Turn Off the Lights!!!

From 8 p.m. to 9 p.m., local time, tonight for Earth Hour, to show solidarity and commitment towards Energy Conservation. I will take it one step further and leave electronics and lights off all evening and light our oil lamps.

Also, on another note, but related to energy, our Stop Mountaintop Removal Blog has moved to its own domain. The new address is EndMTR.com. Denny has done an excellent job setting up the new site and we also have several new co-authors, including Shirley Stewart Burns, author of 'Bringing Down the Mountains'. Check in regularly for updates, related issues, and action steps.

Let's send a message tonight.....

The Colors Of Easter....










Resurrection Day......

My alarm woke me at 5:15, as I was in our church's Easter play this year and we were performing it during the Sunrise Service. I got up in the pre-dawn light and shuffled about quietly, so as not to awake my other two sleeping beauties. It was a quiet drive to church and Easter morning dawned gloriously....albeit being quite chilly. It was a 'big sky' day, as I call them here in the mountains..... when the skies are clear and vast, with just specklings of clouds.

Easter Sunday is always very special for me, even more so than Christmas. The hope and celebration resonate in me. The celebration and joy that came after 3 days of darkness.... three days of hopelessness and despair.... deadness... when Jesus' followers thought the Light had gone away forever.... not quite believing His promise that He would rise from the dead.

As one who has struggled with depression in her life, the hope that my Saviour brings....the promise that there will always be a Resurrection morning, is what keeps rivers of Life flowing in my heart and soul. Despite dark times and times of sadness, I have always been a relentlessly optimistic, hopeful person and see beauty in the journey, even during the dark times. And I'm always reminded of that on Easter morning. Colors are more vibrant, light seems brighter, and hope springs eternal, when you view the world in light of the resurrection.

I hope all of you had as beautiful a Resurrection Day as I....

Reflections...

My trail of tears,

where did it start?

I follow it like bread crumbs,

that lead back to my heart.

Fire..... Ice

Warmth.... Cold

Light.... Dark

If our fingertips touched, would mine freeze? Or would yours melt?

Would your breath suck all the warmth from my bones? Or could mine ignite the tiny ember that is still ablaze in your heart?

Inhale...... I'll breathe on you.....

Exhale...... You breathe on me.....

I want to see.

"It is of the soul, and of the soul alone, that we can say with supreme truth that 'BEING' necessarily means 'being on the way'...."

-Gabriel Marcel

( photo taken on an appalachian backroad in fall.... and i will be taking a week or so off from blogdom to spend some much needed quiet time with my soul and heart, away from the distraction of the computer. much love, friends...... )

Saturday night and the moon is out

I wanna head on over to the Twist and Shout

Find a two-step Partner and a cajun beat

When it lifts me up, I'm gonna find my feet

Out in the middle of a big dance floor

When I hear that fiddle wanna beg for more..

-Mary Chapin Carpenter

Fiddlegirl asked me to help play for a square dance a couple of weeks ago at the local Senior Center. As there's not a whole lot going on most Saturdays and I enjoy playing (and dancing), I obliged her. I'm telling you, those retirees know how to have a good time.... they had more energy than me! When I would take a break from playing to dance, they wouldn't let me sit any dances out, even when I was exhausted. I'd get grabbed back up on the dance floor.

And since our hubbies wouldn't dance, Fiddlegirl and I waltzed together. I made her be the guy. :) It was a fun night.... a perfect remedy for winter blahs, which I think we all had.

When I took my son to his first day of Kindergarten this past fall, we walked past the school flower beds and I noticed how overgrown they were. I could tell that someone had put a lot of effort into them at some point, but they had been sadly neglected for quite a while. "What a waste", I thought.

I knew I wanted to volunteer in some means at the school, so I asked about the flower gardens. Apparently, a former teacher had started them with her students.... but she had since retired and no one else had continued her work. They told me how she loved flowers and would take the kids on spring wildflower walks and drives, and try to instill in them the wonder of nature, and the excitement of seeing the first spring blooms pop up.

I knew then what my task would be during the fall. I started coming on warm afternoons and tried to sort through what were weeds and what were flowers. When you aren't the one that did the planting, and everything is done blooming and beginning to turn brown, it can be hard to decipher what's what. So I did my best to walk delicately amongst the beds, and took my time deciding what needed to be pulled out, what was choking the flowers..... and what should stay.

And my reward came when I picked my son up from school last week..... when I saw these first delicate little blooms had emerged from the ground. I felt relieved that there was still life in the garden.... that I got to it in time, before the weeds had done irreversible damage.

I still have a ways to go, as winter came a little too quickly. There are several more beds I haven't gotten to yet. But in the meantime, I'll enjoy this little section of cleared bed, where sunshine can now hit and where there is enough room for the flowers that were so lovingly planted by an involved teacher, to breathe and come forth.