Regular Meals--at Home, and at Church

This past week, a pair of things happened that made me sit up and take notice.

They were a pair of meals: one was a family meal, and one was a meal at church.

Both meals stood out because of their delightfulness. They were both normal meals in most outward respects--normal in that they were the meals we all expected to have, with the people with whom we expected to have them.

But they both seemed to have a bit of something extra. At the family meal, everyone was just a bit happier than usual. The conversation, usually good, was even better. The food, also usually good, was amazing. The smiles and laughter, usually plentiful, seemed to overflow.

At church, it was Trinity Sunday. The sermon, usually good, seemed to strike at the heart even more deeply. The music, also usually good, was even more moving. The eucharistic meal we shared, always a fearful joy, felt even more meaningful.

The Normal and the Good
Experiencing these two very good meals, the one following closely on the other, made me think: The only way to have very good meals like this sometimes, is to have normal good meals all the time.

You can't really plan for a normal, regular meal that is better than usual--a normal meal that suddenly lifts up onto a higher plane of happiness and delight. It just happens, sometimes.

But it only really happens when you have normal, regular good meals, well...regularly.

Yes, there are things like wedding feasts--meals you expect to be extraordinary, both in fare and in delight. But...those are the exception.

In day-to-day life, the really good meals happen because the sort-of-okay meals happen. Because you faithfully show up, and prepare food, and listen to the people you love, and clean up afterwards.

Both at home, and at church.

If you want the extraordinary, you need to be there for the quotidian.

Show up.

Love.

Partake.

And then see what happens.


Peace of Christ to you,
Jessica Snell

Ugly corner fix, II

A few months ago, I posted about fixing an ugly corner by crocheting a cover for the beat-up cardboard box that holds our printer paper.

Today I'm writing about a much simpler fix: I didn't have to make anything for this one. I just bought stuff.

Here is our "art shelf" as it was: messy, worn, and sad:

We bought ourselves some fabric crates, and now our shelf is glad:

But no, really: having containers that are big enough to actually CONTAIN what you put in them (in this case, to contain our multitudes of crayons, markers, and colored pencils) really makes a difference.

Here's to useful, beautiful changes!

Peace of Christ to you,
Jessica Snell

Weekly Links: some good reading from around the web

wouldn't mind heading back here...

SOME interesting links FOR YOUR SUNDAY AFTERNOON, SET OUT IN MY USUAL CATEGORIES OF FAITH, FAMILY, AND FICTION...

Faith 

-"Give Us This Day Our Daily Bread...": a good poem for Sunday.

-"A Commendation of Leviticus": a helpful guide to a book that often stymies Christians in their Bible reading.

-"15 Proverbs for Social Media Users": much-too-applicable to real life!

-"Some Things You Should Know About Christians Who Struggle With Anxiety": yes, this.

-"On Daughters and Dating: How to Intimidate Suitors": I loved this. I loved the implication that the truly admirable men are the ones who look at strong, godly, content women and say, "Oh, yes please". And that the best way to protect your daughter is to raise her into a woman who is competent and who knows her worth and who knows her family and her God love her, support her, and have her back.  A snippet:

Instead of intimidating all your daughter's potential suitors, raise a daughter who intimidates them just fine on her own. 

Family 

-"McMansion 101: What Makes a McMansion Bad Architecture": I fell down this rabbit hole thanks to Anne Kennedy, and I don't regret it. This was fascinating.

-"How one family is sending 13 kids to college, living debt free - and still plans to retire early": inspiring stuff!

Fiction

-"Where Her Whimsy Took Me": a love letter to Dorothy Sayers' excellent novel, Gaudy Night.

-"The Writing Tricks We'd Be Naked Without": a good round-up of tips for my fellow writers.

-"The Unofficial Rules of the Starship Enterprise": This hilarious list-style bit of fanfic confirmed my secret theory that life aboard a REAL starship would inevitably involve a M.A.S.H.-style illegal still...


