Westward Bound
Travel bags packed, plane tickets ready.
Month: February 2018
Week’s Notes
The Lenten wreath went up this afternoon, and putting away Christmas decorations now. The bitter cold and snow made it hard to part with the tree throughout the month, so I left it up extra long this year. But Lent has come, so it’s definitely time.
Several times I’ve made my own version of St. Brigid’s bread on Ash Wednesday, since the Irish saint’s feast is early February. My only change is that I used half whole wheat flour, and half oat flour (made by pouring oatmeal in the blender and pureeing for about two minutes) simply because I think it tastes good that way. I don’t think this is the recipe I used in the past, since it was a little drier than I remember, but it still made a very nice ‘fasting bread’ for this week.
Mourning the tragic events in Florida this week. Words fail each and every time this world faces such an activity of depravity. Miserere Domine.
Listening to this Gregorian hymn for the start of Lent. Translation here.
Ash Wednesday
As I grew up, my family made bread a central part of Ash Wednesday meals. As a child, the tradition was a reminder of the special meaning of the day, and my siblings and I anticipated the trip to the local bakery to select a few special kinds. We heatedly debated between honey wheat, cinnamon, and sourdough loaves, which would accompany potato soup, macaroni and cheese, or perhaps baked fish that evening. Years later, I fondly adopt this practice as my own.
Now the hunger felt after a small and simple meal of bread and butter recalls a fitting verse for the beginning of Lent:
“Man must not live on bread alone but on every word that comes from the mouth of God” Mt 4:4
“Bread” comes in many forms. The normal diet of my age group includes fare from major food groups such as movie star fashion and physique, Pinterest-style homes, and Facebook-perfect social life. Each promises to satisfy the cravings of the heart, but this is always false advertising. Like seconds of a favorite dessert, each extra helping leaves me feeling like I’ve indulged without anything to show for it.
Thus this season, where fasting and ‘giving up’ something occupying too much time in life gives an opportunity. It leaves an empty space-it’s easy to feel it when I find myself staring at the cupboard before realizing it’s a day of fasting, or stop myself about to impulsively scroll a favorite entertaining, but time wasting online site. This Lent, I’m praying that God will allow me to become conscious of that emptiness, the void I usually try to fill with empty calories instead of real nourishing spiritual food. The emptiness that only feels full when it’s filled with temporal things, but shows itself again when the brief pleasure of buying, or tasting, or any other experience is over. I’m praying that I will have the grace to simply give this vacancy to God, and allow Him to fill it as He will.
{p,h,f,r} February edition
{Pretty}
The spoils of a 50% off sale at a local nursery that now inhabit my windowsill. I had been hoping to expand my indoor garden for a while, so I responded eagerly to the billboard outside advertising the sale. While I planned on bringing home one or two, somehow I brought home four. Hey, discounts that deep only come around in January, right? Carpe diem!
I love the furry rhizomes that slip over the edge of the plant’s pot, and give the Rabbit Foot Fern a name almost as charming as the foliage. Maria has a different idea, however, and has dubbed this my “tarantula plant.”
{Happy}
I’m on the countdown to a trip out to visit my family’s new home. I’ll also get to meet my youngest sister, born about three months ago at the beginning of November, just three weeks after the family transplanted from Midwest to the hometown of the California gold rush.
My feathered friend Gamgee, who came all the way from Virginia on Delta airlines last October to be my friend. A true people parrot, there’s no shenanigan he won’t devise in order to get some attention from me. He’s just getting in some new brighter plumage on his face, and will be shedding his duller baby feathers over the next few months.
{Real}
This morning, I wanted to take off my coat and shout, ‘spring!!!’ That’s what 30 degrees with sun feels like after shivering through -5 degree mornings.
~ {pretty, happy, funny, real} ~ Capturing the context of contentment in everyday life ~
Antipodes
I am off to a terrible start with my New Year’s resolution to post at least four times a month. Life lately has not been overly busy, but it has been disorienting to say the least.
I rigidly controlled my routine through college, as the structure was the scaffolding preventing me from tumbling from the cliffs of textbooks into the whirlpool of homework. Now, I have to let go of that expectation to embrace a rotating work life.
Antipodes: the parts of the earth diametrically opposite, the exact opposite or contrary
Night shift, day shift. Routine, flexibility. Order, chaos. Hospitals never close, so much of my time is spent in the rocky transition period between polar schedules. Sometimes every gear in circadian rhythm protests loudly, preferring to run like clockwork.
I’ve never realized how much energy is saved by having routines. I’ve never had to debate whether I should wake up in the morning, but deciding when to start the day when “morning” is 7pm is exhausting. The first few months of this schedule I felt I walked on alternating sides of a fault line between nightlife and daytime, with seismic activity during each transition.
Now I’m beginning to have a set of routines around my new needs, and have begun getting up an extra half hour before starting out to enjoy the morning, making sure it includes coffee and Gregorian chant. And I know just how much of the day I can use ahead of an all night jaunt, and it often includes a trip to the gym to get some extra energy to start off.