Lent, day three. The practice of gratitude is easily grabbed as we watch the lights of the snowplow dance back and forth and forth and back across the bedroom ceiling at 4:30 a.m. For all y’all out there making this world a little safer to move around in while we are curled under quilts with yellow dogs and tabby cats at our side…thank you. Thank you. Thank you. #longwintersnap #ohsograteful #lightinthedark #shine
Darkness happens, yall. Literally. Figuratively. And when it does, even the smallest flicker of light goes a long ways toward bringing a bit of hope, some beauty in the bleak. . Here’s hoping you stumble across a spark today and share that shine with the people around you. That’s how light grows, after all. Happy Solstice, everybody. ❤️. #wintersolstice #lightinthedark #theworldisabouttoturn #shine
In case some dog time would do you good, here are the #yellowdogsofthebigstonehouse out and about this morning. Turn on the volume and hear the geese, some growls, and see if you can even smell the leaves. Maybe you can. Maybe not. But this 45 seconds of dog time might just help you breathe a little deeper, bring a smile of sorts. God knows we could all stand some smiling and deep breaths right now… #pause #paws #yellowdogpresencepractice #fortheloveofdogs #therapydog
Oh, what a night! This past Tuesday night the living room here was filled to the rafters. All that music. All those people. All of the laughs and sighs and singing along. That, y’all, was seriously good for the soul. Thank you, @celticpsalms for putting us on your tour. Y’all can play and sing here anytime. ❤️. #irishtunesinascottishhouse #sogoodforthesoul #lifeinthelivingroom #almonteontario #celticmusic #rolluptherug #sitandsingaspell #tosingistopraytwice #letsdothisagain
This is the room where it happens, y’all. It'll look a little different than this next week (more chairs, for example) but you get the idea.
One week from today (that’s Tuesday, July 18) some friends from Ireland (who happen to be glorious musicians) will be here to sing and play and soothe our souls in this space for awhile. It's our first house concert in awhile—an evening that is sure to be good for the soul.
You can read more about the music, the musicians, and details about this event on our website (www.bigstonehouse.ca). There are still a few tickets available…you'll find those on the website, too!
The theme for Writing Wednesday this week has to do with rivers. “Down by the Riverside” is an old folk song that starts: “I’m gonna lay down my burdens down by the riverside…”
If you use that opening line as your opening line, what will your soul have to say about that? Grab a pen and paper. Set a timer for ten minutes. Write down that line and see what comes out of your pen and onto the page…no stopping (keep your own moving), no pre-planing what you’ll say (defeats the purpose—it’s supposed to be a practice of discovery after all), or editing along the way (not even typos).
Just Write. Write. Write. And see what is in there just itching to come out…
#WritingWednesday #practicepayingattention #pause #seewhatyoursoulhastosay #schoolforthesoul #realstuff #contemplativecuriosity
These days can feel weighty sometimes, y’all. So play a little when you can, rest a bit where you can, and give a little something of you however you can. It all matters. @redcrosscanada @bigstonehouse.ca #hideandseek #belonging #littlethingsmatter #thoughtsprayersandpracticalthings #yellowdogsofthebigstonehouse #therapydogsofinstagram
Call it the May 2-4 weekend. Call it Victoria Day weekend. Or just call it the long weekend. Whatever you call it, it’s unofficially the start of summer…and it’s only a day or two away.
No matter the calendar date or temperature (it’s only 12 degrees C right now—seriously???), summer here starts with (among other things) blossoms on the trees, crawdads in the creek, and the ducks returning to raise their babies in the rushes by the river.
It used to be that the start of summer also meant digging out the Super8 movie camera to capture these moments on film so that we could revisit them in the dead of winter. It’s been a long time since we’ve used a video camera or even a camcorder. Instead we use our phones (who’d have believed thirty years ago that we’d be able to capture moments with our phones???) and have scads of photos and videos of any and everything on that device.
Maybe it’s because it’s so convenient to snap the shots or the fact that we can watch them pretty much anytime and anywhere that the awe and wonder of it all (the ability to capture an image, the intentionality of doing so, and the ritual of revisiting these shots) feels like it’s been lost along the way.
So this morning we wandered the yard with camera in hand, mindful of the big deal all of this is and took a few photos of the things that made us say “wow!”, the things we found beautiful or intriguing, that we think we’ll want to conjure up when the snow is flying.
It might look like we just shot film of ducks and blossoms and crawdad. But what we really captured was wonder, awe, and joy. Highly recommended.
Happy long weekend, y’all. May you find wonder and awe and a bit of joy wherever you are, too.
#summervacation #super8film #victoriadayweekend #may24weekend #tradition #ordinaryeverydaysacred
It’s Chester’s first Easter, his first Spring. To say he is in awe of the melting snow, of the way the creek runs fast and furious these days, of all of the smells and sounds in the air…well, that would be an understatement. He isn’t just in awe of these things. He is downright delighted, mesmerized, overjoyed, and maybe a little overwhelmed sometimes. His enthusiasm over all this new life is contagious, too: Ellie is downright young again, rolling in the patches of remaining snow, barking at the returning geese, wrestling with Chester-the-pup as though she were a pup herself. And as for us? We see this place anew again, marvelling at the force of the falls as though we’ve never seen them before, whistling along with the birds, wondering who has walked these grounds over the last 200 years and what their stories are…it’s like we’ve been infected with new life. That’s what Easter is really all about, I suppose: hope, curiosity, joy, wonder, awe, new life. Here’s hoping it infects you today, too, in ways that have you seeing these days of ours as something amazing, something sacred. Happy Easter, y’all. #easter #sitstaywatchwait #everydayordinarysacred #yellowdogsofthebigstonehouse
For those who mark the day (and even for those who don't): a moment of pause by the river here and a bit of poetry—a blessing of sorts, really—on this Holy Saturday. ❤️.
Bullet points are how people talk about what they do. Story, though, is how we tell who we are. Story is the stuff of soul. #enneagram #knowyourstory #enneagramofbelonging
We got a good dump of snow here last night…and it’s still snowing. Because the roads may or may not be clean and clear this afternoon, Sitting on Saturdays will be both live AND online today—live for those who want to venture over to Big Stone House and virtual via Zoom for those who would rather not be out on the roads today. Sitting on Sundays hasn’t changed a bit, though. So join us however you can wherever you are this weekend: 5p Saturday (today), 10a Sunday. You can register (or just read more about Sitting) on the Big Stone House website. #sittingonsaturdays #sittingonsundays #ordinaryeverydaysacred #realstuff #knowyourstoryliveyourstory #anotherway #broughttoyoubytheletters
