Thoroughly Alive

Last week, when we students spent five days at an inn just on the edge of the Thames, we took a Sunday ramble. We ended along the river just at dusk. As the others wandered nearer the water, I set off for a moment alone.

A fat, lordly moon climbed the sky as I slushed through muddy grass. His buttery glow mingled with the last pink of the sun. The mesh of their light was a faint brush over the wet blue of sky that comes at the end of a warm winter’s day. I came to a one-railed bridge over a streamlet of the Thames and stopped. A tough, tiny tree canopied the bridge. Moss velveted its trunk and its branches curled into the dusk like wisps of smoke. The stream beneath me brought a slow, langorous movement to the night, its surface a mirror to the sky with the braid of the river reeds as its frame.

I knew, as I held my body still and honed my mind and sight and thought to a full perception of all before me, that I was attended by Beauty. Not merely beautiful things, but rather a gathering of beauties whose sum created a single, powerful presence. Beauty like that is, I believe, a spiritual presence demanding a response from my soul. It is one facet of God’s incarnational presence in the world, drawing me back to his reality, his ever-with-me attention. To encounter it, is to encounter truth; the fact of it requires some turning from me, I cannot be neutral in my response. Either I deny its power, or I allow myself to be reoriented by its grace.

I have always known that beauty had the power to drive me to holiness. For me, the ache for what is transcendent, the hunger spurred in me by art, literature, music, nature, has always been a guide that turned me back from distraction, from hurry, even from sin, to the grace of my ever-present God.

I am more aware of Beauty here in England than I have been for awhile. The change of scene, the sharpness with which new impressions and places hit my senses livens me to watch, to listen, to simply be aware. I have lived much of my last year in a hurry of mind, a distraction of spirit that has been entertaining, but left me disoriented in my walk with God. I have needed to be silent, to watch, to come up against minutes of great, demanding Beauty such as I found the other night.

May Beauty find you today as well.

“I hereby undertake not to remove from the Library, or to mark, deface, or injure in any way, any volume, document, or other object belonging to it or in its custody; nor to bring into the Library or kindle therein any fire or flame, and not to smoke in the Library; and I promise to obey all rules of the Library.”

Thus did I solemnly swear at dusk two nights past. Walls of darkest wood gleamed in the low light as we students stood in pew like stalls at the hour when the sky pearls with starlight. Shadows loomed large in dusty corners, and pooled like flocks of black minnows in the myriad panes of the high, cut-glass windows. I held up my hand before a long faced man in academic robes and swore I would protect the books of the Bodleian Library of Oxford. In return, I was handed what is probably the best library card I’ll ever own, my “Bod card,” which gives me access to just about any book you can imagine. Thus was I made a scholar in good standing with the university. Thus did my studies in Oxford begin. Thus was I tickled pink.

More to come…

Dear friends,

Life kidnapped me. It didn’t just run away with me, it smacked me in the head and dragged me along on a wild escape from sanity and I didn’t manage to disentangle myself until this week. I looked up and discovered however that life may just have been a grace in disguise because… lo and behold – I’m a student at Oxford University!

It’s only for a term, but I have official member status at Trinity College Oxford, I am taking tutorials in Children’s Literature, Celtic Mythology, and perhaps C.S. Lewis if I can manage it. I live in a tiny flat next to the Thames and walk cobblestone streets to study in the Bodleian library (which is just as mysterious as it sounds) each day.

The story of how I got here will take awhile to tell, but for now, I wanted you to know what is happening. I will post some snippets of Oxford life soon and pick back up the thread of writing through those posts.

Just so you’ll know, my time as a mentor at Summit Semester was a thing of joy. I love my girls and got to be part of a community that will continue throughout the coming years. Here’s a link to my concluding thoughts on that subject: Taste and See: The Feast of Summit Semester.

For now, here’s to the blessed craziness of life and the humorous workings of God that land us on strange and adventurous shores.

More to come.

Can motives ever be pure?

This was the question a friend and I debated on my bed last night. I said no and she looked at me askance. “How do you ever do anything then? How do you live without constantly suspecting yourself?

In answering her, I talked myself into articulating a truth I abruptly recognized as one of the rock and brick base understandings of my life: I live in tension. I exist in a state of change, in the taut pull between what I am and what I am becoming.

