Daily 5 - Year 2, Day 300

Today's Daily 5:

1. 1 year, 300 days of making these lists
2. pancakes
3. a long shower
4. taking time to care for myself
5. a floaty, twirly skirt
6. getting groceries without having to take transit
7. hanging out with T & L for the afternoon and early evening
8. making banana cream pie
9. watching Kung Fu Panda again
10. a mostly restful day, despite some harder thoughts

Daily 5 - Year 2, Day 299

Today's Daily 5:

1. the sound of rain on the roof
2. peanut m & m's
3. the sudden return of a funny childhood memory
4. a random fact about palm trees, read yesterday, and still making me smile
5. cozy blankets to curl up under
6. a LONG soak in a bubble bath (read two hours, pruney toes, and a book and a half worth of reading)
7. a walk outside after the rain, with the sun peeking out, and air that smelled like lilacs and rain
8. building, to quote Anne of Green Gables "castles in the air"
9. giggling at a moment of delight, wrapped up in a worm rescue
10. blue jello (totally a fan of jello, can't help it.  except maybe for green.  not a huge fan of green jello.)

Cathedral Building

I'm still slowly working my way through a re-read of one of my all time favorite books "Between the Dreaming and the Coming True" by Robert Benson.  This is perhaps one of the most marked-up books in my collection, simply because so much of what Benson has to say spoke to me deeply the first time I read the book, and continues to speak to the deep places of my heart.  The other night I re-read a passage about cathedral building and knew I had to share it here.

He writes:

We do not talk much about building cathedrals these days.  But we should, I think.

Saint Paul once wrote to his friends in Ephesus that there is "a spiritual dwelling for God" being built among us and that we are all a part of it.  A great temple, Saint Paul called it - a cathedral, I call it - that was dreamed by the Dreamer and is meant for us to build.

Its foundation was laid by the prophets and the apostles, by the early church and the desert fathers and mothers, by the saints who are revered and the saints whose names are unknown to us.  The cathedral that is being built here includes all of them and all of us, all who have gone before and all who will come after.  We, and all that we are - dreams, hopes, gifts, hours, days, work, sweat - are meant to be stones in the cathedral of the Dreamer.

In many ways it does not matter whether we are preachers or poets, stonecutters or schoolteachers, accountants or architects.  Nor does it particularly matter if we are woodworkers or water carriers, missionaries or metalworkers.  What matters is that we dream our dreams and hope our hopes and do our work as though we believe in the Dreamer and the dream for the cathedral that is being built here.  For without us, it will not be built.  (pg. 91-92)

Daily 5 - Year 2, Day 298

Though I'm ending the day in a rather melancholy state, a bit lost in thought, it was really, all things considered, a lovely day, filled with things in which I delight, or in which I find rest, and was one of the days where I kept notes in my phone more carefully than usual, thus producing a longer list for the day.

Today's Daily 5:

1. a favorite red tank top, cuffed skinny jeans, and flip-flops
2. walking in the sun to a farmer's market I'd never been to
3. the goofy thrill that came from picking up a couple of those pop-can plastic rings, that hadn't been cup, from the ground of the park, and bringing them home to cut open, and prevent them from getting caught around birds and small animals (I was indoctrinated well, as a child)
4. listening to happy music on my iphone as I walked (Regina Spektor, Great Big Sea, U2, The Dixie Chicks, Ray Charles and others - it was an eclectic sort of walk)
5. feeling inspiration brewing after a week of letting my soul rest and be fed
6. fruit salad, with lots of berries
7. an Almond Joy bar from my carefully hoarded stash, eaten while bus reading
8. bus reading for the first time in months - bits and pieces of two books, one fiction and one non-fiction
9. new concepts that challenge my thinking and inspire
10. fiction that draws me deeply into the story
11. wearing a pair of earrings that are delicately fashioned and remind me of travel and faraway places
12. watching through the kitchen window as a wild rabbit snacked on clover in the backyard
13. bubble baths whenever I feel like it, in the deep soaker tub in mom and dad's bathroom
14. the thrill of watching the plants I planted in the garden begin to take shape and life
15. green beans, lightly steamed, and coated with butter and sweet chili sauce

Your Questions

I loved all of the questions that you left on my post the other day.  Like I said there, I'm totally inspired by questions.

So...  I've taken all of them, and listed them in my journal, where I sometimes do blog planning, and you'll start to see posts appearing over the next days, and weeks.  Thus far you've left me thirteen different questions, all of which are worthy of their own posts, so you can definitely expect to see them spread out over a while, but I promise I will answer all of them!

And, the fun's not over!  If you have more questions, or you thought of something else, leave a comment on this post, on the original post, or on any one of the answer posts, and I'll add them to my list.