Category: Things I love

Stand and Stare

~ Joy O'Toole ~ 3 Comments
October 18, 2018 at 0807AM - God_s majesty in today_s sunrise. I marveled all the way to work.
Sunrise over the Rappahannock River

Life is so busy, isn’t it? We run here and there—work, home, school, children, errands, entertainment, church. There is always something that needs attention. Or we need to catch up with our friends and followers on social media. Or catch the latest movie. Or make sure to tidy the garden before the first frost. Or the million other things we need or want to do.

So many times I run like a hamster on a wheel to do everything required. Between my responsibilities at work and home, there is little or no breathing space left in the schedule. Mail and newspapers alone can get out of control quickly. I need to cut back plants and weed the garden, as well as run errands and help my husband with needed paperwork.  Then there are the untidy closets and drawers, beckoning for me to come and sort things out, to donate and discard, and to tidy them so that we don’t wasting precious minutes, wading through junk.

I want time to read for fun or edification so I try to carve out time for reading every day. Creating a new blog post or working on a book I’m trying to write also take time. I’d like to get back to knitting and sewing and make curtains for the bare windows in my book room.

I spend precious time in the kitchen, cooking meals for the family, baking food for them and others in need, and endless cleaning up after those many meals and snacks.

If I do everything I need to do, never mind want to do, I notice I’m running myself ragged, like a piece of rope, frayed until worn to only the merest thread holding it together. I feel like that piece of rope all too often, and I know why I do. It’s because, in all of my to-do lists and musts, I have forgotten to stand and stare.

Have you read Leisure by William Henry Davies?  I don’t remember when I first read it, but it resonated so strongly that I have never forgotten it.

What is this life if, full of care,
We have no time to stand and stare.
No time to stand beneath the boughs
And stare as long as sheep or cows.
No time to see, when woods we pass,
Where squirrels hide their nuts in grass.
No time to see, in broad daylight,
Streams full of stars, like skies at night.
No time to turn at Beauty’s glance,
And watch her feet, how they can dance.
No time to wait till her mouth can
Enrich that smile her eyes began.
A poor life this if, full of care,
We have no time to stand and stare.

Do we make time to stand and stare? Do we make time to:

  • look at the beauty of a sunrise or sunset instead of fleetingly glancing out our car windows as we rush off to the next appointment
  •  pause by a rose bush and touch the pale pink petals while inhaling the sweet scent of a newly opened bud
  • walk through the dew-drenched grass in the early morning and listen to the birdsong echoing all around us, praising the God who made the world
  •  sit on the porch during a thunderstorm and watch the lightning and streaming rain from a place of safety, but open to the wind and sound
  • look at the sunlight streaming in the windows over a table with a stack of books and a teacup, full of hot tea, waiting for us to stop and take a sip, then another and another while inhaling the steam and cradling the warm bowl of the cup in our hands
  • sit quietly in the evening with a glass of wine or water, meditating on the past day and thinking about all the little things for which we are grateful
  •  spend a few moments every day in thanksgiving for the simple pleasures, which are all around us and so easy to find if we choose to look

Do you take time to stand and stare?  Or do you, like I, forget that life is so much more than busyness and obligations and duties and shoulds and oughts? How many times do we forget that sometimes it is our business is to be quiet, to wait, to wonder, to meditate, and to think great thoughts? Let’s not spend this precious life merely racing from day to day without standing and staring and noticing our surroundings.

How do we make the time though? With so many people needing us and tasks set before us, how do we turn away from the neediness of our worlds?

I don’t have all the answers but I think that if we want to meet the needs of those around us, we will do it better if we have a regular time to stand, to think, to plan, to wonder, to understand the whys of what we do rather than just throw ourselves headlong, to meditate on the truths of what we believe so that we can more fully follow through on those beliefs.

It is easier, for sure, to rush through life without thinking. But join me in rebelling against that hamster-wheel type existence. Stand. Stare. Look. Think. Enjoy.

Life will be richer and more full of joy and wonder if you and I take the time each day, if only for a moment or two, to stand and stare.

