The Necessary Mess…of Craftiness

My latest obsession is crafting flowers out of muffin cups and candy cups. I watched a tutorial, switched it up a little and started creating…now I can't stop! My office wears the necessary mess of craftiness.

Making these silly flowers is addictive because there is no end to the variety of shapes and colors and do-dads you can add to 

create a one of a kind flower. You can see I added little rhinestone picks to the red white and blue one above.

I used washi tape to cover a white muffin cup..the blue polkadot one above is a washi tape design. I used a raffia covered stem for most of them so they kind of dance in the vase.

My plan is to set up a table downtown 

and give them away...

Along with my little cards…

I'll keep you posted!

God Blessed The Broken Road

Tonight I found Keith Urban Radio and listened in my office to several songs and then came on Rascal Flats…God Blessed the Broken Road..that led me back to you. Just me and my office and the music and me dancing. I haven't been able to dance or move or run or play golf since last year. But this song somehow released me and brought me back to the place where I used to move freely and without pain. And I was. Free and without pain.  Moving my arms and my back and reaching out to the sky. With grace. And crying with gratefulness…tears just running down my face...I think because I have been doing the Miranda Esmonde videos on classical stretch, I wanted to dance--I just felt like moving to music. It has strengthened me and given me hope that I can move again for joy and for fun and without fear. This is a wonderful night for me. Free to move. It is a spiritual truth that we all want to be free to move forward and without fear. God leads us down that broken road to find freedom. How wonderful is that?

Grace Levels The Playing Field

Cuz baseball season is just around the corner, today I saw this picture in my mind…a different kind of baseball diamond…

For those in Christ, the playing field we run through is named grace, built on grace, covered with grace, cleaned by grace, maintained by grace. When we win, grace set it up for us. When we lose, grace takes away the sting so we still win. We are playing the game by grace.

A True Story

Where do we go from here?

I met a friend today in the park.
He had his little tiny puppy dog on a leash.
I was practicing my golf swing, trying to get
unafraid of using the club again after my wrist surgery.
The day was warm after the rain we had been praying for.
We laughed at first about my swing and his swing.
And then we talked. And then he cried.
He is mourning the loss of his precious son.
His son who died too young and too handsome and with
so many hopes and dreams for himself.
He can’t stop crying and either can his wife, the mother of
the child who has gone home to be with God.
I hugged him, but it is not enough.
What is enough? What can help his pain and grief?
His self recrimination? 
The thought that is posed... “Did we do enough? Why is he gone?”
Who can even imagine such a pain? 
Who can help this daddy and mommy heal?

Where do they go from here?

Remembering Oz, the Land DownUnder

At long last a few photos from our 2005, month long trip to Oz…the glorious land DownUnder…where women roar, men thunder and the animals trump everything.

One of Australia's weird and wonderful wild life species

If there's ever a time you'd like to be able to say, "Been there, done that" it would be when someone mentions a trip to the amazing wonderland down under.

Everything in Oz is HUGE, DIFFERENT, dreamlike, unforgettable and unimaginable. Like that weird bird above with a huge bill. How can it fly???

Everything is otherworldly...Like waking up to a airy balloons outside your garden in Melbourne...

Like finding a giant surreal mural in a tiny Tasmanian town and 

realizing you fit right in…

Like spotting giant neon orange and and pink mushrooms….

Like walking into beautiful giant fanning grasses...

and spotting giant two legged birds that can't fly...

Then there is the giant Victoria market that spans blocks...

We found a sculpture garden outside of Melbourne with big white balls of ….

who knows????

There are boldly colored parrots that come 

and sit right next to you...

And a midnight marauding Tasmanian devil who comes right onto your wilderness porch to devour his dinner….those marks on his skin are war scars...

There is a place on Tasmania called "The Remarkable Rocks"…

this one looks like Darth Vader to me...

And this one like a side view of the lion...

Still on Kangaroo Island to the south of Adelaide…you might encounter kangaroos or wallabies anywhere…they eat them in Australia…"minced wallaby" AKA hamburger.

Huge colonies of huge walrus seals lie on the rocky shores on Kangaroo Island…man does that smell!

The sweetest little bear in the world can be found in the wild like this one we spotted sleeping in a gum tree in a community park in Adelaide...

