This evening, I'll share a little exerpt once again from A Circle of Quiet by Madeleine L'Engle. Simply enjoy the beauty of the written words.

Then the path becomes full of tussocks and hummocks; my legs are etched by the thorns of blackberry brambles and wild roses. Earlier this summer the laurel burst from snow into fire, and a few weeks later we found a field of sweet wild strawberris. And then there are blueberry bushes, not very many, but a few, taller than I am and, to me, infinitely beautiful.

The burning bush: somehow I visualize it as much like one of these blueberry bushes, The bush burned, was alive with flame and was not consumed. Why? Isn't it because, as a bush, it was perfect? It was exactly as a bush is meant to be. A bush certainly doesn't have the opportunity for prideful and selfish choices, for self-destruction, that we human beings do. It is. It is a pure example of ontology. Ecology-ontology-the words fascinate me...Ontology: the word about the essence of things; the word about being.

I go to the brook because I get out of being, out of hte essential. So I'm not like the bush, then. I put all my prickliness, selfishness, in-turnedness, onto my isness; we all tent to, and when we burn, this part of us is consumed. When I go past the tallest blueberry bush...I think that the part of us that has to be burned away is something like the deadwood on the bush; it has to go, to be burned in the terrible fire of reality, until there is nothing left but our ontological selves; what we are meant to be.

I go to the brook and my tensions and frustrations are lost as I spend a happy hour sitting right in the water and trying to clear it of the cloggig debris left by a fallen tree.

I think about this concept a lot. My isness. Just being here. Is that really enough? Am I loved no matter how much deadwood I'm dragging along my path? Am I loved enough that the deadwood would be pruned and burned away. Would God really care that much to help me be more alive, more fruitful, more me?

Everytime I 'fail' a bit, I'm forced to deal with this truth once again. I am God's child and he has established peace for me. All that I have accomplished He has done for me. (Isaiah 26)

Peace. It does not mean to be in a place where there is no noise, trouble or hard work. It means to be in the midst of those things and still be calm in your heart. -Unknown

These are pictures of a yarn I just purchased to make a fall scarf. It may take me a little time to get it done, but there's something about knitting that reminds me of my ontology. The simplicity of creating something that is not an assignment, reminds me of who I am as a person in some way. I thought it was quite fitting that the name of this hand-spun yarn is Magic Berries.

Have a peaceful day friends.