Friends, Mentors, and Guides

~ Joy O'Toole ~ 2 Comments

Pierre-Auguste_Renoir_-_Child_Reading_(Enfant_lisant)_-_BF51_-_Barnes_Foundation When I think back on my growing-up years, my most cherished memories are of the books that filled my life.  I began to read in kindergarten and after I learned, it was a rare occasion I wasn’t reading a book.  Curled up in a chair, lying flat on my bed, perched on a tree branch, riding in the car, at my desk in school—every location was the perfect place to read a book. I raced through The Black Stallion books, inherited from my father, and spent countless hours poring over the volumes of Grimm’s and Andersen’s fairy tales that had belonged to my mother. Christmas and birthday gifts always included beautiful hardcover books such as The Little Princess, Alice in Wonderland,  The Wind in the Willows, and other classics. With my allowance, I bought myself the Nancy Drew mysteries that my library didn’t own and filled in the gaps in my collection of L.M. Montgomery’s Anne books.

Each trip to the library resulted in a new stack of books to savor, the highlight of my week. Books by Beverly Cleary, sequels to Little Women, and The Scarlet Pimpernel were titles I borrowed over the years. Staying home sick in bed meant time to reread my favorite Narnia book. If I had to miss church, my parents would bring home Bible story books from the church library to keep me occupied for the afternoon.

Every time we moved, one of the first things I did was to set up the bookcase that my great-grandfather had built in my new bedroom. Made of dark, heavy wood and held together only by slots and pegs, the bookcase contained all of my treasured volumes and remained the focal point of my room.

However, it wasn’t merely the books that charmed me or the stories they contained. The truths they contained, the characters that became my friends, and the worlds to which they introduced me that were the real treasures.

My imagination grew as I traveled to fabulous places. I went to Wonderland with Alice and met the Cheshire Cat, the White Rabbit, and the Red Queen. Dorothy’s adventures in Oz drew me to a place where monkeys flew, lions talked, and terrifying tornadoes became vehicles to other worlds. I grew to love the English countryside of Mary Lennox and Rat, Mole, and Toad. The American woods and prairies, as described by Laura Ingalls Wilder, became my playground too, in my mind, while I longed to go to Narnia with Lucy and Edmund, Susan and Peter to meet Aslan, Mr. Tumnus, and the Beavers.

Also, the heroines inspired me with their character and strength . When I was feeling put upon by having to do chores around the house and yard, I would imagine myself a princess like Sara Crewe in A Little Princess.  Instead of complaining about shoveling the walk, I would do it cheerfully as I thought Sara would do.  Rather than whine about a dinner I didn’t like, I would remind myself that at least I had good food to eat. When I was embarrassed by a pair of shoes I had to wear one year, I remembered Sara’s clothes being old and shabby.  Seeing how difficult it was for Sara, without parents to love her, I learned to better appreciate my own happy childhood.

After reading Anne of Green Gables in fifth grade, I not only found a heroine to emulate but also identified with her imagination and fanciful ways. I loved to read and put myself in the place of the heroine although I fortunately never sank in a leaky boat. I, too, spent hours wandering through the woods and fields near my home, and named my favorite haunts. Violet Valley, a small depression carpeted with violets each spring, was my favorite place. I would sink down among the flowers and pick handfuls of the purple and white blooms for my mother every year.  When I read the chapter Where the Violets Grow in By the Shores of Silver Lake, I was not only reading the words, but I knew exactly what it was like to sink down into a mass of violets.

Reading opened the world to me. I learned how to be more compassionate to those in need, to understand people from different places and cultures than mine. I was inspired to make jam, bake bread, and keep a house from some books. Other books prodded me to study hard and succeed at school. Still others pushed me to continue with my writing. I learned what qualities make a good friend and wife and mother.  Poetry opened my life to a richness of emotion and put words to things in my heart that I didn’t know could be described in words.

Spending so many hours reading during my childhood and adolescence was not only helpful in my growth academically and intellectually. I grew as a human being as I encountered the experiences and relationships of fictional characters. Books have been my friends, my mentors, and my guides.  The person I am today is due to the books and stories I have absorbed and delighted in throughout my life.

