summer conversations and holiday pics

here are some pics and an interesting conversation from the last couple of days ... I am up very early anticipating getting Syd from the airport. (and she woke me up with texts and calls from TO at 330am!)


niece: auntie kelly, lets go swimming.
me: OK!
niece: we have to put our bathing suits on first...and our life jackets.
me: K, I'll go change, be right back.
niece: I'm changing in the living room
me: I can see that...
niece: I'm gonna come change with you
(follows me)
niece: so you don't change in front of other grown ups, right?
me: ummm... ya, thats pretty much right.
niece: well, you would change in front of your sisters.
me: ya, I would.
niece: would you change in front of my dad?
me: no.
niece: but uncle brendan - you change in front of him?
me: yes, we're married.
niece: I change in front of anyone in my family.
me: yup...
niece: do you change in front of grandpa?  He's your dad.  He's in your family.
me: ahhhh, ... ummmm, .... Let's race to the dock!


Here's a few shots of our time in Lac Du Bonnet....

Just learned to walk!

 Summer fun!

about Holidays :)

A few weeks ago I started to feel those twinges of exhaustion and that sense that my energy just wasn't being replenished as quickly as it should - I looked at my schedule and realized I was pretty booked up at work and wouldn't be able to get any time away up til now - it seemed like an eternity back when I planned it.  But it has arrived, and I couldn't be more ready or more thrilled!  We've recently been relishing opportunities to travel or take breaks more than ever before in our lives, its become important to have times where the routine gets interrupted for a few days or even weeks.  And, it is so much fun to plan for and look forward to something. (Our trip to SF last year was such a treat, we still talk about it all the time - we all planned different parts of it, and I'm still so stoked about our public transportation abilities/courage!)

We were planning to go out to a farmhouse we know of for the next few days, but then our car was written off last week, so we weren't sure we'd even have a vehicle.  ... decided that we'd just do a few days of exploring our own city instead. (...and, we love Winnipeg that much!)  In the end, it turns out that we are picking up a new-to-us car tomorrow - a YELLOW one.  I don't remember the model, just the color :)
The plan for the next few days is to go to Lower Fort Garry, Ballet in the Park, take in an exchange walk and free concert, and then go to a cabin in Lac du Bonnet for Friday night and Saturday -oh, and the Folklorama kick off at the Forks on Sat. night (fireworks at 10pm!)
On Sunday, we pick up Syd, drop her in Regina and stay for a couple of nights at a bed and breakfast near Fort Qu'appelle. ( I heard that we should try hang gliding up there, but my husband suggested we just bike ride on the TransCanada Trail - its safer on the gravel path, with our feet and wheels firmly on the ground!)
Later on in August, we are looking forward to a week at West Hawk Lake with our family... and we've been saving for our first ever WINTER HOLIDAY  later this year, too!  That sandy beach and ocean image above IS going to become a reality!

Dear Ben: We are coming for a visit!

Our other big holiday news is that we just started a special savings account for our REALLY BIG plan - a trip to Europe in 2013 - the year my husband, our son, and I all graduate with various degrees and diplomas.  Its also the year Bren and I turn 40.  So, we're finally doing a little more than talking about that dream; and it feels SO good!
Hoping y'all are enjoying summer as much as I am.  If you're from Winnipeg, there is so much fun stuff to check out all summer long - free concerts downtown and on Corydon, folklorama coming up, jazz on the rooftop at the WAG, ... don't miss out!

rethinking proverbs 31

 Until now, I’ve believed that the woman from Proverbs 31 was the consummate traditional homemaker.  She is called ‘the virtuous wife’ in the KJV, a ‘woman of noble character’ in the NLT, the ‘capable wife’ in the NRSV, a ‘worthy woman’ in the NASB.  Directly from the Hebrew, ‘woman of abilities’ is my best translation. Today, I studied her again and learned a great deal – I saw her in a brand new light.

