I started making salve because I had horrible eczema flare ups on my feet while pregnant and my midwife made me a salve that helped. When I asked if I could buy more, she offered to teach us instead. When I say us, I mean RJ. RJ usually actually learns new skills that I am trying to pick up before I do. I either wing it, and make a mess, or get intimidated and procrastinate forever. In my defense I was holding a newborn at this point. I also have bad relationships with doctors and a crazy undiagnosed chronic immune malfunction. So I continued to dig into herbal medicine to avoid needing as much real medicine. That hasn’t worked out so well, but I have learned a lot of things that I still use.

I learned how to make chapstick, as I usually say, or lip balm, which sounds more like a grown up, because I was a life-long Bonne Bell Lipsmackers devotee when they sold to Wet’n’Wild in 2014-2015. I was afraid they would quit making it or the quality would go down, I was not expecting it to start having so much sugar it made my mouth taste bad all day. I didn’t like other brands because they are usually too soft and don’t stay, or they have peppermint. Almost all of them have peppermint. I have sensitive skin. I don’t want my lips to burn all day. I don’t understand why this is an unpopular opinion. Still, I kept trying different things and put off making my own for a while. I tried once or twice but it wasn’t quite right. Then, one day, after I had quit trying again, an unglamorous blog post popped up on Pinterest. It had bad kitchen lighting like most of my posts, and it was just demonstrating what the texture of a balm or ointment looks like at different ratios of oil to beeswax. This may sound dramatic, but it changed my life. I tried 3 to 1, it was a little too hard. I tried 4 to 1, it was a little too soft. Easy fix, I go through a ton of chapstick, so I use 7 to 2. That is the most important thing you will read in this whole post. 7 parts oil to 2 parts beeswax pastilles is the perfect lip balm consistency.

So here are actual recipes. The process is mostly the same. You will infuse your oil with herbs. You will thicken it with beeswax. You will pour it into containers.

Healing Herbal Salve

• 2/3 cup dried comfrey leaf

• 2/3 cup dried plantain leaf

• 2/3 cup dried calendula flowers

• 1 1/2 cups olive oil

• 1 ounce beeswax (about 3 Tbsp)

optional

• 15 drops Eucalyptus essential oil

• 10 drops Lavender essential oil

• 10 drops Rosemary essential oil

• 5 drops Tea tree essential oil

Luxe Lip Balm

• 3 tbsp sweet almond oil infused

• 1/4 c french vanilla coffee grounds

• 3 tbsp shea butter

• 1 tbsp vitamin E oil

• vanilla essential oil

• 2 tbsp beeswax pellets

  

1. Infuse your oil. A double boiler is the main tool for this, but I make more salve than will fit, and a slow infusion is better, so you can also put your oil and herbs in a mason jar and put it in water in your crockpot on keep warm. Turn it on for 1-2 hours until the water is uncomfortably hot to the touch. Turn it off until it cools. Back on, etc. for a day or two. In the double boiler you just get the oil a little warmer than body temp and turn it low to keep it there for an hour or two. after it’s been warmed with oil for a little, you can also just let it sit on the shelf for a week or so. This all sound very unscientific, but I’m telling you this because I have read dozens of lessons and paid for classes with herbalists, and there is every variation under the sun. You want some combination of warmth, but not hot enough to damage your oils or herbs, and time. More time with a little heat, more of the goodness of your herbs moves over into the oil. I generally plan to spend one day mixing and warming this up and then either another day or two in the crock pot or a week on the shelf before the next step.

You don’t have to infuse your lip balm at all. I like it to smell like something, but if you haven’t noticed, essential oils are not generally pleasant lip smells. I have bought some berry fragrance for cosmetics and it smells like medicine. Orange essential oil is another option, but I prefer coffee and vanilla. This is only the olive or sweet almond oil. You don’t want to heat your essential oils, so save them for last. If you use only orange or vanilla essential oils, or don’t add a scent at all you can skip this step and add beeswax straight away.

2. Strain your oils and Add Beeswax. To strain my herbs I use a square of cheese cloth over a widemouth canning funnel into my 2c glass liquid measuring cup, and squeeze it out. I used to try to re-use this cloth, but it is nearly impossible to get all of the oil out and if you are doing more than one batch at a time, you can’t rinse it and reuse it, because you don’t want water in the mixture.

   The proportions are important for chapstick, less so for salve. my recipe called for 1 ounce per cup of finished infused oil, so I pulled out my scale. Also note: The beginning ingredients list has more than a cup of oil. Some of it will not come out of your herbs when you strain it, so you will want to measure how much oil you end up with, and add the beeswax to match. This is easier if you are using a scale and the 1c to 1oz ratio, but again, the salve ratio doesn’t have to be as perfect. So if you have 2/3 cup of oil, obviously use 2 Tbs beeswax, if you have 3/4 c, make them a little heaping and eyeball it, it will turn out just fine.

