Remembering Seasons

Just found these pictures we took last fall when we went up to Notre Dame for a lecture and scanned them into the computer. It is gray and dark in these pictures with the color just starting to change in the leaves. Today it is so sunny and bright and all the flowers are in full bloom with new sorts of color. It reminds me that seasons change so fast, both in nature and in life.

On quiet and food

It has been quiet around here lately and here is why: Lent is wrapping up and I learned that I love food. I really really love food. This year for Lent I attempted to do a juice fast for the full 46 days. There was a lot I was hoping to learn and explore this season. I only made it 26 full days because my body couldn't run off of juice and water alone and listening to your body is part of the fast experience. I couldn't deny it when my body said enough so I started eating raw and then resuming a healthy diet a few weeks before Easter. While I was fasting I grew in ways I didn't expect. The spiritual side of the fast was renewing and left me feeling at peace. I was forced to face the reality of grace with myself and from God. And I learned that though I may not have the most traditional experience of God there is still room for my faith and experiences within the Christian tradition (more on this later). I also learned that I love food. I've always known that I love food, but mostly just eating it. I do love baking, but I don't do the cooking at home. That has tended to be Adam's job. But I found that while I was not eating all I wanted to do was make food. I wanted to be in the kitchen. What?! I am excited about this new development in my life. I am excited to explore the variety of flavors that exist in this world and give Adam a break. Tonight I made lasagna. I've made it before and it was a nice place to start again.

Here's to more nights of cooking. I'll leave you with the chocolate cinnamon sugar dusted chocolate donuts I made this weekend. Enjoy!

Breakfast

I know that mangoes are neither local or in season, but their ripe little yellow faces were calling out to me when I was at the grocery store. I couldn't resist. I've been enjoying mango in unsweetened (Indiana local!) yogurt for breakfast for the last week.

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.