A Room of My Own

~ Joy O'Toole ~ 1 Comment

For many years, my bedroom was the room where I did much of my study, reading, writing, and thinking. Morning is when I read, meditate, pray, reflect, and work on my current study project. With children in the house and a busy schedule, there was no other time and place to work on my own studies and cultivate my devotional life.

Now that my children are grown and mostly gone, I am working every day outside the home so I still don’t have a lot of time. However I still write and read in the morning, and I now have a place for my studies. When we moved into our house, my husband decided that since I was the only woman in a house full of men, it would be a good thing for me to have a room I could call my own. He had our contractor take the back porch and turn it into a room off the back of the house.

It’s a jewel of a room. The pale green walls reflect the sunlight that pours in like liquid gold throughout the day. The dark wood floor is covered with an oriental carpet with rich, deep colors, which my father gave me. Family heirlooms dot the room and the wingback chairs are both elegant and comfortable. And, of course, there is a full wall of bookshelves, covered in books of all kinds, so that I have novels to sink into and bits of information right at my fingertips.

Virginia Woolf wrote in her famous essay, A Room of One’s Own, that for a woman to write fiction, [she] must have money and a room of her own…. She did not just mean a physical place, but also that one must have leisure as well as mental and emotional space in order to pour out her thoughts onto a page.

While I believe that anyone can write in the middle of a busy, crowded room, if necessary, as journalists and other professional writers have learned to do, I also can see what Woolf was implying. In order to write, you must create a mental space to take in information through reading, watching, observing, and then meditate on those things long enough to turn them into your own thoughts. Once those thoughts are formed, they must then be written down in some way. All of this takes time and space and energy, much of which is lacking in busy family life, especially when the children are small.

Of course, a mother must make time for her children. Interruptions must be allowed. Attention must be turned from her work to her child’s needs. Reeve Lindbergh discussed this in her memoir, Under a Wing:

…if I knocked at my mother’s door, she always answered, and if I entered the room, she never seemed to mind. She would put down her pen immediately, and smile gently, and ask what I wanted.

However, since my children have grown and moved out into the world to embrace their lives as adults, it has been easier for me to go deeper and further in my thinking and writing. The empty nest has allowed me to acquire the mental and physical space I need work. Having a room with doors that can be closed signals to others that I am in working mode: please do not disturb. I can now fall into what I call the “black hole of research” without being concerned for hungry tummies and skinned knees.

It doesn’t mean that the men in my house always pay attention to that closed door (which is why I still get up before everyone else in the mornings), but it does help me to feel less conflicted and less likely to be interrupted, which allows me to more freely pour out what I want to communicate. Long stretches of time are still scant, but with careful planning, I can often find corners of time and sometimes even a few hours to gaze out the window, read beautiful prose, chase down my myriad of thoughts, and write what’s in my heart.

A room of one’s own—what a luxury and a comfort to have this place of beauty in which to work and think and ponder the important things of life. This room, this jewel, is in the top ten of things for which I am thankful every day.

Penny Plain by O. Douglas

~ Joy O'Toole ~ 3 Comments

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I had another blog post planned for today, but I just finished Penny Plain by O. Douglas and had to share about this new to me author.

I had heard of O. Douglas, a pseudonym for Anna Buchan, because my boys and I have long loved John Buchan’s books. I still enjoy reading about Richard Hannay and his adventures, especially Mr. Standfast. Did you know that John Buchan is the father of spy novels? His first, The 39 Steps, was written in 1915 but set just before World War I. The first time I read it, I couldn’t put it down. It’s so full of hair-raising adventures and last minutes escapes that you find that you must read one more chapter to see if Hannay escapes the current tight corner.

Anyhow, because of my enjoyment of Richard Hannay, I had read about Buchan’s sister, Anna Buchan/O. Douglas, and had seen her books reviewed by other middlebrow novel enthusiasts. However, until this weekend, I had never read one for myself.

I downloaded Penny Plain for free onto my kindle. (As an aside, while I still adore real books, being able to read out of print, unaccessible books is one of the definite upsides of the digital book revolution). I’ve spent the last two days in Scotland with Jean Jardine and her three brothers, whom she is bringing up by herself after the death of her parents and her aunt.

