This comment on our podcast site, An Atheist’s Prayer, is a good reminder that it’s time for John and I to get back in bed and start podcasting again!
Hooray for more podcasts!
Alyssum sprouts up in my garden just about everywhere.
What a tiny cluster of joy. It looks just perfect in little blue vases, jam jars, or tucked behind my ear. :)
Last night when I came out of yoga class I paused at the window of the art gallery next door. There were many beautiful paintings on display.
What caught my eye was a simple painting of a small wooden boat, moored at the edge of a lake. For whatever reason, it seemed the loveliest thing. That boat. Alone.
My garden is reflected in this globe–its just about my favorite place in the whole wide world.
Spent a few hours there today, the weather hovering in the mid 60s and perfect for working the soil.
A few mornings ago my alarm woke me just as I was about to have a conversation with my Dad in a dream. This is a rarity–to see him–and I was angry and sad when the buzzing popped the bubble that was my special moment with my Father.
The night before, I had been reading a small pamphlet sent to me by Friend Obasan. It detailed several daily meditations on a variety of Christian principles: Joy, Power, Peace, Light, etc, with appropriate scriptures from the Bible. I was charmed by the gift of the pamphlet: hand-bound with pale peach embroidery thread. Yet, I wasn’t sure of the contents. I’d left my struggles with Jesus behind over a year ago. Needing space from all things Christian for awhile.
But in that dream–that same dream when Dad was appearing to me–another image was very strong. It was a rock wall with a small crack spreading down its face. And from that crack was shining a very bright light. As I meditated on that image during Meeting on Sunday, I came to believe that that rock was my heart. And the crack was God. God’s love and joy and healing power. From pondering that image I felt that there was a change ahead for me. Not a big change like turning Quaker after being Mormon for most of my life. But a change in my understanding. And where God fits in to the puzzle of who I am.
Not trying to be all new-agey on you, but just re-telling this moment because it seems important and lovely. And you have shared so many such moments with me along this journey…So here is another step on the path we walk together. :)
If you have just finished shopping and you are trying to balance all 6 bags of groceries along with your purse, half an eggplant brie sandwich, a bag of sour gummies from Sweet Tooth, and your bike lock in your basket. And as you are stretching the bungies across your taller-than-usual load, you pause for a minute and enjoy the incense wafting from the yoga studio next door. If this is you, then the moment will be beyond perfect when you discover that someone you love has left a petite bouquet of pink poesies in your gearshift knob.
A meme from Alisonwonderland. The ones I’ve read are in bold:
1. The Da Vinci Code (Dan Brown)
2. Pride and Prejudice (Jane Austen)
3. To Kill A Mockingbird (Harper Lee)
4. Gone With The Wind (Margaret Mitchell)
5. The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King (J.R.R. Tolkien)
6. The Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring (J.R.R. Tolkien)
7. The Lord of the Rings: Two Towers (J.R.R. Tolkien)
8. Anne of Green Gables (L.M. Montgomery)
9. Outlander (Diana Gabaldon)
10. A Fine Balance (Rohinton Mistry)
11. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (J.K. Rowling)
12. Angels and Demons (Dan Brown)
13. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (J.K. Rowling)
14. A Prayer for Owen Meany (John Irving)
15. Memoirs of a Geisha (Arthur Golden)
16. Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone (J.K. Rowling)
17. Fall on Your Knees (Ann-Marie MacDonald)
18. The Stand (Stephen King)
19. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (J.K. Rowling)
20. Jane Eyre (Charlotte Bronte)
21. The Hobbit (J.R.R. Tolkien)
22. The Catcher in the Rye (J.D. Salinger)
23. Little Women (Louisa May Alcott)
24. The Lovely Bones (Alice Sebold)
25. Life of Pi (Yann Martel)
26. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (Douglas Adams)
27. Wuthering Heights (Emily Bronte)
28. The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe (C. S. Lewis)
29. East of Eden (John Steinbeck)
30. Tuesdays with Morrie(Mitch Albom)
31. Dune (Frank Herbert)
32. The Notebook (Nicholas Sparks)
33. Atlas Shrugged (Ayn Rand)
34. 1984 (George Orwell)
35. The Mists of Avalon (Marion Zimmer Bradley)
36. The Pillars of the Earth (Ken Follett)