Proverbs 31 starts out with a king’s mother giving him advice. She’s cautioning her son not to neglect his responsibilities as king.  Her advice (in my very rough translation) is ‘women and/or booze will take you down, my son. Don’t let it happen! You have a job to do in this world!’

What is this important job the king and his future wife are to be committed to?

Speak out for those who cannot speak, and also for the rights of all the destitute.  Also, make sure you’re able to judge righteously, and defend the rights of the poor and needy (vs. 8-9)

If mom has her way, the king and his virtuous wife (assuming he finds her!) will both be committed to this purpose.  The relationship will include mutual support, not desperate clinginess. This woman won’t derive worthiness or identity entirely from her husband, and because of this they will both be able to contribute to their (joint) task with greater capability, resolve, competence, and purpose. This woman seems healthy and well rounded; she might embody what developmental theorists would call ‘resolved’ or ‘mature’  … because she knows who she is and has the ability to be selfless.  She has a solid identity, which paves the way for genuine intimacy, and opens the door for all sorts of good stuff to enter her home and life.

In the past I’ve read Proverbs 31 and seen a woman who kept it all together, did all the right things, managed her household, business, and other interests - while sewing her own clothing … and I thought I must be a disorganized schmuck.

Today, reading from the king's mothers perspective and keeping their mutual purpose in mind... i saw her in a brand new light.

** The images in this post come from an artist's blog called

Blue, Purple, & Scarlett.  **

daily life in community = FULL

I love living in community.  Being with people is very FILLING for me; I'm an extrovert and enjoy the daily interactions.  Today's 5 minute friday prompt is FULL.  So, here are a few unedited thoughts from the last week, just a few reasons I love living with 25 people!

Cake-off... a sneaky brendan decides we need a healthy dose of competitiveness in our supper team, so he challenges Colin to a cake off.  Very yummy, chocolatey fun!

Unloading groceries ... mundane, yes.  But every week the grocery shopper texts everyone who is home on friday and says 'spread the word, groceries arriving in 10 minutes'... and then we haul, sort, unpack, and put away a tonne (well, almost) of groceries together.  (It's no small feat to shop and store food for such a big group, we have it down to a pretty smooth running rhythm!)

massages ... i went for a massage last week (from a bona fide professional!) for the first time in a long time.  For the first time ever, she said that my neck and shoulders are in pretty good shape.  You know why?  Because I have a live in massage therapist (she's actually a designer, but she should make massage her day job!) who is willing to give me a great massage on a regular basis, just because she loves me and is wonderful.

returning housemates - tis the season for folks to go on holidays, and when they are away their absence is very noticeable. But then, they come home!  And things settle back into something that feels RIGHT, and we get gooey kisses and smiley 'good mornings' from happy little girls once again!

awaiting babies - Flats is in anticipation mode, waiting ever so patiently for the newest community member to make his or her entrance to the world.  It is very fun to be awaiting this new life and we are so excited about the ways he/she will enrich and change us!

  times up.. a little more than 5 minutes, actually!  Thanks for letting me share just a snapshot of  why it is so good to live communally!

5 minute fridays - the gypsy mama invites us to blog for 5 minutes - unedited, on the prompt she gives every week.
This weeks prompt was FULL.  JOIN IN!

Every Girl, Every Boy

For every girl who is tired of acting weak when she is strong, there is a boy tired of appearing strong when he feels vulnerable.  For every boy who is burdened with the constant expectation of knowing everything, there is a girl tired of people not trusting her intelligence.  For every girl who is tired of being of being called over-sensitive, there is a boy who fears to be gentle, to weep.  For every boy for whom competition is the only way to prove his masculinity, there is a girl who is called unfeminine when she competes.  For every girl who throws out her E-Z-Bake Oven, there is a boy who wishes to find one.  For every boy struggling not to let advertising dictate his desires, there is a girl facing the ad industry’s attacks on her self-esteem.  For every girl who takes a step toward her liberation, there is a boy who finds the way to freedom a little easier.