It’s a charming little story with wonderful characters and a happy ending, the best kind of book. Jean is making do with little money but lots of books and love when Pamela Reston comes to the village of Priorsford to escape the social whirl for a while. The book is set just after World War I and the sorrows of the loss of so many young men come across from time to time. In a way, it is more poignant than a modern novel about the losses because the author knew those aching gaps in a way we modern readers never will.

However, the book itself is upbeat and tells about the kind heart of Jean, her genius for helping others, and the way her life takes an unexpected turn as a result of her kindnesses. Also, there are numerous quotes from Shakespeare, Dr. Johnson, and poetry, which I will have to track down to their sources one of these days for the sheer fun of it. I love books that are full of quotations.

Just a few bits to give you the flavor of the book:

“You know the people,” said Pamela, “who say, ‘Of course I love reading, but I’ve no time, alas!’ as if everyone who loves reading doesn’t make time.”

She has been nowhere and seen very little; books are her world, and she talks of book-people as if they were everyday acquaintances.

She was glad she lived among people who had the decency to go on caring for each other in spite of lines and wrinkles—comfortable couples whose affection for each other was a shelter in the time of storm, a shelter built of common joys, of “fireside talks and counsels in the dawn,” cemented by tears shed over common sorrows.

It wasn’t sad to be old, Jean told herself, for as the physical sight dims, the soul sees more clearly, and the light from the world to come illumines the last dark bit of the way….

The other rooms are lovely, but they are meant for crowds of people. This says tea, and a fire and a book and a friend—the four nicest things in the world.”

If you love books with kindness and laughter and true values and happy ever afters, even in the midst of life’s sorrows, then you will enjoy Penny Plain.

 

Remembering Mother

~ Joy O'Toole ~ 5 Comments

Veda-Young

Each year on November 22*, I remember my mother. The world remembers John F. Kennedy on that day, the anniversary of his assassination, and the Christian world remembers C. S. Lewis, who also died that day. However, while I do remember both of these men, the one I most think about and grieve is my dear mother.

It’s been twelve years since she went to be with the Lord. They say that grief eventually subsides and, in one sense, that is true. I don’t actively grieve every minute of every day as I did that first year after she died. I don’t go to pick up the phone to tell her something and start to cry as I remember she’s gone.

However, it’s not true that you “get over it.” Grief of a great loss never truly goes away. It hovers in the background, waiting to pounce on you when you least expect it. Days like the anniversary of her death or her birthday or, for some odd reason, on my birthday bring her to mind. Milestones in my children’s lives, finding a recipe card in her handwriting, reading old letters or looking through photo albums, finding a purse in her favorite shade of aqua or receiving a gift from an old friend of something my mother made many years ago have also triggered memories. Any and all of these things cause me to tear up and remember the gift that my mother was, not just to me, but to so many other people.

My mother was born a month after the U.S. entered World War II. Her father was unable to fight due to health issues so while they didn’t have a lot of money, she grew up in a household with both her parents and was a much-loved only child. She learned her love of beauty from both of her parents, her ability to create art and garden from her father, her cooking and housekeeping and music from her mother. Her father’s sister was the one who introduced her to the love of books and good writing, which influenced my mother for the rest of her life.

My parents met while Mother was still in college, studying English, and they married before she graduated. She didn’t let a lack of a college degree get in the way of her learning though. She went on to teach herself a multitude of things, such as cut-glass work and quilting. She never passed up an opportunity to learn from someone else.

When I was a child, we lived next door to an Indian family, and my mother received recipes and help from our neighbor to learn Indian cooking. I still have the recipes and still remember the assortment of colorful lentils and flavored curries that Mother made. When my brother married an Italian girl, Mother went to the local community college and took Italian so that she could communicate with her in-laws, whose English was fragmented, at best.

Mother was always doing something. Like Martha from the Bible, she was busy with many things. She often said that while my father was working hard at work during the day, she should be working hard at home.

