Tag — eden
Rites of Passage for Back to School
It’s back to school season with the last of the schools in the U.S. starting up after this Labor Day weekend comes to a close. Children are trying on outfits, putting their names on backpacks and picking out new lunchboxes. But beyond the ritual of buying schools supplies, what can you do to create a sacred space around going back to school?
Starting a new grade is a big rite of passage for children — one that more often than not goes by unnoticed. In the flutter, hurry and relief(!) of finally getting those kids back in school, busy parents don’t have a lot of time to mark the moment. So here are 3 easy ways to honor the back to school process.
1. Special Breakfast. For ma [Read more →]
Sacred Life Sunday: Light Keeping
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| Polyphonic Spree, Light and Day |
I struggle to live in the moment. So often I am casting my gaze back in regret and longing, or throwing myself forward in to future worries. I know it’s healthiest for me to live mostly in the Now. But to the Now I feel foreign born, and like an adopted child returning to the place of her birth, I must work a little harder to feel at home on what is truly my native land.
I notice this most when Summer fades to Fall, and the days begin to shorten. I start missing the Light even before she is gone. Start longing for her while she is yet by my side. And in doing so I waste the last long rays of her presence.
This then is my attempt to stay with her, to stay present as long as she is still here. To remain alert to her companionship. To “…follow the day and reach for the sun.”Later when she is gone, these images may hold her near to me a little longer yet, until she gently moves my hand from her hers, pats my shoulder, and tells me to lean into the next season until she returns.
How do you stay present to the edge of this season? What will you need to transition into the next?
Soaring Lessons
Did you know you could fly?
Yes you, with the middle-aged greys springing out of your ponytail…
You with the quarter-life crisis and the world as your oyster…
You with Junior High staring at you from the business end of a double barrel…
You can soar, if only you will bend your knees and leap into the great unknown.
True, the next day, you may fly in a metal tube for 9hours with your broken ankle in temporary cast, and ice from the airplane galley packed around your leg. But you will know in your core that for those clear sparkling moments you were Icarus triumphant. And, when you are old, you will remember those glorious seconds aloft with clarity; while the throb in your bones will be but a faint memory, calling to mind not a fall, but a flight.
“In life you will come to a great chasm. Jump.” -J.Conrad
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Tweenager
For the first time ever, Eden has asked that I NOT post her annual birthday letter on my blog. So in lieu of all that mushy goodness…this is she, and she is lovely.
The Big One-Oh!
My darling Eden turned 10 in July, but due to family visits and poor planning on my part, she never got her annual birthday letter from Momma. Today I finally sat down and wrote my big girl the letter she deserves. Happy (belated) birthday dearheart!
(open this in a new tab for a musical background :-)
Dear Eden,
And now, you are ten. The big one-oh. A decade. A Decade! How can that be? (Do I say that every year? I bet I do. Silly Mama.)
Eden, I’m just so proud of you I hardly know how to express it. When I was younger, and I heard parents say they were proud of their children I always thought they were being kind of stuck up. I thought the parents meant they were proud of the job that they had done raising their children – like whatever wonderful traits the boy or the girl had, it was because their parents were so good at parenting. Now that I’m older and have been a Mother for a decade, I realize that’s not what parents mean at all when they say. “I’m so proud of her.” What they mean is, “Isn’t that amazing, all the wonderful things that girl can do? Isn’t she strong! Isn’t she smart! Hasn’t she learned so much! I am so proud of her!”
One of the things I like best about being a Mom is watching my children learn and grow. You have always been such a bright child that watching you learn was one of those things I could notice right away—even when I didn’t really know what Mom’s should be watching for yet. (New Mom’s have a lot to learn!) People hardly ever believe me, but even before you left the hospital you were lifting your head up off my shoulder so you could look around – something most baby’s don’t do for many weeks. I have a picture of you on Gig Gig’s shoulder looking all around and you are so tiny I can hardly believe your little neck can get your head up and around like that! You can see you inquisitive mind working in lots of your baby pictures. It’s easy to see that your wide, wise eyes are soaking in as much of the world as possible.
But these last few years, as you’ve become a school-aged kiddo, and are now a ‘tween’, I am even more amazed at how clever you are and how quickly you learn about your world.
In the time between when you were nine and when you were ten, you have accomplished so many things! You learned how to be responsible enough to ride your bike on your own. I remember the first time you got to ride your new bike around the block by yourself. You were so in awe. You looked at me in amazement and said, “I get to ride it all by myself! I’m going to ride around the block 29 times tonight!” I think you did ride around 29 times too! I know for sure you went through a couple bottles of water and rode until dark, that’s for sure.
In the time between when you were nine and when you were ten you learned how to choose friends who were good for your soul – leaving behind friends who treated you disrespectfully, and discovering loving souls like Noah to be your withmates. Is so good to see you and Noah together and know that you are two peas in a pod, and I know you will find someone that lovely here as well as time goes by. You are good friend Eden, caring and fair, generous with words of affection, quick to comfort someone when times are hard, and just as quick to celebrate when something goes well. Being a good friend is one of the best qualities person can have in this world, and you have that gift in heaps and mounds!
Between the time that you were nine and ten you learned an entire new language in just 2 months! You read a half dozen—not just novels—but series of novels! You learned how to make pancakes, grew responsible enough to have your own cell phone, and started to do some of the family shopping by bike! You are amazing.