I am fallen, and my frailty twines and twists through every cell of my being and vein of my thought. I want to love, but every drop of my loving is cupped in my own need to be loved. I yearn to do good, yet my motives are inevitably driven by my unceasing need for acceptance, affirmation, some sense of my being right with God and the world. I yearn to love purely, and I know God loves through me, yet whatever purity of God’s goodwill pulses through in my love is inextricably tangled with my own fiery need for love returned.

But frail as I am, the grace of God rises like the slow swell of morning in my darkness. His love is present, pure and untainted by need, and it runs through the veins of my fallen self in a remaking stream. His love does purify my love, his grace heals my need so that I can offer something of myself without demanding something in return. God grows slowly in me, a fullness of Love and slowly, I am remade. But it’s all in progress, half done, just begun, and not yet finished.

We yearn for absolutes, I think. We want the black and white assurance that if I do this or believe that my motives will be absolutely pure and my actions will be right. But the black and white, the gem-cut answers of diamond clarity are rarely to be had in human life.

W live in the broken place, in an earth bruised and blackened with grief, yet still pulsing with the beauty that began it. Brightness is all about us, light and love, music and friendship, an air that fills the lungs of our souls with life even as our feet are mired in death. We breathe it, dying into life as our God draws us to himself. Grief is the music to which we are born, yet joy is the rhythm by which we walk our long way to all that God intends us to be.

And all is lived in the tension between the broken now and the brilliant soon-to-come.

In so many ways, nothing stays and nothing is sure. Not our motives, nor our goals, nor our knowledge of ourselves. For God is moving us on toward his own life and we must simply follow the river flow of grace. We follow one slim, golden cord of God’s changeless good through all the changing of our lives. We walk on toward the rising of his day light in our darkness, even as we journey on through what Lewis called “the shadowlands.”

So no, I don’t have a pure motive in me. Only a self being slowly made pure and a God whose love draws me forward through the tension and into his own eternal good.

I’ve found a new coffee shop in the little mountain town here. It’s my favorite so far. The room is mostly windows so you can bask in the blue light that leaps up from the hills and fills your eyes with quiet. They have books, shelves of old curios, and strong cappuccinos. My sort of place. My, but it’s been a full couple of weeks. Things so beautiful I want to sing, and things so hard I still wonder what hit me. I’ll tell the beautiful first.

Community Life – I am gladdened, in ways I could not know I needed to be, by the gift and challenge of living with many people. Family style meals and communal prayer, classrooms and intense debates, someone always available for a hike or game, these are gifts that seem rare to me in modern day life. On the serious side is the strange (and occasionally stressful) good of never being able to hide anything. And with this, the impossibility of isolation. If you are in pain, someone will notice it. You can’t disappear or disengage. Here, you laugh a lot, you deal with a lot of your issues and insecurities (because there’s nowhere else to go, especially in the wilderness) and you learn to love, to engage, to join in with the life of continual creation and thought.

Wilderness & Stars -You’d have to live pretty darn far in the country to see the stars we see here. I spend most of my evenings and walks between the cabins with neck craned back because the black is unbroken by any light and the stars are a host, a dance, a brotherhood of light that pulses and sings overhead. I can see the milky way. I can lie out in the grass and find shooting stars almost at will. I can see the sheen of planets and the literal sparkle of the bigger stars. I’m learning constellations. I’ve always daydreamed about living somewhere actually cut off from civilization (most of the time) but I never actually thought I’d do it. Well, here I am. Daily, as I wake to my cliff-filled window, as the aspens start their glimmering to gold, and the scrub-oaks heat to their slow burn, I want to cry aloud in excitement. I’ve made it.

Night Hikes – Oh my. One of the guy mentors started to lead nighttime climbs up the mountainside behind our cabins. This may be one of the most joyous evenings I’ve ever spent. The hike I joined was impromptu – we were all riled up after a movie discussion, so we grabbed flashlights, enlisted Jeremy to guide us and ended up with twelve adventurers heading out about 10 o’clock. It was the stars we were really after – a clear view from the topmost point we could easily reach. But the climbing was a breathless, muddy adventure. To get to the outlook, you follow a winding path up through a fir wood to a slope where you use a rope to pull yourself up to the next level of climbing. At that point, you “sasquatch” it and go straight through the pathless scrub oak. So we did, filing one by one through the shadows, listening for the crunch of wild animals in the bushes, stopping to ogle the bear tracks.

