I've finished teaching for the term,
My garden instincts are firing and I can hardly wait to plant and to transplant all the seedlings that are growing out of their confines in our home. Every window sill is covered.
Spring has arrived and I am eager to join in the living.
That is, when I'm not hiding away relaxing looking at media or daydreaming.
But I have no more excuses for not blogging.
I will blog.
I will give voice to some of the things that are brewing inside me and hopefully offer something generous and helpful to the world, either through my honesty in frustration, a bit of true story, or insights into art and my own thoughts about the world.
So here I embark on Summer 2017.
A quick recap from last fall:
I am now in the final three weeks of a run of The Skin of Our Teeth by Thornton Wilder at Rosebud Theatre.
I am so privileged to play the mother of all mothers, Mrs. Antrobus. This play has been challenging and exciting. It takes all my mental and physical focus to stay on track and tuned to the moment. But I love where Wilder lands us. Everything good and worthwhile stands on the razor's edge of danger, he says, and must be fought for. Whether it is a home, a field, or a country. When Mrs. A is faced with a prodigal son who has been the enemy, she starts putting the house to rights. She begins to put order into herself, her home, and her surroundings. This is the work we have to do. This is the basic premise to begin again, and again, and again. It is what everyone who keeps a home going knows, she says. And she goes on to say it's something that shouldn't have to be explained or said, because you can read it in each other's eyes.
This truth. Putting order into the small and mundane, so you can rightly lead in bigger things, has been challenging me.
While I'm fostering these new seedlings of tomato and squash and pepper, there are other corners of my house that have gone untended. I always gravitate toward the new. I love to create and feel at once alive, relevant, and affirmed when I get to do so. But creating New necessitates a clean up, a re-ordering, a time to make sense of what is right in front of me and sort out what is behind me. I can't always create anew without putting order into what is right in front of me. This imbalance causes me to avoid the mundane things that ask me to work hard, to make decisions about the value of my belongings and properly take care of them, or pass them on, or remake them into something else, and where to store them in the meantime.
This is basic housekeeping folks. And I still try and skirt it to do things that are more enjoyable and life-giving in a way I can instantly feel.
God please help me to face what is right in front of me, and what is hiding behind the door, the couch, or under the bed, so I can begin to put order into my home, my self, my life.
Three recommendations:
1. Come see The Skin of our Teeth and have a Rosebud Experience. If you can make it to Calgary, we'll bring you the rest of the way. www.rosebudtheatre.com
2. My friend Heather put me on to this man, Jordan Peterson, who speaks into what I'm saying. https://www.reddit.com/r/Maps_of_Meaning/comments/6answt/jordan_peterson_the_reason_modern_people_cant_see/
3. We watched our DVD of The King's Speech again last night with Donovan and Weston. Beautiful. In every way. Such good story and storytelling. Such wonderful truths and challenges. And the resounding message of finding and using your voice. Highly, highly recommended.
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