Relinquishment and Renewal

These are little gold cardboard stars that I bought for a birthday or something. I don't remember what. But a couple of years ago I thought they would be fun as Christmas decorations, and I hung them in a doorway with pieces of ribbon, so that to enter the dining room you passed under and through a curtain of stars. I thought it was lovely, but someone taller found it less than lovely and even somewhat annoying.

So last year, determined to keep the stars around, I realized there were exactly enough to go on every other pane of the living room window, giving us the look and feel of their golden starry presence without hitting anyone in the nose or messing up hair. So there they went again this year.

I love looking out and up at the blue sky, with giant trees in the background and stars in the foreground. There's just something joyful and of course meaningful about having them in that in-between position, so that stars become part of what you are looking through.

I'm writing this on New Year's Eve, not sure if I'll finish it tonight or tomorrow, but thinking back on 2017 and what has transpired. It kind of blows my mind that I've written only eight blog posts this year, which I see is second only to 2015, with only six posts. I thought that once I finished that degree, I would write more.

Obviously, that's not what happened. As I wrote a couple of posts ago, finding a new rhythm has been hard.

A few weeks ago I ran into writer friend Corey Latta at the bookstore. When he asked how I was doing, for whatever reason I skipped "fine" and said, "Honestly, I'm having a harder time than I thought I would since finishing that thesis and graduating. I thought I would have a lot of energy and be doing new things, but I'm having a hard time getting anything going." To my great relief he responded, "Oh, that is so normal. When did you graduate?" "Over six months ago! Not sure that's normal!" "Yes, that's normal. For so long you had that one thing that took all your time and focus, and it just takes a while to regain your energy and be able to focus on new things. It's normal for everyone post-doc."

I felt as if it had been a divine appointment, that running into him that day!

Anyway, in doing my David Allen-inspired retrospective this evening, I thought a lot about what word best sums up my 2017 experience. "Relinquishment" soon came to mind, and it hasn't yet been replaced by anything else, so for now I'm sticking with it.

It may seem like an odd word. Graduating is what most people would call an accomplishment, not a relinquishment. And of course I have a sense of great joy and satisfaction about finishing and defending that thesis and graduating. But it came only because of learning to relinquish the writing. To stop wanting to do more, or to perfect what was there. To come to a place of saying, "It's enough, and it's good enough, and I will let it go."

And then on our summer trip to Europe our bags were stolen, including my laptop, which meant I lost  4-5 years of photos, among other things. I'll probably write again about that, but for now I'll just say that I've had to surrender that, let it go. There's nothing I can do about it. Of course I didn't voluntarily give those photos up, but I've had to do the inner work of letting go of that.

And here at the end of the year, while of course I can't hold on to the year any more than anyone can, I'm doing the inner work of relinquishing the expectations I'd had for what I'd accomplish in the time since graduating. For months I had a sign up that said, "Write as you can, not as you can't." That advice first came to me in the form of "pray as you can, not as you can't." Now I've put a little sticky note over the first word, so I look up from time to time and see, "Live as you can, not as you can't."

Yesterday I heard an interview between Ken Myers and Michael Hanby. In discussing philosophical issues related to problems of technology, they made their way to a conversation found in C.S. Lewis's The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, where the children have encountered an Old Man who, they learn, is actually a retired star.

Of course they are astounded, this seems so strange.

"In our world," said Eustace, "a star is a huge ball of flaming gas."

Ramandu, the star, responds, "Even in your world, my son, that is not what a star is, but only what it is made of."

And a bit later, "Aren't you a star any longer?" asked Lucy.

"I am a star at rest, my daughter," answered Ramandu. "When I set for the last time, decrepit and old beyond all that you can reckon, I was carried to this island. I am not so old now as I was then. Every morning a bird brings me a fire-berry from the valleys in the Sun, and each fire-berry takes away a little of my age. And when I have become as young as the child that was born yesterday, then I shall take my rising again (for we are at earth's eastern rim) and once more tread the great dance."

