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Showing posts with label beauty. Show all posts
Showing posts with label beauty. Show all posts

Thursday, September 25, 2014

Light

The angle of the light has changed.

It must happen gradually, but every year around this time it seems to happen all of a sudden. One day I'm sitting in the chair by the window with a book, and then I look up and the late morning sun is falling across the books and floorboards in a new way, lighting up a beauty otherwise easily missed.

I've been in something of a funk the past week. Due in no small part, I'm sure, to the whole sleep situation around here. (Last night various babies woke up approximately 9:30,11:30, 12:00, 1:30, 2:30, 4:30, and after that I don't remember. That was particularly bad but if you cut out two or three of those wakings you have my average night. So maybe this post isn't going to make any sense. I am drinking lots of tea. I blather on about sleep too much on my blog. Sorry.)

So yes, tired. But also just discontent. I would look at a room I'd just cleaned and straightened, everything in its place and all in order, which usually brings such a feeling of satisfaction. And I'd think, This is as good as it gets?! For whatever reason home felt shabby and not good enough.

Truly, this is not how I usually feel. I love our home. But the to-do list in my head was wearing me out with its constant, insistent pressure. I felt dull, like any beauty I encountered would just sort of roll off my back with a shrug and a "meh."

I know myself well enough to know that I'd probably get like this no matter my situation in life. If it wasn't motherhood it would be the daily grind of any job. Our sense of beauty is something that has to be tended to, and I haven't been doing a good job of that lately; and life is largely comprised of mundane moments anyway.

But at that light an ache blossomed in me, a familiar autumnal longing. I felt a little more alive, a little more myself. And the mundane was a little more lovely once again, in that angle of the light.

I think I try to wax poetic about the fall too often, but I always feel that this time of year is so full of hope and grace.

And we are picking apples tomorrow*, so I am very excited.

*I keep thinking today is Friday. We are, in fact, picking apples this weekend. :)

Sunday, December 4, 2011

what words can do

You remember Uncle Roy on his knees, hammer in his hand, mouth full of nails--a man bending to do his work, calm at last, strangely grateful--a father humbled by hurt, building a ramp for his fifteen-year-old son's wheelchair. [...] He let the hammer speak: one word at a time, one word over and over.

Sweet Mary Mother of God slit the man's violet scar to slip her own bright heart inside him. She took his in return, pierced and still bleeding. Enough, she said. Let me love you. She's not afraid of grief. You think I don't know? Tulanie's pain has lifted Roy's rage out of him.

(from The Voice of the River, by Melanie Rae Thon)

(Roy is a veteran (Vietnam?) who was sent home after being wounded, and whose wife left him because of the anger he carried after his experience; his son, Tulanie, was paralyzed waist-down in an accident.)

This novel is half fiction, half poetry. I was a little scared to read it, after In This Light, which was often too dark and gritty for my tastes.

Not that I can't read fiction that acknowledges darkness; not that I need happy endings. But I want to feel that I am seeing the darkness of what's human and broken as God sees it: not through eyes of despair or resignation, but redemption. And this book ... this book. I wish I could write it.