The Story of Keep Calm and Carry On

i have loved keep calm since i first saw it years ago

the phrase really does fit LIFE so well, doesn't it?

so happy to have found the story details behind the comforting words

hey there

google image

me.

{life}

and you?

{grin}

friend

photo: m smith

I was invited to his workshop when we lived in his village for 6 weeks.  One of my first friends during a very lonely time.  We laughed and chatted in the workshop.  I remember like it was yesterday, the twinkle in his eyes…his upraised eyebrows and deep laughs at my zany-ness.  Refreshment for my weary, isolated soul.  Oh, did we laugh! 

A small, simple structure with a wood stove.  Sitting on a little hill thirty feet from a winding river. But as we met in that workshop, Your gracious hand lovingly knit hearts together and transformed a plain wooden shack into a sacred place.

Memories flood my heart as I write about my friend this morning, and a song begins playing in my mind…Holy ground, we’re standing on holy ground.  For the Lord is present and where He is is holy. The workshop wasn’t holy in and of itself.  It was holy because when I went there to visit my friend, You were always there, too.

[Isn’t it funny that the God who created us with a need for people 

always gives us the people we need?] 

That lonely summer in a small fishing village, I was longing for a girl friend and lo’ and behold, You sent me a male ivory carver with grandchildren running around.  And You grew our friendship not over tea in a warm kitchen somewhere (the expected and hoped for), but in a simple shed (the unexpected and perfect spot).

Love born in an ordinary, unadorned place.  But that’s how You do things, isn’t it?  You make me smile.

Thank you for giving me one of the very best friends I’ll ever have. I love You. 

Thank you, Lord for the workshop, and for the man who spent many hours creating beautiful ivory carvings within it’s walls.  My heart overflows with gratefulness this morning knowing that fire only destroyed the building and not the man who made the building so special to me.

*i originally wrote this in 2008 and posted it on my first blog

my friend has since built a new workshop

and each summer when i round the curve and see his house

my heart beats a little faster...part of me is home when i am with john

{friends made in the lonely places and spaces always feel like home}

back in the day

i sat in the bookstore totally delighted by this adorable cookbook

the cover called my name

i mean, i just know i'd love to hang out with griff and cheryl

heck, i'd love to work in their awesome bakery in savannah if it weren't such a long commute

i sadly put the $25 book back on its perch knowing i would go home and order it from my favorite perch for much less

{by the way, i love supporting my local bookstore --even if it is a chain--but their prices are often double amazon's...and amazon usually ships free. come on, barnes and noble!}

anywhoo, i am waiting patiently for my little cookbook to arrive

and then i'll have to figure out which meals will be replaced by cupcakes and s'more pie and nanna pudding and hummingbird cake....

up, up...

and away!

we'll fly right through monday...tuesday...wednesday and then

M A R C H

{that glorious, wonderful, spring-is-here-even-if-it-snows month}

just the thought of floating into March this week has me singing a happy tune

back off, winter

i see colorful balloons on the horizon!

*picture from here

l e n t (take 7)

this lent, i'm embarking on a pretty long journey using this book

a dear blogging friend invited me to join her and, at last count, there are 5 of us ("the council") who will help each other out along this sure to be (at times) uphill-with-the-wind-in-our-face-and-the-rocks-crumbling-beneith-us path

some of us will deviate from the author's journey

{and that's a good thing...no cookie cutter approach here}

this weekend i cleaned and organized (we're starting with possessions) like we were moving to africa for the rest of our lives (well, maybe to canada).  i'll deliver over 200 books (dear Lord) to a friend who reads a lot and sends a lot of books to her pen pal prisoners (i've got the coolest friends).  our wedding china (i never liked) went across the street to my friend who told me "i was just telling my sister 'i don't have any good china'. material, old bedspreads went to a crafting neighbor.

i think this will be it for blogging about it.  i want to do this for the right reasons.  

me and God.  i have way more then i need and continually add to the piles.

7, here i come.  i think that's jesus ahead waving and grinning to beat the band.

his laughter puts a spring in my step as i run to meet him

*

So, what's the payoff to living a deeply reduced life? It's the discovery of a greatly increased God -- a call toward Christ-like simplicity and generosity that transcends a social experiment to become a radically better existence. -j hatmaker

rustic church

perhaps it is because i am aging (the whole from dust to dust thing) or maybe because i'm basically a t-shirt and jeans kinda girl
maybe it's because i love LIGHT (always have) and open spaces

or maybe it's because my childhood roots grew down deep into the soil of a country riverbed
but i have always preferred worshipping God in the simple places

the calm organic & earthy vs the flashy crystal & marble

the kind of church where i think to myself "jesus would love this place"

image: flikr, learning junkie

which is why i loved attending a wedding last fall in a barn-turned church with the pulpit made of a big old oak tree stump {we raced by those benches because we were late}

and why i will always remember christmas eve 25 years ago in the temporary barn-like building (we sat on hay bales with candles providing the light) before the towering new structure was completed

and why i loved this church in gretna, nebraska with a man-made ravine running down the sides of the center aisle


isn't it stunning?


and i think, the more i get to know jesus, the more i realize christianity can be stunning in its simplicity


i mean, sure, there are some hard things...heady things


but the basics of our faith?  


love God, love others, jesus saves, encourage each other
live simply so others may simply live (i'm working on this one...thanks, mrs. dunbar)


is stop-me-in-my-tracks stunning in its simplicity


i'm thankful for barn churches and haybales and glass churches on the prairie


these places where i half expect to turn a corner and see jesus in the flesh


{google images}