I'm no star, but this reading was so encouraging to me. I've had a full five months of rest since graduating and returning from a trip to Europe. I've had fire-berries brought to me in the form of visits with friends, long walks, more musical performances than I'd been able to take in over the past few years, even singing again with the Memphis Chamber Choir. My energy is being renewed. I trust my focus will return.

And also, when we think about the year we've just lived and all the things we're aware of having done, that is not what a year is, but only what it is made of. I have a feeling that in the bigger picture, it will turn out to have been much more than we can possibly realize.

Here's to 2018. Happy New Year!

It's Not Over Till It's Over (But It's Almost Over)

Today I took the 25% cotton paper and my 200-plus pages of thesis on a flash-drive to the FedEx Office shop, trusting that tomorrow I will receive back from them four printed copies.

It has been quite a saga.

At some point a few months ago, I came across a little book on spiritual growth, written originally in the 1400's, I think. It had a good section on sloth, with the admonition to "begin, bravely and quietly with one" small task, rather than letting yourself be overcome with the sense of exhaustion and discouragment that comes when you think too much on how big the task seems. Those words helped me get through that final chapter that I struggled with so much.

At one point, I bought myself a special mug, sort of as a mascot to encourage me to keep going, keep going. The mug says someting about changing the world, which sounds grandiose, but somehow it helped me just as a reminder that it really is through the little things each of us does that the world is changed. And I have to believe that this thesis will do something, somewhere, at some point, to change someone's world.

And of course, I had to remind myself repeatedly to simplify. Sometimes that meant redoing a sentence so it wasn't so long and complex. At one point it meant just not writing an entire chapter I had hoped to include.

My counseling office became a second home for quite a lot of weekends. It's going to look strange when I finally get all the stacks of books and papers off the shelves.

My carrel at the library has been a less-frequented hangout, but an important one when I needed books, or when the heating and air conditioning at my office was too extreme.

Several months back, while working on this, I decided to do an art therapy online course. One of the assignments involved making a picture, and then (gasp! she hadn't told us this on the front end) cutting out parts of that picture and using them to create a new picture. It nearly killed me to cut up the first picture that I had so lovingly done. But I did it, and this is what I came up with next.

And that turned out to be a wonderful help as I found myself more able to make changes, cutting and rewriting, in that final chapter that took so much work. I had gotten to a point of feeling really stuck with it, and it was the art that helped me get un-stuck and moving forward again.

And now, even though I can hardly believe it, I have done all I can do. It is at the printer's, and I am simply waiting (and hoping nothing goes wrong with this part of the process!)

It has been so much a part of my life for so long now, it is strange to think of not having to think of it anymore. And of being able to focus on other parts of life. I guess I will "begin, bravely and quietly, with one"....as I just did in writing on my blog, something that's been neglected for several years.

Maybe tomorrow I'll actually get the impatiens planted.....

Tudor Revival, of Sorts

Yes, that below is a frame of our kitchen window. No, it is not chocolate fudge smeared around the edges. It is something less tasty but much more exciting.

After six-plus years of living here with the idea of giving it a different look, we are--tah-dah!--doing it!

Well, we are paying someone else to do it, to be clear about that. They do the hard work. We get to enjoy the finished product. My beloved does other hard kinds of work to pay them for doing this hard work. I guess my main role is having the idea in the first place, looking at pictures and dreaming for six years to keep the idea alive, or at least resurrectable--and finally choosing colors and consulting with friends to get their opinions before we dove in with final decisions.

Of course it won't look any different on the inside, so I'm kind of enjoying this stage of seeing a little bit of it, at least, through the windows.

Here is that same kitchen window from the outside.

A living room window in progress.

The dining room window coming along.

And for comparision, my office window with the original trim color--which, though I realize someone must have liked at some point, I always have felt was somewhat anemic and didn't do much for the lovely brick colors.

