My friend Lauren has a new motto painted over her kitchen sink: Otium Sanctum. It was the first thing that I noticed when we were visiting in their home a couple of weeks ago. I asked about it, and her husband explained that it was an ancient Latin phrase that the church fathers used to…
Lucilla Eliot, of Elizabeth Goudge’s ‘Eliot trilogy’ (Bird in the Tree, Pilgrim’s Inn and Heart of the Family) is one of my heroines. Expect to hear much of her—and the wisdom that Ms. Goudge imparts through her voice—in this journal. Elizabeth Goudge’s writings have played a very formative role in my thoughts on homemaking and…
I’ve spent a delicious rainy afternoon perusing the stack of books I was blessed to acquire from my grandmother’s estate. I’ve held them each, gently turned fragile pages, read the inscriptions of familiar names. Out of one falls a Christmas card to my great-great-grandmother; another has an examination for a W.M.U. Mission Study…
A friend gave me this years ago: "Arise early. Dress thyself quickly. Go thy ways gaily. Do thy work wisely. Answer men demurely. Treat thy kin courteously. Rule thy tongue carefully. Con thy book soberly. Sing thy bit joyously. Dance thy round jocundly. Go thy supper warily And to thy bed merrily. Kneel then…
I wasn’t sure that I wanted to read a novel about birds. “You mean, the birds are the characters?” I gave my mother a skeptical look. To be sure, our new friendship with Gene-Stratton Porter should have left me little room to doubt. On the heels of ‘Freckles’ and ‘Laddie’, it was a safe assumption…
“I’ll never forget the summer I read Freckles”, Mrs. Downs said one afternoon when I had escaped from the heat outside into the cool dimness of her basement shop. “I was fifteen and I sat out on the front porch swing and read it cover to cover.” Her face warmed with a reminiscent light. “And…
Each age has its own outlook. It is specially good at seeing certain truths and specially liable to make certain mistakes. We all, therefore, need the books that will correct the characteristic mistakes of our own period. And that means the old books. C. S. Lewis The greatest tragedy in the life of a book,…
More fragrances abroad in this sweet fleeting Maytime, and effortless flights of nostalgia…the alchemy of privet hedge and honeysuckle transport me again to my first stay on Jekyll Island. Neither before nor since has a place other than my own home been of such vital significance to me, but fifteen visits later my unswerving devotion…
It bears mentioning that I went back to my ballet class yesterday—after two years!! I had to stop my ears against the voice in my head that said I’d never dance again and just go. I knew that it was now or never. The back injury that forced me to drop out in the first…
Well, I don’t know if the chickens appreciate the beautiful, fragrant bower of dog roses cascading over their pen, but I certainly do. It greets me each morning as I’m walking across the lawn and I just stop and think of all the happy hours that scent recalls for me…one of the sweetest is Delphine’s…
Finally, bretheren, whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report, if there be any virtue and if there be any praise, think on these things… Philippians 4:8 These I have loved: White plates and cups, clean-gleaming, Ringed…
On my twenty-first birthday I did a very sentimental thing. I wrote a letter to myself on my best stationery, sealed it solemnly, and dated the envelope July 27, 2005. Ten years later. With a fluttery feeling about my heart I laid it reverently on the bottom of my new hope chest and piled on…
It’s been one of those weeks. Someone left their car in neutral at the mechanic’s where my car was having the oil changed and destroyed my passenger side door. On Tuesday, the house painters walked off the job, leaving a half-scraped house and a disheartening amount of exposed rotten wood in their wake. The next…
It was our last Big Adventure as a family, though we didn’t know it at the time. Perhaps only Mama had some premonition of the changes that lay in wait for us upon our return from the trip to Boston, Bar Harbor and Prince Edward Island. Of course, she couldn’t have forseen that I would…
The End
The End