We made it to the first outlook – a rocky ledge that probably dropped farther than we really wanted to know. We managed to cram all twelve of us along it, legs hanging into the dark while we sang the doxology…again. This is quite the repeated tradition. Then, half of us went on the rest of the way, fighting  bushes, skirting the stabbing yuccas, getting slashed here and there by resentful scrub oaks until we made it to the utmost high point with a 360 degree view of the sky and valley. We craned our heads back, dizzy at the navy bowl of blue and the vast bright and dark of sky and it’s host of stars. We lay flat in the cool grass, with our heads just tilted to the horizon. A harvest moon rose, a golden, blood-tinged hunter’s moon that brooded up out of the mists and hung like a sign of war or glory amidst the smaller stars.

My Girls – I love them. They are full of life, they are ready to learn, and they help me to love God in a sturdier way. As I look for answers to their questions and lives, I am forced to encounter God for myself. I pray for them and they pray right back for me. We perch together in my room and eat chocolate and pray and study Scripture and it is a very good thing.

Gah. And now the hard stuff. I don’t love dwelling on trouble, so you get the quick round version. My Gypsy car totaled. (No one, thank the loving Lord, was hurt.) Eardrum ruptured. Sleepless night. Vicodin (!). Temporary deafness in my right ear. Well mostly. And dizziness. Apparently, inner ears have something to do with balance, so to my own amusement, I’m a bit tipsy.

I’m sure a chastened and insightful and thoughtful (you can smile) post will come out of all this. A lot is going on in my heart as I process these things, as they enter into the way I view my walk with God. But for the moment I will just say God is present and faithful. The staff here are incredibly kind. And the stars are as beautiful as they were before it all happened. I am learning what it means to walk through trouble and still know that “The Lord is my keeper,” and to know it in a way that keeps fear at bay from my heart. There’s a lot to learn in that realm and the temptation to fret is real. But I am blessed, blessed, blessed to be here. I love this job. I love these people. I love this God.

Signing out and sending love, Sarah.

A week ago today, I hurtled over a mountain pass in the pitch black of night and jolted three miles up a red gravel road. I was hot on the trail of a caravan comprised of staff and friends of the program where I’m a mentor. We got a late start, so we whizzed at a startling pace round hairpin curves, up through the black arms of huge spruces and right to the front door of a mountain lodge, and all in the inkiest night. I stumbled out; stars, the kind that get up in your face and stare unblinking, hovered over me as I lugged my three-months worth of luggage into a corner room of a smaller cabin. I collapsed on my bed and fell sound asleep.

6 0′clock next morning I woke woozily to dove light. Curious at what I would find, I crept out of bed and pushed back the curtains. I gaped and knew that I was in the wild. I’ve always dreamed of living in the wild. My view was of a valley all tumbled with dappled aspen and scrub oak, and a green shoulder of ridge beyond, and a purpled peak beyond that, and above all the sky ashimmer with a light like pearls. Glory be.

Now, a week later, the adventure is about to begin. Dozens of students have arrived, the cabins are all in order, the staff is primed and ready and the rooms are, well, generally unpacked. Not neat, but unpacked. And in about an hour, my seven girl “mentorees” will perch in my room for our first small group meeting.

It’s incredible what you can learn in a week. My mind has been awhirl with the realization of the gift God gave in bringing me here, the gift of rediscovering the love of discipleship that is the heritage I have from my family. The gift of community – do you know how much fun it is to live with many people and have huge meals and many discussions? The gift of nature, of disconnection from a hurried age, of silent, silent mornings. The gift of having time to love people and laugh late into the night, but also to run, run, run after the living God.

That’s what I’m going to talk to my girls about tonight. We’ll pull the door closed, light as many candles as I can find, and drink hot chocolate. I’ve decided that we’ll study prayer this year; in the midst of a thousand ideas being learned, we’ll take time to rest, to be hushed and humble, to drink in beauty and listen for the heart of God. Tonight, we’ll start by hearing the stories of how they got here and what they hope and the dreams that this time will shape. I’ll tell them a bit of my own story and of the path that brought me here. Since this is my one chance to blog this week, I thought I’d just tell you the same thing.

I’m here because God closed many doors and left this single one open. He is gracious; he says no to what will destroy us, even when we are blind and hurt and rail at him for it. Then he opens that one, unlikely door, knowing the dawn-like grace hidden on the other side. That’s the door I just walked through here. But my story for tonight goes back several years before, to the time when I was a student just like these girls, hungry to know the living God, determined to know everything I could about truth. I’ve written about my time as a student intern before, the ups and downs, and the ache for God that plagued me through it. I’ve written about Aptin, and the gracious feast he threw, the feast that restored my hope in God’s love, and that’s the story my girls will hear tonight, because I want to be the love for my girls that I was missing in my time as a student. I had so much truth and no beauty, and I want to teach them to keep their souls alive, to cultivate relationships, to see the living, beautiful, dancing God even as they study his truth. So, this will be my challenge to them.

God is rich, and living, and immediately available. You are here because we believe that there is a truth in the universe that can be known, a love that can be lived, a beauty that can be tasted and seen in the outworking of meals, work, play, and friendship. But the heart of it all is the living God, a heart that beats life into all things, a love that is the core of our existence. Amidst your studies and fun, your play and work, I want you to take time away, to sink deeply into the rare quiet of this place, because God is waiting to meet with you. God is alive, and ready every single minute to fill and teach and form your heart. It is his living love that gives meaning to the truth you learn and the work you do. But that love must be sought in quiet, cultivated in the hushed, inner rooms of your heart. 

Are you read to meet the Beloved God in the quiet of your soul?

Because here, in these rare three months, you have the chance to pull away, to take time in these mountains to open your heart to God, to sharpen your inner vision, to listen deeply and meet the Almighty maker of heaven and earth. You have the chance to fill your soul with all beautiful things. To seek what is lovely, to meditate on the truth you learn, to let your heart grow in love for all the people around you. But you must draw away. You must sink into the quiet of the patient pines, sit silent beneath the stars, crouch quiet in your room in the early morning. If you will, I know that God will meet with you. For he always does. He only needs a ready heart.That’s my challenge to them.

But I’m speaking it to myself too. I’m speaking it to the world as much as anyone. These students sure do have a special set apart time here. But God meets us in every walk of life, in every day, in every second that we open to him. God has already met me here with such grace, reawakening old dreams, renewing old passions for ministry, filling my lonely heart with the community for which I have longed. But he waits to meet all of us. He yearns to answer the prayers we are still waiting to pray. He longs to walk into the doors of the hearts we have not yet opened. I am so excited to see what happens in the hearts around me here this fall. May a similar joy, growth, and meeting with God happen in your heart as well.

So, this is Sarah, signing off from the wild mountains. Until next week!

Well this has been one wild ride of a summer. And this is going to be one newsy bluster of a post.

First, the news of my life: I am leaving today to spend three months working in the wilds of the Colorado mountains. The lovely part is that I get to do it as a mentor at a semester long academic/worldview/theology program as part of a community of professors, mentors, and students. We’ll be in a lodge nestled in the southern hills, with very little internet (once a week or so, thus you may see posts every so often) and tons of study and thinking to do and long hikes to take and aspens to see. I am so excited to read and think, to love the people I’ll be living with, and spend my autumn in a fullness of beauty and fellowship.

Part of the craziness of my summer was the passing of my sweet grandmother. Mimi has been sick for a long time, so it was expected, but of course, is a sadness to my heart. Joy and I took a sudden roadtrip to the funeral (22 hours of driving in a trip that lasted a total of 40 hours) and my mom and Joel stayed longer to organize my grandmother’s things. Being with family is always a good thing, a right thing, no matter how much time has gone in between and I was so glad to be able to be at the funeral. My grandmother loved life and loved her family – she was a maker of brownies and lover of butter pecan ice cream and she once spent an entire car trip teaching me the harmony to a darling old WWII love song. I miss her.

I have a lot I want to write about and just have not been able to amidst the summer. I am actually hoping that my fall away will give me some time to flesh out the ideas and stories that are in my heart. This has been a year of real upsetting of expectations and plans for me. As you probably noticed, I’m not going to college, even after all the excitement and tests and applications last year. God has closed many doors and changed many plans. But I have clearer eyes and am beginning to see with what grace I have been held and led. At some point in the next few weeks, I’ll post a little more about the journey of this time, and the truths I am finally beginning to understand.

I have actually prayed this year for time in the wilderness, for time away in which to write, love, and think, and this mountain time is an unexpected answer. So, we’ll see what writing comes out of the wilderness. I won’t be posting often, and will have internet only once a week. This really is the autumn of my disconnect and I am embracing it. I can’t answer many emails any way and am so glad to relearn what it means to be utterly still. But I must admit, the creative possibility of this time excites me. I am withdrawing from some of my usual work and writing, and feel that this promises to be a time in which quiet and calm might just free some of the thoughts I’ve been hoarding away for a restful day.

