personal

3 things about me

1. I am afraid of heights. It doesn’t keep me from climbing everything, though. I once had a panic attack on the top of the Pont du Gard in France. I was walking along the very top, looked down, and froze. My companions, freaked out that Les Mistral, a wacky unexpected wind would come along and blow us off, made a single file, put me in the middle, and hauled me off. Good friends.

2. I don’t like Lord of the Rings. Not even a little. I don’t even feel badly about it.

3. Sometimes I put a song on repeat and play it a gazillion times.

funny what a picture makes me think

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I have no words to put here these days, a pretty lousy condition for a blogger, so I thought I’d share a picture that I took in Kansas City. It’s the World War I Memorial, a pretty imposing structure. I took a walk there one afternoon, enjoying the crisp fall weather and the sunny day coming to an end. I was carrying my camera in the pocket of my hoodie and while I tried to keep the lens clean, it was obviously full of lint or fine dust from the pocket and it made all kinds of flares and messes in the shot.

Here’s the thing, though. I like it. It might have been a nice clean shot, something that reminded me of the monolith shot in 2001: A Space Odyssey. Instead, I got this. I don’t know what this is, but I like it. Silhouette not quite black. Light bursting through. Dirt obscuring the brilliance of the scene.

It makes me think of life. Not always a clean sharp picture. Not always the shot you’d like to frame. And yet, it holds a unique and singular beauty.

Happy New Year!

opaque watercolor over graphite on gray wove paper
by James Tissot (1836–1902)

I’m not a fan of new year’s resolutions. I’ve ranted about that in previous new year’s posts (when I’ve remembered to post on the first of the year). Mostly, I just feel like I set myself up for a list of things I wish I could get right, but have little motivation to follow through with for some measure of success.

That doesn’t mean I don’t have goals or dreams or anything like that, it’s just that I’d rather not enumerate them here at the beginning of the year. I mean, I have the same goals I had on December 27th, so talking about it today won’t make them magically happen. Staying on task will make them happen.

Instead, I jumped over to Jennifer Fulwiler’s blog where she has a neat Saint generator. You click on the link and voilà, there’s a saint that pops up randomly for you. I thought it’d be a nice challenge for 2013 to read more about whatever saint popped up for me.

It’s not a magical thing, for heaven’s sake … just a very clever (and easy, I might add) way to get to know the saints.

I went over there today, prayed a little that I might see something in this saint that will make me a better person…you know, a bettter Christian, and then I hit the button.

Bam! I got St. Luke.

My initial response was…whaaat? Not in disappointment, it was just a little bit of a double take. I thought I knew St. Luke. This will be a nice year to get to know him better.

las mañanitas

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a little lame with the translation, but you get the picture 🙂

These are the songs that King David sang.
Today because it is the day of your saint, we sing them to you.

Wake up my dear, wake up, see that the day has dawned
the birds sing, the moon has set.

How lovely is the morning in which I come to greet you
we all come with joy and pleasure to congratulate you.

The day you were born all the flowers bloomed
and in the baptismal font sang the nightingales.

The dawn has come, the light of the day is given to us.
Get up with the morning and see that it has dawned.

a random rose in winter

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I have this rose bush with a mind of its own. It has survived abandonment, tramplings, storms, and most recently, the window guys who just pushed it aside and did terrible things to it with their scaffolding.

It’s taken a real licking, and keeps on ticking. Long after the other roses go dormant for the winter, this one makes it a point to give me one more bloom at an unexpected moment. You can see the deadheads in the picture — I gave up pruning it a while back, but there you have it, one more beautiful flower.

I always think it’s one last little nod from God, a little kiss, if you will, that lets me know things are going to get a little dark and bleak in winter, but look at what you have to look forward to in the spring.

I’ll take my hope where I can find it — it wasn’t a coincidence that we sang this in Mass today.

To you, O Lord, I lift up my soul,

My God, in you I trust.

psalm 25

the next day

I poured myself a glass of last night’s leftover wine and admired my rose garden, still blooming this far into fall.

It’s dusk. There’s still a little bit of light out, but it’s a heavy sort, like maybe rain is on the horizon. Still, it has a certain beauty, a feeling of change that’s in the air and I can’t quite figure out if it’s the weather or me.

I finally decide it’s me, and suddenly the little spotlight on the Blessed Virgin that sits in a corner of my patio turns on. A little beacon in my garden, and tonight, a little more, as I fancy the Blessed Mother nodding and winking at me from her little perch in the monkey grass.

I can’t help smiling. She knows my heart and the gazillion thoughts that were just swirling around my head, replaced now with a kind of happy calm settling the swirl. I nod back, thanking her for the little visit.

It’s been a wonderful Thanksgiving, quiet and uneventful, a contrast to other years, and I’ve appreciated every moment of it for the gift of the present, and our presence. Oddly for me, I’ve reveled in the mundane tasks of setting tables and doing dishes.  No doubt the leftovers tonight, alone with my husband, will taste as rich.