treasures from the summer - pt. 1

I'd love to share a little from the heart if I may. Family dynamics as usual are pushing me to examine myself. I have never been one to keep a journal. I have a few solid months of writing through each pregnancy just because it was such a special time and I felt very motivated to remember it but each time it peters off and the full term is not represented. It's also very dreamy and silly seeming now, although I dare to hope it might be meaningful to the child it was written for at some point in their life. (If I ever give it to them!) Outside of those few times I have miserably failed to maintain a journal. Journaling is a practice I truly admire. It is like buried treasure, tucked away and known only to one until at some point it is dug up again and shared with all and the beauty takes your breath away. When I think of scripture in such a manner I marvel that I do not gobble it up so voraciously as I do my favorite autobiographies. However before I get on a rabbit trail I want to return to the point of this post. In the past I have treated this blog as a journal of sorts. A diary. At it's best I have created witty banter and a few heartfelt moments of wisdom.  But I have also aired frustrations with spouse and children, given anecdotal stories and snarky commentary on the everyday life of "moi", and got a little personal with the struggles we face. I love sharing the nitty gritty of family life because it is after all the most trans-formative thing a person can experience. I was discussing this issue with my sister the other day. Very badly did I want to lay some things out on the blog that are very personal to my family. It felt liberating to consider sharing our truth. Our story. MY STORY. There was however a gentle tugging on my conscience.  I took just a few days to pray a bit about it. This story was perfectly timed. http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2016/07/29/why-i-decided-to-stop-writing-about-my-children/?_r=0
and gave me excellent food for thought. Ultimately I too, should be able to find things to write about from within and without that does not require sacrificing any aspect of family privacy or priviledge. Showing honor to my husband and children means respecting that their story is theirs. Will Blake, Trinity. or Isaac look back and thank me? I don't know, after all I've already written quite openly about them so maybe it's too late for that. In light of this change of heart, which I do believe is the better part of wisdom for the time being, I am left with only myself to offer as the open book. Can I share a few gems with you that have spoken to me over the past couple of months? Early in the summer I began Gift from the Sea. A wonderful little book by Mrs. Lindbergh. Yes, that Lindbergh. She had this to offer and I was in desperate need of it. . . .
"For it is the spirit of woman that is going dry, not the mechanics that are wanting. Mechanically woman has gained in the past generation. Certainly in America, our lives are easier, freer, more open to opportunities, thanks among other things to the feminist battles. A room of ones own, the hour alone are now more possible in wider economic class than ever before. but these hard-won prizes are insufficient because we have not yet learned how to use them. The feminists did not look that far ahead; they laid down no rules for conduct. For them it was enough to demand the privileges. The exploration of their use, as in all pioneer movements, was left open to the woman who would follow. And woman today is still searching. We are aware of our hunger and needs but still ignorant of what will satisfy them. With out garnered free time, we are more apt to drain our creative springs than to refill them. With our pitchers, we attempt sometimes to water a field, not a garden. We throw ourselves indiscriminately into committees and causes. Not knowing how to feed the spirit, we try to muffle it's demands in distractions. Instead of stilling the center, the axis of the wheel, we add more centrifugal activities to our lives - which tend to throw us off balance. Mechanically we have gained, in the last generation but spiritually we have, I think, unwittingly lost. In other times, woman had in their lives more forces centered them whether or not they realized it; sources which nourished them whether or not they consciously went to these springs. Their vary seclusion in the home gave them time alone. Contemplative drawing together of the self. They had more creative tasks to perform. Nothing feed the  center so much as creative work, even humble kinds like cooking and sewing. Baking bread, weaving cloth, putting up preserves, reaching and singing to children, must have been far more nourishing than being the family chauffeur or shopping at supermarkets, or doing housework has diminished; much of the time-consuming drudgery - despite modern advertising to the contrary - remains. In housework, as in the the rest of life, the curtain of mechanization has come down between the mind and the hand.
 The church too, has always been a great centering force for women. Through what ages woman have had that quiet hour, free from interruption, to draw themselves together. No wonder woman has been the mainstay of the church. Here were the advantages of the room of her own, the time alone, the quiet, the peace, all rolled into one and sanctioned by the approval of both family and community. Here no one could intrude with a careless call, "Mother," "Wife," "Mistress," Here, finally and more deeply, woman was whole, not split into a thousand functions. She was able to give herself completely in that hour in worship, in prayer, in communion, and b completely accepted. And in that acceptance she was renewed; the springs were refilled.The church is still a great centering force for men and women, more needed than ever before - as its message as they used to be? Our daily life does not prepare us for contemplation. How can a single weekly hour of church, helpful as it may be, counteract the many daily hours of distraction that surround it? If we had our contemplative hour at home we might be readier to give ourselves at church and find ourselves more completely renewed. For the need for renewal is still there. The desire to be accepted whole, the desire to be seen as an individual, not as a collection of functions, the desire to give oneself completely and purposefully pursues us always, and has its part in pushing us into more and more distractions, illusory love affairs or the haven of hospitals and doctor's offices.
The answer is not in going back, in putting woman in the home and giving her the broom and the needle again. A number of mechanical aids save us time and energy. But neither is the answer in dissipating our time and energy in more purposeless occupations, more accumulations which supposedly simplify life but actually burden it, more possessions which we have the time to use or appreciate, more diversion to fill up the void. . .She will be shattered into a thousand pieces. On the contrary, she must consciously encourage those pursuits which oppose the centrifugal forces of today. Quite time alone, contemplation, prayer, music, a centering line of thought or reading, of study or work. It can be physical or intellectual or artistic, any creative life proceeding from oneself. It need not be an enormous project or a great work. But it should be something of one's own."

I pondered this passage for a few weeks. I resonate so much with it. We do have an "easier" life and yet we can't seem to pull ourselves together. There is a desperate need for solitude and it is near impossible to find it in the American culture. I feel it. I suffer from it.
Also the idea that church not be that one time we achieve the protected sacred space but rather the rest of the week I should practice what the church has long provided. Sanctuary. Even if only in my mind and heart. That axis of the wheel that must learn stillness while the rest of the moving parts spin around it.
That I should have something of my own. I really felt this as call to spend time in songwriting again. Perhaps as an act of devotion.
Also, I need to ditch facebook. . . . . . . ..... .