America

The Warmth of the Closest Star

I found this to be the loveliest glimpse of understanding the universe, of trying to impart wonder about our existence.  Sasha Sagan, Carl Sagan's daughter, wrote about her "mini existential crisis" when confronted with death and her parents lovely response to it:

“You are alive right this second. That is an amazing thing,” they told me. When you consider the nearly infinite number of forks in the road that lead to any single person being born, they said, you must be grateful that you’re you at this very second. Think of the enormous number of potential alternate universes where, for example, your great-great-grandparents never meet and you never come to be. Moreover, you have the pleasure of living on a planet where you have evolved to breathe the air, drink the water, and love the warmth of the closest star. You’re connected to the generations through DNA — and, even farther back, to the universe, because every cell in your body was cooked in the hearts of stars.

Now as a person who is incredibly in love with the warmth of the closest star, I have to tell you these words really speak to me.  Olivia and I have lots of conversation about our universe and God and the intricacy of billions of cells moving in a rhythm that you can hear if you're still. What a lovely way to express the wonder and gratitude of it all to a child.

So worth watching!

In Which Evelyn Does What She Wants

Could It Be??

Everyone has their favorite version, but here's mine.  We've almost made it fellow sunshine lovers!

I'm not up to much

Did you know that before I picked up a paint brush a couple of years ago, I'd never really nurtured any real creative instinct in myself? Writing was always easy, but I wasn't doing that regularly and anytime my sister undertook a DIY project I'd promptly say something about how it would be better to just pay someone else to do it.  A lot of that has to do with confidence. It's not a good feeling to discover over and over that you're not good at anything and I'm really good at avoiding disappointment.

Anyway, painting little birds was fun until lots of people wanted me to paint specific little birds for them and I found myself spending all my free time hunched over a little canvas wearing clothes covered in paint. In other words, I liked it when I was doing my own thing but really didn't like being told what to do creatively.  That sounds like I'm pretty spoiled, I know, but I insist that I was always grateful that folks liked what I was doing enough to actually pay me to do it.  And I've always been sure that there's plenty of people doing things they don't really love for a lot less money than I was making off little birdie paintings.

Still, HAVING to do it all the time caused me to take my ball and go home. I stopped painting mostly.  I figure when I want to paint, I'll paint.  And then I bought this bracelet. It was months and months ago that I bought this little leather cuff with words stamped on a metal plate on it for $45 online.  I kept looking at it thinking, "I bet I could do that."  And a few months passed and I took an old belt and punched some holes in it and bought a set of metal stampers and messed around and it didn't work so I put it away and got busy with something else. Then our church challenged us by giving us each $5 to generate something good for mission work and Olivia wondered if we couldn't buy some more belts at Goodwill and give it another try, maybe even sell them and make money to return to mission projects through church.  If we combined my mom and dad's $5 with our family's we'd have $25 to start with and maybe we could turn that into something.

I can't figure out why all of our best ideas involve me doing labor in a sweatshop sort of manner, but I had to admit it was a good idea. Selling bracelet cuffs could easily multiply into something that might help someone else.  So I raided the accessory section of the thrift store and made a few worth selling and in less than a month, we'd made $300 to donate for supplies for the FBC Youth's trip to the Dominican Republic in the summer.  That's something to be proud of I think.

So now I'm just tinkering away with making more bracelets because my friend has invited me to make a few more for a craft fair and I've got some custom orders to finish.  If it's true what my therapist says about not speaking some things into your life, maybe it's conversely true that a word reminder on a wrist might also bring good things into a life. That's why I like ones that say "Peace" or "Be Still" so send me some words and phrase ideas and we'll try it.  I don't know how long I'll ride this wave of bracelet making so make sure and get yours now before I get all grumpy and have to wear reading glasses all the time and stop playing again.  The one I wear most frequently is the 25:40 one. It's a reference to Matthew 25:40 and so it reminds me that, "Inasmuch as you have done it unto the least of these my brethren, you have done it unto me."

Here's a picture:

I can see how this happens