Seeking Signs - About Reading

An Excerpt from my M.Ed. Paper, Seeking Signs of How to Live: A Woman's Web of Reading
http://www.box.net/shared/8c4nbp22ck

Mood and Time

Midweek, I was fighting a feeling of uselessness and exhaustion. A day of "self-indulgence" and my energy and happiness rose. Doing was temporarily replaced by being, and it gave health!

Summer Idylls

There have been emotional bumps and fears, but every time I walk in this wonderful summer, I'm in a timeless moment; it is idyllic, and I feel joy.

Cucumbers for Nutrition

Who knew?

Waiting

Sometimes I pin my dreams to a possible response that I'm waiting for.

I hang between hope and the butterfly's move,
counting out my days
in apple cores and coffee grounds.

The Treatment of Women in Canada

I really enjoy reading Antonia Zerbisias's witty, pungent articles. Here, once again, she uses humour to remind us of how women are disadvantaged, even though many find it an old story that they'd rather not hear again.
http://www.thestar.com/living/article/227563
Just because we're used to it doesn't mean it's just!

Art With Art

500 Years of Female Portraits in Western Art

Rumi Said ...

Do you think I know what I'm doing?
That for one breath or one half-breath I belong to myself?
As much as a pen knows what it's writing,
or the ball can guess where it's going next.

Rumi - translated by Coleman Barks with John Moyne

"Time past and time future..."

Eliot again, The Four Quartets.

"To be conscious is not to be in time" but I want to remember "the moment in the rose-garden." To think and to feel - are these opposites? mutually exclusive?


I believe that the wisdom which can come with age is simply and wonderfully, only the integration of thinking and feeling.

Sometimes I am fully in the moment and yet realize I have a choice:
I can collapse into blind raging,

or

I can try loving clarity, the calm voice and the heart seeking peace.

Image - "Open Clip Art Library/Clip Art." Open Clip Art Library. 24 Feb. 2007.

What is Life?

"For what is life but reaching for an answer?
And what is death but a refusal to grow?"

Mary Oliver asks.

Oliver, Mary. New and Selected Poems. Boston: Beacon P, 1992.

Aging

"I grow old, I grow old.
I shall wear my trousers rolled" - T.S.Eliot
I read it when I was young and it haunted me. I didn't know what rolling trousers meant, but I knew it was a

descent,
a diminishment,
a loss,
a lessening.

Was it also a letting go?

Winter in Ontario

Beautiful, but my parents are thankful for snow-blowers and neighbours, and so am I.

Snow Day! Yea!

So today was a Snow Day, with schools closed and people snowed in so they had to work-at-home. My friend, who has a share of a neighbourhood-owned snow blower, got her driveway cleared, but the school where she teaches was closed. She meant to work, but claims that her experiences of Snow Days when she was young conditioned her to stay in bed and read. Sounds like she had a delightful day!

I spent the morning catching up on a report I wrote, then lost when my computer crashed. I think today's version was actually better. I just structured it with the info in a most-important to least-important pattern, and added the recommendations immediately after the reported problem, instead of in a bunch at the end, the conventional method. A point - suggestion, point - approach that I think will be easier to read and take in.

In the afternoon, I discovered a possible job, and then read. Lovely day!

Music to Rouse You!

We saw two groups in concert yesterday, and both were wonderful.

The Blind Boys of Alabama

http://www.blindboys.com/main.html   They are amazing! Their story is amazing! Their name gives you some indication of their age and the era and circumstances they were born into. They have won 4 Grammys in the last few years. They are showmen who use who they are to woo their audience and get us up on our feeting clapping and cheering several times. (Staid, middle-aged and middle class Canadians yelling and cheering! Almost Unbelievable!)

When they came in, guided in a chain with their hands on their shoulders, and obviously quite old, a kind of patronizing preparation sets in; I was ready to make allowances. None needed! Their voices are truly powerful and so is their stage presence. If you get a chance, go see them. If you can't go see them, get one of their CDs.

The House of Doc

http://www.houseofdoc.com/home.html  Much younger and Canadian; their musicianship is impressively tight. The range of instruments and the intense harmony, plus the  stage commentary of their leader all got the audience (same usually staid folks!) on their feet, clapping and cheering. CDs and show - highly recommend.

technorati tags:Blind_Boys, House_of_Doc, music

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After Epiphany

Christmas is over; the Christmas tree waits on the curb for the municipal truck to grind it into compost and haul it away. Snow covers the land outside of my study, at last! This year with the violent and/or strange weather, even the most blinded and reluctant are beginning to admit that Global Warming is truly happening! An epiphany long awaited and leading, I hope, to more individual and government action.

What can be done?

Christmas

Inherited from my husband's family - a Christmas Tradition

Our 2006/2007 Amaryllis

Happy New Year!

technorati tags:nativity, amyrillus

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My Town - A Wet Fall

O for Oakville

Along the Avenue



Gold Beneath Our Feet


Three Trees Are One


The Stripped Tree


Leaves and Berries


A Fall Garden

In the Dark of Winter - An Advent Poem

Advent Meditation
by Joan Vinall-Cox

Listen Here - http://www.box.net/public/7vgtbqolda


This was to fulfill what had been spoken by the Lord through the prophet,
“Out of Egypt I have called my son.” - Matthew 2:15

It was a dark time -
Mary had wanted to be glad
Joseph had chosen her
but that strange dream ...

and old Elizabeth, swollen with child,
calling her blessed, saying a
Child was growing in her
too, yet she’d never...
except in that strange dream;

and she had swollen
and Joseph,
angry and sad and puzzled,
had planned to hide
her disgrace, but he dreamed
too,

and married her but slept
apart
and would not look at her.
It was a dark time.

It was a dark time -
the rulers had decided
to count them all where
their ancestors had lived
so Joseph and Mary must walk

for days, weeks, and her so
large and tired, and both so
puzzled and hopeful and fearful.
Could the Holy One really have chosen
them?

Still they must walk,
as the rulers
demanded, in the cold,
in the darkening time, they must
walk into Bethlehem, this ancient
town, filled with others obeying
the rulers who wanted to count them and did not care

about walking, or a room for a
young woman with her time
pressing on her,
with the Holy One’s Gift demanding
His time on earth,
and no room for this family

It was a dark time.

There was light at His birth -
light in Mary’s eyes and
light in Joseph’s smile and
light flowing out, pulsing out
around the wondrous Child

light that brought the amazed
shepherds,
and star light that
brought the Wise Ones from
afar to worship
Him

and light that the eyes in
the dark could see, whispering to
a man with too much power
that he was nothing
beside such Light,

and the Holy One sent another
dream to guard the Light, to
hide it in a foreign land

and Mary and Joseph fled
into Egypt, carrying the Light
away from the darkness of
Herod’s massacre of babies.

It was a dark time.

It was a dark time -
waiting in a foreign land,
watching Him grow, and learning
patience and trust, waiting
for a new dream, yearning for
home
and then

out of the dark time,
the dream came.

December 18, 1996

Temporarily Away

The view from my study.

I won't be posting in this blog until after Christmas, due to a heavy workload. I will, however, continue posting here - http://elgg.net/vinall/weblog - on, among other things, my experiences as I use wikis and blogs in place of a commercial Learning Management System. Hope you can link to me there.

Fall's Coming

It's cloudy, raining, and cool today.

from http://www.ontarioweather.com/specials/stormchasing/storms.asp?Chasing=June292000

Amazing how dull weather helps you look forward to school and the Fall.

technorati tags:clouds, school

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