AventWord::Celebrate

Celebrate
Christmas is a feast of the senses! It is a celebration of our ability to see and know and taste and touch the power and glory and revelation of God. It is not just about a birth that happened long, long ago and far, far away. It is about the way in which God manifests himself to us in the person of Jesus as friend and food and hope and love. It is a celebration of our ability to grasp God and to sense him with all our being.

-Br. James Koester

However you celebrate The Glorious Holiday, may you be filled with joy and peace knowing the earth shook and history changed for ever on the day the Savior was born, Emmanuel. May love permeate each fiber of your being and may you have fun in the celebration.

When they saw the star, they rejoiced with exceedingly great joy. And when they had come into the house, they saw the young Child with Mary His mother, and fell down and worshiped Him.  Matthew 2:10

AdventWord::Hope

Hope

Converted anxiety is hope. Anxiety is dreadful expectation; hope is expectant desire. They are like cousins to each other. Pray for the conversion of your fretful anxiety into promising hope. If you are anxious just now, you are almost already hopeful.

– Br. Curtis Almquist

What could be added? We plant, anxious to see fruit (or in this case, flowers), fret for the bud to bloom and then, well, we breathe. It really was always going to be fine. I choose converted anxiety.

AdventWord::Light

We will be a more luminous epiphany of the love of Christ not only when we love, but when we recognize Christ present in the loving hearts of others, whatever their beliefs or understanding of God.

– Br. Mark Brown

Light your lantern but do not look for love. Trespass into the dark. Bring light where darkness reigns. You're the answer you're looking for.
- John Patrick Shanley

So, from the words of my childhood worship, the language of my heart: Let your light so shine before men that they may see your good works and glorify your Father which is in heaven. Matt 5:16 KJV

I love the thought then forming in my head from five or six as our Episcopalian pastor spoke those words. My light, coming from the very Light of the World, can shine. With joy and grace and peace, the light from within me isn't my creation, but a further expression of Christ in me. His response, his responsibility. My job is to allow the glow and not to extinguish it. Oh how simple it could be.

Giving thanks - November 15:: A Time To Remember

I'm so thankful for this book and it's telling of the Pilgrim's true story. I got to share parts of it with my daughter's advisement class twice in the last two weeks. (I'm thankful for that too.) Through the book I'm reminded that it's impossible to be grateful and resentful at the same time.

I'm choosing the grace of gratitude.

Peace.

 A webbie blog friend lost her mom a day or so ago.

All I could think about was how my mom wouldn't eat the baby bermuda onion in the Boeuf Bourgignon at Christmas. How for about 20 minutes she behaved more like the kids around the table than the kids - I became terribly grateful.

As Kerry talked about her mom over this last year and allowed us into their relationship my awareness of the unique love between mom and child shifted. We need our moms.

I know that moms are imperfect and beautiful.

I'm thrilled as I can be to be and to have one.

May we all learn to glean what's good in these relationships, and take notice of the gifts.

And accept the peace of love.

The Group Event & The Name is Mom

Ok then, it was a week ago that the Topanga, Westlake, West LA and LB moms and kids converged on the Broadway Deli. Traffic got to some of us and we ate in hilarious shifts. First Joan and L. Then my kiddos, Dad and me. In comes Jem with M and H and finally, Michelle and the boys arrived. We talked and walked and talked and walked along the Santa Monica Promenade until Joan made us stop for gelato.
I can't tell you how much I love these women. They are individual and familiar and beautiful and so magnificently magical. Joan with a bit of Ireland in her voice and lyrical laugh. Jemma with the outright guffaw,  and the zest to just keep going until we can't. And Michelle, who laughs with her (still short) men while she stares down life's dragons and offers them her happy flash of a smile.

I'll tell you more about these moms in a few days.

I'm inviting them and you to participate in a fun Blog Event for the month of May (or before, it's your pleasure) called:

The Name is Mom.

Share your stories of your walk in momhood. What do you love? What surprised you? Share the ups and the downs. Share a moment. Share many moments. Pose a question. Talk about your favorite mom. Your mom. Your grandma. Tell how a mom changed you or how being a mom changed you. We can likely fill a whole month with wonderful stories. Write once or write every day. It's up to you.

Mary has designed a beautiful button which I'll make available.
Email me if you're in and off we go!
We'd love to have you.
Happy Mom Musings to you.

Satisfaction Saturday ~ Seasons, Cycles, Renewal

This week has been filled to brim with lessons and underscoring of life's cycles, seasons and God's always-fulfilled promise of renewal.


This Redbud tree graces my backyard. Its called the Forest Pansy tree. We have two other Redbuds in the front yard, Western Redbuds. My friend, John Petach, a wonderful northern California artist, made a great argument for planting these about eight ago. They're slow growing and provide four seasons for we Californians who seem to have fewer. 

