Bean Sprout Baby!

Last fall, I taught myself how to crochet. And as the fall progressed with all of its craziness, crocheting became very therapeutic.

After the holidays last year, I decided my very unofficial New Year's resolution would be to open an etsy shop in 2012. At with just a couple of months left in the year, I've done it!

Please, take a look! Enjoy! :)

http://www.etsy.com/shop/BeanSproutBaby

one year

Grief is funny.

Not "ha ha" funny. It's unpredictable and annoying. It's necessary. It's messy.

If someone had sat me down on November 2nd last year and said, "Here's what you've got to look forward to in the next year. Here are the losses, challenges, and CRAP that await you," I don't think I would have necessarily welcomed that news with open arms. "Bring it on! Let's see what we can handle!" No. Please just let me keep living my normal, easy life. Please.

However, looking BACK at this past year from here, having survived it, I'd do it again. What? Yes. I'd do it all again because we've not only lost this year. We have gained. We have been gifted with so much. Amidst the pain, there has been life. There has been hope. We have felt God near us in ways that we never have before.

Rather than get into this more in writing, I will share the video from this weekend's services. I was honored to  share our story during our annual "Novembering" services. It was a very sweet, humbling time.

My portion starts around 14:20 and runs roughly 9 minutes. But if you can spare the half hour, I think Steve's intro and closing are really poignant, and Wayne's story is very sweet as well. And the video ends with the scrolling list of names that our community has lost over the past year. Even when you don't know someone on the list, it's always such an emotional part of the service. Both Charlie's and Hannah's names are on the list, which Elizabeth Hunnicutt accompanied with her amazing song, "Grows Hope."

https://vimeo.com/52875936

(Sorry you'll have to deal with following a link. My non-premiere vimeo account won't let me embed) :)

Fall Garden

In fall
the garden is spent

having given its all.

Cucumber vines lie exhausted on the ground

Tomato plants list to one side

Cornstalks stand dignified and empty

Sunflower faces droop earthward, 

shades of their former selves.

All that has not been claimed lies moldering in the dirt--

          a bruised tomato, a forsaken pepper...

                    a misshapen pumpkin, a trampled stalk of beans.

What came from earth is returning

to the place from whence it came.

There is an intimacy here,

          in the fall garden,

                    gazing at living things in their demise.

I want to avert my eyes, avoid this tender grief.

Is this life or is this death? I cannot tell.

Ah, but there is beauty here

          amid all this death and dying.

To have given one's self fully

at least once

that is the thing.

To have spent oneself in an explosion of color

          to have offered one's body for food,

                    one's very soul for nourishment...

It is an unseemly generosity,

beauty of another kind.

In fall

the garden says, "This is my life, given for you." 

And we are fed.

Ruth Haley Barton