by Christie Purifoy | Jan 19, 2013 | Books, children, Gardening, Uncategorized
This week I’ve been knee-deep in gardening books and seed catalogs.
I love winter gardening. It’s all about dreaming.
This is one of my new favorites. Free-Range Chicken Gardens: How to Create a Beautiful, Chicken-Friendly Yard
is practical and inspirational. The photography is lovely, and the ideas are especially well-suited for small, suburban yards.
Another book discovered with my third-grade daughter (actually this is the first of an eight-book series) is Moonsilver (The Unicorn’s Secret #1)
by Kathleen Duey. This is a very rare kind of book. Written for beginning readers, it still manages to tell a beautiful, sophisticated story.
My first-grade son is currently obsessed with The Magic Treehouse series of books. I can hardly stand to read those aloud because the simplistic language and choppy sentence structure drive me nuts. Duey’s series proves that it doesn’t have to be this way. Buy her series for yourself to enjoy. If you feel awkward reading a “beginning chapter book,” just say you’ll pass it on to a young reader when you’re finished.
I especially love memoir, and one of my favorites is Martha Beck’s Expecting Adam: A True Story of Birth, Rebirth, and Everyday Magic
. Here is my true story: I actually brought this book home more than ten years ago from a white elephant gift exchange. No one else seemed to want it, but I knew I’d rather go home with a paperback than a cassette of bad 80s music or a withered house plant. Just before I left the party, a young man came up to me. Very seriously he told me that others may have thought the book was a joke, but he wanted me to know that I would love it.
He was right.
This is the story of how two Harvard academics unlearn almost everything Harvard had taught them. It is the story of a devastating diagnosis, an almost unbelievably difficult pregnancy, and an encounter with Love. I give that word a capital letter, because through this nightmarish yet somehow magical experience, Beck meets Someone. She doesn’t name him, but I recognized him immediately. He’s the one I call Jesus.
What books are keeping you company this winter?
(You can find my earlier book recommendations here and here.)
by Christie Purifoy | Nov 8, 2012 | God's promises, Home, Pennsylvania, prayer, Uncategorized, Work
A few people have recently asked if this place feels like home yet.
I haven’t been sure of my answer. I know that it is home, but does it feel like home?
Lying in bed last night, I finally puzzled it out. It seems presumptuous to call this place – the old brick house, the long maple-lined drive, the falling-down barn – my home. I haven’t earned it yet.
The house has been here for more than 130 years. The farm for longer than that. The stone remains of the ice house and various other outbuildings (we’ve taken to calling them “the ruins”) testify to just how long this place has been cultivated, lived in, and cared for.
How can I waltz in and call it my home?
I need to sweep a few more floors, plant a few more trees before I can feel comfortable making that claim.
And we will plant those trees. We’ll wait for late winter or early spring, and then we’ll dig in four fruit trees. One for each of our babies.
We have plans for blueberry bushes, a few more maples to fill in the gaps, and I’m trying to decide exactly where to carve out the asparagus bed.
Did you know that asparagus can come back every spring for twenty years or more? Placing that bed is a big decision. It matters.
Or, does it?
I can remember someone in the Christian circles of my childhood saying this: “The only things which last forever are the souls of men and the word of God.” I can’t remember who said it, and I can’t remember (or perhaps never knew) if they were quoting someone else.
I can remember, even as a kid, feeling the rift between how those words were supposed to make me feel (focused, committed, inspired) and how they actually made me feel (depressed, primarily). And now I know why: those words aren’t true. They leave out too much.
They leave out fruit trees and asparagus.
Clean floors and campfires.
Friendship.
Love.
Home.
God is making all things new, and our lives, our daily this and that, are a part of that great project. This is an old place, yes, but it, like all other good things, is being renewed.
In God’s kingdom, the stuff of earth can become so much more. This is true of bread and wine. It is also true of bricks and trees.
Our bricks.
Our trees.
For His glory.
Amen.