So, there’s the bluster of news. Today, wish me luck as I cram Gypsy (my car) with more stuff than is really reasonable and head south and up, up, up into the gorgeous mountains. I’ll be listening to Rich Mullins (he is my mountain soundtrack, always), Alexandre Desplat, and a new book on tape. I’ll greet you next from the wilderness. I hope your summer was blessed and that your autumn is full of grace.

Love from your gypsy-hearted friend.

Back when I was in England, we spent an afternoon at Westminster Abbey.

In case you haven’t been there, I must say that it’s a wide grey place with a motherly hold of echoing space. A thousand years of prayer are present in the great, cradled quiet that lingers amidst the uplifted lines of the pillars, the taut reach of the stone, and jeweled rain of light through the stain glass windows. All the world and a thousand busy people are always there in an eddy and flow, but the talk and shuffle of steps is the run of a little river through a formidable old canyon. The silence and shadow were carved by the passing of many years, hallowed by countless prayers, and so seem to hover above the touch of any modern voice.

But Westminster is also a great house of faces. They meet you at every turn and step for Westminster is, in many ways, a hall of heroes, a carved memorial to the kings and poets, heroes, artists and saints who crafted the story of England. This last time, I felt almost haunted. In each alcove I entered, the quiet, stone-carved eyes of saints arrested my glance. Emperors glared a challenge down at me from their pedestals, martyrs wailed their faith with silent, eloquent eyes. I dropped my gaze to the floor, and found the words of poets and novelists, priests and composers carved in the very stone at my feet. Last, I lifted my eyes and found the face of Christ, calm, fierce, lovely, in the glimmer and dance of a hundred stain glass windows. So great a cloud of witnesses… The words from Hebrews sang in my head as I walked.

But it wasn’t until I sat properly still in a small wooden chair for the evensong service that I met the challenge those many faces cast to any who would notice. As the chanted prayers began, I studied the wise, knowing eyes of those statues and thought of the strong works of compassion, battle, or creation that stood as the story and cause behind each one. Each face was carved in that place because the living soul it represented had thought its way to some vital truth about the world. Each face represented a mind that had not merely accepted the world as it was but questioned and hoped its way to a radical truth instead. A truth that compelled them to craft a life and work that embodied the sacred things they found.

Their lives are challenge to any who will listen to do, and be, the same.

I sat up straighter in my ramrod little chair that day, ready to answer and meet their dare. I don’t want to live an unquestioned life, to let circumstance and culture chivy me along unresisting. I want to stand up, look about, ask what is true of the world, what work I must do, what love I must give. I have felt often in the last few years that I was failing in this work.  The rush of my busy days and the distraction of too much everything (voices, options, places, events) weakened my determination to live in a single minded pursuit of what was true, beautiful, and good. I had gotten lax in more ways than I liked; health habits, devotions, self-rule in electronics, rhythms of rest and writing.  It is a hard, striving thing even to keep a soul alive in the distracted haze of modern living, and far harder beyond that to cultivate a heart and mind that are always in pursuit of truth and ready to live by it. But all those kind, wise, keen stone faces convinced me I must try.

They whisper to me yet. Two months have passed since my amble through Westminster, but the challenge those statues posed is a blessed goad in my back. I’ve spent the summer reading the lives and histories of some saints. I’ve read the writings of Mother Teresa, I’ve studied the story of the great Welsh Revival that blazed to life a hundred years ago and shook the world. I’ve studied the words of John, the beloved disciple, savoring his simple, confident words. In each of these stories or studies, I have found the simple fact that when a person comes to God, however flawed or frail they may be, and asks to be used to build his kingdom, to know, as those Westminster saints did, what is really true about the world, God responds.

When people strip themselves of sin and illusion, when they step away from the frenzy of their culture and enter the quiet, waiting space of prayer, God speaks in ways they could not expect. When anyone pursues the truth about the nature of the world, or chases after real justice, or begs to glimpse and live real love, God answers and acts and invades their lives in a way I find shocking. The crux of it though is choice. Simple, but strenuous, a daily choosing to be vigilant in thought, disciplined in habits of body and mind, determined in prayer and in that seeking after the kingdom of God.