In spring the Redbud offers a showing of these profuse and beautiful, more-pink-than-red buds. The buds are followed by leaves. Green on the Western, deep red on the Forest Pansy. Both heartish shaped. These take us through summer when, the Western version adds magenta pods. Leaves and pods turn to brown in fall, and drop. Winter in both trees leave the leafless tree that speaks to the barren rest of winter, preparing, gestating to spring.

I love these trees and all the more as they progress through their cycle.


The pondering alongside, is the loss of a dear, dear, family matriarch, my Aunty Margie. The earthquake of my 7th year brought a baby sister, a departing father (and doggy) and new neighbors. The Foscos, Margie and Fred, moved in to the house next door and brought their three kids, Barbara, 16 and model beautiful, Nancy, 14 cute, darling, fun and the one I wanted to be just like when I grew up, and Freddy, 12, a lanky blond mystery called older boy.


Margie saw the effects of loss in our house and quickly enfolded Mom and we girls. We were granted side door access and spent our days running in and out of the Fosco house. We attended graduations, had the best baby-sitters in the world (Nancy did my hair and make-up, taught me how to eat bags of sunflower seeds and could read a Nancy Drew book in one night), ate bowls of Mostaccioli at every family gathering, watched TV, played cards and every Christmas Eve after going to church, went directly through the kitchen door to one of our best Christmas traditions, time with the Fosco family. We held conversations across our two facing kitchen windows and often just saw the beckoning arm -  come over. The family had big borders too. Auntie Margie's parents, her brother and sister and their families were all part of the celebration and Uncle Freddie's family would visit from Chicago. There was always a recognition that we were in the midst of comfort and joy. My sister and I received love and correction and laughed loads within this family. It was all our normal daily fare. Uncle Freddie would tease me about my love of those Bums - the Dodgers (it was his team too unless the Cubs were in town). My sister was teased about how she drove her VW into the driveway, stopping an inch before the front porch. On a dime. Margie allowed the escaping into her house in my teen years when being at home wasn't always my very first choice. We shared weddings and births and were connected in a simple, expected way, the way neighbors can be.


At 89, Auntie Margie passed on and we all gathered again to celebrate her going on to Glory. Freddie's son, Nick created a beautiful slide show of his "Gigi's" life. I absorbed every picture. I learned bits of the life before ours. I never knew she was born in Texas. What I knew and what I experienced all over again as we gathered and ate and talked is this: She was filled with a very happy love. She met the perfect man, Fred Fosco, and grew this family with joy and laughter, leaving all kinds of marks in all kinds of lives. 


The renewal here, is in the gathering. In the connected lives, who love each other because she, when her beloved and both of her siblings were gone, when loads of grandchildren and great-grandchildren were born, just kept enfolding every one as if they were maternally hers. 


In this loss, I see the cycle. There will be, I suppose, some dormant time, but I see the promise of this spring too. Barbara and Nancy are grandmas now. As I sat with and watched two of their beautiful daughters loving their babies, I saw Margie's love all over. 


There is so much satisfaction, and I am blessed, in the confidence of Love and Renewal. 
I love you Fosco family. Good bye Auntie Margie, may you rejoice in the arms of the others who love you too.

I Love:: 20 - Quiet

My current situation has me in the quiet spot.

This doesn't mean it's quiet around me.

But I am quiet. Can't really do too much busy-ness.

So here I am.

An interesting space.

I Love:: Ten ~ The early morning.

Before most of the people I love are up. I am. It has been like this for most of my life. Early. Alone. The early bird. My dad was like this too. Earlier even than I. Early to rise. In the peaceful, stillness of morning. To me an enticing time. Wondering about the day. My ritual varies. Quiet. Coffee. A step into the yard. Time with God. A fire. Then, as the house opens to the day, my son will sometimes join me. Not my girlie. The dog tries. But he just moves from one bed to his living room spot and drifts back to sleep. My husband, like many of my other favorite people are more apt to enjoy late night but that is their story. 

Mine is about the joy of dawn and before.

I Love:: Nine ~ Daydreaming

Oh yes. It began way back then. As seen in the living room at Gommie and Gramp's. The blank stare.

I'll guess it was my birthday - seeing that I'm wearing the fancy corduroy jumpsuit and my first bracelet. Mom's tan, so I likely have the month right. But none of this matters, because I'm daydreaming. Off in the blank stare space, in some childhood meditation. The peaceful place. Can you hear my mom? Wouldn't she love my attention? Soon she'll check to see if I'm breathing. Or not, because she knows me and she knows I'm -- daydreaming. Transfixed on nothing.
It's good. Especially now, when I'm thinking about something particularly think worthy. One eye drifts out of alignment and the focus just doesn't require vision. It's a dream. I consider and I don't, but in that quiet place of non-topical musing, whilst in the fog, peace and calm overcome.
And sometimes, I'm just thinking about shoes.