Thanksgiving

It’s Thanksgiving! My mom and I just flew back today from visiting family, so we’re celebrating Thanksgiving tomorrow. It’s strange, because we typically have a big gathering in our house on Thanksgiving, and I miss all the cheer and laughter. At the same time, I’m also feeling very thankful to just be safely home, snuggled in front of the fireplace with my dog.

Last year, I made a “thanksgiving” jar –  our guests wrote things for which they were thankful on little pieces of paper and placed them in the jar. It was great fun, because when the food was consumed and everyone had settled into the living room, we began passing the jar around and reading the slips of paper. Everything from “Star Wars” to “my brother” to “tea” made it into the jar, and some of them were quite amusing — it really was a great way to finish up the Thanksgiving evening. Since we aren’t hosting a party this year, I’m going to make a virtual “thanksgiving jar” here, and list some of the myriad things that I’m thankful for. This is by no means an exhaustive list, and it’s in no order whatsoever! Enjoy — and Happy Thanksgiving!

My dog, Violet
My brother
Books
The Hobbit
The Rabbit Room
Creativity
Tea
Fancy teacups and teapots
Jewelry
Blue
Transformers
Star Wars
Mountains
Horses
Food (I’m a hobbit at heart…)
Pretty dresses
Christmas lights
Flowers
Firewood
Soft puppy fur
Liberty University
Laughter
Agents of SHIELD
Home
Owls
Beautiful stationery
Friends
Homemade bread (well, homemade anything really…)
Scrapbook paper
Truffle cookies (like the chocolate, not the mushroom)
Visiting relatives
My Macbook Air
Millet (who doesn’t love a muffin with that little crunch of millet?)
Harry Potter
J.R.R. Tolkien
TobyMac
Francesca Battistelli
Hiking
Pomegranates
Christmas (and the reason for it!)
Cleverness
Humor
Tatting
Airplanes
…
etcetera, etcetera, etcetera! I keep thinking of things as I’m trying to finish this — so many things to be thankful for!

The Book Our Mothers Read

This poem has been on my mind the last few weeks. I read it in a literature class several years back, and thought it was beautiful.

The Book Our Mothers Read | John Greenleaf Whittier

We search the world for truth; we cull

The good, the pure, the beautiful,

From graven stone and written scroll.

And all old flower-fields of the soul;

And, weary seekers of the best,

We come back laden from the quest,

To find that all the sages said

Is in the Book our mothers read.

The Beginning

I love to write. When I was a little girl, one of the first stories I wrote was called “The Caribou and the Blueberry.” It was an adventure in which I got kidnapped and my brother and dad came and saved me. I don’t remember now how the caribou and blueberry fit in… I’ll have to find that box of stories and let you know. 

I digress. I love to write, and, until a few years ago, I had no idea that my writing could be purposeful. That idea came about upon discovering the Rabbit Room. There, I found a philosophy that I had never heard: since God created us, we can create stuff that reflects Him or His light. A few years later, in a class on J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Silmarillion and The Hobbit, I realized that Tolkien was practically the inventor of this idea. 

I fell in love with the Rabbit Room, Tolkien, and the idea that they had taught me. But I stayed in the shadows. I read the posts on the Rabbit Room, laughed and cried over them, but never commented, never thought that I could be good enough to write something that good. Then I started looking at personal blogs of people in the comments, and I just shook my head and wondered how they were so good at writing and articulating their thoughts. 

Then I had an idea — a crazy, crazy idea: I should create a website, where I could blog and have an outlet for my writing. I’m not sure what I’ll write about on here, so you are on an adventure with me — there may be a blueberry or caribou along the way! However, I do know that I want to stick to the idea that Tolkien and the Rabbit Room taught me — I am a subcreator and whatever I create can and should reflect (or as Tolkien says, refract) the light of God. 

Welcome to The Blue Amaranth!