(Adapted from a poem by Nancy R. Smith, see www.crimethinc.com)

loss - 5 minute fridays

  

how can i write only 5 minutes about loss  when its been such a major theme of my life in the last few years?!  i could write pages and pages on it - actually, i probably have; its probably the most consistent theme in my journal.

at the same time, how can i pass up a chance to share the richness that has entered my life because of the gaping hole opened up by grief?

 the losses i've experienced have had a direct connection with some pretty significant changes in life direction. 

the best way i found to condense loss (less than four minutes to go!) was on a canvas where i painted layers after learning the concept of 'stackable losses'.  i imagined a series of losses piled up on top of each other.   The space left over at the top - the space available to cope with life -  was almost nonexistent.  seeing that picture in my mind's eye was a moment of healing for me, because i knew it was the perfect depiction of what had actually happened in my own life.  i instantly recognized that i'd been in a place of significantly reduced ability to deal with many aspects of life because of a series of major losses. 

in the painting, i named them...

dignity was the first and most significant.  losing your dignity means you can't look people in the eye, and you feel like any confidence you ever possessed must have been a joke - actually it feels like YOU are a joke.  thats extreme loss. 

safety was the next.  imagine thinking that you're going to fall into a safe, warm, welcoming embrace ... and then meeting a brick wall ... thinking that there is a safety net beneath you, only to realize that someone came along and cut all the strings... there was a season of my life that felt just like that. it was extreme loss. 

stability, security, and support followed.... in many ways because of the impact of losing safety and dignity.

hold up, though.woe ISN'T me! 

working through those losses wasn't and still isn't a pity party. 

rare is the day when the things i learned through those losses isn't accessed.  those losses have become valuable resources.  and the more i think about it, the losses i've suffered all throughout my life have shaped who i am ...  they've shaped me more than anything i intentionally sought out to shape me ever did.  

 i am rich because of losses.  what an upside down truth! 

think about it - which important theme of human existence isn't infused with loss? 

redemption.  incarnation.  family.   marriage.  love.  resurrection.  forgiveness.

there are more.

but my five minutes were up a few minutes ago....

the gypsy mama offers an invitation to blog for five minutes every friday on a given prompt.  

no editing, thinking, fixing... just GO, for five minutes, on the topic given.

todays was LOSS.

join in next week...

echoes, phantoms and expectations

Lately, I've been reading and thinking about gender roles/expectations.  I came across some interesting stuff last week... 

Virginia Woolf (1882-1941) was famous for writing,  and later on for speaking up on behalf of women. (and maybe for being a bit unstable...)  She expressed and embodied some of the struggle that was being experienced by the women (and men!) of her day.  Rather than telling you my interpretation of the tension she lived with, here are some of her memoir words, from a lecture in 1931.

'I discovered that ... I should need to do battle with a certain phantom.  And the phantom was a woman... I called her after the heroine of a famous poem,, 'The Angel in the House'.... you who come of a younger and happier generation may have not heard of her... I will describe her... She was intensely sympathetic.  She was immensely charming.  She was utterly unselfish.  She excelled in the difficult arts of family life.  She sacrificed herself daily.  If there was chicken, she took the leg; if there was draught she sat in it - in short she was so constituted that she never had a mind or a wish of her own, but preferred to sympathize always with the minds and wishes of others.  Above all - I need not say it - she was pure. Her purity was supposed to be her chief beauty, her blushes, her great grace.  ... every house had its Angel ... the shadow of her wings (falls) on my page, I (hear) the rustle of her skirts in the room... (she whispers to me) 'my dear, you are a young woman ... be sympathetic; be tender; flatter; deceive; use all the arts and wiles of our sex.  Never let anybody guess that you have a mind of your own.  Above all, be pure'.  ... I now record the one act for which I take some credit to myself ... I turned upon her and caught her by the throat.  I did my best to kill her.  My excuse, if I were to be had up in a court of law, would be that I acted in self defense.  Had I not killed her she would have killed me ... for, as I found, you cannot put pen to paper .. without having a mind of your own, without expressing what you think to be the truth about human relations, morality, sex.  And all these questions, according to the Angel in the House, cannot be dealt with freely and openly by women; they must charm, they must conciliate, they must .. tell lies if they are to succeed.  Thus, whenever I felt the shadow of her wing or the radiance of her halo upon my page, I took up the inkpot and flung it at her.  She died hard.  Her fictitious nature was of great assistance to her.  It is far harder to kill a phantom than a reality.  She was always creeping back when I thought I had despatched her.   - from Woolf's In the Death of the Moth and other Essays.  As quoted by Daniel Levinson in Seasons of a Woman's Life.

