Weekend Bits

             

 

 

This last weekend I went on a retreat to the Abbey of Gethsemani in Trappist, Kentucky. Icons and crosses. Reading, meditating, and a little walk in the woods. I arrived with a restless heart and left with hope.

Project Post

While normally I would post pictures of a handiwork project that I am currently working on, today I am on a deadline for a paper that is due tomorrow. I took a class a few weeks back called "Spirituality of Prayer" taught by visiting professor Philip Sheldrake for my Masters program. So today you get pictures of my writing on spirituality and the Christian mystic Julian of Norwich. I won't say much else since my plan is to post some thoughts on Christian spirituality this weekend.

I Love (Louisville Spotlight): Quills Coffee

emily sill

Brian Moats

Brian Moats

As you may or may not know, my husband and I are currently living in Louisville, Kentucky and some of our most favorite things are good food and good drinks, particularly good coffee. When we first moved here, Quills Coffee was right around the corner and Adam was lucky enough to snag a job as a barista there. So in honor of all the time we spend drinking cappuccinos and slow-brewed coffee I thought I would spotlight Quills as my first "I Love" post. Not only do they pour fantastic latte art, have a beautiful aesthetic, and roast their own coffee, they are just all around good peoples. My friend Emily, and manager of the New Albany location, took the lovely photo above. Next time we go into the shop I will make sure to bring my camera to snap some of my own pictures. In the mean time, if you live in the area make sure to check out one of their three shops.

Weekend Bits

Chocolate Chip Pancakes/ Sudoku/ Cinnamon-Sugar Brioche Rolls/

Infusing Milk for Chocolate Lavender Ice Cream/ Crocheting

Thoughts on blogging

I am serial blog-starter and I don’t fancy myself a writer or an artist. My first blog was a random assortment of thoughts and pictures of day-to-day life. The second blog was an attempt at filling people in on the life of my husband and I as we study and work in Kentucky. Ok, so maybe not serial, but definitely uncommitted. They both have failed miserably. Every three to four months I feel obligated to post some sort of update for nobody in particular. And that is why I don’t blog. Because it makes me feel like just another voice in the sea of people who want/need to be heard. I am neither. I do not want to be heard. I don’t feel like my thoughts and ideas are SO important that the whole world needs to read them. And I don’t need to be heard. I have real people in my life to bounce ideas off of. So, why start another blog then? I am here to try to figure that out. My first blog was started in college when I was learning a lot of new things about a lot of new subjects. Plus, I was really trying to impress my now husband with how thoughtful and intellectual I was. It worked. My second blog was started because I didn’t want to have Facebook anymore, but felt like we would fall off the grid if people didn’t have SOME way of knowing what we were up to. We didn’t fall off, and while I went back to Facebook, I try not to check it as much as I used to. And the third was because I felt like I needed one last do-over to document my thoughts on the Masters in Spirituality I am currently working on completing. I thought that if I did not find some way to get the thoughts in my head out that it would explode. As a Masters in Spirituality student at Bellarmine University in Louisville, Kentucky my world has been turned up and down. Things I thought I knew, I really don’t. Practices I thought I had mastered, I learned I have little discipline. Questions that I’ve had and have, have morphed into new and even more complex questions. Just who exactly am I and what was I created to do? Three blogs, started, and failed. So here we are with attempt number 4. Attempt number 4 is happening because I have realized that I tend to try to compartamentalize my life and my blogs are the perfect example of that. But my life if not a fragmented piece of work. There is cohesion. Who I am at home with my husband is the same as who I am while I am reading a book on prayer, as who I am when I sit at my sewing machine to make a dress, or when I am in the kitchen making a dessert. I am a whole being created by a loving G-d that desires to see my flourish and grow and embrace all parts of myself. So I am going to try one last time to document my life with that knowledge in hand. I will try to do this as consistent and fully as I can, knowing that I will fail in making this be exactly what I want it to be, but that it's ok.