by Christie Purifoy | Jul 17, 2015 | guest post, Home, Seasons, Summer, Uncategorized
Visiting from Ann Voskamp’s place today? I am glad you are here. My name is Christie Purifoy, and I live in a Pennsylvania farmhouse with my husband, four kids, thirteen chickens, two cats, and rather too many woodchucks. I am always watching for beauty, wonder, and mystery, and I write dispatches from the golden hour. Welcome to Maplehurst.
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What a pleasure it is to have my words and images hosted today by Ann Voskamp at A Holy Experience. This is the first in her new photographic blog series “Unwrapping Summer.”
I’ve never considered myself a photographer, but I have come home to such a beautiful place. Next to such beauty, words feel inadequate. My photographs always feel inadequate, and yet, together? Well, sometimes, words and photos together help me crawl just a little bit closer to the source of everything good. Everything beautiful.
I hope you’ll join me over at Ann’s place to unwrap the great gift, always beautiful but not always easy to receive, of summer at Maplehurst.
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by Christie Purifoy | Apr 16, 2015 | Gardening, Spring, Uncategorized
Lesson One:
The weeds come back first.
Don’t be discouraged. Start weeding. Keep waiting.
And, especially, keep your eyes open.
Lesson Two:
Even your least-favorite colors are beautiful after a long winter. Neon-yellow forsythia, I’m looking at you.
Lesson Three:
After a long winter spent with books, it takes time to reacquaint yourself with the world outside your door. Like the two-year-old, you may at first mistake a bumble bee for a “porcupine.”
Lesson Four:
Don’t put off till tomorrow the cleanup you can do today. Especially because, tomorrow, all those brush piles will be edged with poison ivy.
Lesson Five:
The garden asks you to do and be. It is important to cut back all the hydrangeas that bloom on new wood, but it is just as important to sit in a green patch memorizing the stripes on a purple crocus.
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What’s growing in your bit of earth?
(P.S. These springtime photos were taken by my sister, Kelli Campbell, last year. If you’d like to keep up with the spring just beginning at Maplehurst, you can find my own images on Instagram.)
by Christie Purifoy | Apr 20, 2014 | Easter, Jesus, prayer, Spring, Uncategorized
“We thank and praise you, Lord, for the gift of your victory over death, for the gift of holy awe that comes upon us as we enter into our Easter joy. Christ has passed from death to life, may we always know you as our way through the desert, our food and drink as we thirst. You are our safe passage through treacherous waters and the home that awaits us at the end of all our journeys.”
– an Easter prayer, from God For Us: Rediscovering the Meaning of Lent and Easter
by Christie Purifoy | Mar 22, 2013 | Blog, Family, Lent, Seasons, Spring, Uncategorized
These last awe-full days of Lent are upon us.
To be honest, the past few weeks seem to me like a blur of pictures and noise. The world is spinning faster now than it was just a month ago (something the poets know even if the scientists haven’t yet discovered it), and I feel the need to stop and steady myself.
And then … the headlong rush into a world made new.
I want to be ready. Or more precisely – I want to notice where it is already springing up.
I don’t want to miss any of it.
I’ll be opening my laptop a little less and stepping outside a little more.
Look for me in this space after Easter.
Thanks to our Photographer Kelli Campbell for this image of
my daughter on one of the most beautiful spring days I can remember.
Find more of Kelli’s photography here.
