Author: Maria Johnson

a different kind of beautiful

On Friday I went on a little adventure to a local state park, Stone Mountain, and took a hike. I spent some time by myself, sat in the shade, thought, prayed a little, and wrote a little. This is the companion piece to Friday’s post:


Besides the beautiful and life-affirming daisies that I encountered on my walk, there were a number of very beautiful damaged trees — trees that had evidently been hit by lightning strikes, or perhaps other things within the environment. Bugs, soil erosion, who knows, had affected them. Some of the trees, in clusters, had to “learn” to grow around the obstacles and get a stronghold in whatever way was possible.

More than the daisies, my eyes were drawn to these trees. They stood out, and the casual passersby might think they were eyesores, and even wonder why the park didn’t remove them in order to restore the vista to a postcard scene.

I am thankful for their testimony. It’s easy to be green and lush when all the conditions are perfect — but what is that perfection? Are not all the trees in the cluster exposed to the same conditions? Yet one gets singled out for the lightning strike, and that changes everything.

It damages the tree, certainly, but then something happens — the tree adapts. And in adapting it becomes something else. Because of its strength it survives and changes — perhaps subtly, perhaps more dramatically. The result, though, is usually the same. The tree stands out — its scars are beautiful because they are present. It stands out — not because it is an eyesore but because it has a character that separates it from the sameness of the other trees. Each scar, each broken branch, each exposed root has character, and depth, and a history of suffering … and strength. And still, in spite of its crooked form, it stands among the others.

To me, those are the most beautiful trees of all.

Look, Mom! I’m not here today…

I’m playing in Dulcinea’s sandbox today. I’m talking about the night that Linda and I made some really ugly rosaries and burned our fingers with nylon twine. We were new to the whole process and made a lot of mistakes, but it had a happy ending. I promise!

I have a rosary that my bestest ever BFF, Linda, made for me many years ago. One evening we found ourselves sitting at my kitchen table drinking wine and making all-twine rosaries for Rosary Army. We were just learning how to make these rosaries, and to be honest, they were turning out … well … not very pretty. [read the rest here]

The delightfully charming Sarah Reinhard has once again opened up her very merry and very Mary blog, Just Another Day of Catholic Pondering, to guest posts, and guess what? I sent her football-shaped little Oreos to bribe her for a slot.

She’s so easy that way.

Of course, it might have been that I held her cowboy hat hostage for a month, but she’s the one that left it behind (I just want to set that record straight, especially now that my post has gone live).

So run, don’t walk on over there and see what else is cookin’ at her blog.

“Don’t you think daisies are the friendliest flower?”

Today I did something a little out of the ordinary for a Friday morning — I went to Stone Mountain and took a leisurely hike up the mountain trail.

Leisurely is code for I had to stop a couple of times because it was pretty steep at the end and I kinda appreciate staying alive.

Anyway, thoroughly delightful. I wandered around and took pictures while catching my breath and continuing up up up.

As far as hikes go, it’s pretty short … about a mile. But the terrain is uneven, and rocky, and there are places where it’s sandy and slippery, and others where water is running down, so for a middle-aged out of shape broad, that mile was a hike. Of course, it’s a lot faster coming down.

The morning was fairly cool and there was quite a breeze blowing, especially at the top.  In fact, I couldn’t have asked for a lovelier day for my little excursion. It gave me a lot of time to think, when I was inclined to think, but mostly, I let my mind go blank and just be. Kind of nice not to think about anything at all.

Of course, that just usually leads to more thinking, and I noticed a couple of things.  I went with the intent of photographing the Stone Mountain Daisies, which are still blooming even though it’s a little late already. As it happens, there were plenty, overgrown, even, but my favorites are the ones that just kind of sprout out of nowhere.

As I would crouch down to get close for a couple of the shots, I realized that they were facing the morning sun, straining, almost yearning for the light. I looked carefully at the next batch, and sure enough, they were facing the sun. It’s hard not to see the obvious there, right? We can learn much from the natural world, and those pretty little daisies, simple, sweet, and so cheerful and carefree (indulge my personification) taught me a lovely little lesson.

