Tag: postaday2011

Posted in Believe it or not!, Photos

Weekly Photo Challenge: Celebration

Posted on by Katharine

We recently went to the Garvin Gardens light display in Hot Springs, AR. It was beautiful, but outside of a brief nod to the Santa stuff, it was mostly not even about Christmas, let alone about the Nativity.

Shown here is a water feature that includes a tree transformed by night in to a blue “willow” with only light strings. Beautiful, but no cigar.

There also was a pagoda that was terribly fun to stand inside and gaze upward. It looked like being inside an explosion, I suppose, but what actual significance did it have?

Lastly, I captured a peacock made of lights. A peacock.

Oh well.

We celebrate what we do not know, I suppose.

light explosion
Light Explosion
light peacock
Light Peacock
Posted in Herbs, Inspiring, Photos, Scripture, Wisdom

. . . They Brought to Him Gifts . . .

Posted on by Katharine
Adoration of the Magi by Fra Angelico and Fili...
Adoration of the Magi by Fra Angelico and Filippo Lippi

The first recorded baby shower in the world, perhaps, was when the Magi brought to Joseph and Mary, and their new baby, Jesus, three amazing gifts from their traveling treasure chests.

Gold

What? No gift card for Baby Gap? No.

Gold.

  • Gold cannot be canceled and is the standard for all worth. Just as Jesus is.
  • Gold never tarnishes, never rusts, never becomes corrupt in any way. Again, like Jesus.
  • Gold is the decoration of kings, the drapery of kings, a symbol of kings. Which is what Jesus is: King of Kings.

Frankincense

No Lysol Spray? No.

Something much nicer and much more meaningful.

  • The aged sap of the boswelia bush, obtained by beating and cutting it, frankincense was considered as precious as gold. Okay, so Jesus is more precious.
  • Frankincense was both appealing and purifying. As is Jesus.
  • Priests burned frankincense to mingle with prayer. Jesus is our High Priest and ever lives to pray for us.

Myrrh

No Mennen’s?

No. Something much more foretelling.

  • Myrrh was a valuable resource from the Middle East, a fitting gift for such an extraordinary birth as Jesus’.
  • Myrrh was a healer and lifted pain. It was offered to Jesus in a drink during His crucifixion.
  • Myrrh speaks of death and was combined with aloes inside Jesus’ burial shroud.
  • It’s bitter properties also foretold the rejection Jesus would face.

How could these three wise men have known their gifts were perfect?

Probably the same way they knew when and where to find the Babe.

They paid attention to the things of God.

_____________________

Image via Wikipedia

Posted in Believe it or not!, Inspiring, Photos, Wisdom

An Incredible Gift

Posted on by Katharine

fernShe was incredibly poor.

A girl I’ll call Sharon lived down the country road from our house, in a piece of rental property meant to be a hunters’ cabin. Drafty, leaky, and termite-infested, it at least provided some privacy for Sharon’s family: her unemployed parents and her 10-year-old baby sister.

When the church brought us meals after one of my children was born, and it was too much food for us, we shared it with Sharon and her family. I worried that they might not enjoy all those types of foods, but they assured us they loved all foods. Then they returned all those empty Cool-Whip cartons, carefully washed and dried. Only once did her mother ask for $25 for food, and when she had finished shopping, she brought me the change she had not needed.

Sharon was trying to finish high school and keep out of trouble, bless her. I enjoyed her calm and sure personality a lot. Although she was a teenager and I was near 30, she seemed bonded to me and would call me to chat, sometimes. Towards the end of each conversation she would mention some trouble she or a family member was having and we would discuss it for a few minutes. Only if I promised I would pray for her, would she end the conversation. That always touched me so.

Before long, she married and the young couple had their first child. She called me and asked me to come visit and see the house her teen husband had built for her. I was amazed at this building made of plywood, inside and outside, floors and ceilings, with the interior walls painted a pale blue. Sharon had actually used a feather duster dipped in paint to make fancy designs on the paint in the front room. A cast-iron wood stove in the center of the house cranked out more heat than I needed, but it was to keep the baby warm.

One day Sharon rang my doorbell and said she had a gift for me. She and her husband and baby were moving far away and it was her way of saying good-bye. There, on my porch stood a small table her husband had made. It was primitive, about on the order of a house made only of plywood, but it was sturdy and painted pale blue with feathery designs on it.

I could hardly believe that Sharon, in her poverty, would think to give anyone anything. It was so touching to me. I have cherished that little table for a long time, using it for a fern stand on the porch in summer and indoors in winter. It didn’t match a thing I had, but I wouldn’t think of parting with that incredible gift.

 

Posted in Blessings of Habit, Homemaking, Inspiring, Photos, Wisdom, Womanhood

It Was a Gift

Posted on by Katharine
one of Joi's doilies
One of Joi’s Doilies

I used to live near a sweet and cheery lady named Joi. She and her husband were quite poor, he being a sacker in a grocery and both of them trying hard to earn college degrees, with four children in a two-bedroom house.Joi and I were friends and she was a constant amazement to me. She made every meal from scratch and did home canning. She crocheted doilies, sewed quilts, even ran soy beans through her blender to make soy milk. And then turned it into ice cream.