   

   Pour the oil into your double boiler and add the right amount of beeswax. You will keep it at medium to low heat. It doesn’t take long to the beeswax to melt. You don’t have to stir it constantly, but stir it thoroughly at the end because it can look pretty homogenous all the way through and actually not be. I have poured a batch of chapstick where half of the tubes were too soft and half were too hard.

3. Add essential oils and Pour. You want to give it just a minute to cool, maybe 5. If the beeswax is starting to solidify around the edges give it a stir. Then add in your essential oils. The optional essential oils for the salve are a favorite blend of mine that used to be in Honest Co. chest rub. It was like their alternative to vix vapor rub. We ended up loving it for everything, especially ear infections. I still keep this blend in a roller and use it on scratches and swollen stuffy sinus pressure ears. The oils are anti-inflamatory and anti-bacterial. It smells so good and keeps skinned knees and things from getting infected. I also always make a batch without because a lot of us who are very sensitive need something really clean for itchy dry skin patches, and even though essential oils are supposed to be non-allergenic, lavender can actually irritate your sinuses on the wrong day.

   

   The vanilla is sold with the now brand essential oils in the health food store, but it’s actually infused jojoba oil, because vanilla beans are not very oily and you can’t really extract much oil out of them. As I mentioned, the fragrance is completely optional in chapstick, I just like this.

   There’s an art to pouring. I’m grateful for the little spouts on the side of my double boiler, and I overflow the chapsticks much less than I used to. They will cone like this in the middle depending on how hot it is when you pour, I just top them off a little after. I usually have never have enough containers, so this helps.

   Containers: There are a jillion types of containers you can use. My first batch of salve from Betsy was in a recycled pimiento container. I have given many over the years in baby food jars. I have bought the classic metal tins. I learned from a friend that her clients with arthritis had trouble opening the tins, which actually i think most people do. Meanwhile, my rescue pastilles come in these very clever containers that pop open easily, so I save them for salve. If you have a favorite cbd oil you can add it to this salve and it is good for arthritis. If not, I would highly recommend the cbd salve from Black South Apothecary. She’s a genius.

   I have recycled old chapstick containers before, but if you’re worried about germs you should boil them in between and that is messy and annoying. These paper ones are from Etsy, there are tons of sellers, and the health food store usually has some options too. The really big ones here are actually pin cases from the sewing area at the craft store, and I just use an exacto knife to cut the bottom loose once they’re cool so that it pushes up. Printable recipes and an exciting offer below.

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Here is the other side. A lot of what I aim for in my business, and who I do businesses with, is to provide an alternative economy. I want to find ways to get money more or less from maker to maker, cutting out the trickle up to corporations. I work for this in my own personal home economics, and I want to empower others to do the same. There doesn’t have to be just one path to this. I think there is space for, demand for, both education and a product.

I’ve been burned before. I gave a copy of my diaper pattern to a friend, after she had bought some of my diapers for her kids. I knew she could sew, she had two or three in diapers, and she was on a tight budget like me. Then I found out she had some for sale at a local boutique. This was not a casual acquaintance, but someone I spent the majority of my social time with, and she hadn’t even mentioned it to me. I found out from someone else. It’s certainly a risk. I just want to make stuff and write and help people, but I also am living paycheck to paycheck, trying to pay off debt, hoping against hope that one day some of the work I do will take some of the burden of support off of my husband who works long hours while I try project after project that usually costs more than it makes. Hey, at least it counts as a loss on the income taxes.

What I’m saying is, I’m not 100% sure this is the right move, but it feels really aligned for me to make a space here where I talk to you about garments and skin care products that I make and allow people to purchase them, and also provide tutorials and even printable patterns for things that you can make yourself, and to let you know that if you are local or want to give video a try, I am happy to schedule a one on one lesson in a skill that I have that you want to learn more about. I think — I hope — there’s room for all of it. At the end of the day I want you to have a share in creativity however that fits into your life right now.

5 In your relationships with one another, have the same mindset as Christ Jesus:

6 Who, being in very nature God,
did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage;

7 rather, he made himself nothing
by taking the very nature of a servant,
being made in human likeness.

8 And being found in appearance as a man,
he humbled himself
by becoming obedient to death—
even death on a cross!

9 Therefore God exalted him to the highest place
and gave him the name that is above every name,

10 that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow,
in heaven and on earth and under the earth,

11 and every tongue acknowledge that Jesus Christ is Lord,
to the glory of God the Father.

