Art House Blog

Come, Lord Jesus

2013-06-13T15:55:48Z

I use it sometimes now, when it’s my turn to bless our food before dinner and I am tired or worried or simply can’t think of anything to say. The familiar rhythm of the words comforts me, carrying with it echoes of the many people who have prayed it before me, and those who still pray it around their tables. It brings me back to those summer days at Mimi and Papaw’s, standing barefoot on the kitchen tile, hand-in-hand with the people I loved the most. Now, as I face my husband across our own dinner table, it sums up everything I want to say:

Come, Lord Jesus, be our guest, and let this food to us be blessed.

The Zen of Seeing

2013-06-13T15:55:28Z

So rather than read further, which would’ve been much easier, I decided to take the ballpoint pen and lined notebook paper and draw what was right before me — and do it quickly, without proper paper or the need to prettify my work. I did opt for color because the green was so lush and bright with the afternoon sunlight shining through the leaves, so I found a couple of green markers and sat there in the sun happily coloring away, like I often did as a child. Did I capture the head of Romaine perfectly? Not at all. But did I begin to glimpse its infinite beauty, the curtain of one leaf folded inside another, the veins like tiny circuitry? I did, indeed.

What the Morning Says to Her

2013-05-16T14:47:34Z

I have a wonderful doctor, who always treats me with affection and skill, but as I sat in the waiting room I’d wondered what she could possibly recommend next. At 84, just when one ailment gets fixed — with a new knee, hearing aids, glasses, medication — something else is bound to go. It’s become a kind of routine.

I was overdue for help, both physical and spiritual. And there she was, this small anonymous messenger from God.

A Dream Deferred

2013-05-16T14:46:00Z

Dreams can be subsumed or trumped, and this was definitely one of those situations. The dream I’d been chasing was replaced by a new reality that moves me to tears and grins in equal measure. I barely think about the old dream unless someone asks about it. Almost two years separate me from that idyllic poolside dive into the unknown, so the dream is slowly regressing into the same nostalgic trophy room where I keep my guitar lessons, my bachelor’s in molecular biology, and my liver from my twenties.

It’s Never Too Late to Mend

2013-05-16T14:45:00Z

Then one day, it happens: rising out of bed in the new day blessing, rubbing the crusted corners of my eyes, drawing back the curtains, I behold through a breach in seasonal tyranny the previously cloaked indigo canvas. Its light is shocking. Reveling in the vaulted firmament, I swear I will never again curse the heavens or the sun in their — in my! — desertion. I remember to smile.

A Home That Feels Like Home

2013-05-02T01:05:35Z

What I didn’t realize was how deeply entwined are the concepts of hospitality and housework. Keeping a home is an extension of hospitality, not in the way we might think of it as occasionally entertaining guests, but as a way of life. It’s not so important to have a magazine-perfect home or spend hours on end cleaning, but taking the time to clean house, clothes, and people; to make a meal; to make comfortable spaces — these are vital tasks.

Something’s Brewing

2013-05-02T00:14:39Z

I dabble. This is partly to do with a lack of focus and, at times, plain old laziness. But sheer curiosity holds the lion’s share of this scattershot creativity. It’s not enough to enjoy a good book — I want to write good words. To drop five bucks on the counter for an artisan loaf of bread or to savor a craft brew and not experience the process is to leave something incomplete. A question remains unvoiced.

Mending My Life

2013-05-01T22:54:26Z

Mending is neither glamorous nor easy, but I’ve discovered it can be a calming antidote to the frantic pace of my everyday life. It requires me to stop in the middle of commitments — a day job and a marriage and freelance assignments — and commutes to focus on one small, tangible thing. There is satisfaction in threading a needle with just the right color of thread and making tiny, precise stitches to close a hole or hold a seam together. I’m always amazed by the strength of those stitches and the sense of accomplishment I feel afterward.

Threads

2013-04-18T17:10:38Z

From our hastily packed bag, I pulled out the tattered green copy of the book we had been reading as a family. Curled up tightly on the hospital bed next to my pale, tired boy, I flicked through the yellowed pages to find our place. Yes, that was it. A pile of neatly arranged feathers, topped with two carefully crossed crow’s feet and a beak, had been found in the center of the barnyard. Jinx the cat had been framed. As we read together in that hospital bed, what took place was a holy alchemy. Ordinary words on paper were transformed into extraordinary glimpses of hope.

On Greening

2013-04-18T17:10:19Z

A seed. I have wondered, is it dead? It is in so many ways a remnant of something good that was before. A fruit or a flower that has already spent itself in glory. A seed is the remains, fit only for burial.

A seed, small and dry, should be shrouded and cast into the soil. But it is not dead.

Nor is it yet fully alive.