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#FeministFriday, Women who rock my world: Julian of Norwich.
I’ve had several signs pointing me to the writings of Julian of Norwich lately. She was a fourteenth century anchoress and Christian mystic, who, when she was 29 years old, fell deathly ill. While on her sickbed, she had sixteen visions of Christ, starting when she saw the garland wreath in her room literally bleed, the way Christ’s crown of thorns would have made Him bleed. After she had her visions – and survived her illness – she wrote about them, and was the first woman to publish a book in the English language, right around the same time as Chaucer, Revelations of Divine Love. She also devoted her life…
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The Week in Books: Hilary Mantel, and series reading…
I’ve been doing books in units the past few months, immersing myself in a topic or series. I haven’t read this way since I was a kid with series like The Babysitters Club, or Anne of Green Gables when I got older. As an adult, I just drift around from topic to topic, with no structure other than the huge To Be Read list I have (which, thanks to NetGalley, grows at about 15 books a week! Gah!). But last year I started doing immersive series reading again with the Poldark books. First I binged on the series, then I binged on the books. The TV shows had been recommended…
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The Art of Routine in a Pandemic
I’m not a big fan of prescribed routines in general. I do have a morning ritual (Morning Pages as suggested by Julia Cameron in The Artist’s Way), and I write out a gratitude list at the end of the day, that’s it. I see bloggers and YouTubers with these elaborate morning routines of juicing, and meditating, and sun salutations, and ginger shots, and chanting, and cold showers, and I think, “yep, they don’t have kids.” In general, I find that having so many things to remember as part of your routine adds to the pressure of said routine, thus making the routine another Thing To Do Right, negating its entire…
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Newton and Goal Setting
Isaac Newton is the symbol of an enlightened 17th century scientific revolution, having codified the laws of physical and motion to the extent that humans were able to observe them. Newton’s Laws of Motion only work on Earth, and it wasn’t until Einstein, 300 years later, when we began to understand the forces working on bodies in space, and where earth’s gravity isn’t applicable. But Newton’s Laws are perfect for studying motion on our planet. I also extrapolate them out to help me understand why achieving goals can be so damn hard. So let’s look at Newton’s Three Laws, and how they can relate to setting and achieving goals. The…
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Living a life worthy of the $75 journal
Yesterday my kiddo and I were talking about taking the easy route. She is a bright little girl, for whom most things come easy. Consequently, she can get by with little effort, and those activities that do require effort get put aside. I was sharing with her how I used to be much more like that – I still am, to a certain extent – but that with age I learned how good it feels to stretch yourself, and have a feeling of pride in learning something new, or accomplishing something that seemed impossible. Around 2009 I bought a gorgeous leather journal with beautiful narrow-ruled paper and a leather tie.…
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A gift to be simple…
For as long as I can remember, people have been paying lip service to the joys of simplicity. Even before Marie Kondo taught us how to tidy up, Sarah Ban Breathnach’s Simple Abundance, a Daybook of Comfort and Joy extolled the simple pleasures of coffee in the morning, using the good china for meals other than holidays, and waking up after a good night’s sleep. Now, in the wake of a pandemic and 30 million unemployed Americans, those efforts seem so… quaint. Like, “awww, isn’t it cute how we had to be told to appreciate fresh air. That was before we were cooped up inside all the time!” Two days…
