Simple Thoughts

Life moves too fast to document everything or even to note significant highlights. Blogging was helping me to do that, but I'm finding my energy level and time available to sit down and write to be quite limited. I still put creative energy into my Tuesday group and into the creative team at the Refuge. I even put time, thought, and energy into decorating for Christmas. Web design has taken many hours, but the sites I'm working on still aren't up and running. (I'll link to them when they are.) But I want to get back to regular blogging and I hope you'll stick with me. If you respond we can create a conversation.

At church we are into a series called Simple Gifts. It's about 4 gifts that Jesus gives us us, and the teaching has been from Jesus' stories about the lost coin, the lost sheep, and this week will be about the lost son (the Prodigal.) The first 2 gifts were equality and freedom. I know what the next 2 are (because I'm on the creative team) but am not allowed to tell yet. They are being unwrapped one by one each week.

So, I've been thinking a lot about simple gifts. My decorating, inspired by my trips to the coasts in the late summer and fall, uses seashells. Yes, for Christmas. And it ties in to the idea of simple gifts--those which are meaningful, make us more alive, more grateful, and require us to notice and to listen. Gifts from the sea; gifts from God of ornate and intricate design to ornament his world, yet simple, quiet, subtley colored, and sometimes not noticed or valued. Our Tuesday group started discussing the shell theme, and then listed things that qualify as simple gifts to each of us personally. We then asked how we could give these types of gifts to those we love. It was a little harder to answer because of the experiential nature of the gifts. A hug is easy. A glorious view of the moon over the mountains early in the morning is not quite so transferable. Still we wanted to go further and translate our list of simple gifts into some practical and do-able items that we could put together for a special person (one of our group members) in a time of need. We wanted things that would be meaningful, experiential and sensory, and would surprise (as simple gifts often do) with joy, and communicate love. The more ideas we came up with, the more excited everyone became to do this thing. We completed our project within a week and delivered our gifts- so anxious for them to be received. Giving, of course became a gift to us.