Tuesday, August 31, 2021

August and Summer 2021

Summer 2021

• June summary [Mostly] Flowers in Los Angeles

• July synopsis Here There Everywhere Around Town

Lectionary Project for August

Dominguez channel LA River gate 2021

• Beautiful gate to the Dominguez Hills Channel of Los Angeles River in Gardena

Restaurant description on window

• I love the variety and layout of the writing on this window for the Natural World Market Café.

August 22 Full Blue Moon 2021

• The Full Sturgeon Moon on 22 August was a Blue Moon. I thought blue moon was a second full moon in a calendar month (it is, isn't it?); it also can be the third full moon in a season containing four full moons (three is usual).

Stacked Pallets Summer 2021

• Stacked pallets are such cool arrangements! This is the best picture of the ones I captured this month.

Outdoors Leafy Greens 2021

• Leafy greens in the outdoor dining area of Natural World Market and Café. I still haven't Dined Inside a sit-down restaurant yet.

Recall ballot and sticker 2021

• A bunch of COVIDIOTS and MAGAS are trying to recall California's blue governor. Everyone got a vote by mail ballot; though I'd much rather vote in person, I'll mail-in this time. 40+ candidates took up both sides of the ballot! How thoughtful for them to provide an "I Voted" sticker. Right?!

Living Local 2021

• Living Local, Still.

Friday, August 27, 2021

Five Minute Friday :: Desperate

Advent hope candle
Five Minute Friday :: Desperate linkup

In Spanish, esperar and its cognates mean hope, wait, and expect. The English "desperate" comes from the same root, so yeah, de-spero equals without hope, or de-hoped. No more hope or wait or expect.

We often talk about God's passionate love for all creation, about God's charge for all of us to love the same way Jesus of Nazareth – the Christ of God – shows us. In the power of the life-bestowing Holy Spirit of Pentecost, we do what we can to enact justice for all. Most of us attempt to show others the kind of merciful consideration and forgiveness we want for ourselves. But more than love, more than justice, more than mercy, Christianity is about hope. We actually expect newness and we wait for resurrection because Easter has erased death. Easter has erased despair!

No longer desperate, we hope. We wait. We expect. We trust. Because we know!

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Illustration notes: I designed my header "HOPE" candle during Advent 2019 for the cover of our Lessons & Carols worship folder. With the world over a year and a half into Covid-tide, Advent 2019 feels long ago and far away. I love how the image our FMF host Kate provided also is abloom with flowers. Planting, waiting, hoping, and harvesting is such an icon, such an action of non-desperation!
five minuter friday desperate flowers
five minuter friday button

Thursday, August 19, 2021

Five Minute Friday • Teach

suntreeriver design yard chair
Five Minute Friday :: Teach linkup

A decade ago on facebook mini-polls trended for a while. One of mine asked what little kid me wanted to be when I got older. Choices were artist, teacher, famous, and designer. Similarities between artist and designer should have clued people – although I do some fine art, I usually identify as an artist-designer – but evidently not. Most people guessed teacher or artist. Only Mike Lewis of MIchael David Lewis Music correctly guessed famous, but he may have been the only respondent I knew in real life. Mike didn't need to guess. Mike knew.

Famous hasn't happened (yet!), but teacher has. I'm very greedy and I want to learn as much as possible from everyone and in every situation. Of course… I don't seriously crave a lot of life going down with circumstances sufficiently dire they only become a "learning experience." I love to teach because When you teach others, you teach yourself, per violinist Itzhak Perlman.

What do I like to teach? Everything I know something about. Art and design; bible and theology; music— especially keyboards. How about you? Would you rather be the teacher or the learner? If your answer is teacher, you know you're both.

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A big "Thank You" again to FMF host Kate for the wonderful cable knit and yarn heart button.
give minute friday teach knitting sweater or scarf with heart
five minute friday series button new

Saturday, August 07, 2021

Five Minute Friday • From

five minute friday from heaven bread of life

Five Minute Friday Linkup • From

Many churches worldwide follow the Revised Common Lectionary for their Sunday scripture readings. This year we get five Sundays in a row of John 6; this year I'm blogging five Sundays of John 6 on my Urban Wilderness Lectionary Project blog.

John 6:32-42

32Then Jesus said to them, "Amen, Amen, I tell you, it was not Moses who gave you the bread from heaven, but it is my Father who gives you the true bread from heaven. 33For the bread of God is that which comes down from heaven and gives life to the world." 34They said to him, "Lord, give us this bread evermore."

35Jesus said to them, "I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty. … 38for I have come down from heaven…"

42And the religious authorities said, "Is not this Jesus, the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know? How can he now say, 'I have come down from heaven'?"

Writing for five

Bread from heaven gives life to the world. I am the bread of life… from heaven. John begins his gospel account with, "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God."

The synagogue leaders were confused because they knew Jesus as a local guy, son of Mary and Joseph. They were right! Like them, we know Jesus born in Bethlehem – Little Town of House of Bread – came from the earth, his body made of creation's stuff—just like ours. Yet Jesus is from heaven. How about us?

Every one of us comes from a certain place on the map: born one place, maybe we currently live in a different one. We've been born of particular parents, and in some cases, adopted by different ones. Many of us have been nomadic enough to have more than one reply to "where are you from?"—depth and complexity of anyone's answer all depends. My casual one is "Los Angeles," but I've been known to backtrack with "I'm from San Diego," or go wayback to my geographical origins on Mobile Bay. Like Jesus, we're from earth; like Jesus, we're from heaven, too, as baptized we breathe the Spirit of the Divine.

"From heaven" means knowing justice, love, mercy, and grace. "From earth?" Solid (sometimes shifting?) ground underfoot, sun in our face, feasts of food and friends … sometimes a deluge of hunger, loneliness, thirst, and want.

When heaven and earth meet in Jesus, in each of us…?

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Five Minute Friday From clothespins
Five Minute Friday button