Those First Few Notes

"And what does January hold? Clean account books, bare diaries. Three hundred and sixty five new days neatly parcled into weeks, months, seasons. A chunk of time, of life. . . those first few notes like an orchestra tuning up before the play begins."

~ Phyllis Nicholson, Country Bouquet

Happy New Year, my friends! I pray that these first few days have been blessed and bright!

My end of the year, new year is not starting out exactly as I had planned. You may recall that back in April and May of last year I pinched my sciactic nerve and it laid me out for about six weeks, three of those on the couch unable to do much of anything.  It had taken months of physical therapy and a few visits to the chiropractor to get me to a better place and it had only been in recent weeks that I was able to get around without pain.

Perhaps because of that I was overly confident, but honestly, all I did was bend down to get a load of laundry out of the dryer when I felt that familiar pull and immediately and hobbled straight to the couch. Of course this was on Friday, the last day before the holiday weekend! But thankfully I was able to get a call into my primary care doctor who sent in a prescription for pain meds to get me through the weekend. With those and my husband generously giving up his recliner as it is the only place I can sit comfortably, I made it through.  Yesterday I actually got to see the doctor, who gave me a steroid shot and a refill on the pain meds.  I can already feel some improvement, but likely will be continue to take it easy for the rest of the week.

My word for the year is T R U S T (if you see that familiar blanket in the background of my pictures in the near future, you'll know I haven't left my reclining post.)

I prayed about my word back in October, and after coming across several verses that spoke of the wonder of God and seeing that same word in a few other random places, I felt certain that wonder was my word and I was excited for it!

Then my daughter sent me a link to Dayspring, where through answering a series of questions they generate a word of the year for you. So just for giggles I decided to play along and the word I received was T R U S T.

As soon as I read it I knew immediately that my greater need for 2024 was trust, and if I'm being honest, I wasn't all that happy about it. T R U S T was my word once before, back in 2016, and boy was that a year I had to learn to trust.  But apprently there is a deeper work the Lord wants to do and my spirit resonantes with this, even though my flesh is still mourning that year of wonder I was so looking forward to!

I had so many plans for celebrating the New Year and for this week, but I'm learning to be content with the process. I bought these cute little head bands at Hobby Lobby right before Christmas and had hoped to take a cute family picture in front of the tree on New Years Eve. I had white balloons I had planned to fill with red, green and silver confetti and red and green streamers tied to the ends. I did manage to feel well enough to sport the green head band and my daughter chose the silver. We wore them New Year's Eve, had some chips and dip (a far cry from the menu I had planned) and watched the ball drop.  My daughter blessed us on New Year's Day by making black eyed peas from scratch. She used my recipe, and they turned out so good! So thankfully we got a serving of good luck for the New Year,  but the pork roast and cabbage are still waiting. In all of this, I am T R U S T I N G that things will improve, and on the bright side, as far as the head bands, balloons, and confetti, lets just say I'm way ahead of the game and already set for New Year's Eve 2025! 

As I've had a lot of time on my hands I've been doing a lot of reading. My first two books for 2024 are Placemaker by Christie Purifoy (AFFILIATE LINK), which I am enjoying so much! And I'm also reading In Search fo Guidance by Dallas Willard, but thankfully I was able to find it on the Interner Archives, because the prices they are asking are outrageous! I think I'll start keeping an eye out at the thrift stores!

So that's the update on my life! How about you? Is your new year off to a good start, are you reading or have you read any good books lately? I've got a longing to read the complete Betsy Tacy series again this year. Have you ever read them, and if you haven't (or even if you have), would you be interested in a read along here at the blog?  Leave a comment and let me know!

And now I'm, well not off, just on the next thing I am able to do from the comfort of this chair!

Have a blessed day, my friends!

- Kim

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Happy New Year!

 

Wishing you and yours a blessed and happy New Year!

Small Things - The Gratitude Edition

 "Life is not, for most of us, a pageant of splendor, but is made up of many small things, rather like an old fashioned piecework quilt. No two people have the same, but we all have our own, whether it be listening to Beethoven's fifth with a beloved friend, or seeing a neighbor at the back door with a basket of white dahlias. Or after a long, hard day, having the family say, "That was a good supper."

