February book giveaway

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Squeaking in here at the last minute with the book giveaway!

Details for entering are in this month’s newsletter, which goes out Wednesday. Enter by February 28th, 2020, 9 pm Pacific. Winner will be announced on the blog February 29th!

This month’s book is James Baldwin’s Go Tell It On the Mountain.  This is a challenging (and semi-autobiographical) novel about John, the 14-year-old son of a Pentecostal preacher struggling to waken to his own identity and faith.  The novel takes place mainly during a couple of church services where John and the other characters confront memory, desire, expectation, and truth.  Baldwin’s dive into the enormous pressure and emotional manipulation of a Pentecostal upbringing astounded me and took me right back to my own teen years.  (With the caveat that Baldwin’s Pentecostalism is also an escape from a racially charged and oppressive world I have no ability to understand.)  This is a book about race, doubt, sexuality, abuse, and rage, and Baldwin is a profoundly skilled writer. I hope you’ll give it a try.

Good luck!

hello!

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Hello friends!

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Sorry I’ve been MIA this month. Life threw me a couple of curve balls, but all is well and I’m back to work this week. I am working on the newsletter and will get that out in the next few days! There is a book giveaway too, but it will have to be a quick one to get it in before March, so watch for that. :)

Thanks for your kind thoughts and checking in. I hope February has been kind to you all. I look forward to catching up with everyone.

much love.

tonia

Brigid's Day

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A photo from earlier in the week.

A photo from earlier in the week.

The rain has swollen our community creek, so we couldn’t go down to dip our hands in it as we’d planned on this Brigid’s Day, but we prayed a blessing over it anyway. It’s home for fish and frogs, crayfish, the giant salamander that surprised our son one day, countless insects and creatures and birds, stones and root and branches, silt of our common land, and most importantly, water, which grows more precious to me every year. (Do we ever dare complain about rain and snow in these days when so many in the world have no water at all?)

“Let us bless the humility of water

Always willing to take the shape

Of whatever otherness holds it…

Water: voice of grief,

Cry of love,

In the flowing tear.

Water: vehicle and idiom

Of all the inner voyaging

That keeps us alive.

Blessed be water,

Our first mother.”

~ John O’Donohue

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This week, I also found a lovely series of house blessings in my Northumbria Community Prayer Book to be said on Brigid’s Day. You stop at each room of the house and give a blessing specific to that space. We’ll do that tonight.

Here are a couple of them:

At the Doorway:

May God give His blessing to the house that is here.

God bless this house from roof to floor,

from wall to wall,

from end to end,

from its foundation and in its covering.


We call upon the Sacred Three

to save, shield and surround

this house, this home,

this day, this night,

and every night.

In the kitchen:

Seeing a stranger approach,

I would put food in the eating place,

drink in the drinking place,

music in the listening place,

and look with joy for the blessing of God,

who often comes to my home

in the blessing of a stranger.


May your homes and your places be blessed as well, friends, with generosity, compassion, abundance, and life this weekend.

Peace keep you,

tonia