I can hardly wait now to see it all completed. From a young age I fell in love with Tudor style architecture (and Tudor Revival Architecture). Probably partly because of the home of the former Dean and Shakespeare scholar that sat next to the campus building that house the English department, where I spent many hours, both because my dad taught there and because I got an English degree there.

Probably also because of a house in Brownsville, Tennessee, where my grandparents lived. When we were little, my sister and I would play a game of choosing "if you could live in any house on College Street, which one would you pick?" While we each occasionally picked another house, we usually settled on the same two, and "mine" was a home with modernized Tudor architecture.

Our house is not actually built in that style, but its lovely brick, along with the ivy growing around the front, gives is a cottage-y feel and just made it seem possible to give it a Tudor touch.

I'm thinking once it's finished, we'll have to start drinking more hot tea--and reading late medieval British poetry on a regular basis. Anyone have other suggestions?

Korak po Korak

When I first was in Croatia, even before we married, I think, I heard a singer named Lidija Bajuk on TV singing a song that of course I could not understand, since I didn't speak Croatian. But the refrain always included the words "korak po korak," and I remember asking my newly beloved if that might possibly mean "step by step."

He said yes. And once more I thought how all those puzzles I used to do in the newspaper had paid off. I think they were called cryptograms? All the letters had been assigned a number, and you were trying to figure out a phrase simply by making intelligent guesses based on what you knew about how letters tend to be used in patterns to form words. I'm sure it helped me in learning foreign languages because of the constant pattern recognition that is necessary.

Anyway, today that memory came back to me because I saw my doctor this morning and was told that after six weeks following a surgery, I can (and should) begin walking again.

For six weeks I have mostly lain on a couch, keeping my foot, and usually its companion, up above heart level, to prevent or decrease swelling and to help it heal. I have leaned heavily on the generous heart and strong body of my husband, and we have been immensely grateful for the support of friends with prayer, words of encouragement, meals, visits, and other ways of helping out. But the time has come that walking is what this needs to further heal. And it's what I need to live the life I normally live, which was the whole point of the surgery.

So today I took my first very tentative, very strange steps. I have to wear this surgical boot that reminds me of the stormtroopers from Star Wars. Said boot is about two inches higher than the very, very low-heeled shoes I normally wear, so each pair of steps was almost comical because of the lopsidedness. (I'll be calling the doctor about that. I don't want to develop a spine problem from lopsided walking for another month and a half.....!)

I think in my naive mind when I first scheduled this surgery, I imagined that when the day came that the doctor said I could walk, I would just be able to walk. I hadn't thought about what six weeks of not walking would do to the muscles and joints and even the part of my brain that has since toddler years just known that I could walk and how to do it.

I hadn't thought that my foot would still be bruised at this point, that the incisions would still show and be sensitive. Or that one of the major nerves in my foot would still be experiencing strange effects that sometimes resemble pain.

That's why I decided to take those first steps with the walker you see in the photos. Just to be smart, just in case I needed it.

So I thought I would just be walking to an event I've been looking forward to tonight. John Michael Talbot is coming here to teach and sing. I'm very much excited about it. I had really hoped to simply be walking, even if slowly. Now I'm wondering if I should just go with the scooter thing I've been using. I hate calling attention to myself and can't decide which is worse--to be on that thing, or to walk with a hobble and possibly "give out."

The truth is, either way I have to wear a stormtrooper boot, so I'm not exactly going to blend in, no matter what....

I'm not sure what I'll do. But it's an exciting day. And it was really neat when I took these steps and sent the pictures to my  husband, that he texted back, "One step at a time." Which is basically what "korak po korak" means.

I remember over 25 years ago when we saw her on TV, I said something like, "She seems like a lovely person. I'd love to meet her." And he told me she is from his hometown, she is his age, she is a real person that people do meet and know, even though that night she was on TV and by that time was living in Zagreb, the capital, where we moved shortly after we married. We didn't know at that moment that a war was going to start and change everything. And we thought perhaps we would connect with her.

