Wednesday Wonders {Day 9}

Sticker-ed my new prayer journal! 🧡

Listening… I’m interested in learning more about communist history and there’s a readathon on Booktube/Bookstagram in September called RedSeptember. I don’t necessarily follow the prompts etc, but I started early listening to Red Scarf Girl by Ji-li Jiang. Fascinating and heart wrenching memoir looking at the cultural revolution in China. I’m hoping to listen to Animal Farm by George Orwell next.

Reading…I’m working hard on Charlotte Mary Yonge’s, Dyvenor Terrace and The Cross by Sigrid Undset. I’d love to finish them by September! The Kristin Lavransdatter saga is so beautifully written, however the story was heavy! I’m going to be processing for awhile.

The Cross

Watching…I recently got The Boy and the Heron from the library and hope to watch it soon. I’m a big fan of Hayao Miyazaki. I’ve heard it’s a bit dark, so want to preview it without children! 😅♥️

Noticing…We saw a ‘V’ of Canada Geese last night! 😭 I noticed a cluster of beautiful brown, amberish colored cones at the tippy tops of our blue spruce trees. Autumn 🍂 is creepy in…🧡🤎🖤

I’m reading this on kindle, but saw this original illustration online! 💕

How about you? What are you listening to, reading, watching, and noticing? 🍂🌿🖤

Monday Ponderings {Day 7}

“Words are one way we leave tracks in our world, Sol. Maybe one day you will write a book, like Olaus, or Molly Thorn. And people will read it, like I’ve been reading to you. And they will know that you were here, and a little about what you were like.”

Sol’s face remained far away. Her cheeks were white and hollow, but her eyes shone a bit, I was fairly sure.

Leif Enger, I Cheerfully Refuse

Saturday Examen {Day 5}

The smell coming out of our public library was intoxicating! 😍♥️

I really enjoy this app and that they make Saturday a time of spiritual reflection over the past week. ♥️🙏🏻 I highly recommend listening (you can listen on their website, too!)

I jotted down their questions this week and found it so refreshing and challenging to honestly pray through them. It’s sobering to deeply examine oneself in the light of our Lord!

Does the LORD take pleasure in burnt offerings and sacrifices as much as in obeying the LORD?

Look: to obey is better than sacrifice, to pay attention is better than the fat of rams.

from 1 Samuel 15:22-23 CSB

How was your week? 🌲♥️🌲

Wednesday Wonders {Day 3}

Listening… I’ve been loving these playlists! So peaceful and calming.

Reading…This essay from Joy Marie Clarkson and this essay from Carol Hudson! Both have excellent food for thought.

Watching… I love the peaceful atmosphere of Cath’s vlogs. If you love cozy stationary, journaling, or slow reading reflections, her channel is for you. We don’t perfectly line up in reading tastes, but I enjoy her videos so much.

Noticing…the grasshoppers fleeing the edge of the road as I crunch past on my walk. The golden edge to the weeds and fields.

What are you listening to, reading, watching, or noticing? 🥰♥️

•sweetness• {Day 2}

Lord, you do not withhold your compassion from me. Your constant love and truth will always guard me.

~Ps. 40:11

The Lord will send his faithful love by day; his song will be with me in the night – a prayer to the God of my life.

~Ps. 42:8

What secrets fly out of the earth

when I push the shovel-edge,

when I heave the dirt open?

And if there are no secrets

what is that smell that sweetness rising?

~ Mary Oliver

Monday Ponderings {Day 1}

The times are so unfriendly. Play me something, would you, Rainy?

Leif Enger, I Cheerfully Refuse

{starting my 180 Days Project! More about it as the days come and go! How are you all? Blessings over your week. Don’t forget to ‘play a little music’ against these unfriendly times! 😌♥️}

•plans•

One of the greatest things in human life is the ability to make plans. Even if they never come true – the joy of anticipation is irrevocably yours. That way one can live many more than just one life.

Maria Trapp

I found this in an old journal from 2016 surrounded by lots of those very same types of bygone plans. It made me smile. 🌿♥️

•inexhaustible•

My husband’s cousins gorgeous garden. 😍

What do I make of all this texture? What does it mean about the kind of world in which I have been set down? The texture of the world, it’s filigree and scrollwork, means that there is the possibility for beauty here, a beauty inexhaustible in its complexity, which opens to my knock, which answers in me a call I do not remember calling, and which trains me to the wild and extravagant nature of the spirit I seek.

Annie Dillard, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, p. 140-141