Light and life arise from the personal presence of our Lord.
Charlotte Mason, Scale How Meditations
Monday Ponderings {May 16th}
Category: Inspiration
|| on clouds ||
|| endless clouds extend to the horizon line. slate grey, white tuffed, take-deep-breath marshmallows , chewy goodness. softness, a gentling, sunsplit glints of gold, the dresden of heaven’s hutch. clouds come down, bringing middle earth to midwest. pillows, puffs, earth and sky gooey s’more center, coolness, and shade. buckets of liquid love dipped and poured over earth’s open and waiting hands. what would i be without clouds? i’m not talking about the science behind the loss of clouds, i’m talking about fluff-on-the-wind deep soul loss. the loss of the wisp and whisper drawing our hearts and our eyes upward. clouds crowd the crevices of my heart and i want to be forever enveloped in a squishy embrace. bright white, somber grey, i take this popcorn of the sky, salted, anyway. a true friend to sail away on, summer shape finding, a friend to count on hovering close by. a field of fluff for soul and spirit encouragement harvesting. a bit of white lace for earth’s blue and green dress. freshness, light, love…clouds. ||
Monday Ponderings {May 2nd}
It was rather that as I came to know the children and to think of them as persons rather than names in my grade book, I forgot my reactions and began to love them. I suppose the principle was that the higher affection will always expel the lower whenever we give the higher affection sway. For me, it was letting love for the mountain children come in the front door while my preoccupation with bad smells crept out the rathole.
Catherine Marshall, Christy
Monday Ponderings {April 11th}
The trunk of the tree grew thick as a wall. Anatole could not even see where it curved around to the other side. He looked up into the branches. No light broke through at the top. The tree grew into great darkness.
“It’s best not to think about the top,” said the north wind. “It’s best just to start climbing.”
Sailing to Cythera – Nancy Willard
Favorite Reads {1st Quarter 2022} 📚🌿📚
What’s up, Doc? Can you tell what my children have watching lately? 🐰 I thought it would be easier and fun to just highlight my favorite reads this year in a quarterly fashion. 🌿📚🌿
I had some BEAUTIFUL reads in January. Surprising reads, too, as Out of Silent Planet was a reread and was so much better this time around. One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich was a semi-autobiographical, heart wrenching look at a Soviet work-camp. The Scent of a Water was a favorite, so introspective and lovely. About an older woman starting afresh and the things she learns from the journals of her relative, her new neighbors, and nature. Wives and Daughters just a pure character dive into depth and insight, people to root for and love. Gaskell is SO accessible and lovely. You don’t have to work hard to be rewarded.
February brought the the lovely read of Emily of Deep Valley, a book that’s been on my TBR list for a long time and it didn’t disappoint. A coming of age story with so much to learn for this almost 42 yo! My reread of Martha’s Vineyard: Isle of Dreams by Susan Branch was just perfect. My favorite memoir from her! I really enjoyed finding the work of Austin Kleon, his encouragement on creativity really resonating with me.
A pleasure is full grown only when it is remembered.
C.S. Lewis
March brought the beginning of a huge reading slump, but I did manage to enjoy the adult historical fiction, The Morning Gift, by Eva Ibbotson, a new to me author whom I’m enjoying. This was about an girl trapped in Nazi-occupied Vienna and it was different, well done, and I really enjoyed it.
Love, Amy ♥️🌿
Lenten Gratitude {3} 🌿💜🌿
Continuing my Lenten List of Gratitude…
21. reflection in my rich, delicious coffee and cream of the light above, the ripple and movement of it catching my eye in the early morning quiet
22. marking up seed catalog with stickies, my 12 yo and I, the hope of green growing things to come, something to look forward to and tend outside of ourselves
23. the pleasure of a 2 yo over thrifted shoes, velcro and camo cuteness for $3
24. this song
25. evening and morning of little nothings that are something with husband to reset – peanuts, journaling, talking by the river, seeing a duck break through the ice, weasel bounding across, Sandhills bugling, crows, and the waddle of returned Canada geese, chicken avocado salad, and long meandering drives through farm country
26. juicy pears
27. this unique show I found on YouTube- yes, low budget, predictable, but heartwarming. Based on a true story!
28. a church friend asking us over for lunch and her lovely cat Smokey climbing in my lap, purring and so affectionate
29. coffee catch-ups lately with lovely women
30. potty “training” to help me learn yet again to move at the pace of a small child, so sobering, infuriating, and endearing at the same time
What gifts have caught your eye lately? I’d love to hear! 🌿💜🌿 Lots of love, Amy
Monday Ponderings {March 14th} 💚🌿💚
“…Thy need is sown and rooted for His rain…
Work on!”