So today when I'm not thinking about walking or the other things I have to think about today, I'm thinking about Lidija Bajuk and wondering if somehow, someday, I may still be able to meet her and tell her  how beautiful I think her voice is and that I love the simple way she plays guitar and sings. And that she has worked to keep poetry and folk stories alive. That I love how her videos feature nature and its beauty.

Maybe I should write her a letter?

Send her a link to this blog post?

I don't know. Step by step. Korak po korak. First I need to be able to walk to my desk if I want to write a real letter. And walk to the mailbox to mail it.

Meanwhile, you can listen to her music and see scenes of Croatian nature here.

And here is a song she wrote about the river that runs close to the town where I first heard of her, with pictures of it, also.

Now I'll go practice walking some more.....(and any typos are surely due to residual pain medication effects....)

Death Be Not Proud

Death, be not proud though the whole world fear you:

Mighty and dreadful you may seem.

But, death, be not proud, for your pride has failed you.

You will not kill me.

Though you may dwell in plague and poison,

You're a slave to fate and desperate men.

So, death, if your sleep be the gates to Heaven,

Why your confidence,

When you will be no more?

You will be no more.

Even death will die,

Even death will die.

Death, be not proud.

Death, be not proud.

Death, be not proud.

'Cause even death will die.

It's a beautiful rendition of John Donne's poem by Audrey Assad, and as I listened to it today while driving, I thought of the beloved one who died today three years ago.

Since her death, I've written about her on this blog, here and here.

Oh, and here.

And then one more here. 

She was my piano teacher, and she was so much more.

I wrote about her before her death, too, this post about autumn leaves and resurrection.

I had no idea then how much more those ideas of hers would come to mean,

more than they did my freshman year of college,

more than they did when I wrote about them years later.

Because she--who loved autumn so much and saw in it not only the ends of things

but also the beginnings of things,

an encounter with life at a new perspective,

at a new level of  meaning, of intensity--

she died in autumn.

So this morning I took a walk in the park and thought about her,

and this afternoon I took some pictures with the sun shining through the autumn leaves.

I remembered her (I'll never forget her; she's in my music, in my mind, in my heart,

in the way I hold my hands, in the Bible verses I read, in the words I give to my own students)

and I listened to this song.

Even death will die.

Even death will die.

Death's sleep is the gate to Heaven.

And there, or then, however we should speak of that existence--

"I like to think," my teacher said, "that in heaven we will be like the autumn leaves. Our true colors,

our real selves, will finally be revealed. All the things of earth that had to be a part of this season of lie won't be part of us anymore. Only the truest part of us will remain."

I think everyone who knew her knew they were seeing her truest parts.

Her kindness, her graciousness, her honesty, her compassion.

Her sense of humor, her hearty laugh.

Her love for God and love for others.

And remembering her,

we are helped to let go of unneeded parts of ourselves

so that our truest parts can be revealed,

little by little, day by day.

I know it's true for myself, and I see the things people are writing

on Facebook today.

Her light shone in many lives.

And for her life, and for her love, today I give thanks.

And this wasn't a planned-out decision--it just happened this way--

but it just hit me that her degree was in organ, not piano,

and tonight we had an organist over for dinner.

The first time we've ever had this friend over.

What a lovely gift, a way of connectiong with her

without even intending to.

Life is a funny and wonderful bunch of connections.

So in a minute, I'll go play her music,

the music she told me I just had to get and learn to play,

those last couple of years when she was delving into jazz. . .

because she never, never, never gave up.

When you believe that even death will die,

you never give up.

Good night.

How Out of It I've Been and Something Funny and Lovely

It seems I have now set a new record in the length of time between blog posts. From May 31 until now would be close to four months.

It's beyond my ability right now to remember whether or not I have said anything definitive on this blog about why I have written so little in recent months and even a couple of years or more.

A rather fascinating story lies behind just about everything in life, and that's true for this as well, but for now suffice it to say that around the same time I decided to return to school to work on a doctoral degree in ministry, my mom began to have significant health problems. The combination of these things has simply (and in quite complicated ways at times) demanded my focus, my time, my energy more than I could ever have anticipated.