Still on Kangaroo Island…an otherworldly land down under the surface 

These are aboriginal hands painted on a cave wall…remarkable rocks again I guess!

I love Australia! One of the best things that ever happened to me was getting the opportunity to live a year in Melbourne teaching high school in the suburb of Fawkner…that was 1975-76. My students treated me like royalty and my memories of life there are just as clear as if it were yesterday. It had always been my dream to take Dave to Australia and share the things I treasured in the land down under. The thing is…it was even better the second time around.

Visiting a Friend

Yesterday I found a pretty pink orchid at the Farmer's Market for Marlyn, our beloved Ditto sitter…I plan to take it over later today.

It is almost a year since Ditto died, but we find ourselves with only happy memories of the 21 years we spent with her. We met Marlyn because of Ditto and she remains a very special friend to us for the care and devotion she gave our kitty even though she only climbed up once to sit on Marlyn's lap.

When we were in Texas last year, Ditto fell trying to get up into her chair, so Marlyn made a set a stairs for her out of pillows and towels to give her wobbly weak legs the support she needed. I thought that was so wonderful. We never had to worry a minute about Ditto even when we were in New Zealand for 6 weeks and Australia for a month…because Marlyn was here to take care of her.

I'm dropping off one of my poems along with Marlyn's orchid--she has always seemed to like my writings. This one is called Brazen Love. The interesting part of the poem for me as I revisit it, is that Ditto had the most beautiful hair, long and sweet and lovely but of course she didn't know that…maybe just like Mary Magdelene.

Brazen Love

Who did she think she was?

No one. That’s who she was.

The murmuring went like this:

She shouldn’t be sitting there…at his feet.

Unheard of.

And where did she get such alabaster?

Where the perfume?

It’s not hers. Too expensive.

Now what’s she doing?

She’s unraveled her hair.

In front of everyone.

What’s the matter with her?

Someone stop her.

She’s embarrassing us. Him.

Hair unfurled, she’s pouring gold on his feet.

What could she possibly be thinking?

Disgraceful.

In front of everyone…the way she’s looking at him.

Now she smells like him, drenched in his fragrance.

Just sitting there. Not working. Not thinking of the others.

What about the poor and needy?

She must be mad. She has lost herself.

And then the voice that slays every shame.

“Leave her alone.

She’s mine.

I cherish her…the one whose heart has leaned on mine,

I see her whole self, abandoned to me, no thought of you.

She can’t see you anyway. Can’t hear you.

Leave her alone.

She’s mine.

Among all here, she will be remembered.
Whenever anyone talks of me, they will speak of her naked, brazen love for me and wonder why they have not done the same.

She is not ‘no one’.

She is mine.”

By Candyce Roberts

from the story of Mary Magdelene at Jesus feet in John 12 and Luke 7

Rivers of Living Water

Lyell Fork of the Tuolemne River, Yosemite National Park

When I was making the bed this morning, one of Simon and Garfunkle's old songs popped into my head and I started singing..."When she goes, she gone...." So I decided to see if I could find the song on youtube and remind myself of all the lyrics. Ahh, the song's called "Fakin' It".

I watched the version they did in Central Park, 1981...It was wonderful...Next I listened to "American Tune". Why don't people write songs like that anymore? There was a comment under the video...

"The day after the 9/11 attacks, I went to work, and plugged this CD into my player, not thinking about this song at all. When it began to play, I burst into tears. Without a word, and without knowing what I was listening to, the woman sitting across from me moved to sit next to me, and hugged me until she had to get off the bus. A song that will live in my heart forever"

Her words made me realize how much music touches the deepest part of us. How we seem to have a built in mechanism for wanting to let music in to feed and move us.  Because it does. Her experience of being comforted by a stranger reminded me of how much we need each other and can change a life just by being there. Anyway, this is what I was thinking after watching the concert and reading the special comment ...

"God knows how to make us a symphony. A sweet, deep healing song...that's what he can make of us. 

If only we could allow ourselves to listen to the voice that could put us in synch, in time with his timing and each other. 

God knows how to make us flow together so that our lives look like the river of living water that quenches and cools the aching need that parches every soul. 

God knows how to help us play a note that matters and catches hold so that we know it by heart and sing it easily. 

I'd like to listen long enough to learn how to play my part in the symphony and stop trying to conduct the music of the universe."

Here is the link if you want to watch...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zTZkk66pd1I