Happy Friday friends
How’s July treating you ?
It’s a gorgeous sunny day here today making the two week lock down that much more bearable. Sitting in the sunshine is still allowed and wearing cropped summery pants because it’s Friday is too. Liv’s still none too happy to have all her school holiday plans cut short so shes pushing for an extra week off school once lock down ends – I like her ingenuity!
Happy 4th of July long weekend to all my friends across the water. Hope it’s beautiful
As always I hope we all find simple ways this weekend to rest, recoup and celebrate life.
Lets start right here – – –
A Good Word
Thank you Kyra Joy Craig
A Good Look
Just give me blue and green and sky reflecting off water
Find more of this loveliness here
A Good Idea
Be Still
I’ve never been good at rule following. Lists drive me nuts. And though I appreciate helpful ideas and even systematic disciplines that add value to my life, I remind myself that being comes before doing.
I think we’ve reversed this in our world. We do, do, do, and wonder why we’re stressed and out of metaphorical and physical breath.
Well, today you’re good friend Tim is passing along his own personal reminder to you: be still.
You’re good enough right now. Eight hundred million voices on Instagram will tell you how to think, what to wear, where to go, how to do and be … whatever. But the only voice that counts in this life is God’s.
Where is HE calling you? Who does HE want you to be? Why does HE love you? Certainly not because you or I will ever be good enough.
(Instead of) looking for the useful or “The Five Steps to Make you – – – – whatever, look for the useless, the beautiful. John Ruskin said the most beautiful things in our world are the most useless. Our pragmatic world sells the lie of utility. But we are called to something deeper. Stop pushing to always improve. Instead find ways to just be. Be, before God. Be, You. And breath blessing. Get comfortable with stillness.
I’m not saying don’t challenge yourself in this life or do things to help you learn and grow. I AM saying stop striving to become something you think the world says you should be.
Stay calm. Breathe deeply. Be still.
And remember. Being comes before doing.
A Few Good Reads
We’ve Always Asked the Wrong Question
The past few months have been weird for me because I’ve felt both swamped with work and delightfully freer to pursue that which interests me than I have in years. It’s a sign that things are as they should be, I suppose, to have a full plate and a clear conscience to not sweat what They say you Should do with your time and talents.
During these months, I’ve vacillated between feeling like I have SO many things to say and absolutely NOTHING to say — not much in between. There are mornings when I can’t wait to get words on a page, and there are entire days when nothing but terrible song lyrics autoplay on repeat in the ol’ noggin. I’ve wondered what the difference is between these two states of mind. What’s going on when I feel like all I want to do is putz around on YouTube or play with my dog, and moments when I can’t find my pen and journal fast enough?
For one, I have more to say when I remember to refill my Prozac. That’s a real thing, and it’s a real twitch in the brain when I forget to click the ‘yes, please; refill away’ button on the pharmacy website. It’s also no joke to say I don’t have as much to say when I go to bed too late. It makes me think weird thoughts and feel weird feelings and eat unhealthy things — like that new adage says, when you’re mad at everyone it means you’re hungry; when you’re sure everyone’s mad at you it means you’re tired – – – keep reading
Behind every buzzy, viral internet recipe, there’s a grandma who was doing it first.
“You don’t want me in your book,” an English grandma warned Anastasia Miari and Iska Lupton, authors of Grand Dishes: Recipes and Stories from Grandmothers of the World. Demurring that her husband was the one with the career, and she was merely an improvisational cook, the 75-year-old grandmother of 16 in fact had a fascinating life story. In her 20s, she moved with her husband, a military doctor, and their two babies to Uganda. She traversed Tanzanian villages delivering iodine capsules to local women and prepared warming peanut stew for hospital patients’ lunch using stray chickens that wandered into the ward – – – keep reading
The Exterior Life doesn’t want you to feel sad. Ever. It recoils at the prospect. It wants there to be nothing but pleasure. But this is unnatural. To be fully human is to endure the full range of emotions in response to the broad continuum of life’s experiences. That means that we are destined to experience sadness as well as joy, anger as well as love, restlessness as well as contentment. To live the Exterior Life’s lopsided emotional existence is to bury honest and necessary emotions, to heap tension upon tension while covering them with a yellow smiley face. Such a life involves the willful stunting of our growth until we ultimately become, as Georges Bernanos would describe, horrible undeveloped monsters, stumps of men – – – keep reading
That’s all for now friends. Enjoy the reads and have a beautiful weekend, rest up, do something you love xx
Water Into Wine 