Only in Wyoming

I saw this on my run this morning in Teton National Park...too funny!

End of the weekend.

Every week we host a "small" group. We get together with a group of people from all walks of life and talk about the bible and what God is doing in our lives. This last week we ended up talking about our families struggle with "church". Should we go, how much, is it even important. All of these questions we go back and forth on. We like our church that we currantly attend, I mean in all honesty it is a little boring and redundant, but that's not the end of the world and you could argue about whether that should even be a factor in the attending church factor.

So the conversation in our group circled around and around with people on both sides, but no one saying a firm "yes" or "no". Which is nice.

One person in our group who is quiet and thoughtful started talking about his church experience growing up in Pensylvania. He talked about the pastor who was an amazing speaker and about how the building was very historic and had lots of secret tunnels and cool things for little boys to explore. He also talked about the memories of sitting with his mom and dad and getting mints from his grandma.

I thought about what he said in the days that followed and the question arose, "What memories and traditions are we creating for our kids?"

This is such a broad topic, but one worth thinking about. Tradition for tradition sake seams futile and without meaning, so I do want church to be more than memories and good feelings. On the other hand giving our kids the gift of memories is also invaluable in fostering the growth towards whole people.

All these ideas were swirling around in my head competing with the very real fealings of, "just not wanting to go" in me. When I remembered that way back in July I committed to teaching an art lesson second hour at church. This seamed like divine planning!

So, Sunday morning I dragged myself out of bed, got the kids ready and we headed out the door with everyone protesting!

Five minutes into the second hour children's time the kids were asking me if we could come back every Sunday. And trully what I saw was not the Sunday school of my childhood church experience, but real learning about Jesus and the bible and real language being used and some good topics being discussed.

It then occured to me that church might not be so much about me anymore and more about what lessons and memories could be written on my children's hearts to carry them through their lives into their adulthood.

Peace on a rainy Sunday evening,

Lucia

The day after...

I am so thankful today for so many things.

The rainy weather feels refreshing this morning and odd for this time of year, but a good day to draw and knit and snuggle in.

I feel thankful that the day after Halloween is a Saturday, and not a school day because that is just torture! Plain mean!

And mostly I feel thankfulness for my "life" friends that I have collected throughout my life.

I think of them all often and the different moments we have shared and the many things I have learned about how to do life through each of them..

The other day I was thinking about how many times in my life I have moved. I realized the longest I have lived in one place is six years! That is not a long time. We have already lived here for five years and it is finally starting to feel like home.

With all that being said I find myself on the other end of moving where a life friend has moved away from me. And it feels like a giant hole in my heart and life. It is much harder that I expected, even though we will see them a few times a year it is so very lonely here in Jackson right now.

This is also the sad reality of living in such an expensive a transitory place. People come an go a lot. I like some aspects of this because it brings in new a fresh perspectives and energy in such a small town it is like a fresh sea air, but the hard part is it can make you weary of even forming bonds and attachments to anyone and I know that is not healthy.

Book Recommendation-

My friend Melissa recommended a book to me this summer and I bought it then, but didn't have the mental space for it at that time. I picked it up again this week looking for some inspiration and found myself just soaking in this woman's words of wisdom and thought.

The book is Walking on Water : Reflections on Faith and Art by Madeleine L'Engle. It is a really wonderful book of her thoughts on different things and her vocabulary is incredible. I have had to look up a half a dozen words already!

Here are some of her thoughts;

"It is a frightening thing to open oneself to this strange and dark side of the divine; it means letting go of our sane self-control, that control which gives us the illusion of safety. But safety is only an illusion, and letting it go is part of listening to the silence, and to the Spirit."

She talks a lot about being obedient as an artist and the idea that we must practice our art so that the art can speak through us.

"I believe that each work of art, whether it is a work of great genius or something very small, comes to the artist and says, 'Here I am, Enflesh me. Give birth to me.' and the artist either says, 'My soul doth magnify the Lord,' and willingly becomes the bearer of the work, or refuses; but the obedient response is not necessarily a conscious one, and not everyone has the humble, courageous obedience of Mary."

In other news...

I worked all evening on fixing my computer because my USB ports decided not to work anymore and I wanted to upload some new pictures. I got that fixed and then the very next day at the school Halloween carnival I dropped my camera and now that is broken! So new pictures are not to be!

That is all I have for this Fall morning!

Peace and love to my life friends!

Lucia