December’s ProjectJanuary 9, 2016
Daily commitment is tough. It turns out I’m not that reliable. I don’t intend to fail and forgo, I just fall pray to the distractions of life. I forget to complete the task, or, if I remember I procrastinate, fill my time with the other things “I said I’d do” or tasks that need to be done.
The only way I keep to a task is to claim something publicly… it makes it harder to back down, even if it’s only to a couple of people. It’s not a pride thing as much as a promise thing. Mentally I accept failure is something I deal with daily, but promises are things I strive not to break, even if it gets uncomfortable.
Not doing my monthly creative project in November felt bad. Nobody was hurt by this failure and I had no need to do it but it still felt bad. And so I decided to up the stakes for December, I would be hyper creative, because as well as decorating the house and sorting Christmas pressies I would be creative every single day… I’d create a real time advent calendar.
My desk became a sort of sewing haven as scraps of felt were cut and stitched. Nap time became dominated by attaching buttons to a felt tree, and simplifying patterns. Then, as the day ended I would photograph my latest ornament, complete with gingham ribbon, and post the picture on-line. What was achieved is delightful. In the corner of the room stands a tree, a basic cone adorned with felt decorations. Each ornament has a story and as I hand stitched, every single last stitch, I dreamed of reusing them next year, complete with an accompanying daily activity.
Basic instructions are as follows… 1) Google felt cone tree tutorial, 2) buy the thickest interfacing you can find so you don’t end up having a floppy tree until Christmas eve, 3) use cheap thin felt and glue it, stitch only if you want to lose all nap time, 4) don’t try and create your own characters, one a day is enough without remakes, 5) make sure you count correctly otherwise you’ll suddenly end up with only 23 ornaments! 6) proudly place in the corner of the room for your child to generally ignore or throw the ornaments on the floor then eat them.
Warning: your child may mostly sit on the tree so it crumples!
Now… What to do for January?
Restarting wiserJanuary 3, 2016
Over the last year I’ve become a fan of Velvet Ashes, It’s a site, a community, for women scattered across the globe, people who have called themselves missionaries, who still call themselves by that name, those about to dive into the water and those long dry from the swim. Velvet ashes has a weekly theme, and this week it’s Eden.
Eden is a beautiful but painful parable. A story of divine perfection and absolute communion that was ultimately wrecked irrevocably. It’s a story of innocence, the baby steps of the bible. It’s a souls longing to return to the time of simplicity, a time when we could wander alongside our maker, skimming stones and marvelling at flowers, where our creativity could bloom as we name the creatures and explore our new world. But Eden’s perfection is so limiting in my eyes. Eden was before the heavenly choirs of Christmas, before Easter darkness and blinding light, before our beautiful, complex and awe inspiring relationship with our maker expanded and grew. It’s naivety was easily tricked, it’s knowledge limited and community tiny and hence fragile. Eden is a story of both wonder and woe. We could never return to Eden without forgoing the story thus far.
As a new year dawns we once again come to it’s Eden, it’s beginning, it’s shiny new blank diary pages and well intentioned resolutions. Beginnings for us mean flights. We landed last night shortly after the snow started, passing gritting lorries along dark roads where heightened headlights reflected snow flurries blinding our way. Outside the crisp whiteness deepened during the day, leaving a blank slate of possibilities and restrictions. Inside we turned up the gas and unpacked into our little Eden, guarded not by cherubim but solid walls.
But our Eden is not our weakness, for our Eden was opened up, opened by a neighbours unbidden kindness to clear our pathways, open by the technology that links our world to others. Our years start is not riddled with first discovery but with knowledge we can build upon, the innocence we retain is more precious for we know how easily it is lost, how protected it must be. We may have wiped the slate clean, reset the books, written our goals up high on the wall, but we do so in community with man and God, aware of the blessings we have been given and the responsibility they carry. Our hearts will always long for something of that lost Eden, but by man’s adventures beyond, by his stumbling we have discovered so much. Perhaps that’s why Eden is a limiting a story to me, for the adventure only really begins when God asks man to ‘go’.