Hi friends. So glad your here.
Saturday edition because with lots of early starts this week the most I could manage last night was a cup of tea, a Subway cookie and going to sleep early. Feel worlds better today. We’ve howling cold winds here which is my excuse for staying inside where its warm and pouring myself another coffee. What are your plans?
As always I hope we all find simple ways to rest, recoup and celebrate life.
Lets start right here – – –
A Good Word
And if you need a laugh please please take a look at Noelle’s short video series “If Jesus Disciples had an Italian American mother from New Jersey” You wont be sorry. See them here
A Good Look
May I suggest feet up, fairy lights and fluffy things
Find more of this loveliness here
A Good Idea
by Kayla Craig
I (go up to the upstairs landing) to hide sometimes. From the telehealth therapies and the remote school and the pings and beeps of my phone. It’s mostly clean on this landing and if you squint, the peeling paint blurs and you can’t see the dust bunnies on the stairs. I push away the Ninja Turtle underwear and the discarded socks from the little boys’ bedrooms and it’s mostly quiet. I lie on the rug that I bought with a Target gift card and listen to the whir of the ceiling fan and for one fraction of a second, I loosen my shoulders and breathe.
I don’t exactly know how to rest or the five points to getting rest but I know it’s important.
I know that our culture screams MORE and NOW. That we hang our hats on a job well done and can’t seem to hang up our to-do lists, too. We think collecting worms with a child is a waste of time and our schedules are better packed with accomplishments that always fill the calendar but never fill our souls.
I know that I have consumed and called it rest. I know I have felt guilt when stepping away. I know I have made myself God in my heart for a more just and equitable world instead of tending to the heart and mind and body and soul in myself that was made in the image of God, the Maker of all things who — get this — rested.
I have often thought that rest is for the rich — but rest is for the weary. The exhausted and the bleary-eyed. Those who labor and those who toil and those who wander and those who wonder why.
“Are you tired? Worn out? Burned out on religion? Come to me. Get away with me and you’ll recover your life. I’ll show you how to take a real rest. Walk with me and work with me—watch how I do it. Learn the unforced rhythms of grace. I won’t lay anything heavy or ill-fitting on you. Keep company with me and you’ll learn to live freely and lightly.”
A Few Good Reads
I Know the Secret to the Quiet Mind. I Wish I’d Never Learned It.
Of all the injuries we suffered, mine is the worst. My brain injury has shaken my confidence in my own personality, my own existence.
The worst things can happen on the most beautiful days. My family’s worst day was a perfect one in the summer of 2019. We picked my daughter up from camp and talked about where to go for lunch: the diner or the burger place. I don’t remember which we chose. What I do remember: being woken up, again and again, by doctors who insist on asking me the same questions—my name, where I am, what month it is—and telling me the same story, a story that I am sure is wrong.
“You were in a car accident,” they say. But this cannot be. We’re having lunch and then going on a hike. I had promised the think tank where I work that I’d call in to a 4 p.m. meeting – – – – keep reading
The Errand Friend Date & Practicing Possibility
An interesting read and what a great idea
A love letter to the sweet vulnerability that comes with the everyday, and a reminder that many of us are re-learning what it means to practice again and again.
I spent some time noodling around trying to think of an opening line that would eloquently and wittily sum up the three month respite I’ve taken from public-facing interactions. But all I have to offer you is this: is there anything more sweet than the errand run friend hang?
The errand hang – where you hit your homie up to accompany you while you tend to the tasks that come with adulting – the grocery run, getting a pair of pants tailored, helping you pick a new bedframe, etc. The errand hang dismisses the usual setting of a bar or a lunch. It waves off the expected script of “give me the summarized updates on your life and then I’ll give you the sum on mine.” – – – – keep reading
The pandemic obliged—or enabled—many women to go gray. They’re still reckoning with the transformation.
For years, Devery Doleman had her hair professionally colored once a month. Her colorist mixed together a half-dozen shades to create a fiery red that Doleman, who is forty-eight, found arresting in an interesting but not obvious way—“like when I bike to the beach and I see red-winged blackbirds—you see this flash that gets your attention,” she said. When the pandemic shuttered her salon, Doleman watched with a different kind of interest as her roots grew out. Eventually, her colorist was able to send her supplies at home, but Doleman decided to preserve a streak of gray. Photographed by Elinor Carucci, the silver flows from Doleman’s brow like a trickle of liquid mercury. “I would never have gotten to see what was underneath if there hadn’t been this forced interruption,” she said. “You know when botanists bisect a tree, and can tell by the thickness of rings what the conditions were like that year? This feels like we had that year, and this is what happened.” – – – keep reading
That’s all for now. Enjoy the reads and have a beautiful weekend friends, rest up, do something you love xx
Water Into Wine 