seven things, not six and not eight, just seven ...

thing one:

late last night Our #2 turned up and on sunday my folks appear too! tis less than a week to Thanksgiving and it is truly beginning to feel like the holidays. it has been 2 years since my folks came to stay, we are all quite giddy waiting their arrival and i have promised them they will not have to stand for a whole 2 weeks and that there will be chairs and a bed for them to rest their weary bods.

thing two:

i will be participating in the 2nd Makers Market this december 6th from 9 to 6 at Tolt Yarn and Wool. my little stall will be a medley of vintage and handmade with a sprinkling of 'one offs' from my studio. if perchance you would like to pottle on by to see me, i would like that so muchly 

thing three:

alas and alack, the last of our chickie peas, Little Voice, was taken from us this past weekend.

 it has been 6 years since those funny little feathered friends came to live with us, the very reason for us moving to Mossy Shed. 6 years of every evening some bod shouting through the shed "has someone popped the chickens away?" and 6 years of me standing at the kitchen sink each morn watching them pace up and down ready to be let free to roam another day. my man said upon discovery of Little Voice having gone to the great las vegas in the sky, albeit not looking her finest, "we may be planning our future but we must still live in the present, therefore i vote we find ourselves some chicks next spring" i have no idea where that profound wisdom came from, but i liked it, i liked it a whole lot and in turn this made me like him too.

thing four:

i have finished up my 'woolly tattoo'-ed sweater but cannot don it for the cold dip has gone away and now we are positively tropical in temps with a bit of damp. i fear if i put on my turtle neck wool sweater i may just have a bit of a panic and overheat, thus it will have to just wait looking splendid upon a hanger till such time the temps dip again

thing five;

the new issue of PomPom Quarterly appeared at work yesterday, i had not planned to go in but a need to change a few displays was required so off i trotted. where upon i saw a copy and flicked to just one page which happened to have mittens upon it, not just any old mittens but crocheted mittens, the likes of which i have never seen before. be still my beating mitten loving heart. i was smitten, i needed to make those mittens. all plans to make Our #3 a knitted beanie to keep his nuggin warm this scottish winter went out the window. all plans to figure out a crochet version of the 1930's cowl went out the door. all plans to make a granny neckerchief to share on this here shiny space went out the cat flap. for all i have eyes for is this peachy pair

thing six:

i did not know when i wrote about the book i read this past week how many dearies it would resonant with, i felt i was not putting things into words correctly, that it was swimming all jumbly and bumbly inside of my head, mixed up with so many emotions and i could not let it come out clearly but i need not have fretted for it would appear the gist of it was understood. it is an emotional and physically draining process when you start to sort through mementos from years gone by. 

i am tres happy to think when i read the comments on facebook that perhaps this little book will help others join me in treading not so fearfully 'the path of letting go'.

thing seven:

dearest readers, happy happy weekend to you, may it be filled with love, light, learning and lots of joy

x

On measures taken to keep us listing slightly to starboard.

Today, 21st November, the feast of the Presentation of the Blessed Virgin in the Temple, is the day chosen by us to grapple with the demands both of monastic observance and communication with the outside world. Since both are necessary.

Leave the world and give yourself to Me.

In monastic life we follow St. Alphonsus who as a young man was directly told by a voice from heaven: "Leave the world and give yourself to me." This led him eventually to Ciorani where he and his early companions were described as "the solitaries of Ciorani."

From young manhood until his death when over 90, 

whether as solitary, missionary or bishop

Alphonsus, our father, left the world 

and gave himself to Jesus.

The spiritual men who knew St Alphonsus and his companions, including his first biographer the Servant of God, Fr Antonio Tannoia, C.SS.R., considered those first Redemptorists to have lived their monastic life as did the early Desert Fathers in Nubia and the Thebaid. Fr Tannoia’s high praise for St Alphonsus is echoed without exception by other writers.
Repeatedly expressions are used such as:
• “a hermitage, a lonely, solitary spot” (the Monastery at Ciorani) where “Nubia and the Thebaid never saw coenobites more given to contemplation than our hermits”
• “the blessed hermitage” where the saint’s life “might be compared to that of the anchorites of the desert.”
Scala which was the cradle of the institute is variously described as:
• “the desert”
• “the hermitage so well adapted for recollection and prayer”
• “difficult of access”
• “remote”
• “this desert", where a "truly eremitical life began for all of them”
• “the solitude of the anchorites of Egypt” where “we live in calm and silence far from the tumult of the world, hearing nothing of what is passing there”
• “the new Thebaid”
• “the solitude” where they lived “on the hill alone, like Jesus in the desert.”
The monastery of Iliceto: "the hermitage”
The monastery of Caposele:  “the hermitage”
The monastery at Villa degli Schiavi: "the hemitage."

The cells of Papa Stronsay.
The early life of St Alphonsus and his companions is our beautiful heritage. 

In the monastery-island of Papa Stronsay we cherish this ideal.

In a far inferior degree we strive to pursue it.

All this is true. It is also true that our holy vocation calls us to the apostolate and the salvation of souls. St. Alphonsus was as on fire in his search for souls, as he was, at other times, in search of solitude.

