Outdoor Lights

This year we cut down our juniper tree on the left side of our house, which is good for all reasons except that we can't put Christmas lights on it anymore. Sure, I love junipers in the desert. In fact, I'm all about changing Utah's state tree to the juniper (our state tree is the Colorado blue spruce--yes, it has another state's name in it, although we usually leave that part out). But despite my love for the juniper, I'd like them to stay in the desert and out of my yard.

I think Kevin did a great job with the lights, especially on the gnarly hibernating trumpet vine. We're experimenting with the blue LEDs this year. Also note those very clipped rose bushes along the driveway.

Christmas Tree Tour

My favorite decoration for Christmas is our Christmas tree. We bought this one seven years ago, and it's getting a little fragile, but still good enough. We aren't purists, but for some reason have always loved the way the white lights look in our home. These are snow lights, where every other one is a frosted white light.

When Kevin and I go on trips, instead of buying souvenirs, we buy Christmas tree ornaments. These keeps our house from being cluttered with foreign kitsch during the rest of the year, and it makes decorating the tree ultra fun as we can remember the places we've been together.

Here are a few highlights:

This is from the old cat shop in Seaport Village in San Diego. It's a ball with three very fat cats on it in Santa hats. Hmmm... remind you of any kitties you know?

This jester is from Shakespeare's birthplace in Stratford-upon-Avon. There's something that feels so Christmasy about England, and Shakespeare did write Twelfth Night to be performed on January 6th, the 12th day of Christmas in King James' court, so why not have a court player from Shakespeare's home on my tree?

This one is extra special. This Navajo story teller was bought in Pipe Springs, Arizona for me by Kevin's Grandpa who isn't with us anymore. However, it's just one of the many things that reminds me of him and his ever-giving ways.

These two aren't from trips, but they are two of my favorites. The one on the left is from 2006, and the two little cardinals are in their new home. Kevin and I bought this to commemorate buying our home that year. The one on the right really spins. I got it when I was a girl because I had a hamster that would climb up and down stairs and I'd make up super-hero stories about her. I just can't believe they thought to make a hamster wheel ornament.

This last one is from our honeymoon in Mexico. It's a teacup turned on its side with a little nativity inside. I still keep it wrapped in the newspaper the shop owner wrapped it in. I don't think it's even supposed to be an ornament, but since we got married at Christmas time, it will always remind me of our first Christmas together.

List of Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday of all. The family, the food, the non-commercialization, these all add up to what makes this the best week of the year.

My list of thanksgiving, in no particular order:

Art, freedom of expression, and authenticity
Good books, great authors
Food in abundance
Being a woman after the feminist movement blazed the way for my freedom
Music, singing Handel's Messiah, family singing
Heat, energy, and light in this great vacuum of space
Jobs, employment, health insurance, good work
Health, strength, exercise
Home with Kevin, music, garden, and kitties
Education, learning, teachers and mentors who made a positive difference
Generosity of friends, family, and strangers
Quality time
Conversation
Diversion, leisure, browsing, relaxation, vacation
Soft answers, patience, forgiveness
Global community, exchange of information, travel, many cultures and human richness
Wilderness, primitive places, isolation
Civilization, political stability, engineering, medicine, warm sanitized water
Humor
Creation, songs, painting, improving the world
Sacrifice
Beauty, nature, flowers, mountains, deserts, sky
Mercy
Questions, processes, opportunities
Family, tribe, heritage, roots and connections
Good night's sleep
Love

I hope that you will be blessed with thankfulness, happiness, and companionship this holiday!

These Roses Know What They're Doing

This week I am aspiring to be what I've been wanting to be: a woman of leisure. I took off work and it feels wonderful! I spent the morning in the warm sunshine seriously cutting back my roses for the winter.

As I knelt down with each of my 16 rose bushes today, I couldn't help feel a little apprehensive with all this cutting away. It was a tangly, thorny job. Thank goodness the garbage man came in the middle of my pruning because I filled the garbage can twice. I almost didn't get the first full garbage can to the curb while the truck rumbled down my street, but had to go running down my 80-foot driveway with an awkwardly full can crying, "Wait! I have garbage!"

I'm told that roses love nothing more than to be cut back, that essentially my hacking away at them down to the wood today will make them blossom even more come June. Taking a break myself this week, I couldn't agree with them more.

Methodical Miscellany: Women Doing More

When I start feeling grateful, I start wishing there was more I could do to help people who are really in need. A great new blog (new to me, at least), Women Doing More is a place that gives daily ways we can become more involved in filling these needs. How awesome.

