Today the autumn sun shone warm, we enjoyed a family bike ride along the river and ate too many Easter eggs and buns. It felt great to be alive on this day that our family celebrates Jesus' resurrection.I was intrigued to read Sharon Astyk's description of her Jewish faith as being a communal religion requiring a critical mass of Jews for many spiritual practices. I'm not sure why Christianity, with its roots firmly embedded in the Jewish faith, has swung so far towards the individualisation of our faith.I'm wary of the mood of triumphalism that creeps into our celebrations on Easter Sunday - particular in the evangelical branches of the Church that I've always been a part of. Sometimes we simply rejoice in our individual salvation "ticket" and fail to see that the Easter story is a powerful call to a gathering of believers to a different life, a difficult life.Let me just throw some random Rob Bell quotes I've been enjoying at you:"The way of Jesus is the path of descent. It's about our death. It's our willingness to join the world in its suffering, it's our participation in the new humanity, it's our weakness calling out to others in their weakness.""The gathering of the church, in a service or worship or teaching setting, is to remind, instruct, and inspire people about being Eucharist ["The Good Gift"] for the worlds they find themselves in.""The Eucharist is ultimately about what we do out there, in the flow of everyday life.""Disconnection from the suffering of the world, isolation from the cry of the oppressed, indifference to the poverty around us will always lead to dispair."
So for me Easter has been yet another reminder that this journey I'm on is with others and for others.
I have two friends expecting twins at the moment. I'm not sure what was in the water that week! I've started knitting a wee stash of soakers and longies for the set of identical twin girls. I've been using the Little Turtle Knits Original Soaker pattern for five years now - since my second child was in cloth nappies. I still love the pattern and am particularly chuffed with the simple look of this pair using Treliske Organic Merino - so beautifully soft for those precious girls.
A wee gift for a new mum in my faith community. I love this sweet Pebble Vest. I so appreciate people sharing such cute stuff for free. (I used scrummy Treliske Organic Merino.)I think new mums deserve a decent Fairtrade hot chocolate made from real cocoa, don't you? It's my drink of choice while I'm going coffee-free for Lent;-)
"Schoolhouses are made wrong. If they must be, they should be built in a woods pasture beside a stream, where you could wade, swim, and be comfortable in summer, and slide and skate in winter. The windows should be cut to the floor, and stand wide open, so the birds and butterflies could pass through. You ought to learn your geography by climbing a hill, walking through a valley, wading creeks, making islands in them, and promontories, capes, and peninsulas along the bank. You should do your arithmetic sitting under trees adding hickorynuts, subtracting walnuts, multiplying butternuts, and dividing hazelnuts. You could use apples for fractions, and tin cups for liquid measure. You could spell everything in sight and this would teach you the words that are really used in the world. Every single one of us could spell incompatibility, but I never heard father, or the judge, or even the Bishop, put it in a speech."Laddie: A True Blue Story by Gene Stratton-Porter. 1913
Truth be told? I'm not ready for the end of summer. I'm trying to "be in the moment" of these beautiful autumn days and ignore my dread of the coming winter.
My girls shot across the room like greased lightning as soon as they spotted the lady with all her gorgeous needle-felting. A wee addition to our autumn table with Mr Green Gnome.
Our resident teeny needle-felted gnome (or Jawa as I like to call him) bought himself some new tools for his gardening and underground work (thanks Nova).
Hubby harvested the final round of beets from our garden before every got pulled out. He blanched and froze it for our curries. Winter garden planning now underway.