37. The Power of One (Bryce Courtenay)
38. I Know This Much is True (Wally Lamb)
39. The Red Tent (Anita Diamant)
40. The Alchemist (Paulo Coelho)
41. The Clan of the Cave Bear (Jean M. Auel)
42. The Kite Runner (Khaled Hosseini)
43. Confessions of a Shopaholic (Sophie Kinsella)
44. The Five People You Meet In Heaven (Mitch Albom)
45. Bible
46. Anna Karenina (Leo Tolstoy)
47. The Count of Monte Cristo (Alexandre Dumas)
48. Angela’s Ashes (Frank McCourt)
49. The Grapes of Wrath (John Steinbeck)
50. She’s Come Undone (Wally Lamb)
51. The Poisonwood Bible (Barbara Kingsolver)
52. A Tale of Two Cities (Charles Dickens)
53. Ender’s Game (Orson Scott Card)
54. Great Expectations (Charles Dickens)
55. The Great Gatsby (Scott Fitzgerald)
56. The Stone Angel (Margaret Laurence)
57. Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (J.K. Rowling)
58. The Thorn Birds (Colleen McCullough)
59. The Handmaid’s Tale (Margaret Atwood)
60. The Time Traveller’s Wife (Audrew Niffenegger)
61. Crime and Punishment (Fyodor Dostoyevsky)
62. The Fountainhead (Ayn Rand)
63. War and Peace (Tolsoy)
64. Interview With The Vampire (Anne Rice)
65. Fifth Business (Robertson Davies)
66. One Hundred Years Of Solitude (Gabriel Garcia Marquez)
67. The Sisterhood of the Travelling Pants (Ann Brashares)
68. Catch-22 (Joseph Heller)
69. Les Miserables (Victor Hugo)
70. The Little Prince (Antoine de Saint-Exupery)
71. Bridget Jones’ Diary (Helen Fielding)
72. Love in the Time of Cholera (Gabriel Garcia Marquez)
73. Shogun (James Clavell)
74. The English Patient (Michael Ondaatje)
75. The Secret Garden (Frances Hodgson Burnett)
76. The Summer Tree (Guy Gavriel Kay)
77. A Tree Grows in Brooklyn (Betty Smith)
78. The World According To Garp (John Irving)
79. The Diviners (Margaret Laurence)
80. Charlotte’s Web (E.B. White)
81. Not Wanted On The Voyage (Timothy Findley)
82. Of Mice And Men (John Steinbeck)
83. Rebecca (Daphne DuMaurier)
84. Wizard’s First Rule (Terry Goodkind)
85. Emma (Jane Austen)
86. Watership Down (Richard Adams)
87. Brave New World (Aldous Huxley)
88. The Stone Diaries (Carol Shields)
89. Blindness (Jose Saramago)
90. Kane and Abel (Jeffrey Archer)
91. In the Skin of a Lion (Michael Ondaatje)
92. Lord of the Flies (William Golding)
93. The Good Earth (Pearl S. Buck)
94. The Secret Life of Bees (Sue Monk Kidd)
95. The Bourne Identity (Robert Ludlum)
96. The Outsiders (S.E. Hinton)
97. White Oleander (Janet Fitch)
98. A Woman of Substance (Barbara Taylor Bradford)
99. The Celestine Prophecy (James Redfield)
100. Ulysses (James Joyce)
I hereby tag all of you do do the same with this list on your blog :)
Yah, because this is enough of a reason to forego fast food and meat for awhile….
When I first read Walden back in high school I realized that I was innately a transcendentalist. So today’s quote is to celebrate that moment:
As to conforming outwardly and living your own life inwardly, I do not think much of that.
~Henry David Thoreau
–Spending the noon hour in my garden. checking the progress of my new plantlings and feeling the warm sun on my face. Lovely.
–CatGirl and GameBoy’s dental checkups went well. No cavities for either of them–even after having had braces for the last few years.
–Betting the checker at Trader Joe’s that I could estimate the total cost of my groceries better than he could. I was almost exactly right. He was $30 too high (ah, because I’m such a savvy shopper….)
–Vegetarian mushroom stroganoff for dinner. Yum!!
–Teasing the kitties a bit: preparing their dinner meal w/o singing the tuna song. Eyeing them to see if they would know it was mealtime despite the departure in our routine (yep, they had it figured out pretty quickly).
–Our showerhead working again after a visit from the plumber today. No more cold and dribbly showers. And the tub is draining much better, too. Hooray for the perfect warm shower experience to start the day!
:)
This might just be a record for me: I’ve been insulted and reviled on four different blogs in the last two days and on the way home from class tonight a car-full of young men (undergrads, perhaps–maybe I gave them bad grades in years past??) came up behind me on my bike and yelled in my ear (just about fell off my bikeseat when they did this) and then proceeded to follow me through the next intersection making rude remarks.
Yah whatever.
Somehow it doesn’t really bug me. You know, the “sticks and stones” thing, I suppose. Or maybe it’s a certain devil-may-care attitude that comes from having a physical disability. I’ve been stared at, gestured towards, mimicked, teased, accosted, etc. for so many years that I’m just used to it now.