I’m glad that I live in this beautiful world

Today I am thankful for beautiful music, warm days, and loving friends. I've been thinking of this primary children's song lately, and I think its message is beautiful and simple with the merging of nature, the senses, and God's love. I should have sung this more when I was the primary chorister last year. I think if I could give one message to children that they could internalize, this would be it.

Whenever I hear the song of a bird
Or look at the blue, blue sky,
Whenever I feel the rain on my face
Or the wind as it rushes by,
Whenever I touch a velvet rose
Or walk by a lilac tree,
I’m glad that I live in this beautiful world
Heavenly Father created for me.

He gave me my eyes that I might see
The color of butterfly wings.
He gave my ears that I might hear
The magical sound of things.
He gave me my life, mind, my heart;
I thank Him rev’rently
For all his creations, of which I’m a part.
Yes, I know Heavenly Father loves me.

"My Heavenly Father Loves Me," The Children’s Songbook, p. 228

Here's lookin' at you, kitties

Here are two crazy autumn cats caught doing what they always do: Aja is perched on something that's a wee bit too small for her so that she will be noticed. And Phoebe? She likes it when she can see, but not be seen (always suspicious). Any proximity to Aja is a bonus. This picture cracks me up.

We are the ones for whom we have been waiting

"We are the ones for whom we have been waiting."

-Hopi Elders

What do you think of this idea? Are we the ones who have come to rescue ourselves? Are we enough? Is the idea that we may have to rescue ourselves from ourselves a frightful or comforting idea?

An ice-axe to break the sea frozen inside us

If the book we are reading does not wake us, as with a fist hammering on our skull, why then do we read it? [...] What we must have are those books which come upon us like ill-fortune, and distress us deeply, like the death of one we love better than ourselves, like suicide. A book must be an ice-axe to break the sea frozen inside us.

-Franz Kafka, as quoted in The Promise by Chaim Potok

This is not a post about the books we read for fun, for guilt, for pleasure. This is about the novels that shape us, sometimes in painful ways.

What are the novels that have torn you up, that have cracked the ice within you? The first fiction I remember that was really meaningful was A Wrinkle in Time. It changed my perspective on many things. As you think of your own soul-shattering novels, here are a few of mine. I had long explanations on each of these, but I've decided that these books are just too personal to explain in a few sentences and share with the world. So you get the revised high-level list:

• A Wrinkle in Time

• To Kill a Mockingbird

• Beloved

• Heart of Darkness

• My Name is Asher Lev

As I look over this list, I realize that all of these books were read between the ages of 12-18. It's a transformative time. Yes, as I was earning two literature degrees in college I encountered many far-reaching novels that I assume have shattering potential equal or greater to the ones I've listed (The Color Purple and Jude the Obscure come to mind). Yet in some ways these were variations on the themes of the previous books. The foundation had been laid, torn down, modified, rejected, and remodeled through each of these reads. Now with that, I could build a palace with other uncomfortable, strange, new, and sometimes disturbing reads.

What about you? What novels/fiction did you read that shattered your universe and molded you into who you are?

The Leaves are Falling

The leaves aren't just turning anymore: they're falling. Unfortunately for my cats, that means all their outdoor hiding spots will be revealed. Some people say that fall is a spring where every leaf is a flower. I really enjoy the colors, and I'm sad to see them go.

One saving grace is November has pretty clear, beautiful skies.

Spooky Halloween Night

When I was in elementary school, the two best school-celebrated holidays were hands down Halloween and Valentine's Day. We stopped regular lessons, ate sugar cookies and cupcakes, paraded in our costumes (Halloween) or handed out candy to everyone in our class (Valentine's Day). Next to the school carnival and field day, these were two of the best of the entire year.

For work I had to locate some kid pictures Halloween costumes, and I came across ones of my dear husband too. Kevin and I want to wish you all a fun, spooky holiday, brought to you by these low-resolution photos. We both agree his traffic light costume (with real blilnking light) is the best (with a cameo from Tracy). Happy Halloween!

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Beyond the Horizon

As I sat at work today, not too happy about some things that are taking longer than I would like, this Bob Dylan song came on iTunes:

Beyond the horizon, behind the sun
At the end of the rainbow life has only begun
In the long hours of twilight 'neath the stardust above
Beyond the horizon it is easy to love

I'm touched with desire
What don't I do?
Through flame and through fire
I'll build my world around you

[...]

Beyond the horizon, the sky is so blue
I've got more than a lifetime to live lovin' you

The sliding steel guitar and dancing tempo of this song brought me back to Hawaii. Now there's a place I'd love to be right now, dancing to Bob Dylan on the beach.