I hope you have a good weekend!

Peace of Christ to you,
Jessica Snell

This post contains an Amazon affiliate link; if you purchase a book from this link, I receive a small percentage of the purchase price.  (See full disclosure on sidebar of my blog.)

Yarnalong: Oh-so-bright socks & "Love the Home You Have"

Today I'm linking up with Ginny, over at Small Things, who says, "Two of my favorite things are knitting and reading . . . I love seeing what other people are knitting and reading as well. So, what are you knitting or crocheting right now? What are you reading?"

The book:

I'm reading "Love the Home You Have", by Melissa Michaels. As a mom of four in a small home, I admit to loving the title. :) 

And so far the book is pretty good. I don't identify much with the author - she's someone who has moved many, many times, mostly just in search of the "perfect home" - and I'm someone who enjoys staying put when I can. But I do appreciate her search for contentment, and now that I'm through the more biographical part of the book, I'm curious to see what practical advice she has for me.

The knitting:

The knitting is (yay!) birthday yarn! It's Schachenmayr Regia Fluormania Color in Neon Beach (Rav link). It's so beautifully bright. I almost made the yarn into a scarf (and I have another skein of it, so I might yet), but I was really in the mood for making socks, so I just gave into the impulse!  

What are you making and reading this week?

Peace of Christ to you,

Jessica Snell

This post contains an Amazon affiliate link; if you purchase a book from this link, I receive a small percentage of the purchase price.  (See full disclosure on sidebar of my blog.)

Weekly Links - Christmas Edition

I know, I know, it's not weekly at all. But, Christmas!

Okay, here's my list of good reading for what's left of your weekend - and I've been saving links the whole time I've been on holiday, so this particular link entry is particularly full of goodness!

It IS still Christmas, for two more days, so I'll start with the seasonal links:

-"Christmas Can Be Creative!" - fun (mostly easy!) group-oriented ideas for the last few days of Christmas.

-"The Party Has Just Begun" - I'm a bit late linking to this one, but it's good for the last few days of Christmas this year, and it's also so resource-full that it's a good one to bookmark for when the season rolls around again.

-"Every Shepherd Soul" and the Invisible Mission of the Son - a good meditation on a mostly-forgotten hymn.

-"The Slaying Song Tonight" - Unlike the rest of the links on the list, this one isn't informational. It's a piece of holiday flash fiction by Lars Walker, one of my favorite authors. Flash fiction often requires at least two readings, because the ending can change your perception of the beginning so much. That's certainly so in this case.

-"Christmas Traditions Without Kids" - Another good one to bookmark. So many holiday activities are planned around children, but not everyone is a parent, and Lisa has lots of good thoughts on how to celebrate with your loved ones if that's the case for you.


Now, moving on to the more general interest links:

-"Making Home" - Jessica Brown is one of my new favorite authors (I might have had a sneak peek at her upcoming book project), and I thought this meditation of hers was really beautiful.

-"You Don't Need a Date Night" - for all of us who love just living ordinary life with our spouses!

-"Why Is English So Weirdly Different From Other Languages?" - my fellow etymology nerds will love this one. (Especially when you read here that etymology isn't really a big deal in languages that aren't as weird as ours!)

-"King Lear: The Syntax and Scansion of Insanity" - Another good one for English nerds - esp. if you're into not just etymology, but also literature.

-"The Secret to My Productivity, Or: Thoughts About Luxury and Privilege" - a lot of home truths here.

-"Writing Wednesday: Are Short Stories Worth It?" - Yes - but only if you sincerely like them!

-"7 Reasons to Join the Liturgy of Life Reading Group 2016" - Another one from Erica and, yes, I might have personal reasons for thinking this looks like a great reading group, but even aside from those: Folks, this looks like a great reading group!



Happy Christmas, dear ones!

