Pour a Cup and Stay a While
This week, show the same thing — an object, place, or person — presented in several different ways.
Variations on a Theme: Hoarfrost
On Wednesday, I assembled a Variation on the theme of Blue Wild Flax Flowers at The Art of Disorder.
Weekly Photo Challenge: Cheeky!
Daily Post Prompt: Live to Eat:
Some people eat to live, while others live to eat. What about you? How far would you travel for the best meal of your life?
I used to live to eat, I think. When I traveled in my younger years, I planned my trips and vacations around exploring restaurants. I spent an entire ten days in a town between my then hometown and Seattle at a hotel near a restaurant that had fresh seafood flown in from the west coast. The other consideration was whether or not the weather was good enough that I could spend the rest of my time walking about. I usually found an outdoor spot where I could sit to read.
I went twice also to the Seattle area and ate fast-food seafood on one of the piers; I don’t remember if I traveled by train or airplane, that time. I’ve also eaten at Ruth’s Chris Steakhouse in Manhattan and several other sit-down and fast food places there, as well as buying breakfast early in the morning from a street vendor. I’ve gotten no farther north than Winnipeg or south than Omaha and New Jersey/ Maryland/ Washington, D.C., and more often found myself in southern Minnesota. That was before I discovered that I am allergic to wheat and gluten intolerance runs in my family. At that point, 1990, I started studying about and learning how to cook.
These days, while I may become preoccupied with other activities and skip a meal…or a day or more of them, I would travel no farther than the grocery store, butcher shop and local farmers market for supplies, and then do my own cooking.
For example, this morning’s breakfast. And, yes, I do commonly take photos of my meals, so that I can scan my photo archive for a picture of a meal or entrée or gluten-free baked product that I can’t quite recall. While I now eat to live (when I remember), feeding myself has become another creative activity. My husband has his own set of (if it’s healthy, it can’t be enjoyable) favorite foods, but where our tastes mesh, we share.
I best like accessorizing simple foods. The scrambled eggs were dusted lightly with paprika, garlic powder and white pepper and accompanied by red currant jelly and melon slices. Water for the day is filtered into a couple of pitchers and chilled in the refrigerator.
I also go wild with soup stock and Crock Pot meals and ad lib the g-f casseroles and breads.
Daily Post Prompt: Young at Heart.
What are your thoughts on aging? How will you stay young at heart as you get older?
Since living past age 35, I haven’t much thought about aging. I have had chemical/fragrance sensitivities since high school, food and respiratory allergies—physical conditions that I am used to dealing with, and so those are non-issues. My mother has many of the same, and she is active, still seeing to the needs of house, husband, &c. and she still has a sharp mind and a … weird sense of humor. My father is jovial, physically fit and active, getting out every day to have coffee with the “boys” downtown. He manages the life and activities and camaraderie he has always enjoyed, keying down to what’s comfortable to him. I look at them and say to myself, “Yeah, I can do that.”
With my parents as examples of adapting to and enjoying life in their 94th and 100th years, I am prepared to copy with physical, financial and social changes. I have modified my lifestyle, retiring half a year before my 66th birthday and dropping some lifetime pursuits to make more space for down time, resting, correspondence and self-expression (blogging, art work, et al.), prayer and meditation.
Although I have spent my life wrapped up in music, both as a listener and as a lyricist (mostly for my own amusement), singer, and instrumentalist, I found it relatively easy to drop the music for more time to read, returning to political philosophy, social theory and ecology. Although I am considering having the piano tuned, once we have finished house and grounds repairs. (I cannot get to the piano, since most of the downstairs movables have been stacked in the living room since the spring of 2014.) As I can no longer maintain a vegetable garden, I sow wildflower seeds and watch the insects among the blooms from May through October and sometimes November.
While having respiratory problems and diminished eyesight require shifts in activities, there are always new things to learn about, thoughts to pursue, poems to write, photographs to take, art to create. And more, too, I find myself digging in, seeking out and enjoying the activities and interests that my husband and I have in common. Making dates to spend time conversing over meals out, as well as setting the house and its innards to rights while we are still up to doing so physically.
Life is life. It’s ups and downs, crises and contentment. Love, joy and loss, but always revolving around…centering on what is truly important but which can never be taken away. Even with the pain of the losses—obituaries are more often for people our age and younger, and not just the aunts, uncles and parents—there is nothing we will ever face that has not been faced and endured with optimism and confidence by many more than ourselves.
Both of my husband’s parents have died. Out of the nine of my parents’ children, six of us are still alive. My own body chemistry does not deal well with medicines or medical facilities, and so my end of life will be relatively uncomplicated. Loss and heartbreak and death are as much a part of life as love, joy, faith and peace. The one set doesn’t over power the other. They are part of the life that we all live, but they do not define us.
Romans 8:38-39 is real. We go along, at last, for the ride, hanging on with both hands to the one who’s holding onto us.
An interesting phrasing of the beginning of the Old Testament book of Ecclesiastes, i.e., everything is vanity.
Apart from fellowship with God and love of others, humans chase the wind and waste their lives in a cycle of futility. [V. Fizzell]
Also, in Eccl. 2:24-26:
24 A person can do nothing better than to eat and drink and find satisfaction in their own toil. This too, I see, is from the hand of God, 25 for without him, who can eat or find enjoyment? 26 To the person who pleases him, God gives wisdom, knowledge and happiness, but to the sinner he gives the task of gathering and storing up wealth to hand it over to the one who pleases God. This too is meaningless, a chasing after the wind. [BibleGateway, NIV]
I think that’s pretty much true. In particular, knowledge of what is right and what is wrong is important to living a life of faith. Wisdom involves knowing whether a particular “right action” is one that I am to undertake. That is, something that God has called me to do. Mostly I am called to not act. I am called only to what I can and should do. There are many people who are better suited to respond to nearly everything.
(My ego often gets in the way, and so I now more easily recognize when my responding feeds my self-esteem rather than the other’s need. It is humbling to realize how often my prayer devolves into “Forgive me for making mistakes. Please make me perfect now!” while ignoring the things that actually call for repentance and forgiveness.)
Walking in faith, for me, involves not being blown about by the winds of politicking, advertising, speakers or movements, rallying cries, &c. Rather, faith is a relationship, a daily dialogue. With me doing the preponderance of listening. I want an understanding, recognition of what I can do that is not idle vanity, but obedience, and also common sense.
There are many voices, but if God does not speak to me, affirming that what is being said is for me to follow up on, then I should not. There is no cause that will fail because I am not called to put my hand or voice to it. God calls laborers each to their particular paths. And a path may be a short one for some, while lifetime commitments for others. It’s not all about me. It’s about relationships.
And so, my calling in life is to have faith in and maintain a two-way relationship with God and to love all others. Not mine to “judge”, but also not called to condone, approve, become involved with, or such. I am not called to insert myself or my ego into other people’s lives. I’m just called to love them and to live in the joy that centers on God.
Lizl
I enjoyed this prompt — Pingback to Un/Faithful | The Daily Post — and the prodding to revisit the fundamentals explicitly.
Note: Still having eyesight and coordination problems and not doing well at all in recognizing and correcting my copy.
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Stray Coffee Breaks 