News Article

Afghan Women Painters on Show

I love the photo of a painting that accompanies this article. Titled simply "Hope". So good.

Try to Love the Questions...

Have patience with everything that remains unsolved in your heart. Try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books written in a foreign language. Do not now look for the answers. They cannot now be given to you because you could not live them. It is a question of experiencing everything. At present you need to live the question. Perhaps you will gradually, without even noticing it, find yourself experiencing the answer, some distant day.
(Ranier Maria Rilke)

I found this quote on somewhere recently, and, well, it grabbed at me. I am not good at patience with the unresolved things. And while I'm better than some at living with the questions, I certainly don't love them, and I've never managed to just live them, instead of looking for answers. I've recently been in the midst of some things that are quite frustrating, and told a dear friend in exhaustion that I was wishing for a three-step method to solving all the problems, and that I then wanted to accomplish all three of those steps in the next 20 minutes and be over and done with this all. She pointed out that I didn't really want that. Darn those friends who tell the truth! (Which is precisely what I want in a friend, but dang, sometimes I wish the truth lined up with what I want to hear/see/do a little more often.)

Beautiful Words

I updated my list of links in the sidebar to include a few more blogs that I've been reading rather regularly lately.

I want to highlight one of those. I have loved each of the few books I read by Claudia Mair Burney, and I loved her blog, Ragamuffin Diva in the days when she was still writing there. I was delighted to see that she's started a new blog, with vignettes, and info on her books.

Here are three posts I loved this week:

Encouragement from St. Clare of Assisi (I have my own special affection for St. Clare, and her feast day was August 11th - I'll probably write about her sometime soon here, but in the meantime, I loved these words from her that were included in this post.)

Something Beautiful for God (because this played nicely into the poverty theme that I've been encountering lately)

Being Quiet (Because oh, do I ever know about avoiding God and the call to silence)

Enjoy!

Sigh

Thankfully, today has been mostly peaceful, if tedious.

In spite of that, I'm exhausted.

And craving chocolate.

And trying to remind myself that I don't "need" chocolate. (see my post on self-care from earlier this week.) I think there might be banana chocolate muffins in the staff kitchen. I should check on that. That would be a good compromise.

I'm also incessantly thirsty.

I'm on my fourth bottle of water for the day, and will likely refill at least once more before the day ends.

The workday ends in an hour. I'm so glad for that.

Then about an hour, maybe an hour and a half on public transit to get home.

But there should be a dinner of honey-garlic pork roast, potatoes, and broccoli waiting for me when I get there, courtesy of my recently returned roommate, who has not yet returned to work.

And a quiet evening. I need a quiet evening.

Maybe a long bath.

Maybe just curling up like I did last night with a book, my laptop, my journal, and some snacks and a magazine.

Sigh.

I'm almost done.

And I'm glad for that.

Quick Smile List

Because it's half-way through Wednesday, which means I'm half-way through another week of work. Because it's been the kind of week where before I ever left my house on Monday morning, I thought to myself "I need a weekend". Because I'm tired, but oddly peaceful today, and a quick list of things that make me smile can only contribute to that.

• dove in flight necklace


• cooler weather


• figuring out a way to move an office machine so that an extraordinarily tedious task which will fill most of this week is slightly less tedious, and doesn't involve me standing and running back and forth from my desk all day.


• an email from a friend


• satsuma oil and sandlewood oil burning in my bedroom last night


• good leftovers for lunch today


• a favorite new purse from the Tibetan shop I love (my roommate surveyed me this morning and commented, "You look very business like and formal until you see your purse." I laughed and reminded her again that I'm embracing my "hippy, bohemian side")


• mandarin oranges being back in stock at the grocery store


• five reminder stones sitting on my desk


• an odd, but somehow peaceful experience this morning


• time writing on the train


• books