Recentering on God's Light

In today's episode, we take a few moments to center and settle our minds after a tense fall season.  We look to God for love and leadership as we move along.  Join us today for a few quieting and peaceful moments.  

To learn more, go to mycreateharmony.com

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:04

Welcome back to the Create Harmony podcast. This is a podcast where we set an attention rhythm. We talk about savoring life's blessings and learning how to use our imagination as a way of listening to God. Now, if you're a person that wants to learn more about how to bring stillness and gratitude into your life, you're probably going to find a lot here that you love, and if you like to be creative and fun, there's a place for you here as well. In this place, we'll take a few minutes to celebrate those everyday joys and remind ourselves how to notice goodness all around us. So I'm your host, sally Burlington, and this is episode 99. We just wrapped up our great fall series. That's when we spend about six weeks in the fall talking about gratitude and how to weave it more deeply into our daily lives. So now we're going to shift gears and I'm going to give some status updates on some of those just everyday, ordinary things that we have had going on around here. We're going to talk about three things that I've mentioned in previous episodes and I'm going to give an update. So the first is our pool construction. We are putting a pool.

Speaker 1: 1:15

One of the reasons we moved into this house a year ago is so that we could build a pool in our backyard. It has always been my dream to have a pool and we're going to build one. So we've selected our contractors, we've applied to the city for a permit and that just passed. So we've gotten the okay from the city and next the demo crew has come. They're going to, you know, rip everything out so that we can create a clean slate for our project. And what that means for us is there's a few trees that need to come out, there are lots of other plants, shrubs, some larger shrubs. There's a patio with a brick wall that surrounds the whole thing. It's sort of like an inner courtyard of our yard and then like the grassy area kind of in the back of our yard. So all of that's got to be taken out. And you guessed it, we have got a mess over here. It is a mud hole, but what I've learned is you can't get a pool in your backyard if you don't dig a big hole and make a big mess. So we are getting that process started. It's just a little seedling of a project right now. We've been told it'll take about three months, so I'm going to count that it's probably going to take about four months, because stuff like that never goes according to plan, particularly when you're working through the winter and you're going to have inclement weather. So that means we might, fingers crossed, have a pool by spring, and I'm going to be documenting the whole process. I'll put those pictures on my Instagram and in my newsletter and you can sort of see it as it unfolds. So that's really exciting.

Speaker 1: 2:49

So the second thing I'm going to update is what I called my someday notebook. So we talked about this someday notebook in a previous episode, but I'll refresh your memory. So this fall, I became an empty nester my husband and I are empty nesters and as I shifted into that phase, I realized that there are lots of things that I had thought about wanting to do, but didn't really remember what they were or how I was going to access them until we have more open space in the calendar. And these are things like restaurants I wanted to try. Hobbies. I thought about trips we'd like to take just, you know, general ideas and interests that I'm curious about. So I created what I called a someday notebook with categories, so that I could, you know, take the time and space to dream and plan for these things and I added tabs to the notebook. That would be inspirational, and they have titles like idea hub, pop-up Trips, curiosities, and I have taken some time to add these things. Now the restaurants and little pop-up trips. That wasn't too difficult. But here's the true confession this was harder than I thought it would be. Does anybody else out there struggle to get going with just dreaming out of space?

Speaker 1: 4:08

My goal with this notebook was to be imaginative. I said we like to use our imagination as a way of connecting to God, and one of my words of the year was imagine. So I intended that to be a practice that pulled me towards the wonder that God has when God looks at the earth. What is possible? How can we bring light into dark spaces? How to use my gifts for the greater good? But look, it's not as easy as I thought it would be.

Speaker 1: 4:35

And I'm naturally pretty creative. I like art, I like to do crafty, creative things. Maybe I just coined a new word create-y things. But sometimes I just sit there in this someday notebook with a blank page in front. I just sit there for a bit. What I've realized is or I guess I'm reminded I knew this. I'm reminded that imagining is not linear. It's not like you're going to sit down and just all this wonder and magic is going to come pouring out. Wonder and magic come in unexpected ways and I'm trying to learn to lean into that. I'm learning to create some space to listen and then let God fill up the pages with these someday possibilities. But, needless to say, this is a work in progress for me.

Speaker 1: 5:21

So the third thing I'm going to update you on today is our garden. So this speaking of a work in progress, so in the spring I told you we bought and installed a kit that's like raised beds. We got, you know, the kit all put together. We got the irrigation installed, we got soil brought in, everything was going great. We got the plants there are herbs and veggies and the crops were growing and thriving.

