A Contemplative Life

All I need to do is baste the above quilt. How I deal with the edges will appear another day. Isn't that often the way we work? Stressing out about this or that when truthfully all we need to focus on is one small detail. I realized that this morning, as in truly grasping it with all gears. LOL. And of course, as these things go, my laptop just notified me the battery is SUPER LOW. So I've plugged it in, and will continue this as soon as possible.... Okay, I've eaten breakfast and am ensconced at my office machine. Probably the laptop is fully charged by now, hah, but as I was saying, we freak out or worry or over-analyze this, that, or some other and if all we'd done in the first place is to deal with the initial step, voila! All our anxieties would be gone. That sounds SO SIMPLE. So EASY. So, so, so.... So something, ahem. What in our human natures seems to crave drama, fretting, over-analyzing. Why can we live and let live? Why, why, why.... Why's as deep a subje...

Hmm, I guess this is how life is now; dark, cramped, alone. Yes, imagine you are Owl Chicken; one moment you're trying to get comfortable for sleep, then next you're shoved aside, falling down a sharp drop into darkness. Utter darkness. Solitary darkness, although you can hear peeps and tiny clucks above you. The rest of the flock is above you, but now your world is altered. Is that how those abducted by ICE feel in detention centers? Snatched from their lives, they languish in facilities where their humanity is devalued by deplorable living conditions. Or how trans veterans are being forced into retirement and denied full benefits after loyally serving this nation. Any number of situations can be listed, people being maltreated for a variety of reasons that the current administration have imposed due to cruelty, bias, and worse. The current American administration is displaying distinct hatred to segments of this nation without remorse or apology, despite what God made know th...

Brollies in the green colourway; Kaffe Fassett designed this gorgeous fabric, which I am turning into a placemat. Mourning and rejoicing simultaneously, because what else is there to do? At the end of last week, I finally started writing. Kind of a Just Do It! sort of situation, and much to my thrilled relief, I have nearly twelve thousand words accumulated. That's pretty darn fine amid occurrences that feel pretty damn horrific. "Rejoice with those who rejoice, mourn with those who mourn." Romans 12.15. Because truly, that's what we're called to do. In the smuggled correspondence with his best friend Eberhard Bethge, imprisoned Lutheran pastor and theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote that most of his fellow prisoners only knew whatever emotion was most prevalent; they were frightened if circumstances were poor, greedy when opportunities arose, despairing as though no hope existed. Bonhoeffer sounds a little judgemental here, yet his complaints are valid, in that...

Hearts sewn with my left hand to assuage my achy right shoulder. These hearts took nearly twice as long to sew, but sometimes the best things don't happen overnight. What's so frightening about peace, love, and understanding? My first novel featured a white woman with a biracial sibling. My second, and first indie publication, concerned a bisexual author, his long-time liberal Catholic girlfriend, and the AIDS epidemic. My focus has always been on inclusiveness amid varied genres ranging from literary fiction to fantasy, women's fiction to sci-fi. Sense a theme? It's all about peace, love, and understanding. Today's title hit me yesterday morning, but other than ranting how different Jimmy Carter is from the incoming president, I didn't have much plotted for this entry, which I didn't want to turn into some raging blah blah blah that has already been done to death. Yet I want to mention how hearts matter more than male appendages, and while yes I'm a wom...

Hearts made last night after my fave basketball team won. Lol. Fashioning hearts because love matters. So lately while my husband eats his oatmeal, I've been sewing jewels into hearts. I finish breakfast before him, mostly because his oatmeal takes ages to prepare (he chops an apple and uses old fashioned oats, which takes a good five-plus minutes to cook). Yet I don't like leaving the table just as he's sitting down to eat. Years ago I kept English paper piecing on the dining table, as I was awake before he was, and wanted to do something productive, if I wasn't writing, before he left for work. I don't like being idle, it makes me twitchy. Better to sew something than feel twitchy any day. Anyway.... Since starting these hearts, I've tried to squeeze time to make more of them. There's plenty to do for Alexandria, and I am, stitching hexagon blocks like the one above. I have eleven more to make, then of course HEAPS more to configure, but these hearts, oh m...