-Jessica Snell

Little Liturgies

I've been thinking about little liturgies. You know, the prayers and blessings that sprinkle our days.

"Liturgy" means "the work of the people". And it refers, of course, to the work of the people in worshipping God, primarily as we meet together as the church. (Maybe even "exclusively" and not "primarily". I'm not sure, to be honest.)

"Liturgy", then, rightly brings to mind the official liturgies of Sundays and feast days that define our weeks and months and years.

But then there are the smaller habits of prayer that develop differently in each household. These aren't official liturgies, but they serve similar functions in most of our lives, and many of them are utterly commonplace and utterly good.


In our home, it's  the "I love you" and "Jesus bless you" at school drop-off.

It's  "The Lord bless you" "And keep you!" that my husband and I exchange as he leaves for work

It's the "Guide us waking, oh Lord, and guard us sleeping . . ." that we pray with the kids each night



I suppose, in the end, that I'm talking about habits, but particularly those habits that tie us to God and to each other at the same time.

I imagine each Christian household grows its own little liturgies as the years roll on. What are the little liturgies in your home?


Peace of Christ to you,
Jessica Snell

Yarnalong - Kilt Hose and Together Alone

It feels like forever since I've participated in a Yarnalong!

First, the pretty, pretty knitting:

That's Adam's kilt hose, which is coming right along now that I'm done (for a while) with all those hexipuffs.

The pattern for the kilt hose is Kilravock, which is free on Knitty, and the yarn is Knit Picks Stroll in Basalt Heather.

And I have oh-so-far to go before this is a complete pair of socks. But at least I have both of the cuffs done, and that's the tricky part!

As for books, I didn't get a decent picture of it, but I'm really enjoying Susan Wittig Albert's Together Alone. My mom lent it to me because of some of the writer's life bits, which I do like, but more than that, it's a story of Susan and her husband making some land in Texas their home, and themes of home and making homes and what Home is are just exactly my brand of literary crack, and so I'm enjoying this book very much indeed. (Reminds me a bit of this one, in its groundedness.)


More yarny, bookish goodness over at Ginny's lovely blog, Small Things.

Peace of Christ to you,
Jessica Snell

Love of the Local - or how I finally admitted to being an Angeleno

"AngelenA"? Probably more correct, but nobody says that here in the City of the Angels.

Actually, it isn't the city of the angels, it's the city of Mary. Originally it was named after "La Reina de los Angeles." (My friend Jim recently wrote a beautiful and creepy meditation on that name.)

And I've lived here for over twenty years now. That's weird to admit, because I still think of myself as a missionary kid - as the girl who grew up in the sub-Arctic and got only got to visit her home country in the summer.

But even though smelling snow in the air is still enough to bring back a flood of memories, scents that spell home now are jasmine flowers and eucalyptus leaves, arid heat and ocean breeze.

Writing home
The last book I wrote was set here in California, and I loved writing about my adopted home state. The higher my word count got, the more I realized that I love where I live.

It's not an adoring sort of love. I admit that the Los Angeles basin doesn't have the heartbreaking beauty of the New Zealand alps (though you should see the high Sierra) or the comforting green peace of the Oregon coast (though you should walk Carbon Canyon's ridges just after a thunderstorm's cleaned the air).

But it's a love born out of familiarity. In terms of Lewis' "Four Loves", my love for my home is storge, the sort of love you can't help having for someone you've known for years, whether you like him or not.

I know what blooms when. I know we have summer for half the year and squeeze fall, winter, spring down into six short months - and some years only four or five. I know that the sky is boring and smoggy most of the time but that if you catch us on the right day we have a snow-capped mountain view that rivals Denver's. I know that the miles of concrete and asphalt are endless, but not as endless as sea, and you can sit on the beaches here and never tire of the view of grey-green waves pounding the sand.

I love Los Angeles.  It's true that I love it because I know it, but there are worse ways than that to love.

Peace of Christ to you,
Jessica Snell