In late April, I turned in my last paper for school. And at some point in the summer I turned in the official prospectus for my thesis. And after that all the paperwork for approval from the Institutional Review Board. I'm now officially in the thesis phase of the degree. Since I had "levelling" work to do (extra classes because I didn't go into the degree with a Master of Divinity degree already), this means I am now freer than I have been in three years. Not free, but not continually under the pressure of huge reading lists and deadlines.

So slowly, slowly, life has been shifting to a more liveable pace. I'm returning to the routines and rhythms that were interrupted pretty severely for almost three years.

And so, at some point in the late spring or early summer, I began noticing the straggling green things out in the pots on our deck, and I thought, oh, one of these days I will have time to plant flowers again. Planting flowers has not been completely neglected, but it has not been the regulary activity that it once was, so that something was blooming pretty much all year round. Where we live, it usually means pansies in the winter and impatiens and petunias for the spring and summer.

Of course I had to get that prospectus turned in and all the IRB paperwork. But in the back of my mind I was dreaming of buying and planting petunias, at least a few, to enjoy through the heat of the summer. I also remember noticing with the peripheral vision of my awareness that those plants out in the pots still had blooms, and it seemed awfully late and hot for that. Pansies don't generally make it into the summer heat in full sun.

On July 30, I finally actually walked out there and watered and weeded, thinking there was still time to plant some petunias, if I could find any for sale that late in the summer.

And for the first time, I realized . . . these were petunias!

Which meant they had been planted early LAST summer, and that I had never planted any pansies in the fall. These guys had made it through the winter and come back to life.

So, I did of course water them, and I pulled out the amazing little weeds that find their way through the air into the pots. And I pulled off the dead blooms.

And I laughed at myself and at how crazy life can get, and smiled at how beautiful it is that these flowers made it through with absolutely no help from me or anyone--just the sunshine, the soil and whatever rain fell on them over the course of most of a year. (And this was the coldest winter we've had since we've lived here.)

It felt as if they were saying, "Surprise! Welcome back!"

"We're still alive, and so are you. It's time to stretch and breathe and grow again."

I've been watering them and pulling the occasional weeds and the spent blooms, and they've continued to grow through the heat of the summer, and as the air has begun to turn toward fall's shorter days and cooler temperatures.

The spearmint from last year made it through, too, not surprisingly. Mmmmm.....

Maybe soon I'll even clean these pots so they can be as pretty as what grows in them.

And I even dare to hope that I may manage to get pansies planted for this fall and winter.

It's hard to know how to describe the past three years. A lot has happened, a lot has had to cease for a while. "Upheaval" comes to mind as a one-word description that avoids the extreme emotional content other words would carry with them.

But these flowers bring to mind other words, words that remind me in a comforting way that while my life matters, and each person's life matters in ways we surely cannot fathom, each life is also part of a whole that gives us meaning and hope and comfort beyond what we could ever come up with on our own. These beautiful words--

While the earth remains, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night, shall not cease.

After three years of pursuing a "Doctor of Ministry degree in missional and spiritual formation," I may have learned more about spiritual formation from these sweet petunias that came as "missionaries" to assure me of the good news that life is much bigger than my life, and strength and resilience and beauty are everywhere in the midst of it all. Even when I'm exhausted and oblivious.

Dvadeset i Tri na Dvadeset i Treći (Twenty-Three on the Twenty-Third)

We interrupt this Lent for a special announcement . . . Twenty-three years ago today, we were married. Like today, it was a bit overcast and windy. (In fact, we have a hilarious picture of my veil blowing in the wind at one point.) Unlike today, we were twenty-three years younger and had little idea what lay ahead.

I remember hearing before I married that every wedding has something significant go wrong, that it would be bad luck if you didn't.