“Learn from the way the wild flowers grow.  They do not work or spin.  But I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendor was clothed like one of them.”(Matthew 6:28-29)

The pretty little daisies were showing me the way — to look up, brightly, into the Son.

snapshots of my day…

* enjoyed my morning cup of coffee instead of the usual guzzling

* an amusing distraction courtesy of Silly Songs with Larry and a curious craving for cucumber salad

* a faithful prayer of thanksgiving for my dear dear friend and his battle with cancer … and a prayer for physical relief and creative focus for another

* the pretty lavender and eggplant lining in my black suit jacket makes me feel feminine on the inside and corporate on the outside — I like my secrets

* the fact that women reading this understand “eggplant”

* it’s cool enough for a sweater — mine is teal

* God’s house is big — where a door closes there’s usually another door open — I don’t need to go crawling through windows

* the oak outside my office window is still green and looks majestic against the bright blue sky

* in the continuing game of finding random Cubans everywhere, met a new student recently arrived from Havana

* a shot and a beer, albeit virtual, hit the spot when I found it around happy hour

* got home to a special delivery pizza, a glass (or two) of wine, and a quiet conversation on the porch. aaah.

It’s Banned Books Week! read something scandalous!

So I totally took this list from this American Library Association site. I’ve read the ones that are bold. I have to wonder what had people’s panties in a wad … but yeah, some of them had some themes, ya know?

*1. The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald
*2. The Catcher in the Rye, by J.D. Salinger
*3. The Grapes of Wrath, by John Steinbeck
*4. To Kill a Mockingbird, by Harper Lee
*5. The Color Purple, by Alice Walker
*6. Ulysses, by James Joyce
*7. Beloved, by Toni Morrison
*8. The Lord of the Flies, by William Golding
*9. 1984, by George Orwell
*10. The Sound and the Fury, by William Faulkner
*11. Lolita, by Vladmir Nabokov
*12. Of Mice and Men, by John Steinbeck
*13. Charlotte’s Web, by E.B. White
*14. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, by James Joyce
*15. Catch-22, by Joseph Heller
*16. Brave New World, by Aldous Huxley
*17. Animal Farm, by George Orwell
*18. The Sun Also Rises, by Ernest Hemingway
*19. As I Lay Dying, by William Faulkner
*20. A Farewell to Arms, by Ernest Hemingway
*21. Heart of Darkness, by Joseph Conrad
*22. Winnie-the-Pooh, by A.A. Milne
*23. Their Eyes Were Watching God, by Zora Neale Hurston
*24. Invisible Man, by Ralph Ellison
*25. Song of Solomon, by Toni Morrison
*26. Gone with the Wind, by Margaret Mitchell
*27. Native Son, by Richard Wright
*28. One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, by Ken Kesey
*29. Slaughterhouse-Five, by Kurt Vonnegut
*30. For Whom the Bell Tolls, by Ernest Hemingway
31. On the Road, by Jack Kerouac
*32. The Old Man and the Sea, by Ernest Hemingway
*33. The Call of the Wild, by Jack London
*34. To the Lighthouse, by Virginia Woolf
35. Portrait of a Lady, by Henry James
*36. Go Tell it on the Mountain, by James Baldwin
*37. The World According to Garp, by John Irving
*38. All the King’s Men, by Robert Penn Warren
39. A Room with a View, by E.M. Forster
*40. The Lord of the Rings, by J.R.R. Tolkien
41. Schindler’s List, by Thomas Keneally
*42. The Age of Innocence, by Edith Wharton
*43. The Fountainhead, by Ayn Rand
44. Finnegans Wake, by James Joyce
*45. The Jungle, by Upton Sinclair
46. Mrs. Dalloway, by Virginia Woolf
47. The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, by L. Frank Baum
*48. Lady Chatterley’s Lover, by D.H. Lawrence
*49. A Clockwork Orange, by Anthony Burgess
*50. The Awakening, by Kate Chopin
51. My Antonia, by Willa Cather
52. Howards End, by E.M. Forster
*53. In Cold Blood, by Truman Capote
54. Franny and Zooey, by J.D. Salinger
55. The Satanic Verses, by Salman Rushdie
56. Jazz, by Toni Morrison
*57. Sophie’s Choice, by William Styron
58. Absalom, Absalom!, by William Faulkner
59. A Passage to India, by E.M. Forster
60. Ethan Frome, by Edith Wharton
*61. A Good Man Is Hard to Find, by Flannery O’Connor
62. Tender Is the Night, by F. Scott Fitzgerald
63. Orlando, by Virginia Woolf
*64. Sons and Lovers, by D.H. Lawrence
*65. Bonfire of the Vanities, by Tom Wolfe
*66. Cat’s Cradle, by Kurt Vonnegut
*67. A Separate Peace, by John Knowles
68. Light in August, by William Faulkner
69. The Wings of the Dove, by Henry James
*70. Things Fall Apart, by Chinua Achebe
71. Rebecca, by Daphne du Maurier
*72. A Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, by Douglas Adams
73. Naked Lunch, by William S. Burroughs
*74. Brideshead Revisited, by Evelyn Waugh
75. Women in Love, by D.H. Lawrence
76. Look Homeward, Angel, by Thomas Wolfe
*77. In Our Time, by Ernest Hemingway
78. The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas, by Gertrude Stein
79. The Maltese Falcon, by Dashiell Hammett
*80. The Naked and the Dead, by Norman Mailer
81. Wide Sargasso Sea, by Jean Rhys
82. White Noise, by Don DeLillo
83. O Pioneers!, by Willa Cather
*84. Tropic of Cancer, by Henry Miller
*85. The War of the Worlds, by H.G. Wells
*86. Lord Jim, by Joseph Conrad
*87. The Bostonians, by Henry James
*88. An American Tragedy, by Theodore Dreiser
*89. Death Comes for the Archbishop, by Willa Cather
*90. The Wind in the Willows, by Kenneth Grahame
*91. This Side of Paradise, by F. Scott Fitzgerald
*92. Atlas Shrugged, by Ayn Rand
93. The French Lieutenant’s Woman, by John Fowles
*94. Babbitt, by Sinclair Lewis
95. Kim, by Rudyard Kipling
96. The Beautiful and the Damned, by F. Scott Fitzgerald
*97. Rabbit, Run, by John Updike
98. Where Angels Fear to Tread, by E.M. Forster
99. Main Street, by Sinclair Lewis
100. Midnight’s Children, by Salman Rushdie