A few things I remember her doing: dipping pine cones in wax in the autumn for the fireplace each winter, standing over the kitchen sink soldering pieces of glass together, sewing something on her Singer sewing machine, and gardening. She had a large vegetable garden when I was young and after she gave up the large garden, she always had a small plot for herbs for cooking. And her cooking! She was a gourmet cook. Countless meals and gifts came out of her kitchen. I know she touched the lives of hundreds of people through her cooking alone.

She spent her odd moments of leisure doing needlework and taught me how to do embroidery, needlepoint, and counted cross-stitch. She sewed many of my clothes, my dolls’ clothes, and many of her own garments as well.

One of our most cherished memories was of the time we were walking through our favorite department store. One of the saleswomen in the suit department admired the suit I was wearing and asked me if I had bought it at their store. When I told the woman that my mother had made it, she was astonished and said that the suit was as beautifully made as any the store carried. What a triumph of Mother’s skill!

Mother was a letter writer. Before I was even in school, I called our typewriter a “type-a-letter” because that’s what my mother used it for. When my brother and I went away to school, we could count on at least one letter a week. She sent some emails but even when she used a computer in later years, she often printed the letter out and sent it in an envelope along with articles and other little things she had clipped and saved. I have years of letters in her beautiful handwriting that I treasure for the glimpses into her life, for the wisdom of her advice, and for the love that poured out to me in her words.

Mother believed in the idea of anything worth doing is worth doing well. Her gifts were wrapped as if they were done by an expert. Her home was always warm and inviting. The backside of her needlework creations was almost as beautiful as the front. Every garment she made had finished seams, so you never had to worry about loose threads, and I don’t remember ever losing a button off one of the blouses she made me. When she started quilting later in life, every quilt was beautiful—all her points came together in the piecing and the quilting was always perfect.

Every year, she made dozens and dozens and dozens of homemade Christmas cookies. Some were for the Christmas brunch she held for many years, some were to give as gifts, and some were for her family. Each cookie was beautiful. Se would spend hours on finishing touches to make them more than just something to pop into your mouth.

Best of all, my mother loved people and would go out of her way to befriend them and care for them. She spent her time, listening, advising, and serving her friends and acquaintances. After she died, many people told me how much Mother had meant to them. I only knew a fraction of them because her circle of friends was so wide.

How does one get over the loss of your mother? I remember my pastor once commenting that losing your mother is one of the greatest losses. He said that on his birthday, his mother would buy him a shirt and after she died, he missed those shirts. Your mother is the one who has known you from the beginning. Very few, if any, people will know and love you the way your mother does.

A good mother knows her children—their likes and dislikes, their weaknesses and strengths. A godly mother instills the truth of the gospel in her children from the time they are very small, she prays with and for them, and she teaches them the ways of God in her words and deeds. A loving mother spends time with her children and does many things for them. She encourages them when they are struggling, advises them when they are confused or lost, and is their greatest cheerleader.

Years ago, my mother and I read a book that said that our fellow Christians are our “balcony people.” The author was talking about Hebrews 12:1:

Therefore we also, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which so easily ensnares us, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us,

The author pointed out that the great cloud of witnesses in Hebrews 11 are the saints who have run the race before us and who are now standing in the balcony of heaven, cheering us on as we run the race of the Christian life.

Mother said that she would always be my balcony person, that she would always be cheering me on, no matter what. She knew me better than anyone else in the world and was my friend and advisor and support until the day of her death. And, I suspect, that she is still cheering me on from heaven.

When I lost my mother, it left a hole in my heart that will never quite be filled on this earth. But I can cherish the memories of her, share the good things she shared with me, advise my friends and family with the wisdom with which she advised me, and tell the world about what a good mother can be by telling the world who my mother was.

Go give your mother a hug. She is your first and best friend in the world and no one can ever replace her.

*Although I wrote this post on the anniversary of my mother’s home-going, it seems appropriate to post it on her birthday.