Venerable double vocation! 

Yes! To continual prayer in solitude, 

cut off from the world, as a hermit. 

Yes too! 

To untiring mission to souls,

 in the midst of the world, as an Apostle. 

These two directions, like identical twins, wrestle with each other. They always did. They still do. St Alphonsus, in the early Constitutions of 1764, brought the two vocations to an almost perfect balance.

"Thar she blows!"

The Good Ship "St Alphonsus," making for port 

but slightly listing to starboard.

She is in search of big fish. Indeed she's ... a whaler! 

-but rightly ballasted to her starboard side.

St Alphonsus, as it were, constructed his sons a fishing boat to go in search of souls, but he ballasted the ship in such a way that it always slightly listed to starboard, the side of solitude; under the gaze of the Star of the Sea, the Morning Star, the Stella Matutina.

Our Lady! Our Sweetness! Who fixes us in our love of solitude, 

search for God and flight from the world!

She is called Porta Caeli, Gate of Heaven, 

obtaining grace for the salvation for souls

 through missionary efforts on the fishing boat's port side. 

As a measure to protect our vocation to solitude and, in the good sense, our call to flight from the world, we have decided, as an experiment, that from today we will greatly limit our use of the Internet, keeping its use to Thursdays. We will post on the Internet (Blog or Facebook) only on Thursdays. We will receive or reply to email only on Thursdays.

Our little boat Stella Maris 

has set her course for the solitude of the sea. 

We keep you in our prayers, 

and ask for yours, for us.

Thursdays will see us back into port, 

fresh, buoyed up, and surely still listing slightly to starboard.

tidying up ...

i have just finished up a book with a cat on my lap in bed at 10am this morn, this is highly risque of me and not my usual morning routine. however when i rolled out of bed this morn at 6:30 to get Our #4 to school i noted upon my return (in pj's still) that is was my only morning in the longest time when i did not have to be out and about somewhere. 

so i took my book and a passing cat back to bed.

the book i am reading is called 'the life-changing magic of tidying up' by marie kondo and you can find it online if you go searching. it found me in an odd roundabout way which makes me once again wonder about how the timing of these things comes to be.

i have read it from cover to cover and placed little sticky notes here and there for fear my aging cogs will not retain. i realize all along i was purging with the wrong intentions, i am thankful to marie for pointing this out. it is not about what you wish to get rid of, but what you choose to keep and why. what brings you joy the moment you look at it and only keeping those joyful things in your life. she also holds your hand when it comes to letting mementos and photos go.

i have come to the conclusion i hang onto the past, always have and i wonder if i always will? according to marie, i will not if i follow her easy but strict rules for tidying up once and for all. i find it even more interesting that it takes a stranger of whom i have only just met to give me the ability to let so many things go, things which i was hanging onto because of who gave them to me or how they came into my possession. i realize despite having these things in my life, they cannot bring back that person and all but a few of those things actually connect me to a memory of that person. i do not want to live in the past any longer.

whenever i read a book such as this, i become a believer. i like books which lighten the load we carry, i like books which help clear the air and the noise in our heads and our bodies. i did not know i liked such books until a few years back one rescued me. i like that marie believes if i tidy up (clear out) once and for all, the weight i have been feeling the past few years will be lifted. of course it is quite possible you may read the book and think she and me are quite bonkers. truth be told i think it is a little too but i do not care, all i care is, right now i can let the past go and the future, (specifically a bricks and mortar dream) and truly live in the present.

my creative corner after tidying up. fret not, Miss Ethel is safely tucked under the table resting quietly until our next spin together

i told my man all about what i had learnt (half way through the book) the other day, when he came in from spending 5 hours picking up the debris covering our acre of moss. i told him it was terribly important to hold each possession in your hand and ask the question "does this bring me joy?" and if not, then its okay to let it go, even if at one point it did. i then continued telling him we can only have things in our home that bring us joy from now on. he looked at me covered in dirt, dried bits of leaves and pine needles and said "my leaf blower and lawn mower bring me no joy, i do not need to hold them in my hand to know that. shall i thank them, then get rid of them so we can slowly be buried under a pile of yard waste?"

 darn and drat, i have a 'non believer clever bod' in my midst. alas, marie does not talk about non believers, her wisdom only goes as far as to say, 

"where you tidy, others will follow" ... mmmmm, interesting, very interesting.

woolly tattoos ...

i do not wish to do anything else, forever and ever, other than stitch woolly tattoos on knitwear.

 i am pondering stitching 

'I ♥ MY MUM' 

upon my man's sweater sleeve whilst he is at work today.

my cogs are whirring with the 'woolly tattoo' possibilities and wondering if one could travel the world with suitcase and yarn in hand, teaching folks to woolly tattoo their yarny garments. i asked my man this morn whilst he was deep in thought, if this maybe so. if i plotted and planned and worked really really hard, should we, could we, would we, possibly have a chance in a couple of years to see the world whilst woolly tattooing from town to town?

"why not?" said he distracted 

already i was elsewhere... 

ah yes indeedy! i can see it now! 

and in my head i have left home two years early