Showing posts with label joy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label joy. Show all posts

Wednesday, August 4, 2010

Garden Retreat

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This is my back yard. It was a shambles when we bought the house, but we’ve built the flagstone patio area with the swing, fire pit and picnic table, planted tender new flowerbeds everywhere and spent many long evenings eating and laughing together here.

My daughter and I just finished this dinnerware set, which combines my Organic Soul with her garden Retreat.

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We’ve worked hard on the dinnerware set to make the leaf plates curl gracefully, to make plates that are organic shapes but also not warped. We’ve sweated in physical labor as a family creating our retreat far more than the time we’ve spent lazily enjoying it.

Is this a conundrum, to work hard making a place of rest, or a dinnerware set intended for long leisurely meals?

The work has been a kind of joy and pleasure unlike any other. There are thoughts that come while forming clay into a poppy or planting new lilies or laying the flagstone that are as if the mind has opened and something large and full of grace steps in. Inside of the physical work of creativity I find delight, as if delight were the most serious thing possible.

Wednesday, April 15, 2009

When I look at her



My daughter is coming home today from a trip to Disney with her school band. This is a cameraphone picture carelessly snapped before she left, and filed in a folder she's marked 'Random', and that is so perfect. There is such a crazy joy in her that I feel, in looking at any random moment, like I'm looking through a thin veil, and behind it, just beyond the gauze of prettiness and youth, is the wonder of a Universe, a Creator, most pleased with itself. She has had this unreasonable transcendent laughter, merriment, joi de vivre, since she made her entrance into this world, and my hope, my prayer, my heartbeat's afirmation, is that this quality stays with her, no matter what else comes or goes.