Yesterday, I was texting back and forth with the friend who gave me the book on the Welsh revivals and she said, “it’s almost as if you can’t imagine something like that happening until you read the real story.” “I know,” I texted back, “so, you want to start a revival?” Because I kinda do. Or something along those lines. The Welsh revivals started with one young man gathering a few friends in a dim little room to pray. And from that, the new life of thousands. So why not me and my friend, praying together, begging for God to invade us?

Why not? That is the challenge flung by heroes and saints. I’m ready to meet it in a way I almost never have been before. I’ve decided to form a prayer group this fall, to study what it means to commune with God, to hear his voice, and then, to just do it. To make my heart and will single-willed for the coming of God in the days and ways of my existence. So I’ll end with a request. What books, or friends, or heroes shaped the way you pray, the way you perceive the possibility of God’s presence in your life? What influences can you share with me that will help me and my little group on the road to kingdom heroics? An adventure is beginning, and I want to be well-provisioned for the road.

(PS- Next time I’ll let you know where I’ve been and where I’m going (exciting stuff!) and share a few of my favorite links and thoughts these days.)

I’ve been listening to this song all week during my morning walks. Perhaps it will spice your weekend with wonder as it has mine.  (Lyrics below.)

Everything is Holy Now
by Peter Mayer

When I was a boy, each week
On Sunday, we would go to church
And pay attention to the priest
And he would read the holy Word.
And consecrate the holy bread
And everyone would kneel and bow
Today the only difference is
Everything is holy now.

Everything, everything,
Everything is holy now.

When I was in Sunday school
We would learn about the time
Moses split the sea in two
Jesus made the water wine
And I remember feeling sad
that miracles don’t happen still
But now I can’t keep track
‘Cause everything’s a miracle

Everything, everything
Everything’s a miracle.

Wine from water is not so small
An even better magic trick
is that anything is here at all.
So the challenging thing becomes
not to look for miracles
but finding where there isn’t one.
Holy water was rare at best
barely wet my finger tips
Now I have to hold my breath
I’m swimming in a sea of it
Used to be a world half there
Heaven’s second rate hand me downs
now I walk it with a reverent air,
’cause everything’s holy now.

This morning outside I stood
And saw a little red-winged bird
Shining like a burning bush
Singing like a scripture verse
It made me want to bow my head.
and I remember when church let out -
how things have changed since then,
everything is holy now.

Well, this regular writing thing is going bumpily.

I should never make absolute statements in July. Summer always confounds me. And this particular last two weeks has been a bit crazy with my brother Joel packing up to move to LA, and plans getting in place for the fall, and projects getting finished. Of course, all these last minute details must be taken care of with Joel (small things, like buying cars) and last minute memories must be made. Summer day rambles and evening forays to the ice cream shop at the lake do sometimes trump writing goals.

I haven’t had a lot of time for long, long thoughts these days, but I have been gathering memories and beauties by the handful and that reminded me of something I’ve wanted to blog about for awhile: my wall of small wonders. I have always been a keeper of little beauties. Postcards, a note from a friend, photos of favorite outings, ticket stubs to particularly meaningful concerts or movies or underground adventures – all these accumulated in a box I kept for scraps of memory.

But then I encountered the magnificent bulletin board of my friend Andrew Price (over at Foolish Knight). During a long visit to his family, I got to behold his wall-size board of art and prints, pictures and scraps, quotes and cards. A jigsaw, puzzle-pieced tapestry of memories that told the story of his loves, his wonders, his life. I decided to start my own, and over the years it has steadily grown in size, but also in value to me. I love that one space on my walls where the memories of trips and friends and beauties found collect in a vivid collage. Take a look:

There is great value in keeping hold of the lovely in life. Of marking each memory, of keeping tiny beauties as reminders of the joy that has come, the adventure that will come again. I’ve decided that whatever home I have in future, apartment, cottage, house, whatever, I will have a wall of wonder. I’ll fill it as I always have with memories, photos, little beauties. But I’ll also invite my friends to bring an occasional contribution themselves. Leave a mark of their beloved presence. Remind me of the joy we shared.

How do you collect small wonders? I’d love to hear!

Okay, I’m off to make brownies for the roadtrip my siblings will begin at the grey hour in the wee sma’s tomorrow morning. I’ve got miles to go before I sleep. And a few more memories (and meals) to make. Happy summer day to you friends.