Well, our expectant-mother cake-maker was ordered on strict bed rest the day before the wedding. Our music director's child got chickenpox a few days before, and his wife was in cancer treatment and couldn't be exposed to it. And during the ceremony itself, one of the groomsmen fainted, nearly taking down with him all the ivy connecting the arch and flowers.

So according to the conventional wisdom, we should have been inoculated against bad luck. On the other hand, a dear woman made a wonderfully delicous cake at the last minute--and still came to the wedding despite the lack of sleep. And the music director was able to find childcare and direct the choir, which meant the world to me, since he had been my chorus director and beloved Bible teacher. And another groomsman caught the fainting one, saving the wedding from disaster; they even revived him before the end of "Lord, Make Me an Instrument" came, most people didn't even know it ever happened, as they had heads bowed and eyes closed for that prayer/song.

So, who knows, maybe all those last-minute "saves" undid our inoculation.

Of course, it wasn't "bad luck" that caused the war in former Yugoslavia. It was much more complicated than that. It may have been coincidence that we had bought our tickets to return there the very week that the war started. And it wasn't "luck" that we came from different cultures and spoke different languages; it was very much a choice we made to marry, knowing we came from different worlds. So I wouldn't say we had bad luck. But we did have a very tough start.

I've often looked back and wondered how many people choose this hymn as wedding music. Certainly today I don't hear it at weddings, and I don't know if I ever did growing up. But I knew I wanted it at ours, and Drazen agreed to it. We really were not expecting the war, but I already knew that moving so far away from home would be hard. And we knew that neither of us had "ease" or "idleness" on our list of hopes and dreams.

Father, hear the prayer we offer,
Nor for ease that prayer shall be,
But for strength, that we may ever
Live our lives courageously.

Not forever by still waters
Would we idly, quiet stay,
But would smite the living fountains
From the rocks along our way.

Be our strength in hours of weakness,
In our wand'rings be our guide;
Through endeavor, failure, danger,
Father, be thou at our side.

Twenty-three years later, by the grace of God, here we are. And it is by the grace of God.  He heard our prayer, and hears our prayers, and has given strength and guidance and many other things needed along the way.

And, I must add, I married a patient and persevering man. I don't think I'm an easy person for an engineer to live with; I know I'm not, for him. It's almost laughable to me, now a marriage therapist, to look at our scores on various personality tests. We are both extreme in most areas, and we are opposites in our extremities--except for the "intuitive" part on the Meyer-Briggs. So maybe intuitively we both knew we could make it, even with all the reasons we might not. Whatever the case, I'm thankful that he is who he is, and that he loves me as I am.

We didn't have these words at our wedding; I just noticed today that they are a part of the hymn based on St. Francis' Canticle of the Creatures--

And all ye men of tender heart,
Forgiving others, take your part.
O sing ye! Alleluia!
Ye who long pain and sorrow bear,
Praise God and on Him cast your care!

But we did have other verses sung, and thanks to God's faithfulness in all our wanderings, it seems a good way to end this writing about our anniversary.

All creatures of our God and King,
Lift up your voice and with us sing,
Alleluia! Alleluia!....

Let all things their Creator bless,
And worship him in humbleness,
O praise him! Alleluia!
O praise the Father, praise the Son,
And praise the Spirit, Three in One!
O praise Him, O praise Him!
Alleluia! Alleluia! Alleluia!

Signs of Spring

I found my first daffodils of the year yesterday. Almost missed them, as they were tucked away in the woods, off the beaten path.

But I did see them. And my heart danced a little dance of hope. It has been a long, cold winter. Two winters in a row, really. I don't even remember the past spring. A blur of wintry storm and blazing summer heat fill my mind when I think of last year, even though I know the spring did come between the two.

In Narnia, the White Witch made winter last unnaturally long. Sometimes life is like that, and it seems the ice will never melt, the green will never come, there will be no more flowers.

But in Narnia Aslan came, and he made things right, and the ice did melt, and life resumed the way it was meant to be. The frozen came back to life.