My Reading Life

~ Joy O'Toole ~ 2 Comments

You can never get a cup of tea large enough or a book long enough to suit me. —C. S. Lewis

Bookroom corner

For anyone who has read my blog for any length of time, I’m sure you’ve discovered that I love to read. I cannot remember a time when I didn’t love books or have time for books in my life. As a child, the bookcase in my room was a never-ending source of delight. I read and reread favorite books. Every year a friend of my grandmother’s gave my brother and me books for Christmas. The Velveteen Rabbit, the Little House books, The Little Princess, and a set of six matching hardbacks, including titles such as Mary Poppins and The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe were some of the titles I remember receiving from her.

My mother took us to the library regularly and once I was big enough and strong enough to bike there myself, I would go on my own. We lived in a small town for several years and the library was only a few miles away. By the time I was in junior high, I could go by myself.

I still remember that library. It was a little house on the town square, filled with books. I first read the Anne of Green Gables books and The Scarlet Pimpernel there. It’s funny that I remember no librarians, just stacks full of books to browse and borrow.

When I was in high school, we moved to a different state and I had a job at our town’s public library. That meant that I could bring books home every day after work. I didn’t have to wait for the once a week trip. It was in high school that I discovered Agatha Christie books, selling for 10 cents a piece at our library book sale. I spent many happy hours reading when my schoolwork was done and on weekends. I remember taking a book out with me to the woods, sitting in a chair with an apple and a book on a rainy Saturday, curled up on my bed one weekend with Gone with the Wind and astonishing my mother when I finished it by Sunday evening.

In the library where I worked, the fiction collection started on the left-hand wall, continued around the back wall, and finished on the right-hand wall. I started the A’s with Jane Austen and spent the last two years in high school working through classics like Sense and Sensibility, Jane Eyre, Les Miserables and many others. I also fell in love with the historical fiction books by Thomas Costain, Anya Seton, and Leon Uris.

Despite my studies in college, I still found time for pleasure reading. I mostly had to rely on the books that I had brought from home until my last year in college. The summer before my senior year, I moved to a house within walking distance of the university with a bunch of other girls.

Just around the corner, there was a tiny public library extension and any time I wasn’t at work that summer, I was reading. Our house didn’t have air conditioning and the nights could be unbearably warm so a book to read until 2 a.m. was a help in making myself tired enough to sleep in the heat.

I worked at my university after graduation. On weekends, I poked around used bookstores and made a trip to the main downtown library for something new to read. My collection of books was growing. I started branching out from historical fiction and mysteries into poetry, plays, and literary fiction. I first found Miss Manners and learned etiquette while giggling over her snarky attitude. I read biographies. It was at this time that I first discovered Anne Morrow Lindberg’s books of journals and letters that made such an impact on my life. I was single and not a party girl. I would go to work and afterwards my books would keep me company in the evenings.

I did finally get married, but I didn’t stop reading. My husband was in school so we spent evenings reading—me with my beloved classics and mysteries and he with his school books. This worked out well since it would have been hard if my new husband hadn’t understood my love for books.

After our children came, I was busy most of the day caring for them and the house but I still carved out time for books. With just one baby, I could find time to read while nursing, while he napped, before bed. However, when the second little guy came along, it was much harder. I was on the go all day. Every time I wasn’t doing something, I was exhausted and only wanted to sleep.

I was feeling starved, intellectually and spiritually, without time spent reading, reflecting, and writing. One day, I realized that after the baby’s early morning feed, he went back to sleep and I had an hour before my oldest woke up. Rather than go back to bed, as I had been doing, I used that time to read my Bible, to journal, to read uplifting books. I rediscovered my core being again as God’s Word nourished my spirit and mind, as I read good fiction and edifying nonfiction, as I reflected on new ideas, and wrote about what I was thinking and how I was growing.

When we started homeschooling our children, I introduced reading as a pastime to my children. I had read aloud to them for years, but now we spent long hours every day with books—reading, discussing, narrating. The boys would look forward to library day when we would go for library programs, gather a new stack of books, and spend the evening together, everyone with the book of their choice.

