summer of solitude

My summer of solitude is coming to a close.

In forty minutes I need to leave this house and head to the airport to pick up Bill. We are heading for New Mexico on a road trip to see the ancient ruins of Chaco Canyon among other things... then I will head off to the Glen Workshop for a week of creativity in Santa Fe while he goes back to Idaho. Doesn't sound too bad, does it?

But I am mourning none the less. I have loved this quiet summer, this summer of silence, this summer of looking inward, this summer of peace and tranquility.

I am ending this time with projects unfinished. My dining room table is started, but not finished. Funny google-eyed chickens are beginning to pop up in the underbrush under a full moon I painted in the center of the table, but there is still much to do. It will have to become a Saturday job... the next time I really get a Saturday. The bead/jewelry projects I have laid out still sit, in stacks of colored ceramic bowls, waiting for me. I walk by and fondle the beads... but I have run out of time to sit with them... but they will wait on me, too, and I will find the time to complete them when it comes to me. The knit bath mat I began at the beginning of the summer... the same one I ripped out two times when it was nearly complete... is almost done for the third time... but almost is what my ex-husband would have said was "close, but no cigar"...

however, there are projects I did get done. I finished my essay I needed to submit to the workshop, I have gotten this blog up and running - looking and sounding the way I want it, mostly - I have done some small home repairs, tiled my daughter's bathroom counter, and made a birthday gift for daughter # 1, that I can't describe yet, since it is just now in the mail to her. Hopefully she will post a picture of it on her blog.

But none of these things could have happened, not even the half done stuff, if I had not had this wonderful block of time to think, contemplate, and create.

Solitude, I have learned, is a life restoring thing... it has opened a spaciousness where God has entered to heal and create within me. It is something I need to find in bits as I head out for a two week jaunt in New Mexico... it is something I need to work into my daily schedule as the school year resumes when I return.

But now, I need to run....

I will try to post from the road if I can!