Thursday, August 30, 2018

Out and about

Last Sunday morning Marnie, Denver and I tried a new church. The aptly named Church in the Paddock...

Because it is...

At Caveside, about a 1/2 hour drive from Deloraine (or 15 minutes when Marnie is driving), through some pretty countryside...

see the faint rainbow?

Some interested locals across the road...

And then it was back to Deloraine for an afternoon of live music organised by the Jazz Club...

So...that was Sunday!

Tuesday was an early start to go to Forth for Marnie's appointment at The Purple House...

I either wait in the car (with my book and knitting), or wander in their beautiful garden...

We then ventured further afield to the seaside town of Pengiun...

Where we had lunch and got our 'sea fix'...

And here the journey ends...for now!

Except to say, if you'd like to see more of my photos, I'm on Instagram and you are welcome to take a look and/or follow.

Hope the music is playing and the sun is shining...wherever you are!!

Sunday, August 26, 2018

Weekend Words

“My Home is God Himself”; Christ brought me there.

I laid me down within His mighty arms;

He took me up, and safe from all alarms

He bore me “where no foot but His hath trod,”

Within the holiest at Home with God,

And bade me dwell in Him, rejoicing there.

O Holy Place! O Home divinely fair!

And we, God’s little ones, abiding there.

My Home is God Himself”; it was not so!

A long, long road I travelled night and day,

And sought to find within myself some way,

Aught I could do, or feel to bring me near;

Self effort failed, and I was filled with fear,

And then I found Christ was the only way,

That I must come to Him and in Him stay,

And God had told me so.

And now “my Home is God,” and sheltered there,

God meets the trials of my earthly life,

God compasses me round from storm and strife,

God takes the burden of my daily care.

O Wondrous Place! O Home divinely fair!

And I, God’s little one, safe hidden there.

Lord, as I dwell in Thee and Thou in me,

So make me dead to everything but Thee;

That as I rest within my Home most fair,

My soul may evermore and only see

My God in everything and everywhere;

My Home is God.

—Author Unknown

John 14:27 New King James Version (NKJV)

Peace I leave with you, My peace I give to you; not as the world gives do I give to you. Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid.

Thursday, August 23, 2018

Mixed Bag

Been on a couple of day trips recently. One to the small town of Westbury (16km from here) for a walk and café stop...

And another day, to the sea, at the mouth of the Rubicon river...

And on the home front: the charity blanket is finished...

and will go to Wrap With Love

Reading/watching...

Absent Fathers, Lost Sons

Lagom

Hutterite Dairies

And just a note on Hutterite Diaries, it is not fiction, but part of the Plain Spoken series, by 'real' Hutterite/Amish/Mennonite women. So if you want to know what it's really like, read these, and not the plethora of romantic fiction out there!

Still slogging my way through episodes of Northern Exposure. It's not really a slog...I'm enjoying it!!

Season 4 and counting... :))

I bought a jasmine plant on the seaside trip, to plant along my side fence. Cut some of the flower bud stems off before planting...

Love...

Hope your getting all you need!

Sunday, August 19, 2018

Weekend Words

Simple Philosophies by Travis Elborough (Kinfolk Magazine)

But what does it all mean? Many great philosophical minds have tried to pare down their theorems to find the fundamental truths.

Often when we think about philosophy, we think about big ideas, complicated theories and untameable beards. While browsing the 900 pages of Immanuel Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason, who hasn’t thought they could do with, well, less? Less of it for a start—and perhaps less of philosophy generally. Yet since the classical times, philosophy has been fundamentally concerned with getting at the essential truths to the messy questions of life, the universe and basically everything. For all the long words and big books, thinkers have simply been trying to help us to live better lives.

Turning first to the Ancient Greeks, we come across Socrates, the father of the quizzical Socratic method of inquiry and star of Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure. This great Athenian proposed giving up material goods, arguing that we can only be truly happy by freeing ourselves from hankering after wealth and status. Anyone who was “not contented with what they had would not be contented with what they would like to have,” he reasoned.

Epicurus—another Greek philosopher—held that pleasure was the highest good. He promoted a doctrine called Hedonism that many still associate with the earthly excesses that Socrates frowned on. Dictionaries commonly define an Epicurean as “a devotee of sensuous and luxurious living.” But thrill-seeking visitors to Epicurus’s school just outside of Athens were shocked to find a man who drank only water, dined ascetically on vegetables and regarded “a pot of cheese” as a feast.

For Epicurus, pleasure was living well. And to live well, one had to be healthy and free from hunger and pain. Since indulging one’s appetite to excess could lead to sickness, emotional distress and reduce the overall quality of life, he believed it should be avoided. He therefore suggested that a plain but nourishing meal of nuts and berries could offer more intrinsic pleasure than a lavish banquet. To his mind, what constituted “abundance” was “not what we have but what we enjoy.” Like Socrates, he argued that for anyone who thought that “enough” was too little, then nothing would ever be quite enough. Epicurus’s ideas were embraced by the so-called Stoics, who counselled frugal, reclusive living and acceptance of suffering, and counted the Roman thinker Seneca as one of their leading lights, despite dining lavishly himself.

In the Middle Ages, William of Ockham, a Franciscan who had taken vows of poverty and chastity, became the next major apostle of philosophical simplicity. He urged thinkers not to “multiply entities beyond their necessity”—in other words, keep things simple, guys. When faced with two competing theories, he believed that the simpler one would usually prove best. This principle became known as Occam’s razor and remains an invaluable tool for eliminating metaphysical waste.

But Western philosophy’s most audacious attempt to strip things right back to basics perhaps comes from René Descartes, who decided to “demolish everything completely and start again from the foundations” while holed up in a Bavarian farmhouse in the bitter winter of 1619. By questioning all of his beliefs about the world, he concluded that the only thing he could not doubt was that he was thinking. From this, he derived his famous maxim, “I think, therefore I am.”

Naturally, philosophers have been arguing about this ever since. But then again, as Confucius once observed, “Life is really simple, but we insist on making it complicated.”

And the simple beauty...

of an early morning sunrise by the river

Friday, August 17, 2018

Spring?

Apparently...

over my back fence this morning

Thursday, August 16, 2018

August Yarn Along

Joining in with Yarn Along again this month

When my friend Debbie visited recently she brought me these two blankets she had crocheted...

And along with this child's jumper/pullover and vest that I knitted...

will be mailed of to KOGO

I've had a bit of 'intellectual overload' recently, and needed a bit of 'grounding', so am re-reading some oldies but goodies from my book shelf...

The Plain Reader and The Amish Kitchen

Complimented by another beautiful early morning walk...

down by the river

Wednesday, August 15, 2018

Town of Murals

Yesterday Marnie and I took a trip to Sheffield - the Town of Murals - 40km away. Each year they have a Mural Festival. We walked around town snapping some of the murals on the sides of buildings...