Blog
The most surprising gift of Christmas!
January 3rd – the ninth day of Christmas Sweet, quiet January stretches out kindly and demurely ahead of me now. The wild flurry and strain of the year behind me is lost in the disorder and happy hearted abandon of December. The most surprising gift of Christmas is what comes “after” it. The gift of a new beginning. Clean, unbroken, unstained by failure and baggage, limitations and doubt. That tiny baby boy gives me more than I can ever give myself with all the best of my efforts. Without judgment or condemnation He...
read moreInterview with Lanier Ivester – Part 5
“The bone and marrow of an artist’s life is lines. Words, notes, brushstrokes. One after another. Every single day.” — Artists Life, July 2008 What have been the costs for cultivating beauty? What do you see as the costs ahead as you continue to cultivate the life you are creating? “Counting the cost is not something I’m very good at. I can be pretty unrealistic about how long things take and how much they will require of me, and I have learned that I have got to be very intentional about my daily commitments. Sometimes...
read moreInterview with Lanier Ivester – Part 4
On your website you have a lovely dedication to “A Saint among Book Sellers – Kathrine Downs”. It explains how you came to do an online bookstore for old print books of a certain grace and genre. It leads me to think about how we are inspired by various people in our lives who serve as heroes or guides. Who are your heroes and how do they influence, inspire or guide you? “A lot of my heroes are writers, of course. I cherish the way that they help me to see life and God and myself, and the value they place on things I’d...
read moreInterview with Lanier Ivester – Part 3
How have the deep losses of life shaped how you create and what you cultivate? “I hope I can say that they have helped me to create more honestly. I really think that the losses I’ve experienced have stung my soul awake to the preciousness of life and the brooding tenderness of God in all things. We all have dark places to walk through, nights of the soul in which we can’t see our hand in front of our face. But there is one thing I can say with all certainty—God is there. There is not a valley I’ve walked through that has not...
read moreInterview with Lanier Ivester – Part 2
What draws you to make life a palette of cultivated beauty? What motivates you to create beauty across so many canvases? And in so many forms? Writing, Music, Decorating, Images, Gardens. Relationships? Many artists focus expressly on one or two genres – like painting and sculpting – but while you have the heart and drive of a writer, you are cultivating beauty in other disciplines and weaving them all together into a broader canvas of art – multi-dimensional that people can actually live in for stretches of time. Has that...
read moreInterview with Lanier Ivester – Part 1
It is fitting that the very first person to be interviewed in what I hope to be a rich, long running series is Lanier Ivester. Name sake the most beautiful website I know, Lanier’s Books, Lanier has influenced me over the years in a way no one else has. She inspires me to be shameless and intentional about loving what I love and bringing beauty into every thing I do. I have heard a number of others say this, and it is true for me as well. Lanier Ivester is one of my living heros. Her website was the one website that I took direct...
read moreSometimes this is what Hope looks like
Funny how a single sentence can stop you in your tracks instantly crumbling the edifice of how you define reality. I can still hear her beautiful soft voice on the phone and feel the strain of trying to catch her quiet words: ”Lancia, the baby doesn’t have a heart beat any more.” I’ve been here before and I’ve had another phone call like this. All the things I was doing, all the things of that moment, all the things I thought I had to do tomorrow and the week ahead flatten faster than a deflated balloon. The...
read moreOxbridge 2011 Favourites Slide Show!
The C.S. Lewis Foundation brought us another superlative event this summer which took place in Oxford and Cambridge. Extraordinary speakers from multiple disciplines presented plenary sessions each morning preceded by worship services, then afternoon workshops covering a range of subjects from poetry to creative writing to business management. Evenings led into beautiful meals, world-class music or drama presentations and culminated in happy fellowship at Bag End Cafe. An experience not to be forgotten! If you would like...
read moreDaniel’s Birthday
Today is Daniel’s birthday. My beautiful, prince-like, brown-eyed son. We named him for the prophet Daniel after these words Youths without blemish, well-favored in appearance and skillful in all wisdom, discernment, and understanding, apt in learning knowledge, competent to stand and serve in the king’s palace¦. (Daniel 1:4) He would be 35. Today marks another milestone that I will not celebrate with him. Try as I might to focus on life today with all its fullness and blessing, grief resolutely stands at the door of my mind...
read moreC.S. Lewis Song by Brooke Fraser!
Brooke Fraser is an exceptional song writer and singer whose music has been an inspiration to me for the past several weeks while editing and preparing images from the C.S. Lewis Foundation’s triennial Oxbridge conference. Good friend and Lewis scholar Andrew Lazo introduced this song to me while we were staying at The Kilns this year with other Foundation staff members before Oxbridge began. From the moment I heard it I was enchanted. The lyrics are superb and are based on C.S Lewis’s famous quote in Mere...
read more
Recent Comments