Take a breath

Saturday, November 2, 2019

It's a quiet creative day - I'd call it "anti-busy." I'll have something to show for the day, but it's not academic, pastoral, or focused. It's silence and solitude, which are life-giving for me. Every once in a while, my soul needs a "maker" day to reboot my mind.

I pull out my old Bernina 930, a relic that keeps on clicking. Fabrics are stored by color in clean pizza boxes. For a while, I've considered making pillow covers for the BIC hall. (It's easier to clean a pillowcase than a pillow, right?)

This morning I don't even open my phone for messages. I'm feeling creative and the digital barrage puts a damper on ideas. I haul out a few blue pieces from my stash to make 10 assorted cases.

Pak Gum goes to the florist for the flower arrangement for the hall (thanks for those each week, Ibu Fenny). He takes the pillowcases along, to leave on the stage.

Eki has created the center art for November's November bulletin board, a soft graphic of the leaves falling at Green Gate. Love it! That will go up tomorrow as well.

For the past 2 months, I have been drying roses from Sunday floral arrangements at BIC. My energy is still high so I sew 10 sachets  from scraps. There are enough dry petals to stuff about half of them. I pluck lavender sprays from the garden and add them in, too. W and I found two lavender plants last year in Lembang - one French (bee) and one English (the long flower stems). They thrive during dry season; the leaves and flowers can make everything smell better.

Between heavy rains, there are a few thunderous episodes. Gypsy wants to be inside the house, but he's wet - and so inside the crate he goes, along with his comfort animal (Cocoa the standard poodle.) The dogs settle down with a playlist from Alexa until the atmosphere clears. Lucky dogs.

In the afternoon, I wander into the garden for leaves and a flower. In a copper cup, the snips of dill, mosquito shrub, purple vine, red-stemmed coleus, and a cone flower look cheerful.

The stepladder is coming out of the kitchen today, W promises. The gusher of rain yesterday landed on a plugged balcony drain. That resulted in a flooded balcony that leaked into the house. Water poured into our kitchen via an adjoining wall and though the spices shelf. What a mess. How glad I am that I spotted the drips on the kitchen counter early. Otherwise, who know how much water we would have shoveled and swept out of downstairs as well as upstairs!

After a 36-hr fast to settle Thursday night's unhappy stomach, I'm eating again. Ilan (our tour guide in the Middle East a few years ago) was right: "Stay away from food, drink lots of water, and let the body sort itself out." W urges pills but I'd rather try a natural solution first. (And it works.)

In the afternoon, W returns from a few appointments just before our friends Annette and Andrew arrive for a spot of tea.

Read more:
*Remember the wonderful works he has done, his miracles, and the judgments he uttered. Psalm 105:5 

*Taking the five loaves and the two fish, Jesus looked up to heaven, and blessed and broke the loaves, and gave them to the disciples, and the disciples gave them to the crowds. And all ate and were filled. Matthew 14:19-20

Moravian Prayer: Divine Chef, we thank you for the simple pleasures of eating, and for all the ways you refresh and feed our spirits—through beauty, through silence, through friends, through ministries. Remind us that we and others need both kinds of bread. Amen.