Even though we are living in a world that is very different from Woolf's 1931,   I find myself wondering why is Woolf's phantom description still familiar?  

grateful

  

honestly?  Grateful isn't what I want to write about today.  Oh, I'm grateful, don't get me wrong.  Just not right now.  Right now, I'm in fixing mode. Fixing puts grateful on the back burner - maybe off the stove all together!  Let's be even more honest - fixing preoccupies me; it makes me unable to see grace. I'm managing, listing, planning, and orchestrating.  Trying, striving, and re-configuring.  
So, i will take this prompt as a reminder not to get lost in the trees and lose sight of the forest. 
Gratefulness helps us SEE.  It helps us LET GO.  It helps us EMBRACE.just writing a few words, suddenly, all the things I'm grateful for come flooding in ...  laughing till my face hurts flowers on my pillowsmiles from strangersre-do's journalling pages that inspire and attend to my heartold friends and long walkssteak dinners my husband's colognegracehappy kids with chocolatey facesholding handstender toucheshomemade french friesahh... time's up.  
Gypsy Mama challenges us with a topic to write about - unedited - every Friday.  Today's topic was Grateful.Join in!

ordinary radicals

Last week, we had a special guest visit us for lunch one day...  Shane Claiborne was in the city speaking to a gathering of Canadian YFC staff, so we took a chance that he might be interested in our community and invited him over for lunch. Turns out he gets those kind of invites all the time, and genuinely enjoys seeing what other communities are up to.

So, Bren whipped up some bannock sandwiches and broccoli soup, and we all ate and chatted.  We asked him about sustainability, inspiration, and the content of internships at Simple Way.  He asked us about shared vehicles, exercise equipment, and using our artspace for community engagement.  (I had a good laugh when he snapped a photo of our van rules - he especially liked the $5 surcharge for leaving a mess in the shared vehicle... I guess my husband goes down to their place and leaves coffee cups all over their van too?!?)  We saw some really sweet pics of his lovely new wife and their wedding day in their neighborhood.  It was low key, helpful, and encouraging to be together.

A really inspiring part of the lunch was that 3 of the folks who were there shared with Shane that Irresistible Revolution - and other books he's written or contributed to - were part of the reason they were at Flatlanders at all. That his writing had shaped their decision to be part of living in community.  I was one of the three; I remember when I got my copy of Irresistible Revolution for Christmas one year and had it done by New Years Day.  I underlined things like:

• We can admire and worship Jesus without doing what he did.  We can applaud what he preached and stood up for without caring about the same things. (p. 113)  
• the nature of the kingdom of god has an ethic and economy that is diametrically opposed to those of the world (p. 104)
• Even though there is enough for everyone, greed and injustice will always create poor people in the land, so God teaches us personal responsibility to our poor neighbors... God systematically interrupts the human systems that create poverty. (p. 171)

Although we didn't expect otherwise, it turns out that Shane is just a regular guy who likes to eat lunch around noon time.  Imagine that; a very ordinary person doing radical things.....

This shot has nothing to do with lunch.  i just want to brag about getting better with the camera... this is fireworks from Canada Day at the Forks.