George MacDonald, The Cloud of Witness, p. 153
{Grati~logger} 🌿♥️🌿♥️🌿♥️🌿
I’ve been thinking about my blog here and what {exactly} it is I love about it. It has grown into an offering to God🙏 more than anything…gratitude for the generous giving of other’s words written, a whispered prayer of thanksgiving through photography {a photo often says something words cannot}. It’s a tangible witness of the sheer love for the gifts of nature, poetry, writing, art ~all from the world’s well of inspiration. To us, from them, to them, from us. So you could say gratitude + blogger = gratilogger? 🌿♥️🌿♥️🌿♥️🌿 How ‘bout you? Do you ever feel this way also? Do you feel like bursting with all the beauty given to us? Why create? Why give in these ways? From the bottom of my heart, THANK goodness YOU create and give. I need it like air. 😄♥️💜♥️ That’s all, Happy Saturday!
Lenten Gratitude {2} 🌿♥️🌿
Continuing my Lenten List of Gratitude ~
11. Mr. Kleon’s work has been opening my mind to possibly lately. And that’s a good thing.
12. Thinking on this quote I read with my 17 yo the other day, “A picture or poem, or the story of a noble deed, ‘finds’ us, we say. We, too, think that thought or live in that action, and, immediately, we are elevated and sustained. This is the sympathy we owe to our fellows, near and far off. If we have anything good to give, let us give it, knowing with certainty that they will respond. If we fail to give this Sympathy, if we regard the people about us as thinly small, unworthy thoughts, doing mean, unworthy actions, and incapable of better things, we reap our reward. We are really, though we are not aware it, giving Sympathy to all that is base in others, and thus strengthening and increasing their baseness: at the same time we are shutting ourselves into habits of hard and narrow thinking and living.” ~ Charlotte Mason, Ourselves
12. Thinking about creativity and how sometimes it’s hard to grasp that elusive ‘thing’ that’s haunting you and waiting to be born. How birth is beautiful and miraculous, yet it’s earthy, natural, and an everyday occurrence all over the world. These lyrics speak to that and here’s the music video which has stunning imagery about this tension. {click CC button, top right corner of video for English subtitles}
13. The flames, smell, colors, warmth, ritual of filling our indoor woodburner. I’ve been finding in the midst of the hard work of it and constantness of it, a beauty. Hmmm, this sounds like writing practice. 😬😩😂
14. Margin. Modern life is a snowball. I’m thankful when I remember to stop it and live counterculture for a bit. Run counterclockwise, Amy. One part of this can’t really change though. Relationships. Those you need to keep your toe dipped into.
15. This zany, high energy podcast. An encouraging online friend, Adrienne, recommended me to this resource!
16. Starting enjoying a new Shakespeare play, composer, and especially enjoying this unique artist with my children. So thankful for the moms in my homeschool group for sharing these riches.
17. For this this poem and animation. So peaceful!
18. For photography- snippets of light for dispelling darkness
19. Warmth: fires, slippers, hot showers, hot tea, steamy coffee, and comfy thrifted purple Scotland sweatshirts.
20. Changes of perspective to help me get outside of myself. For coming back to my mountain to climb with newness and freshness, or at least a deep breath. ♥️🌿
What’s fueling you? 🌿♥️🌿 Lots of love from the Ridge, Amy 💜🌿💜
Monday Ponderings {March 7th}
Looking at Stars
The God of curved space, the dry
God, is not going to help us, but the son
whose blood splattered
the hem of his mother’s robe.
Jane Kenyon ♥️
Lenten Gratitude {1} 🌿♥️🌿
Even though my church tradition doesn’t include the observance of Lent, I find the church seasons helpful in my faith walk. I hope to use Lent as a time of conscious gratitude, close attention, and a listening heart and spirit. ♥️
1. Statues and their stories whispering in the sunlight
2. Used, magical bookshop filled with 40,000 dreams
3. 2,000 year old caves, drip-drips echoing, concentric circles of time, red ochre art of the past, both mysterious and timeless
4. Brokenness bringing the riot of beauty in the everyday out anew and afresh
5. February’s Peace Poem project bringing so much more to me than what I gave…gifts do that often, don’t they?
6. Meditating on these words from Wendell Berry, “…But I aspire downward. Flyers embrace the air, and I’m a man who needs something to hug. All my dawns cross the horizon and rise, from underfoot. What I stand for is what I stand on.”
7. Intricacies of nature, mind boggling
8. A little boy so concerned about his thumbs finding their way in his leather mittens
9. Beauty found in icy disappointment
10. Thinking on and thankful for this: “ When people speak of a beautiful sunset, do they hurriedly riffle through a book of photographs of sunsets or go in search of a sunset? No, you speak about the sunset by drawing on the many sunsets inside you…” Mr. Miyazaki goes on with more of this gorgeous thought in his book, Starting Point
May your Lenten journey or posture of prayerfulness be one of fruitfulness 🌿🌿🌿
Lots of love, Amy ♥️
Monday Ponderings {February 28th – Merriest of March Eve to you!} 🌿♥️🌿
MAY I reach
That purest heaven, -be to other souls
That cup of strength in some great agony!-
Enkindle generous ardour, -feed pure love,-
Beget smiles that have no cruelty,-
Be the sweet presence of a good diffused,
And in diffusion ever more intense!
So shall I join the choir invisible,
Whose music is the gladness of the world!
G. Eliot, The Cloud of Witness, p.136
A.M. Pine - Hearth Ridge Reflections 