Speaker 1: 5:46

But then, just like all garden projects, we started having some problems and our problems were drainage oriented and they have gone from bad to worse, because the spot that we put our raised beds it's kind of in the back corner of our yard and the yard is pretty flat but it slopes down just a little bit towards that back corner and what it seems like is that, putting that raised bed situation, we kind of created a dam and things don't run off like they used to. So we've had lots of standing water on and off. I've talked about this some and that's been a you know. We've been trying to come up with ways to drain the water better and whatever. In addition, the kit we bought is having some structural issues. We didn't quite understand all of how to put it together and maybe we didn't do the parts. We were very thorough when we put it together, but maybe we just didn't quite understand the nuances of the construction and so it's kind of the boards are kind of bowing out and anyway it just looks terrible. All that to say, the garden looks terrible and it's the end of the growing season, so stuff is dying back. It's a bad looking spot.

Speaker 1: 7:01

But and what we think we need to do now, the best solution here is to disassemble the whole situation. Take the raised bed kits apart, regrade that part of the yard and start all over again. And let me tell you something when I first heard that from our landscaper we have a landscaper that does you know the general mowing and I had him come and consult and when he first said this is what I think you need to do. I was pretty overwhelmed and I was pretty, pretty defeated. I mean, it took me just a beat for me to remember all the goodness all around me, especially since we're also undertaking a big project in our backyard, in our pool construction, and there's really only so much destruction that I can handle. But once I took a minute and considered it, I know that these things really do need to work together.

Speaker 1: 7:54

We're already having a huge pile of extra dirt that we're digging out of the hole of to make a pool. We're already going to have that huge pile of dirt and it's going to have to be removed. So why shouldn't, why couldn't we just use that dirt to regrade where the garden is? That makes the most sense and we're already having heavy equipment come in on site. That's already going to happen through the nature of our other project. So doing these projects together makes the most logistical sense and, like the pool, I'll be glad when the destruction of the garden is getting put back together and all ready and nice and neat for the growing season next spring.

Speaker 1: 8:31

And so maybe during the shorter, colder days this year, we're going to take that whirlwind in our backyard and, just you know, break everything down and piece it back together, sort of like how I like to do my jigsaw puzzles and the pieces will be all back together by the time the days get longer and more bright, fingers crossed. So I'll be focusing on extra cozy ideas to snuggle down inside as we are journeying through this season. I'm going to be a lot more focused on time by the fire and sipping tea, because our backyard is going to be a mess. So I'll document the garden progress as well, as it unfolds, and we can celebrate it all together once it's all done. Now I realize these are pretty small challenges. In the grand scheme of things, these are not huge problems, and sometimes I get in my own head, but I'm going to remember my own words there is goodness all around, all the time. So for our closing today, I'm going to share a prayer of gratitude by St Francis of Assisi, and it goes like this now, for our closing today, I'm going to read a little story out of our ideals book. I told you in a previous episode that when I was a kid, my mom used to have this sort of like a book, sort of like a magazine that we would get called ideals, and it had all these poems and stories, and we would read these same stories every year when it came around to fall. So I'm going to read a story to you called A Boy's Thanksgiving. And so we're thinking ahead a little bit to Thanksgiving and it goes like this Thanksgiving comes on Thursday by the president's decree, but Friday, good old Friday, is Thanksgiving Day for me.

Speaker 1: 10:23

There's lots to eat on Thursday, just heaps and piles of stuff. But Mother always worries for fear there's not enough. So many folks for dinner, she's sure some will starve. And whispers to my father be careful how you carve. And as for me, she warns me. I've heard it all before. No matter what we pass, you don't ask for any more. But Friday, one day after, she doesn't feel that way. I've heard it all so often. I know what she's going to say. Whoever would have guessed it? To see those people eat that on this turkey's carcass there'd be left a shred of meat. I thought before they finished we should have to cook its mate. But there's quite a lot left over. Come, willie, pass your plate.

Speaker 1: 11:17

Thanksgiving may be Thursday by the president's decree, but Friday, oh boy. Friday is Thanksgiving Day for me. And it isn't only turkey, for there's nuts and fruit and pie and no one counting noses with a watchful, worried eye. There's joy in every closet, a surprise on every shelf and only gentle warnings. If I go and help myself, there's candy in a box upstairs and in the shed a jug with just enough apple juice to make her go. Ker-chug. Thanksgiving may be Thursday if you're eating as a guest, but I give thanks on Friday For home folks. That's the best. So that's our little thanksgiving story for today, and hopefully it will remind you of things that you can be thankful for in your lives. And thanks for listening for our updates today, and we will be back next week starting our advent content. We're going to be using some wildlife creatures to center us during Advent, so you don't want to miss that. So be sure to come back and listen and until next time, peace, thank you.