Category: Writing Life Tension

{Grati~logger} 🌿♥️🌿♥️🌿♥️🌿

amyofhearthridge6 Comments
Cedar Falls Overlook ~ Petit Jean State Park, Arkansas

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} 🌿♥️🌿

amyofhearthridge5 Comments

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 💜🌿💜

Happy Birthday to Maud Montgomery, My Marvelous Muse

amyofhearthridge2 Comments
Lake of Shining Waters ❤

{Happy Birthday, Lucy Maud Montgomery! Original poem from 2017 after my dream trip to Prince Edward Island with my husband in celebration of our 15th wedding anniversary}

Prince Edward Island to Hearth Ridge Farm: A Tension

Here home again, bittersweet world of words.

Red-stained, Isle of blue-green,

Sail waiting to be unfurled.

Glints of gold on glass, mind’s-eye scene,

path of sunlight to horizon, quiet ease.

The din of loved ones, drowning

sea’s strong murmur. But I’ve a new lease, a fervor.

Responsibilities crashing loudly, crowning,

but a secret seeps from my

lapping lips, whispering of far-flung beauty sounding.

Out comes dunes, out comes brilliant sky,

Out comes red earth, surf, and seagull cry.

The thick worlds collide, my heart’s

isle and soul’s farm become intertwined.

Fingers stroke cheeks, sand grains left behind.

My breath is salty, pungent as I kiss

their darling, dirty faces, fists. The fields of corn,

waves of the sea, something missing and found in me.

Beacons, buoys, blueness, quintessential coastal horns,

sea in my lungs, earth in my throat,

compost of being, soul sea-soaked.

Farm’s beauty full width and breadth, feasting on, seeing

It’s flesh alive because of Island wind,

that died a death sown deep in me.

This old dirt-made woman, new from sweet saltiness of sea.

~A.M. Pine

Other posts I’ve written on Maud here and here if you are interested! ~

Who is your forever muse? I have many, but Maud will always be my favorite inspiration!

Monday Ponderings {November 29th}

amyofhearthridge4 Comments
“Killing Me Softly with His Song” – my favorite version is by Roberta Flack ♥️♥️♥️

We are the music makers,
And we are the dreamers of dreams,
Wandering by lone sea-breakers,
And sitting by desolate streams; —
World-losers and world-forsakers,
On whom the pale moon gleams:
Yet we are the movers and shakers
Of the world for ever, it seems.

~ Arthur O’Shaughnessy, from Ode, here is the full poem and it’s just so lovely.

♥️I’ve been musing on how art begets art. It’s like really and truly being SEEN by someone and seeing a bit of them, too, connection that knows no boundaries, an amazing gift, when my heart beats with a story, art, music, or a film. ♥️ How about you? What do feel when something someone created reaches out to you?