In spite of often being not the biggest fan of the writings of Paul, this early hymn or creed is pretty central to my understanding of who Jesus is and why I want to follow him. He starts the chapter though with four conditional statements; If you have any encouragement from being united with Christ, if any comfort from his love, if any common sharing in the spirit, if any tenderness and compassion… It’s and invitation to start with gratitude, and specifically gratitude for community, and for the Spirit that unites that community. I have recently been revisiting the writings of Dietrich Bonhoeffer lately, particularly his work Life Together. I was drawn to this because I felt Bonhoeffer, as a leader of a dissenting church in a culture where the majority church institution was capitulating to authoritarianism, might have something particular to say to us in our time and place. What I was not expecting was how much of the text was concerned simply with an order of worship. How do we spend our time together? His best effort for resisting Nazism was to worship together well. In seminary we read a book on worship for our chapel Bible study one semester and one of the central themes was, “Worship is a shaping of the affections.” Put another way, we often discussed liturgy as forming community identity. Both mean this, the things we say together when we gather, when they are words inspired by our Creator, form us into a community that loves the things the Creator loves. We share this common Spirit of comfort and love. The Spirit of God with us.

One of my friends and mentors Joy Prouty writes about taking self portraits as an act of self compassion, because it helps us to be a better human for those around us. One of her central principles is this: scientists have discovered that it takes about 3-7 seconds for a negative experience to imprint on our brains. This is survival. When we have an experience that is dangerous or harmful, it is important for our brain to make a note *This is not safe, stay away.* Our brain takes much longer, up to a minute or two, to make a lasting impression of a positive experience. Now we all know, that when it comes to moments, we have more good than bad ones, and still many of us go about feeling as if our life is a constant struggle, a heavy burden. This gets worse when we’re in a rush, because these beautiful moments do not have time to leave a lasting impression. So before we start out on whatever work is laid out before us this week, we take a minute or two to look around at our community, at the blessings of love from the Holy Spirit, and we say thank you. We linger long enough for them to make an imprint.

If, Paul says, we have these positive experiences, this community in the Spirit, as our foundation, he asks us to go the next step by having one mind, by being united. This does not mean we agree on everything. We always want to leave room for different beliefs and understandings. While we value working and worshipping together, we know more than anyone that Unity can cut both ways. A while back, a lot of churches started calling for unity, they started having revival campaigns and bible studies, calling for unity among christians in America, and while I know this is on its surface central to our mission as the Church in the world, some of the particular groups calling for this left me unsettled, and I couldn’t put my finger on why until I read a message that said, “If you say all are welcome, and you mean that wolves and sheep are all welcome, you are likely to only get wolves.” There are a lot of places in the American Church right now that are not safe spaces for God’s sheep. We see over and over again in the scriptures warnings against bad shepherds and wolves, so how do we strive for unity while also building safe spaces. Having the same mind sounds great, but who gets to decide? Most people enter arguments wanting everyone to agree at the end. Agree with them. But Paul doesn’t finish there, he says, having the same mindset as Christ Jesus, and that is what the rest of the passage describes to us - the mindset of Jesus.

Jesus, who literally was God, in coming to earth to live among us, did not consider that his godness was something to be used for his own advantage. Paul says he took the very nature of a servant. I picture Jesus at the Last Supper, washing his disciples’ feet and telling them, if you want to follow me, if you want to lead, this is how you do it. This posture is central to Jesus nature, but I think the way that he demonstrates it here is something he got the idea for from women in his life. Not long before, he had seen that when he comes to visit, Mary likes to sit at his feet and listen, and rightly she should, it is the most valuable thing, but also sees that when a large group of people comes to visit someone there are meals and sleeping places to be prepared, we don’t get worship without service. Even more recently, only a few days before this last supper, he had his own feet anointed by a woman who was seen as an interruption to the gathering, but he tells his disciples that wherever the gospel is preached her act will be remembered. Dorothy Day, leader of the catholic worker movement in the mid 20th century, is often quoted as saying, “Everybody wants a revolution, but nobody wants to wash the dishes.” This is the mindset that we are to have in common. Love usually, most often, means doing gross or boring things that no one wants to do, but that someone has to do.

What comes next for Jesus is not for us to follow, but it is a part of our own journey as well. Paul says that because of Jesus obedience, the Father exalted him and gave him the highest name, at which we would all bow down. When I hear bow down, I think of Anna and the King or the King and I, whether you watch the musical version or not, whenever the king comes in everyone else hits the floor. Most often the posture we think of when we hear bow, like this is similar to what in yoga is called the child’s pose. When you are in a yoga class and are instructed to move to child’s pose, it is a rest. Your muscles cannot stretch and grow and get stronger without rest. I don’t know about you.

