Happy New Year!
I hope this finds you adjusting to writing 20 instead of 19—or 2020 as my oldest warned me, so that time travelers do not come in and try to re-write history by post-dating my entries.
Food for thought, anyway.
It seems books are the way that I often choose to get my footing in a new year. I load up my library cart and hope that they popular books get delivered to me at a pace with which I can keep up (this is never how it works). I love making lists of the books I didn’t get to last year, suggestions I’ve received, or things I hope to learn about in the coming year—so if you have some recommendations, please share!
My top five books from 2019 include:
Island of Sea Women, The Nightingale, Educated, Everything Happens for a Reason & Other Lies I’ve Loved, Where the Crawdads Sing
In this library cart stuffing-frenzy, I also added Miss. Rumphius for our kiddos and was delighted by her message which I haven’t heard in ages:
Essentially when Alice Rumphius tells her artist grandfather her plans for her life she describes going to faraway places, and growing old beside the sea. He tells her that there is a third thing she must do: ‘Make the world more beautiful.’ She agrees, but has no idea what that might mean and the story ensues.
Like any good book reading mama, I asked the girls what they thought they might like to do to make the world more beautiful. Just like Alice, they sort of shrugged and said they couldn’t think of anything. As I closed the book, my oldest asked what I am doing to make the world more beautiful…
Funny how often we assume children’s books are for children.
I haven’t given her my answer yet, but I am savoring the question. The timing is ripe with possibility. Whether or not I’ve started with the task, it is liberating because we can start anytime, or every year–every day, even.
The short list for today includes:
-Raising kiddos
-Raising bees/flowers (as a side, here is a really thought-provoking article about modern beekeeping)
– On good days, sharing words in hopes that they land where they’re most needed
How about you? What beautiful thing(s) would you choose to leave as your legacy?
*For Miss. Rumphius, it’s lupines.
Prayer pledge
The image that has had my attention lately, is the Sacred Heart of Jesus. Admittedly it isn’t one I have spent a great deal of time with before, which is perhaps why I’ve been captivated. This is the theme for the 2020 prayer pledge for the month of January, put on through Blessed Is She. I am excited to share with you that I was able to contribute the reflections for the final week of January. It has been a real gift to read other writer’s insights on the same theme, which helps to broaden my own awareness of Christ’s penetrating love. (It’s not too late to sign up if you’d like to follow along! Subscribe here for daily prayer pledge reflections).
Whether you are seeking beauty in book lists, seed catalogs, cherished photographs, prayer, music, dear friends; I pray that the New Year will provide a foundation for those things, and an invitation for new ideas!
Everybody needs beauty as well as bread, places to play in and pray in, where nature may heal and give strength to body and soul.
-John Muir
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Lastly, if you’re already looking ahead to Lent next month and would like to participate in the Lenten journal through Blessed Is She, my friend Laura Kelly Fanucci is the reflection writer, and if you have read her work, you know it is soul-stirring. Orders fill up fast, so don’t wait. If you order, please consider using my affiliate link—thanks!