People asked me how I had time to read while homeschooling three children and running the house. My response was that I needed to read in order to do those things. Reading and studying was key to my ability to grow in my faith, teach my children what they needed to know, and to keep my sanity. Studies detailed how many women were on anti-depressants and other drugs in order to cope with the stresses of modern life. I found that if I kept learning and reading and regularly interacting with good ideas, those pastimes helped me with stress. I found strength in the nourishment I was receiving intellectually, emotionally, and, most importantly, spiritually.

These days I still read whenever I can find a few moments. Now that my children have grown up and starting new lives in working and higher education, I work at our local library so I still have plenty of books at my fingertips. Newly published books make their way to my nightstand, piles of books that I’m reading and pondering teeter around my “book room”, and my bookshelves still overflow.

What started as a common pastime as a child has turned into a way of life. I still spend many evenings and weekends with a book and a pot of tea. I do not regret the many hours spent in other people’s lives. I lived a thousand lives, traveled the world, and learned about life from other people’s experiences. Reading has enriched my life beyond all imagining. The reading life is the only life for me.

Advent

~ Joy O'Toole ~ Leave a comment

In our country, Christmas is advertised before Halloween arrives. By the first of December, the Christmas season is in full swing. Holiday parties and greetings are everywhere you go. There is extra food, gifts in the shop windows, concerts, ballets, and more.

How different this is from the traditional Advent. Like the Lenten season before Easter, Advent was a time for fasting and preparation. Preparation for the coming of the Christ was the focus as you contemplated Christ’s first coming and looked forward to His second coming. The hymn, O Come, O Come Emmanuel reminds us of His first coming while Joy to the World anticipates His future return to earth to reign forever.

Advent starts on the fourth Sunday before Christmas, which was the first Sunday in December. The first Sunday’s theme is hope, hope that our Savior will be born to us, hope in God’s promises to us that He will send a savior, hope that the baby born in a stable will transform the world. This past Sunday, the second Sunday of Advent, the theme was faith. Faith n the promises of God and in His Son, Jesus Christ, who came to take away the sin of the world.

Each day of Advent, there are hymns to sing and Scriptures to read as we hope and believe, pray and prepare our hearts for the coming Messiah. Over the years, my children and I spent time each day reading about the promises of Christ’s coming, starting in the Old Testament and ending in readings about His birth in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke.

Advent is from the Latin word, adventus, which means coming. Two ways of counting down the time are advent calendars, where you open a door in a calendar each day of December until the 25th. Also, the Advent wreath is a traditional way of counting down. Each Sunday of Advent, a different candle is lit. The four candles stand for hope, peace, faith, and joy. On the 25th, the center candle, the Christ candle, is lit, signifying that He has arrived.

It is a time to prepare fruitcakes and cookies and other traditional fare, which are then tucked away for the great day to arrive. Christmas trees didn’t become an American and English tradition until the 19th century. For many decades, the tree was put up and lit on Christmas Eve, partly because a live tree doesn’t last long and partly because Christmas itself was not celebrated until then.

There is a song called The Twelve Days of Christmas and we sing about the many gifts that the true love gave to the singer. However, we don’t think about the meaning behind the song. In medieval times, all of the preparation of Advent led to the twelve days of Christmas in which people celebrated the Christmas season. Starting on December 25 and lasting until Twelfth Night, there were feasting and stories and celebrations throughout the twelve days.

Christmas ended when Epiphany, January 6, arrived.

One of the things I often thought I’d like to do is to celebrate the twelve days of Christmas, even if quietly and without big daily feasts and presents, but to save up the celebrating and special treats until the actual day of Christmas and the days following.

This year, as you struggle to buy the presents and prepare the cookies and candies and treats and run around to the various parties, celebrate Advent by spending some time, quietly, reverently, wondering at the coming of the Christ, who came to give His life and save His people. Find time each day to think about that wondrous gift from God and pray and ponder Him in your heart as Mary did. You will find the season has much more meaning as you think about what it really means and how you can know this baby who is the Son of God, the Savior of the world.

Quote for the Day

~ Joy O'Toole ~ Leave a comment

Bookroom corner

 ” ‘I thank you, sir, I thank you,’ he murmured, and placed George Herbert between Spenser and Piers Plowman on the shelf. ‘You give me great wealth for the gift of a book is the gift of a human soul. Men put their souls in their books. When one man gives another a book then three souls are bound together in that most happy thing, a trinity. ”

From The White Witch by Elizabeth Goudge.

