"Actually, all education is self-education. A teacher is only a guide, to point out the way, and no school, no matter how excellent, can give you education…
What you receive is like the outlines in a child's coloring book. You must fill in the colors yourself."
~Louis L'Amour
"Whenever you go out of doors, draw the chin in, carry the crown of the head high, and fill the lungs to the utmost; drink in the sunshine…" – Elbert Hubbard
Yes, do.
After dreary spring weather I was so afraid there would be no brilliant blue skies this rapeseed season but the clouds have parted and soon as they did we brought the little girls to the fields, where they gathered armfuls of bright yellow blossoms.
Drink it all in.
It doesn't last forever.
– Anne of Avonlea
"I don't think I got it, Mom. The sun is right behind the nest."
One hallmark of springtime in the German countryside is the return of the storks to their wheel high on a rooftop in a nearby village. Moira, tasked as she was with snapping the mama stork as we drove 'round the corner, doubted the shot was salvageable.
"Let me look at it in editing. I might be able to save it," I told her. When I went through them later, one image just caught my breath. Most of the storks we have seen have been pristine, almost regal. Through the zoom lens, however, this mama appeared a little bedraggled. Tired, but steadfast, serene as she has been every time we have passed lately. She was plucking down from her undersides and dropping it into the nest.
I keep returning to this image. It stands in start contrast to a world that insists we mothers must reach for our own oxygen masks first. Perhaps in our quest for self-preservation and fulfillment we have missed what these creatures just know instinctively: It is in giving that we receive.
"'There were in Delft innumerable storks' nests. When the fire broke out, which was on the 3rd of May, the young storks were fledged, but could not yet fly. Seeing the fire approach, the parent storks attempted to carry their young ones out of danger, but they were too heavy; and after having tried all sorts of desperate efforts, the poor birds were forced to give it up. They might have saved themselves by abandoning the little ones to their fate. But instead, they stayed upon their nests, gathered their little ones about them, covered them with their wings as if to retard as long as possible the fatal moment, and so awaited death in that loving and noble attitude.'
Truly this was a remarkable illustration of devotion, and again demonstrates the fact that there is no greater love in the world than mother love. This holds homes together and comforts in distress. This abides when all others fail.'" – Edmondo De Amicis
This makes my inaugural England post from our whirlwind house hunting trip. Such a jam packed visit that the only tourist pictures I got were from the car. Since there are a remarkable number of roundabouts in that fine country and since driving on the other side of the road in traffic made things just a smidge confusing at first, I had lots of opportunities to get up my shots as we circled the college area moving ever closer to the exit each round lol.
April was quite a month let me tell you. Catching my breath just a bit this week as we enter round two here in May. Lots of challenges converging simultaneously, the sort which tend to make one's hands wring and feet pace. What to do? What to do?
I listen to my gypsy friend who reminds me - just do the next thing.
I hope you have a friend like that. I hope you too remember to just do the next thing when the water gets choppy. And maybe take a few pictures too. I think it helps <g>
"We housewives often in the course of our work come up to bare unwitting prospects and we exclaim, “Oh, it’s perfect drudgery!” But stay, come round this way, view your work from another standpoint. Ah, what a change! Heavens light is upon it; sacred memories arise, glad songs are heard and we trace where high art has been at work. Best of all, our work need not be likened to a ruin, but a place filled with happy human souls. Don’t have one-sided views of your work, view it all round. Have a truly high idea of your work, and you will never commit the great mistake of thinking it drudgery."
By Charlotte Skinner, The Housewife, 1886.
Do visit Brocante Home for the entire essay!
It is of the LORD's mercies that we are not consumed, because his compassions fail not. They are new every morning: great is thy faithfulness. Lamentations 3:22-23
One of the biggest surprises I have had in the past several months has been a growing fascination with the Old Testament. I will admit it did not draw me in regularly for many years. It was Allen's audio bible study app that started it all. He is a man of schedules and goal setting and the whole idea of this reading all planned out appealed to him especially. He listens to his chapters on his own and then reads to us after the rosary. More often than not I am so caught up in what we hear I grab my bible after to read the sections before and after.
It's been a blessing.
Every morning.
A very good theme for 45, I'd say.
How about you? Are you dreaming any new dreams this year?
It's never, never too late.
There she was, that nanny goat, as we turned into the marketplace full of Easter revelry. She arched her blonde neck to nibble the last bits of grain from one wrinkled hand. Moira and I tried to coax the little girls in close to feel that soft nose, to see the sleepy burro in the straw. Oh, they stepped in a bit. Tentatively.
They don't remember.
Their world is so new that their memories don't reach back beyond these cobblestones. Tess talks of loving to ride the horse, but it is not our horses she speaks of. It is the pony ride tent she recalls. For a minute my knees are weak.
It wasn't so long ago. I sat on an upturned bucket and ran my hand along the side of doe like this one, coaxing milk from a warm udder and knowing exactly how long I had to work before the feed was eaten and she'd stomp impatient. If I close my eyes I can feel the metal handle of the water bucket, hear the bleating of goat kids in the stall nearby.
It wasn't so long ago. And it was good.
Things are different today. We stand here with these girls peeking between old boards. Another farmer will gather this flock in tonight. My husband and I will gather our own little flock into a yellow house at the edge of a village some 5,000 miles from a barn in Colorado. While they sleep we pore over pictures of houses in yet another country, wondering which we will find ourselves in this summer.
This too is good.
Perhaps the most important lesson I have learned these past two yrs is that happiness is not wedded to a place nor a circumstance. It is not frozen in time. It is fluid and changing and can pour out of its old containers to fill up entirely new spaces. Even to overflowing. I think I didn't know this for sure until I left.
I leave here with something I didn't have when I came. Faith. Faith that happy isn't just a fluke. It can happen again. And again. Just like challenges. I don't know where we are going exactly but I feel sure there is good there and we will find it.
Still, I hope that just maybe, there will be another day when I turn a corner a England and see a nanny goat.
Don't cry because it's over, smile because it happened. - Dr. Suess
"Life passes so quickly that is it obviously better to have a most splendid crown and a little suffering, than an ordinary crown and no suffering.
When I think that for a sorrow borne with joy, I shall be be able to love You more for all eternity, I understand clearly that if you gave me the entire universe with all its treasures it would be nothing in comparison to the slightest suffering.
Each new suffering, each pang of the heart, is a gentle wind to bear to You, O Jesus the perfume of the soul that loves You;
(last frost of the year)
The more the soul grows in love, the more it must grow in suffering too.
What a favor, my Jesus!"
– from the letters of St Therese of the Child Jesus, Divine Intimacy
Starry Sky Journal 