Somehow she had an abundance of cheer to compensate for all she did not have. Somehow, before the age of computers, she knew all about the health truth about oleo and butter. Before the age of herbal renaissance, she knew all about herbs. She played piano beautifully, taught piano lessons, and played for her church. I always felt somehow behind when I would visit her house.

Eventually she and her husband completed their degrees and moved to where the jobs were. I regret having lost touch with her, but in a way, I still feel the touch of Joi’s cheer in my life.

When it was my birthday, she visited me with a huge surprise. Humble and sweet, just like Joi, no gift could have made me happier that day. Wrapped in a towel was a huge loaf of warm, homemade bread. I had never seen any bread so big, and later learned she actually used the dough for two loaves and placed them into one bread pan. What a gift! Along with it, she brought a large bag of her own spinach, perfectly washed and grit-free.

We loved that sweet gift to pieces, literally. Every slice of the bread was a marvel of deliciousness and the spinach made a great addition to our supper that night. You may think it was an odd gift, but she knew what it means to think before you give something, and we recognized the rarity of it and the loving care that went into it. Imagine washing and washing all that spinach and then giving it away! Imagine the aromas of homemade bread floating through your house, but the bread going to someone else’s house.

It was a gift.

Posted in Blessings of Habit, Good ol' days, Health, Inspiring, Photos, Rain, Wives

Weekly Photo Challenge: Waiting

Posted on by Katharine
waiting
Waiting

These men are waiting. They may look like they are quite active, but I know them. One is 80 years old, and the other is not far behind him. They devote their days to making improvements they will never enjoy, such as planting trees on Arbor Day.

They do enjoy much of it, though. The ability to move about and act like men, still, free of huge medical problems, they enjoy. The camaraderie with other men who care about the future of our grandkids and great-grandkids, they enjoy. Rising early and dressing for work, like the good old days, they enjoy. They are real men, more so than some of their self-professed more virile co-males on this planet, who still lie abed at 10:30 a.m.

They gave up waiting for them.

The tree around which they just finished firming the soil is also waiting. The soil, the men discovered, was moist only down to about 8 inches.  On this overcast morning, everyone is hoping for rain. It does fall, 1/2 inch that night and 4 inches the next couple of days. In tree-years, it did not have to wait long.

The tree also is waiting for spring, to show off its promised beauty and to grow into the new soil around its roots. It is waiting to increase enough in size to shade the walking trail just beyond it. And someday, it will have waited until, like the men who planted it, the end will be very near and it will be ready for a position on a truck similar to the one parked in the background.

That truck also is waiting for someone who lives nearby to get going on this mid-morning. Is he lazy? Does he have the day off? Is he bound by a schedule that will not allow him to deliver his load until later?

Or is the driver also waiting? Did his wife sleep in and forget to make breakfast? Is he waiting for an important phone call before he begins his day? Is he waiting for the dryer to stop tumbling so he can finish dressing?

How inter-connected we all are! How much one slow one can affect it all!

Posted in Blessings of Habit, Good ol' days, Homemaking, Inspiring, Who's the mom here?, Wisdom

I Have Slept . . .

Posted on by Katharine

 . . . but I did not dream.

Dreaming about getting the laundry done.I love dreams, except for nightmares. I love recalling those crazy twisted dreams and trying to figure what was going on in my head that I could have thought such things when my mind was disengaged.

They say “house” dreams are about yourself, so the one I dreamed with the flooded basement probably was not a good sign. But what about the one where the staircase just went on forever with thousands of rooms on hundreds of floors, all furnished like a ritzy bed-and-breakfast? Hmm.

My other dreams, my wide-awake dreams where I plan how wonderful I will be next year, are another story. These dreams haunt me. I put them off, thinking I need some other thing to be just perfect before I can get started. You know the type: losing weight, writing a book, finishing crocheting that afghan, unpacking the last box from moving several years ago, etc. I know I should make some headway on at least some or at the very least one of these dreams, but the facts stand on the sidelines laughing at me.  The facts are that I don’t do what I could and I don’t know why.

I used to keep ironing up to date. Really. I used to keep my flower beds weeded. I used to weigh less.

I think partly I was living before my children and insisted on setting a good example at all times. Now they are grown and mostly gone and no one is watching me.

Except the Lord. He sees. He knows.

What I used to do because I believed I must do it, I now must learn to do only because it is right. My mind allows me choices these days, and I am surprised at who I see living underneath all the exterior rules I had made for myself.

I distinctly remember thinking, when the last child was off to college, “Whew! Now I can rest and do whatever I please. Finally! I am my own puppy!”

I think I need to rethink.

I have slept. It’s time to wake up.