This good day

Today, there is air like cold water and sun like gold dust amidst it. Today, the leaves reveal their fiery hearts and line the trees like soldiers ready to fight the wind, and die.

Today, music is a lilting cry that sings what I can't speak.

Today, the twist of branch and gem of berries twine round a fat candle that tilts and gutters next to the open window.

Today, the world outside is a jewel-bescattered kingdom and my walk amidst it is a hunting of treasure.

Today, the rule of living is hot drinks unnumbered and long books begun and joy picked up like a penny from the sidewalk of these autumn days.

Today, I will start The Lord of the Rings all over again.

Today, I know that God is present before me to be taken in my hands. Decisions are illusive - they can always flit one more day ahead.  But the grace of today can make me strong. I am shored up by awareness of this settling season, as people and trees buckle down to face winter but do it with bright eyes and laughing hearts. Sometimes warmth is the sweeter because you have to fight the cold.

Today, I realize that beauty is the way I take hold of God. These small, strange gifts of leaf and flame and tea and story and sky, are the literal, physical hands God reaches down for me to hold. And I do. I put my small hand into their cupped, protective grace. And even amidst this unsure time, with shadow obscuring the road ahead, for now, I rest. And I am held.

A new house... your thoughts?

I've been playing with an idea for the last week or so and I'm curious what you think. Once in awhile, you write something, and then you go back a bit later and realize how vastly more true it was than you even originally thought. That's how I felt once I looked back at the welcome post to this new bit of blogspace, describing this blog as a house. The idea of this place as a house you enter in which fellowship and ideas and griefs are shared captivates me. So I am thinking of shaping this blog a bit more literally as a house or maybe, a cottage.

Different rooms will be different  pages, designed to have pictures that reflect the room you're visiting. You could "walk" through different rooms of the house, see what's going on. Blog posts would be filed/categorized according to room. I might give my little place a name. Houses ought always to be named. If you have ever read a good story, or talked with Anne of Green Gables or really, Dickens (Bleak House, for instance), you know this. If you have any ideas, do share. (The "Life House" thing is a stop gap. And for those who read this post earlier, I took down my experiment of "Lark Cottage" because I'm not quite ready to commit.)

The different rooms will reflect different rooms of soul. The library, well, book reviews and learning and thinking, of course. The kitchen table, the hodgepodge glory of mundane life and the million thoughts that flow from it. The fireside, the shadow dappled place where deep contemplations are grown up out of the soul. The great hall (oh yes, my cottage, however tiny, will definitely have a great hall for feasts and dancing), a place for the recording of festal days, friends, celebration, stories. Maybe I'll name that one the "Hall of Fire" after Rivendell. And then, the front porch, or entry way, basically, the in between place where the outside wind blows in with news of the world, and you can see the hills and the road running back to the battle, the place where plans are made, where travelers set out, and refugees come in.

In part, this idea comes from my dream of an actual, physical such house. To invite people in is something I have always wanted to do, and if you stumble across this blog, I love the idea that you could feel you had come into a real (more or less) place. A house in which a life that is thoroughly alive to truth, beauty, and goodness, is guarded and nurtured. But also a place where great plans and journeys are begun for the helping of all the lost ones still out in the storm. I hope with all my heart to create such a real house one day, and this is, in a way, a possible beginning.

So. Confusing? Inviting? Odd? Good? What do you think?