And you’ve grown in other ways too this year. Remember how we used to be a totem pole with Souren? I fit under his chin, you fit under mine and Catie fit under yours? Not anymore! Now you are now nearly as tall as your Momma. (5 1 to my 5 3). Pretty soon you’ll be looking down at me and patting me on the head! And you’ve grown into your own sense of style this year too – sporty and comfortable, with soft seams and no pink sparkles. You always look long, lean, healthy, and vibrant. I know you get embarrassed when I say it and often roll your eyes, but you are so beautiful!
I can hardly believe my frail little baby who wouldn’t nurse and had to be weighed everyday for fear she was shrinking is now this tall, elegant girl who reads through entire libraries, swims like a fish, rides her bike around Copenhagen, and speaks two languages. Miss Eden Claire, I declare, you’re the sweetest anywhere…and I am indeed, very proud of you.
Happy birthday Ten Year Old!
Sacred Life Sunday
click watch a joyful romp
mother’s prayer #105
may my children for always
feel this at home in
their holy, beautiful bodies.
amen.
Overheard: Just an Ordinary Girl
Eden, age nine, while playing with these toys from her Kinderegg:
“I’m just an ordinary girl with ordinary dreams. I just want to win this nascar race and bring home a bag of gold to my man.”
Hmm. Is that an improvement from this conversation at age six?
What’s the funniest gender role conversation you’ve had with your kiddos?
Sacred Life Sunday
“Lie back, daughter, let your head be tipped back
in the cup of my hand.
Gently, I will hold you.
Spread your arms wide, lie out on the stream and look high at the gulls.
A dead-man’s float is face down.
You will dive and swim soon enough where this tidewater ebbs to the sea.
Daughter, believe me, when you tire on the long thrash to your island,
lie up, and survive.
As you float now, where I held you and let go,
remember when fear cramps your heart what I told you:
lie gently and wide to the light-year stars,
lie back, and the sea will hold you.”
Phillip Booth, Words of Mouth
Eden on Art
Now that I have a digital recorder I’m going gaga making soundscapes, audio essays, and interviews. In one such interview, Eden chatted with me about living the artist’s life — specifically about quality control, mass production (pro or con?), and pricing your artwork for sale. There’s some really helpful stuff in there.
By the way, Eden is nine.
Listen to the podcast here:
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It’s a little bit of a rough recording because I don’t know how to edit properly yet, but hang in through the not-too-long slower bits to catch Eden’s pearls of wisdom. In the recording I mention this product and this event, and Eden talks about my vintage collection which you can find here. Also, as a nice little tie-in I’m reviewing the band you hear at the end of the podcast in my weekly review over here. Happy listenting!
P.s. I’m a little shy about posting these podcasts, so if you feel like commenting it would go be ever so encouraging. And I promise to learn how to edit soon!
Tales from the Urban Abbess: Jesus in My Stomach
Here’s a retroactive post from my life as an non-traditional ordained minister. You’ll find more Magpie posts on spirituality every Sunday from here on out.
Jesus in My Stomach
orginally posted November 10, 2003
Yesterday my sister in law emailed me from Africa. She’s a missionary there, in Kenya. She and her husband work incredibly hard to install water systems and build medical facilities and school houses. They are an amazing couple.
Anyway, she emailed us yesterday to tell us “very exciting news.” Now, when I see this in an email from my relatives, I assume this means someone is having another baby. (We are the only ones stopping at two.) However, this time she was super excited because her four year old daughter had accepted Jesus into her heart.
Now I’m happy about this. This is very, very sweet. But at the same time, this makes me wonder, because even though I am an ordained minister, I have not so much as even offered to pray with my children about asking Jesus into their hearts. In fact, it hasn’t even crossed my mind.
After reading the email, I turned to Cate, who was sitting next to me at the computer and said, “Cate? Where does Jesus live?” “In your bah-dee silly!” Cate replied. (Cate is three.) “Oh Yeah?” I answered, nonchalantly, “Where?” “Here.” Cate pointed to her heart, with an uncapped purple marker, tapping her sweater several times.) “That’s great Catie. Glad to hear it.”
On to the next child, age 5, who’s cutting out paper dolls in the living room. “Eden, where does Jesus live?” Eden answered, sounding very bored and put-out, “In heaven….on the earth in the olden days….in my heart.” Again I try the nonchalant parent voice, “Yeah, that’s good to know Eden. You know, Auntie Jewel says Joanne just asked Jesus to live in her heart.” At this point Eden put down her scissors and looked at me with her head cocked to one side and her mouth scrunched up like she does when she thinks a grown up is trying to pull one over on her. “Jesus lives in everybody’s heart. Everybodies in the whole world, Mommy!” “Yeah, Eden. That’s kinda what I think too. (pause) Unless someone wants to kick him out.” Eden shrugged. Then she went on to her paper dolls and I went into the kitchen, confident that my kids were aokay in the ole’ salvation book.
That’s pretty much how I form my theology. Thirty four years of sermons, 12 years of Christian education, 4 years of Christian college, three years in seminary… and it all boils down to 2 conversations with the 5 and under set. Go figure.
Of course, the next day Cate told me Jesus lived in her stomach…with her baby, “Nina”….not sure what that’s supposed to mean…
