Plain and Simple

I've been rereading a book that years ago made such an impact: Plain and Simple: a woman's journey to the Amish by Sue Bender http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=sue+bender&x=0&y=0.

Lately I've been drawn back to the Amish, as I have been various times through my life. Recent trips to Yoder, KS,
 http://www.yoderkansas.com/ an Amish community may have triggered it. Seeing their simple, basic life. The practical hardware store, horse and buggy transportation, a country store where I found fabric, canning lids and rings, where there is no television. And the Quilts on Parade….our main reason for visiting this little town on the prairie. 

Was it a coincidence, then, that as I looked through my bookshelf for something to read when I finished my last book that my eyes fell upon Plain and Simple? 

A restlessness has seeped into my life lately, after months of mostly sedentary life. Content during that time to read, scrapbook, surf the 'net, I balked at physical activity. Then the days became warmer, and green sprigs poking through the ground in my herb and flowerbeds beckoned me. It was as if they cried, "Help! Clean away the leaves and debris so I can stretch and feel the sun."

Spring is a piece of God's patchwork. Spring, summer, fall, winter. A definite pattern. And yet, within it, differences, tension and harmony: calm spring days when one feels at peace with the world. Turbulent spring storms that threaten to destroy everything with their wind, hail, pounding rain.

Awakening of life, growth, waning and dying. 

Bender's description of the Amish quilts: 

"The relationship of the individual parts to the whole, the proportion, the way the inner and outer borders reacted with each other was a balancing act between tension and harmony."

"How could pared down and daring go together?…calm and intense at the same time?" 

Nature's pallette: Brilliant indigo iris that looks like velvet, pale apricot tree blossoms; vivid red tulips, soft lavender phlox.

Balance.  

Sometimes I think I am learning, as I grow older and (I hope!) wiser. But I used to relate all too well to Bender and her lifestyle, rushing toward goals, not stopping to smell these spring flowers, busy busy busy, trying to do it all.

Bender: "I wanted it all, a glutton for new experience…accumulating choices was a way of not having to make a choice…I pushed myself, trying to make each piece (of pottery) more original than the previous one." 

Ah! So me. My cooking, my art, my life. The other night, as we were cleaning up after dinner, Charlie said to me, "You always make it so complicated." I told him I don't know how not to.

When I discovered Simple Scrapbooking and The Big Picture 
http://bigpicturescrapbooking.com/ , a style taught by Stacy Julian and a few others, it was another Aha! I was drawn to the basic, uncluttered, simple approach to scrapbooking.

When the magazine SS was discontinued a year ago, I mourned. Then I rediscovered Cathy Zielske http://www.cathyzielske.typepad.com/
and, going back through my collection of the old SS books and magazines, rediscovered what had drawn me there in the first place. I had been lured away by the plethora of scrapbook products flooding the market: embellishments, bling, tools. Not to say these are bad, but read on….

The cliche' "back to basics" (photo, paper, story) within a simple pattern speaks to me. I've always been attracted to the nine-patch quilt pattern more than any other. After reading Plain and Simple, I understand. It is ordinary, common, providing a framework within which to be free. Sounds contradictory, but it is not. I've been doing some layouts based on Cathy Zielske's digital templates that are the framework for her page designs I like so much. They are so freeing.

Freedom to be creative within a framework, just as the Amish women use quilting stitches (feather, tulip, wreath, pineapple, star) in their seemingly austere, minimalistic quilts to exercise their creative selves. Often their flower gardens are reflections not of a rigid lifestyle, but of vibrant color and artistic expression. 

I balked at first at using the scrapbooking templates. I didn't want cookie cutter, look-alike pages. But then I discovered they are like using a recipe to cook or a pattern to sew: again, they provide the basic framework, freeing me from that initial hard decision. I can vary the photos, the fonts, the colors, the text within to put my own stamp on a page.

This thought process leads into more I want to say, but as always, I have more to say than space and time allow. So, I will continue this another day because it seems I am leaving this unfinished. 

Meanwhile, Ali Edwards, a "life artist" and scrapbooker I find so inspiring along with Cathy Z, is exploring something that fits well here. She and Cathy are both doing "Week in the Life" projects this week. Read their blogs and tune in here later to see how it all fits together—part of the whole pattern of life and creativity, The Big Picture. 

Now I'm going out to check the progress of the garden Charlie's been planting. From the window I can see the rows of green already making a pattern within the square of the whole.

Serenity

January 1, 2009
Happy New Year!

This seems an appropriate time to post an entry to my blog, which has been neglected for months. I've written several entries, but never followed through with posting them.

I've just been reading Ali Edwards' http://aliedwards.typepad.com/_a_/2009/01/page/3/ blog. She is always so inspirational and today is especially so. She has, for some time, been encouraging her readers to focus on a word for a year that embodies a goal, a wish, a dream, a place one might want to be. Do you know how hard that can be? To stay focused for that long? Or, for much time at all. To be honest, I tried it last year and right now, I can't even remember "my word."

So, I'll try again. Contemplating my stage of life, there are two words, actually, that came to me: GRACE and SERENITY.

In much of my reading over the past couple years I've seen references to the 60s as "old age." Well, I do not intend to think of myself as "old"! However, I'm definitely past the diapers and hectic mornings and rushing off to a job filled with deadlines and meetings and busyness. Thankfully. I have finally reached the place in my life when I have more control over my own schedule and actions.

But, even though it doesn't happen as often, I still find myself reacting with the old knee-jerk flight-or-fight syndrome.

(An aside: one doctor has recognized this as one cause of fibromyalgia: a chronic flight-or-fight reaction that has become a never-ending pain syndrome. Since I was diagnosed years ago with FMS, this is the first make-sense thing I've read.)

I still tend to stress over things that—even though I've sometimes chosen them—begin to overwhelm me. Things that aren't according to my liking, my beliefs, my way of wanting something done. Maybe they are moving too fast, even, and I begin to be uptight, feeling out of control. This goes all the way from personal stuff up through—and particularly—politics and national and international happenings.

I've always admired people who are able to accept life with grace, to be serene in the face of adversity or chaos. There's a lot that goes along with this: tolerance, acceptance, nonjudgmental, positivity, joy.

I suppose I could select any one of those words, too. But I want to be more encompassing. I want to be able to stay calm in a potentially explosive or disturbing situation. I want to not have my blood pressure rise, my muscles tense, my corrosive thoughts take over.

Despite what I said earlier about my stage of life in which I have more control over my circumstances, there is much I still cannot control. I often turn to St. Francis' "Prayer of Serenity":

God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change. Courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.

I could go into the biblical and spiritual ideas about "grace," but for now, let's keep it simple: I want to live with grace, which I think is to live St. Francis' prayer, to be accepting, to have courage, and to have wisdom.