Here's to Hope

Kevin and I just finished planting 100 some odd bulbs, including 50 crocuses, 10 white daffodils, and the several varieties of tulips. It's not the kind of thing where you plant a seed and expect results in 2 weeks, a month, or anytime soon. I figure the crocuses are five months out at least, but I am excited to plant them because crocuses are the first spring flower I remember from when I was a kid.

Here's to hope to last through two seasons.

Headlock of Love

While pulling up some childhood costume pictures for our work Halloween party, I ran across this picture of me lovingly holding my first cat, White Paws.

I think this is evidence that some things never change.

Meditation

Kevin grabbed this snapshot of my meditation over the weekend, 1,000 feet above the Fruita orchards.

Those hard-to-reach behind-the-ear spots

Watching Phoebe and Aja like this reminded me of all the great things friends and partners do for each other. I shudder to think of where we would be without the other to support us and cover us in those hard-to-reach parts of our lives.

One thing I'm surprised you can't hear on the video is Aja's very loud motor of a purr.

Acorns

My childhood was surrounded by bark, leaves, and acorns. My backyard was home to a tall stand of wild oak trees. This small grove hovered above my park-issue swing set, and I could almost touch the branches with my feet when I swang high. The oaks had a nailed-in ladder to a high platform that served as my tree house, and later my dad added another, lower tier so that I had a proper second story.

In autumn the leaves came down in abundance. The ones that fell over the lawn were swept into heaping piles, but the majority of the leaves were left to provide a floor for the mini-forest that was replenished and re-layered with every cold season.

Around this oak patch and up in my tree fort, I engaged in the kind of unstructured imaginative play that doesn’t come from Barbie dolls or watching cartoons. I was an orphan like the Boxcar Children, surviving in the forest, Mowgli in the rain forest, and even a creator of vast worlds. I would invite (which usually meant I would carry) my cats up to the fortress and make them my subjects while I barked orders and they lazily rolled over in the spotty shade. It was the kind of place I could bring my friends or attend alone, but it always proved to be an open, freedom-filling space.

Down below the tree dropped hundreds of acorns. These were my earliest experiences with seeds, which are the metaphors for our growth, our spirituality, our human stories of life and regeneration. I wanted to understand how something the size of a fingertip could grow into the massive organic structure that held my two-story fortress, shaded my yard, and provided enough of a large forest for me to get lost in imagination. Occasionally I found the decomposing ones, which were pliable and allowed me to peel down to the heart of the nut in an attempt to uncover the magic of their potential treehood. The cupules would detach freely and make perfect fingertip covers, tea cups for grasshopper tea parties, or small shovels for miniature construction sites. Now when I see an acorn still attached to the tree, I can't help but think of those cup-shaped cupules and how I used to collect those perfect half-spherical shells.

I never ate the acorns despite knowing that they fed birds and other animals, not to mention the Native Americans that were able to store them up fresh for months—even years—at a time without processing them. I think that’s what makes the acorn somewhat unique: they are an early, natural hand-me-down source that doesn’t need immediate modification to be used at a later time. Like the acorns, my playtimes in the wild oak tree patch were ones that preserved themselves well, stored up raw in the reserves of memory, to draw upon when the simple times have all but diminished. I can barely recall those times of processed, commercialized play with heavily-branded merchandise. Instead these unstructured, natural experiences are the ones that last for years in their pure form, a harvest I can draw upon when new production of unstructured imaginative experiences are harder to come by.

Evening at Silver Lake

I've been thinking about mountains and water, and so Kevin and I decided to take this gorgeous autumn stroll around Silver Lake this evening. I can hardly believe this is so close to our home. The aspen color is better than I've seen it in years, and you can see the snow that's coming down the mountainside.

Where Mountains Meet Water

I love this picture I have that belongs to a series Kevin and I took at Jenny Lake in Grand Teton National Park this summer. The lake is beautiful, but it's the mountains coming right up out of the water that gets to me.

I first learned to recognize and love the blend of shoreline and rising peaks when I went on an Alaskan cruise with my aunt and uncle almost nine years ago. I just can't help but think how great it would be to have this view out of my back door. I guess I'll have to settle for mountains rising up out of the desert valley for now.

Hi-Ho, Anybody Home?

Growing Hearth, Red Butte Garden

Matt mentioned campfire songs recently, and it made me think about two things. First, there's been a serious lack of campfires this year, and second, I love autumn-sounding songs like "Hi-Ho, Anybody Home?" and "Have You Seen the Ghost of John?". Great rounds.

I'm also thinking about Halloween. I suppose it would be pretty inappropriate to don a prairie dress and do up my hair like a polygamist? It's a shame. I could totally pull that off.