Ashes time

Today marks the beginning of Lent, Ash Wednesday. Its a time to identify with the death of Jesus so that we can truly identify with the resurrection and life.....to let go so we can truly live. Being quarantined away for 40 days begins to make room, begins to carve out / stake out some space where God can come and in clean house. Sculpturally speaking it could be thought of as a subtractive process, making a negative, creating a void. We live in such an additive society so this is foreign thought to me. Im going with it by carving out some space at night so I can have the time in the morning to be still and silent for an hour before I eat breakfast and get ready for work, a small attempt at some regular spiritual discipline: listening. Going to sleep by 10pm so that I can wake by 6am may not seem profound, but its those 2 hours at night (10-12) and the ones fighting to awake have really robbed me of awareness over the years, I think. I could be wrong (and dramatic) but Im going to give it a shot for 40 days. Today was the start.

Phase 5 complete

Phase Five of our House Reclamation Project was recently completed, thanks to an army of friends from every area of our lives from the past 10 years. Jenna and I are eternally grateful for the help we received from all of you who showed up this past weekend to help with the punchlist and cleaning up. We've had a strange sense that we are living in someone else's home, where light switches work, walls are painted, and the air quality is relatively healthy....its a strange experience tying up loose ends like that. Here are some pics:

Living / dining room:


janky front and back....

2nd floor bath.....

up the stair of seascapes to the 3rd floor

Croatan Drummers

Im playing now with this drum troupe called Croatan Drummers.....

which has been coming out of the West African Drum Classes and Jay Beck's ongoing vision for a multicultural arts and education studio connected with Psalters, Circle of Hope, and all kinds of other cool things. We've been practicing three songs for our first performance:

Tiriba

Yankadi-Makru

And we're also going to sing this piece at the end of Makru called Jole. All in all its going to be pretty epic. Come by, we'll be playing in between sets:

PAPER TRIGGER ALBUM RELEASE SHOW

feb 21st9pm. johnny brenda's

with CROATAN DRUMMERS
PATTERN IS MOVEMENTand WHALES AND COPS

Hope to see you there.

spirit animal

I was beginning to think that my spirit animal was a jellyfish, because Ive long identified with them as my nemesis. I saw this picture of a giant 'lions mane' and began to consider it even more:





Then I read this piece about "Jellyfish wisdom" (wisdom?)


Jellyfish's Wisdom Includes:
Sensitivity to water energy—emotions
Understanding of the value of floating, rather than swimming, through trying emotional times
Proper use of softness (not being rigid)
Ability to become untangled from the webs of peril in life

Im reconsidering that I may be a Bear after all.

nextness

Ive been away from regular stuff that keeps me centered, and boy it makes a difference, but it can be really difficult for me to give in to daily prayer and contemplation when I feel so limited in my ability to get done what needs to get done with all thats happening right now. Not a complaint, but i am becoming so aware of my need to go and be with Jesus every day, in silent prayer, listening.
Right now we are rounding out 6 straight weeks of overseeing mulitple people working on our house so we can be prepared for an appraiser to tell us how much our house is worth so the bank can refinance our mortgage and "give us" some more monwy to finish it up. I cant tell you how difficult this process is for me. I do not like to reliquish control and oversee other people working on our home. I dont know why, I want to WANT to have it be easy, but it is not. On top of that its one of my closest friends, so that gets messy too. Letting go is really important for me though, and self care as well. Seeing things through, finishing ideas we had when I was 26 is also a good idea. Getting on to the next version of me seems Herculean. Finishing anything does for me. But its so good to untie one more knot in that Gideon cluster that is the interworkings of my brain at times.
We signed the papers for the refi, and the bean-counter is on his way to tell us how much our house is worth. This game, is such a game. It feels so inauthentic. I dont like games. I dont particularly like capitalism either, and I feel so stuck there sometimes, so compromised. having to dress up the house so it looks worth it is so hard for me. But it dovetails with actually finishing bits and pieces Ive been neglecting for years now. And it is looking SO SWEET!

I cant wait to get some of this cash and apply it to things like a wood buring stove, super high efficiency boiler, new kitchen, and maybe even a double-tiered roof deck where we plan on growing a bunch of our food! A lot of ideas Jenna and I have had (God bless that patient woman...love you babe) for years are coming to fruition lately....its often more than my brain can handle at once. Ill post some pics soon.

Oh, the bit about self-care......
1. Went to the dentist for the 1st time in 5 years - brutal, but so good.
2. Went to an orthopedic specialist to finally get my knee seriously looked at.
3. considering therapy again to work some stuff out thats really been coming up again and again.

There is lots to be really excited about:

-I'm in the advanced class for West African Drumming.
-I finally got the lighting plans for Circle of Hope done...the first pass at least.
-I'm feeling good about my job / getting the hang of this LEED Consulting thing.
-I'm about 90% done my bathroom project, which began last May.
-Ive got two friends of mine working on my house (mostly the 1st floor) so we can polish it up for an appraisal and refinance our mortgage....its like an episode of Flip that House!
-Ive got a new person coming to my cell this week.
-I'm even beginning to admit how much of a control freak I am (all the stuff Im doing is bringing it up...in a good way), and I think I'm ready to start letting go.

40 years in the making

For our office holiday outing, we visited the Wharton Esherick house, the home-turned-museum of one of the country's most celebrated artist-painter-craftsmen. I would rank it a top-ten local visit (its in Paoli) by anyone who appreciates art, furniture design, or custom designed and built homes, hovels, and haunts. Its a beautifully crafted tiny little house / studio that took him 40 years to complete. He just added what he needed as he and his family needed it. They added a small bathroom after 21 years of trudging to the outhouse. They finally added a kitchen after a few decades of cooking over an open fireplace....things like that, made from what they could find around them, artfully crafted. Wharton referred to the house as an "autobiography executed in wood." We had the pleasure of taking the tour with his son in law, Bob (about 85) who knew him well and shared many personal stories. Bob was great. I got to site next to him on the now world famous cantilevered oak stair listening to him share about the life and times of this great craftsman and why he made some of the design decisions he did, slowly but surely, piece by piece.

Ive got to say it was really encouraging to me in regards to our own home renovation process, which sometimes seems never-ending, but has always gone at the pace we've set out. Im not interested in rushing things. Ideas come at me when they do......and I execute them when I do.

Here's the outside:

This is Bob, and his hat. It was 19 degrees and he was the only one not cold. What a storyteller he is.

And the famous double hand carved stair: