It has come to my recent attention that I use the words beautiful and brilliant a lot.
This, along with my recent considerations of the prevalence of "love" in my dialect leads me to a personal challenge... omitting them.
The theory of love languages proposes multiple ways of communicating affection ; quality time, service, verbal, physical and gifts.
In short - if love is an emotion - how is it expressed?How much there must be beyond three spoken words.
So it is my current challenge to use other languages to express emotions. Beauty, brilliance, and love.
Perhaps I could tell you about golden sunlight, wind whipping 4th graders' hair and journal papers, warm stoney cliffs with rippling rain water pools. Perhaps I could tell you of cruising across crisp leaves peppering the Appalachian Trail, the turbulence of waves across a man-made lake as 10 year olds in blaze orange PFDs soaked in this ever present autumn light canoe through what could be the next cover of LLBean's fall catalog.
After spaghetti and garlic bread Sophia and I giggled until we cried over birthday cake and nothing at all.
Two years ago I was on top of Springer Mountain in Georgia October 7. Today is a good day for mountain tops.
It dawned on me today this life at Mountain Campus, through full of unique challenges is the most personally serene fall I've had in years. No homeless sleeping in cars or finding mattresses in alleys, no rainy north Georgia days to walk through giardia, no commutes after choffee dates and before scrounging for dinner.
Nope. Things are pretty simple around here. Wake up, eat, keep to the day's schedule while serving / protecting/ teaching students and other instructors, sleep, repeat.
At morning meeting today Izzie gave her class a quote "Life is a grand adventure, or not at all". Students interpreted this as unless you're on a grand adventure you're not really living.
But I've been wondering.... whether it feels like it or not.... we're always living. So maybe the true point is to LIVE a grand adventure; in southern terminuses, homelessness, unemployment, homecomings, restlessness, quiet breathing, pumpkin parties and pumpkin ales. All of it jumbled into the epic pages of simply complex adventures.
Maybe the "not at all" part isn't possible.
Yeah. I'm calling that bluff.
How could life not be a grand adventure?
Friday, October 8, 2010
Tuesday, October 5, 2010
A time for every purpose under heaven...
I am currently wearing an over the ears tassel hat, silk tank, long-sleeve shirt, sweater, synthetic puffy jacket, leggings, dance pants, a skirt, and socks. I kicked off the insulated furry boots to curl up on the staff house couch.
What a long day. What a full few days. Driving, scenery changes, loved ones, meaningful conversations, stressful work situations, more driving.
3 gents I love are safely home from a Mexico - Canada walk. It's so crazy how different and similar their worlds have been and are now. What they've each returned to, and how they're deciding which direction to progress in. It reminds me a lot of fall 2008 as I struggled through the southern section of the Appalachian Trail and fall 2009 as I struggled through finding a home and setting up my Montana life.
This weekend's theme has been life; what it gives us and how we feel about it. And a handful of people I love have weighed in on the matter.
Such brilliance and desperation, such blessing and restlessness. All rolled up into a breathing beating passage of time.
Two friends are reading Ecclesiastes with me as we try to find time in a 90+ hour work week to talk about what these words mean. There is a time for everything. There is much chasing after the wind and vanity in the world around us.
Yet diamonds sparkle in the rough, simple carbon having gone through enough heat and pressure to catch light, reflecting to the world around them.
How beautiful love is in times like these. How beautiful life can be with love.
As autumn light deepens colors and vibrance around me, these mountains drive me to rag tag outfits of layer after layer, I try to focus on each moment. The light, love, blessing and grace they bring.
And warmth.
What a perfect season.
What a long day. What a full few days. Driving, scenery changes, loved ones, meaningful conversations, stressful work situations, more driving.
3 gents I love are safely home from a Mexico - Canada walk. It's so crazy how different and similar their worlds have been and are now. What they've each returned to, and how they're deciding which direction to progress in. It reminds me a lot of fall 2008 as I struggled through the southern section of the Appalachian Trail and fall 2009 as I struggled through finding a home and setting up my Montana life.
This weekend's theme has been life; what it gives us and how we feel about it. And a handful of people I love have weighed in on the matter.
Such brilliance and desperation, such blessing and restlessness. All rolled up into a breathing beating passage of time.
Two friends are reading Ecclesiastes with me as we try to find time in a 90+ hour work week to talk about what these words mean. There is a time for everything. There is much chasing after the wind and vanity in the world around us.
Yet diamonds sparkle in the rough, simple carbon having gone through enough heat and pressure to catch light, reflecting to the world around them.
How beautiful love is in times like these. How beautiful life can be with love.
As autumn light deepens colors and vibrance around me, these mountains drive me to rag tag outfits of layer after layer, I try to focus on each moment. The light, love, blessing and grace they bring.
And warmth.
What a perfect season.
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