Blogs that I love – Modern Mrs. Darcy

~ Joy O'Toole ~ Leave a comment

Knitting

Several months ago, I discovered that I was reading articles from a new (to me) blog: Modern Mrs. Darcy (MMD).   First of all, those of us who are Jane Austen fans can’t possibly resist the name, Modern Mrs. Darcy!   Add to that, Anne, the owner of MMD, is an engaging writer who covers so many topics I’m interested in.  From book reviews to articles about Myers-Briggs personality tests** to organizing life the Kondo way  to introducing services like ePantry, there is always something of interest.  Add to that, a weekly round up of favorite links and lists and lists of good books to read, and I was hooked.

While I read some blogs for moral or theological edification and others to help me organize or learn things I need to know for work, school, or my home, there are a few blogs I read just for the sheer fun of it.  MMD is one of my fun blogs.  I hope you all enjoy it, too.

Here are just a few articles to get you started:

Books worth binge reading

3 time management rules I wish I’d learned 10 years ago

My accidental capsule wardrobe

The perfect summer reading for every Myers-Briggs personality type

Grown-ups shouldn’t finish books they’re not enjoying

 

**I adore taking Myers-Briggs personality tests.  Even though I rarely deviate from the expected result, I still can’t resist taking it again, just in case I’ve changed, and then reading all of the various personality quirks, perfect jobs, and people like me articles that go along with my personality type.  It’s fun.  Give it a try.

Things I love: Planning and Organization

~ Joy O'Toole ~ 6 Comments

For many years I eagerly anticipated September, not just because it meant a new school year (like Hermione in the Harry Potter books, I was a confirmed know-it-all), but also because I loved all of the organization paraphernalia that went along with a new school year. New pencils, blank notebooks, perfect binders, a new box of crayons, etc. All of these things made my heart sing with joy.

When I graduated from college, I had to replace those lovely paper products somehow and turned to planners and calendars to scratch my paper/organization itch. I started with a fairly straightforward planner I found at a office supply store. Several years later, as a new mother, I found a lovely bound book for Christian women. One year I used a calendar I had bought at a museum shop, several years I used a Franklin Covey planner, and another year I downloaded one and put the printout in a binder for that year.

Then came the electronic age and a new smartphone. Suddenly I had a calendar that went everywhere with me and had multiple apps to keep track of my schedule, my task list, and notes. So last year I decided to go paperless. I downloaded Evernote for note-taking and a calendar app, which combined my two google calendars (personal and work) and my iPhone calendar as well as my task list.

I wish I could say that I am now proudly paperless, but I didn’t last very long without paper. I found myself writing down lists on the backs of envelopes (and promptly losing them), taking notes on pieces of paper that then floated away into a stack of loose paper, taking sermon notes on the weekly bulletin and sticking it in my Bible until I could hardly close it, and generally being completely disorganized.

Last spring I heard about bullet journals from a friend and since I had an extra blank notebook, I created a bullet journal. Some things I really liked about it: I could put anything I wanted in it—task lists, books to read, blog post ideas, sermon notes, work notes, menus, etc. However, I didn’t like the fact that I could never find anything without going to the index in the front and then turning to the page. It was annoying. I decided that I really liked the binder idea because I could put tabs in for different categories, but I didn’t like a full-sized binder.

My problem was solved when I discovered the Arc notebook system at Staples. I found a 9 x 6 notebook on sale and bought it. I can print out my own pages (there are numerous sites with free forms although I could also create custom forms in Word, if I want something I can’t find), put tabs between sections, and only have the categories I need without a bunch of things I will never use.

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The best part is that since it is completely customized, I was able to start using it immediately rather than wait until January 1—a definite plus. In addition, it has that new paper and notebook smell that is uniquely tied to Fall and the beginning of the school year. This new planner pleases me in so many ways that I’m bound to use it, if only to have the privilege of writing on a fresh page each day.

How do you like to plan? Do you use paper, electronic, or a hybrid?