And I've lived long enough now to trust that spring will always come. To trust that even though I may endure some very long winters (stretching me so that I come closer to understanding an eternity perspective, perhaps?), God keeps promises, and new life will always come, no matter how frozen or dark or lifeless I may feel inside.

As long as the earth endures,

    seedtime and harvest, cold and heat,

summer and winter, day and night,

    shall not cease.

~ Genesis 8:22

Let us know, let us press on to know the LORD; his appearing is as sure as the dawn; he will come to us like the showers, like the spring rains that water the earth.

~Hosea 6:3

. . . let no flower of spring pass us by.

~Wisdom 2:7

". . . and God himself will be with them;

he will wipe every tear from their eyes.

Death will be no more;

mourning and crying and pain will be no more,

for the first things have passed away."

And the one who was seated on the throne said, "See I am making all things new." Also he said, "Write this, for these words are trustworthy and true."

~Revelation 21:3b-5

Left Hanging

Almost a month since I've added anything here, wow. It was not my intent to start the story of my travel and then just leave it hanging, as I have.

Those who know me know that the past month has included an intensive graduate-level course and the lengthy hospitalization and subsequent death of a very, very dear friend. These things take time and energy.

Interestingly, just as the class ended and the funeral was over, I began a streak of getting more referrals for my work than I've ever had before. They say word of mouth is the best marketing, and somehow word of mouth has been getting around a lot lately. So I've been working more than usual and am thankful for that.

And so my blog has been neglected once again. Often in the evenings I feel that I just need to study, or get dishes done, or prepare documents for work the next day.

Another factor is that I began reading a book called Younger Next Year that deepend my resolve to exercise more frequently, so I find myself refusing to stay up late for the blog, because I want to be able to get up to walk in the mornings. Not a bad thing at all! (A funny note about the book: I bought it on impulse when I saw it on sale at the bookstore. It wasn't until I was a few pages into it that I realized it was written specifically for men. While it has been very motivating for me, it hasn't been because I could feel my chick appeal lessening....I learned later that they also wrote a version for women and am hoping to get that soon.)

Even so, I am determined to get more of my Italy trip on here. Even if all readers have lost interest by now, I have not, and I want the time to savor and remember those experiences.

The photo above was the view out my window in the morning on Saturday. Laundry is a much more public part of life in countries where dryers are still not the norm. I love seeing clothes and other pieces hanging out on a line. I love the scent and the feel of clothes and especially towels that have been hung out to dry in the air.

But I don't love leaving my blog hanging for so long. When I realized the date of my last post, I just had to write something tonight.

I'll try to be back sooner. I shall persevere.

Of course, now that I think of it, I am writing about Italy, no? The land where clocks don't matter the same way they do over here. Where you live life fully in the moment. I've been living very much in the moment lately. But I do intend to look back on earlier moments and share some more.

Wish me well. Arrivederci!

Surprise

Lycoris squamigera is their Latin name, but I have always known them as surprise lilies. They pop up practically overnight and bloom so quickly as to seemingly defy nature.

This particular specimen was a super surprise. It came up before I realized or saw it, and while doing some work in the area, I accidentally stepped on it so hard that it was horizontal on the ground and looked to my eyes as if it could not survive. I felt terrible when I saw it and felt I should complete the detaching and give it a proper burial, but I was pressed for time and left it there for later.

And lo and behold, that amazing energy that makes it grow so quickly must also have restorative powers, because even with its stalk partially crushed, it straightened itself up and bloomed, as you can see!

Tonight I look to the lily as a symbol for my blog. Not giving up, despite the thin tissue holding it together! Rising once again to surprise those loyal readers who inform me occasionslly that they've checked and not seen anything new for a while.

Some things in life are calming down a bit, so I hope to find a new rhythm for writing. Time will tell.

Lycoris squamigera. Never underestimate the power.

(And, no, I have never actually had a burial service for a deceased flower. I just love surprise lilies so much and felt so bad for stepping on it that a little goodbye and apology seemed in order.)