Anyway, celebrate our freedom of expression and the importance of reading — for the right reasons. Read a book. and then, do something even crazier — talk about it with someone.

I’m gonna do that tonight. In fact, maybe I’ll read something really far-reaching and thought-provoking. Like this little book.

stop the world…I cooked

And by that, I mean I cooked real food. As in, a real menu.

As in: Beef Wellington.

Yes, I know it’s amazing. Believe me, no one is as amazed as me. Well, maybe John, who was rather pleased, and that, my friends, was the whole point.

After almost two weeks of phoning it in as a less than mediocre homemaker, I pulled out the pearls and <gasp> Martha Stewart (I will deny this tomorrow), and proceeded to have a rather lovely afternoon in the kitchen being creative in all kinds of new ways.

I could do this again.

In a very long time. That bottle of  Clos du Bois from earlier this week was for me.

I knew I’d find it if I looked hard enough

Whoa, it’s been a heck of a week. The end of a term is always marked by chaos, long days and longer nights, and a certain level of anxiety and distraction that ends, rather suddenly, with the click of a mouse and a command: enter.

That’s a funny word: enter. In this case, it doesn’t mean enter at all. Well, it does mean “enter the information into whatever it is that goes on in the computer’s brain”, but for us in the real world, to end something — put it away — is not entering at all, but more of an exit.

Believe me when I say I have wanted to exit all week. Exit my office. Exit work. Exit this hard life.

Stop. Don’t read that last exit the wrong way. I was just thinking about heaven … and heavenly it must be to be surrounded by God, all the time.  Enveloped by His grace, all the time. And then I thought to myself, Self, what are you talking about? You already have that. Look.

And I did. Here is what I found:

  • Life isn’t a game show, so I have the “phone a friend” option all the time.

and

  • God is present in my life all the time, even if I’m the one with the vision problem.

Just when I thought all that profoundness was enough, I also found laughter in unexpected places.  I don’t need flashing lights and a game show buzzer to know that’s a winner. All the time.

contemplating…

Ce qui embellit le désert, dit le petit prince, c’est qu’il cache un puits quelque part…

“What makes the desert beautiful,” said the little prince, “is that somewhere it hides a well…”