- GLADYS TABER

With Thanksgiving just around the corner, I thought it might be good to focus on gratitude and thankfulness in preparation for this lovely idea.  Here are some ideas to cultivate a spirit of gratitude

In no particular order, here are six small things that inspired me this week;

1. Light A Candle, from gratefulness.org, is a beautiful online activity that encourages thoughtfulness and thankfulness. 

2. Printable Thankful Dice - roll the dice and share what you're thankful for!

3. Gratitude Stones - I love this idea! You could set them out in a pretty basket along with a few chalk pens and allow people to reflect and add to the basket of gratefulness throughout the day!

4. Gratitude ABC's Printable - This would be great for the littles in your life, and for the not so littles, too!

5. Gratitude Scavenger Hunt - This would be a fun family activity after everyone has enjoyed the big meal.

6. Free printable Gratitude Journal!

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The Present Moment Is Eternity: The Liturgical Year

Beginning November 6 and on each subsequent Monday in November, I will be posting a weekly series of  on Advent, which begins on Sunday, December 3. 

Following is a post I have shared several times before, but for those who are not familiar with Advent which is the first day of the Liturgical Year, or as I refer to it, the Year of the Lord, I find it helpful. 

Many years ago I stumbled upon a book in the public library, Holidays and Holy Nights by Christopher Hill, who first introduced me, a wholly Protestant girl, to The Liturgical Year, or as I prefer to call it, The Year of the Lord. Though I was not raised Catholic, in reading this book I found a beauty and rhythm in The Liturgical Year that was appealing, even comforting. Recently, as I’ve begun working my way through the spiritual practices, I was reminded again of this lovely book and the in particular, the following passage. In my efforts to slow the pace of life, these words are a balm for my hurried soul, and what started me on my journey to a slower, sacred, and more meaningful way of living. 

"The whole point of the Year of the Lord is that there is more than one way to experience time. The understanding of time that most people live with is only one way to experience it. We could call it the worldly or profane understanding of time. It is an image of time as a straight horizontal line with a middle point, where we stand, called The Present. This line is always moving past us like a conveyor belt. On the left is the Past, where present moments constantly flow and immediately cease to exist. On the right is The Future, which is always moving toward the Present, but never actually arrives. 

This model is almost completely abstract. In other words, we never actually experience any of it. The present is gone before we are aware of it, and the past and future lie outside our grasp. Anxiety is built into it. Each human possesses only a limited quantity of this kind of time, and it is constantly passing us by, never to return. 

This view of time is not necessarily bad. It can be a useful tool. All human progress, in some sense, depends on it. But its not the whole or most important part of the picture. It is not the way we experience time in the deepest parts of ourselves, on the level of our hearts, and it is not the way God experiences time. Above and below this abstract, one-dimensional timeline, is well, reality. This is the world we actually experience, in which we “live and move and have our being”, as Paul said. The word “I Am” as God introduced himself to Moses. The present moment is eternity. 

For most of human history, people experienced time very different. The pattern was not a line, but a circle or cycle. The cycles of sun, moon and stars; of the seasons of the life, death and birth of plants, animals and human beings. Everything went away, but then in some way everything always came back. We can be sure that people living with this image of time still got anxious about things, but anxiety wasn’t built into the system itself. 

The image of the cycle contains a lot of truth. It expands the one-dimensional timeline into a two-dimensional circle and so takes in a lot more of reality. it is less abstract than the line, truer to experience and incorporates the fundamental patterns of creation. Years, seasons, months, weeks, days and hours all come from this model of time. Birth, life, death and rebirth are all in it. What it doesn’t include is the possibility for growth. In this cycle, the more things change, the more they stay the same. 

The Year of the Lord, the Christian understanding of time, is a variation on the cycle. The timeline, as we’ve said, is a one-dimensional model. The circle is two dimensional. The Year of the Lord is three-dimensional. It is modeled on the spiral, a circle that grows outward and upward. It grows in a vertical direction as well as horizontally, combining the straight line of the past, present and future with the height and depth of eternity. Like a spiraling tornado, it sucks one-dimensional time up into three dimensional reality. It uses time to break us out of time. It hallows and sacralizes time and transforms it into eternity. Year, season month, week, day and hour all concentric circles that lead deeper and deeper into the center; the present moment, where we live in the presence of God. The present is the Presence. And the present time ripples outward again, connecting us with all time and all the cosmos."

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