clean space.

4.

I recently posted a reflection on handguns on Piekno..There are many such reflections in my mind as I work to simplify, not only my physical life, but my mental and spiritual life. It’s definitely a growing process, and as such, has some pains along with it, do read it and offer your direction - gently- I have high hopes of becoming someone who can be directed by the wisdom of others.

5.

We only have bad coffee left in the house…and the only store I can walk to stock Instant (ewww!!) How exactly do people build productive lives?? Anyone know?? I’m off to make lists of things that must be done, things I should think about a lot before doing, and things that can be given up as hopeless..then I should do them, but I’ll probably just clean again instead.

Blessed busy days to you all! Hopefully I’ll be more coherent tomorrow.

The New Year

I’ve been away, in California for four days watching a dear friend marry her beloved and begin a new life. It was lovely, one of the loveliest weddings I’ve ever seen: we sang Christmas hymns and celebrated under a full moon in weather that felt ridiculous under the light of Christmas candles and Holly wreaths. The ceremony made me miss my husband - snowed in at home with pork and presents and our sweet, neurotic dog. I came home in time for the New Year, jet-lagged and sleep deprived. I’m looking forward to 2013 - the year I will leave my 20s behind forever, the year I will - finally- do the many things I have collecting on resolution lists from year’s past.

The morning, only the second day of the year, is colder than we’ve had for a long time. I don’t remember a winter morning this cold last year - even on the nights I stayed up to feed the stove each hour. We’re better insulated, both by our own work and by the early storms that buried us in snow. I’m eating oatmeal and drinking the first of many cups of coffee as I watch my husband walk the long driveway out. I don’t have defined resolutions this year. 2012 had some of the best moments, and a few which stand alone as the worst moments of my little life, and I’ve been ending the year with a sense of renewed direction, not always well-lived out, but active and growing. I am, more than ever, resting in the hands of God and offering my life up to him. Waiting for him to show me the new year rather than planning it, or searching it out in cards and fire. Blessings to all in 2013, may it be everything good to you all!

Mondays

The sun is autumn-bright, pine-needles make the path to the outhouse slippery for the tiny moccasined feet that follow me out and back again. I’m planning black coffee and fig-jam filled pancakes for tea and cleaning up the messy that’s collected this past week. Petka is napping. I spent the morning prioritizing my nap time activities - the poem I’m trying to finish for this, the article I’m working on for that, pilates and letters and here I am, posting a blog - which is actually on the list, but lower down, because Yarrow doesn’t make blogging impossible so much as she slows it down. I could use a lesson or two from her. She likes things to be slow and peaceful, my little elf. She likes the long days at home, and the hour long strolls up and down the driveway, stopping to pick up a stone, a leaf, a stick; stopping to write out her magic in the dirt and laugh up at the sky. She likes the days with no visitors, and she likes to watch her bushia’s truck pull up in the yard, wave and smile.

    Jenna is taking the week off, to do the things in life that pile up when priority goes to the computer, our discussion will return again next week. There’s no rush, we have time. I might do the same, spend this week mainly off-line, canning apples and making jams, putting the gardens to bed and stacking wood. Finishing poems. Sewing. Reading Each Peach, Pear, Plum again and again to the girl who enjoys repetition almost as much as her beloved Baby Jesus. But if I can, I’ll wake up early to post things and enjoy the wider world. It will be my gift to myself for learning again to love the dark autumn morning.

My siblings have been pressuring me to start an online bookclub. The plan is to read a short story or an essay every two weeks, and discuss. It is not limited to family only! Please join us, if only to break up a fight or offer a slightly less biased opinion. We’re setting it up at The Coffee Cup, so please come by!

The plan right now is to give all of the regular readers a chance to pick short stories or essays for us to read and discuss in two week intervals, with lots of time for the reading and discussing, as not everyon has unlimited reading time and easy access to a library - I know I don't. But it should be fun, I have to figure out what to start with by tomorrow, and I'm still undecided.

I have candles everywhere tonight. They make the house warmer. The stove is on, the laundry is done, and we have a votive in front of St. Joseph at the Church in town, burning merrily.

Challenging Beauty

There is a preying mantis climbing the rafters above my head. Yarrow is sweating her way through dreamland with a fat smile and a tight fist. I spent the morning coffee-free , baking muffins and picking flowers. We have a frost advisory for tonight. I don’t know how that will affect our sunflowers. I’m transferring poems for further editing, and making lists. I am not writing a discussion post. It isn’t in me today, not with the wind and the falling leaves and the autumn air. But Jenna’s response last week was fantastic, and I have to respond a bit:

 

“The idea that anyone's highest calling could be to Fix Other People And/Or Society isn't just a wrong notion; it's dangerous.”

You can happily call me a nerd, but I’d encourage anyone interesting in pursuing this idea to watch the movie Serenity, or better yet, the whole Firefly series and Serenity. It’s a great look into what the attempt to ‘Make people better’ creates.

“Artists have one first and foremost purpose: to create beauty.

Out of ugliness, beauty. Out of chaos, order. Out of confusion, meaning. Out of despair, hope.

Out of darkness—and here I don't refer so much to the darkness of ignorance as to the darkness of faithlessness, hopelessness, and lovelessness—the lighting of a single candle and the placing of a mirror behind it. The pulling back of dusty curtains to reveal, if nothing else, the light of the stars.”

And this, Jenna, is just beautiful. Lovely writing, lovely imagery, lovely message. It makes me smile and treat myself to another whole cup of coffee. We agree so completely here, that I don’t even want to move on the the little disagreement..The challenge of beauty. But I will, because to write a response requires a bit of thought, and thought requires another cup of coffee, and I might as well finish off my whole pot at this point anyway, right?

 

I don’t think it’s a complete disagreement. I do think there is a place for accessible art (and even for accessible non-art), and Jenna’s right when she says that the shallow end is a good place to begin, but sometimes we get too comfortable there. We hold tight to our happy Bouguereau peasants and never wonder what Cezanne was doing with all that color, or we become like the late Roman poets, just reforming old phrasing and old ideas into tired old imitations, while Augustine is making the whole world new. And really, it’s the not wondering that worries me, the lack of interest in exploring, in challenging ourselves. The deep end might be too deep for some, but with water wings and a little floaty inner-tube, we can all wander a little closer to the middle. And that, I think, is the natural challenge inherent in beauty, from the fully accessible to the dangerous, it leaves us with the desire for something good just out of reach.