I intend to redeem myself. AFTER we move house. What kind of stuff would you like to see, it’s been so long I can practically reinvent myself!

I did need the space. Lent. However the time was so full of other ‘must dos’ and now that is over and finally I can shuffle things around things to where they can be re-evaluated.
So I am shuffling. Somewhat slowly. Shuffling and re-evalutating.

Perhaps words will resurface to the top again?

Did I mention I got an iPad (1) for my birthday, it’s uber fun. Perhaps it is not helping me find space directly, but it is new and fun. Did I mention that it is fun? It’s really the most fun present I’ve ever received.

And the Enneagram email was a beast the other day:

As a One, you are part of the Frustration-Based Group. Ones are frustrated that the world is not more sensible and orderly. The antidote for your frustration is acceptance of reality. (Understanding the Enneagram, 318)

Saffron & Nutmeg

IT’S OVER

You can add me again to your feed readers.

*This does not count for posts written at ridiculous hours, although that’s sometimes when the brain is free enough to be ridiculous and somewhat good… yes I’ll shutup now.

1. Introduction
2. Love
3. Light
4. Dark
5. Solace
6. Break away
7. Heaven
8. Innocence
9. Drive
10. Breathe
11. Memory
12. Insanity
13. Misfortune
14. Smile
15. Silence
16. Questioning
17. Blood
18. Rainbow
19. Grey
20. Fortitude
21. Vacation
22. Mother Nature
23. Cat
24. No Time
25. Trouble
26. Tears
27. Foreign
28. Sorrow
29. Happiness
30. Rain
31. Flowers
32. Night
33. Expectation
34. Stars
35. Hand
36. Treasure
37. Eyes
38. Abandoned
39. Dreams
40. Rated
41. Teamwork
42. Standing Still
43. Dying
44. Two Roads
45. Illusion
46. Family
47. Creation
48. Childhood
49. Stripes
50. Breaking the Rules
51. Sport
52. Thought
53. Secret
54. Tower
55. Waiting
56. Danger
57. Sacrifice
58. Kick in the Head
59. No Way Out
60. Rejection
61. Fairy Tale
62. Magic
63. Disturbed
64. Multitasking
65. Horror
66. Traps
67. Melody
68. Hero
69. Annoyance
70. 67%
71. Obsession
72. Mischief Managed
73. Inability
74. Challenge
75. Mirror
76. Broken
77. Test
78. Drink
79. Starvation
80. Words
81. Pen and Paper
82. Heard
83. Heal
84. Cold
85. Spiral
86. Seeing Red
87. Food
88. Pain
89. Through the Fire
90. Triangle
91. Drowning
92. Posessions
93. Surrender
94. Hope
95. Advertisement
96. Storms
97. Safety
98. Puzzle
99. Solitude
100. Relaxation

There are a few things I would like to improve on this year.

• Have more people over
• Get vaguely fit/eat healthier and more varied foods
• Watch less television
• Spend more time talking with Geoff
• Deal with the backyard/garden
• More time with God (actual decent time)

Nothing revolutionary. Quite sedate, standard things really. Which is what would be truly nice for this year – after a year of so much change and newness.

Totally stealing from Ann Voskamp and her post about ‘Naming the Year‘ I have chosen the word Communion. I did actually sit down and pray (terribly briefly) about what it should be – but looking at that list up there and from what I can gather, this is what keeps resonating. The list after all is very much about connecting with other people and with God and with my surroundings, and for someone who lives far too much life in her head, I think this is something I should be thinking about.

I do feel rather disconnected from the depth of life that used to be so obvious and present.

I hope to write here more. But I hope to write here less if it means I am spending my time more richly.

“Maybe communion is just a way of waking up to reality of real living” – Ann Voskamp

Jesus replied, “Anyone who loves me will obey my teaching. My Father will love them, and we will come to them and make our home with them.” – John 14:23

“A writer is dear and necessary for us only in the measure of which he reveals to us the inner workings of his very soul. ~ Tolstoy

Today I saw a taxi with a number plate 1111. It amused me.
Still chasing our hosting to deal with the horrid spam.
But I’m coming back. Just. you. wait.

Very sorry, it seems someone has used my blog feed to post ads, I will attempt to get to the bottom of it! Sorry you got spammed.

Bec

The opinion piece addresses the thoughts of writer Ted Genoways.

At the same time, young writers will have to swear off navel-gazing in favor of an outward glance onto a wrecked and lovely world worthy and in need of the attention of intelligent, sensitive writers.

By way of overview – this is the opinion piece:

Pardon us for filtering out the unimaginable suffering we watch on live broadcasts with a sickening compulsion and can replay on YouTube. In the chasm between vacuous celebrity and the realities of insidious fundamentalism, perhaps it is only our own lives, logged hourly and picked over, that we can clutch on to for purpose, meaning and creative inspiration, in order to tune out the loud, fast world.

For now, might we be excused our navel gazing? When you have seen men glide down from burning towers on slipstreams of hate, perhaps it’s not too big a leap to conclude that one’s navel is the only safe place to be looking.

And to dear Ted, we are the wrecked and lovely world. It’s there in our writing if you can bring yourself to read it, and while it may not be ‘sterling’ enough for you, it’s as real as the Iraq war, and often as heartbreaking.

I find that I am struggling to hold my intense introverted and internal methods living and processing – my narcissism, with the outward looking life I desire to have. Perhaps this is why this article plucked deep hurt on the strings of my soul.

From letter 89 by Tolkien:
“…I coined the word ‘eucatastrophe’: the sudden happy turn in a story which pierces you with a joy that brings tears (which I argued it is the highest function of fairy stories to produce). And I was there led to the view that it produces its peculiar effect because it is a sudden glimpse of truth…. It perceives– if the story has literary ‘truth’ –that this is indeed how things really do work in the Great World for which our nature is made. And I concluded by saying that the Resurrection was the greatest ‘eucatastrophe’ possible in the greatest fairy story– and produces that essential emotion: Christian joy which produces tears because it is qualitatively so like sorrow, because it comes from those places where Joy and Sorrow are at one, reconciled, as selfishness and altruism are lost in Love…”

Cannot we find some way to correlate our local and personal sorrow and experiences of living with the greater sorrow of this world, to lean on eucatastrophe and hope – wait and live that reconciliation of the overlapping now but not yet.

There is another response (in a more literary sense) to the Harvest piece here: A response to harvest.

I’m dealing with some interesting things with work at the moment. It is quite frustrating.

You know when you feel like you’re in the groove and suddenly the bowling ball wanders off track into the gutter. Ach. so close. Not there yet. No great misery, simply tiresome.

And, what is Posterous? A few people I know have it – is it simply another form of sharing content? I wish Google reader allowed output for specific things directly into this blog. Then I could target the shares that make it here. Currently they just all are plastered across the same rss and aren’t here at all. Besides, I have too much in Google Reader, perhaps I should cull. It is unhealthy. I like those blogs where someone shares their delightful finds, however it’s too tedious to do a re-post everytime I find something.