There are certainly a great many leaders in our world who are trying to skip the humbling part, but they definitely want to be exalted to the highest name, certainly want people to bow to their desires. I for one am relieved that I do not have to be in charge, am not ultimately responsible for restoring all things to their Creator. I am starting to see that equality with God is not something desirable for grasping. And yet. This exaltation of Jesus, this bowing down to him is apart of our journey. There is a feature on the playground at Scarborough park where my family go with our friends for lunch after our homeschool co op on Fridays. It is an uneven horizontal wheel set around a center spoke. The little kids ask for help to reach it, and can’t wait until they gain the height and the strength to jump up and grab it for themselves, because they see the bigger kids take a running jump, and get it moving, and it will keep going for a while because it is at an angle, the going down, provides the momentum to go back up. Our power comes from when we let go.

I recently read a book called Wanderers: A History of Women Walking. It covers a wide range of women throughout history for whom walking, particularly very long walks, or becoming very intimate over time with their local hills is very important to their creative process, and the last, most recent woman who’s story is told is Cheryl Strayed. Maybe you saw the movie Wild with Reese Witherspoon, which is the dramatization of her book. Cheryl has reached a point in her life, a divorce and the death of her mother very close together, where she was coping with a lot of unresolved trauma by engaging in harmful habits, and she knew she needed something dramatic to break out, so, as a woman who had never done much hiking before in her life, she set out to walk as much of the Pacific Coast trail as she could in one season. It goes along the mountain ranges of California, Oregon, and Washington pretty much from Mexico to Canada. She loaded a bag with the things that she thought she would need, and she couldn’t get it on. Couldn’t lift it high enough to get on, couldn’t stand up if she strapped it on sitting down. She narrates quite comically how she eventually managed to strap it on laying on the bed and use momentum to get standing, and against all of the advice of experienced hikers she did not take one thing out that she had brought along. She says that the first few weeks did break her out of her destructive mindsets not because of the endorphins of exercise or the beauty of nature, but because she was in so much pain from the rubbed raw spots on her shoulders and hips that she couldn’t think of anything else. Don’t follow this example. It is a relief in our climb, in this very long walk that we are living, to let go of some things, to lay them down, to give our selves rest, to let Jesus be in charge.

As I was writing all of this I came across an infographic labeled The Circles of Rumination. Anyone else been ruminating a lot lately. Like a cow, digesting with our brains. If I just roll this over again enough times I will solve the crisis? In the middle of three rings it says loop triggers, as you move outward from that ring it says loop amplifiers, fear, lack of sleep, grief, dysregulation, etc. and in the center, if you move inward from the trigger it says things like this, gratitude, community, moving your body, true rest. Sound familiar? Whether the work we have to do this week is a physical journey, or just breaking out of the cycles of anxiety and frustration in our own minds, Jesus leads the way. Stop, name and give thanks for your blessings, especially this community of sharing in the Spirit, move your body in service to others. And rest in the knowledge that you do not have to be God, you do not have to finish the work, you only have to follow the steps of today.

I have a seven pack of nice small pads from an Etsy seller that no longer exists. They’re just not long enough on my heavy days. I have 3 or 4 overnight ones from Treehugger Cloth Pads, who is where I would buy all of mine if I couldn’t make them. The company has been around about 20 years and still have great quality. I thought I couldn’t afford them when I first started out, but that splurge a few years in is still serving me well. They are located in Canada, but close enough to the border they drive over to ship without tariffs.

Both sets that I have made myself resulted from a plush sewing activity with my 13 year old where we had leftover Minky. Minky is polyester, and I’m sure Bamboo Velour would be better, but I still have fewer cramps and easier periods with these than disposable ones, and if it’s free and taking up space in my fabric storage I’ll use it up every time. Either way the fuzzy fabric is so soft and helps them stay feeling dry. Then the pads have a layer or two of Zorb attached to that top. In cloth diapers or menstrual pads Zorb is the only fabric I have used that absorbs a lot while washing and drying thoroughly, not retaining smells, and not wearing out or getting stiff over time. The backing is poly fleece which you can get cheap at the fabric store. It is waterproof enough to stop leaks, but much more breathable than PUL which is used for diaper covers. They are still not as bulky as some disposable pads, and I really don’t mind the bulk they do have. It is all so soft and comforting when I am achy and sore. I can count on one hand the number of times I have had leaks with cloth pads.

Here’s my method for making. I traced the treehugger ones I like onto a cereal box. You could also draft a pattern from the images of thees on a 1” grid square. Then I trace that onto the minky back. THIS IS YOUR SEW LINE. The most important thing is to make them fit your underwear well so they don’t roll. You want them to lay flat. So the size is precise. Instead of adding seam allowance to your pattern and sewing inside of it, you trace the sew line and cut around it with margin. be sure when you trace it you leave enough for two seam allowances between each one. Then I make another pattern that excludes the wings and is about 3/8” less around all the edges. lay the minky on the fleece, right sides together, and cut the fleece to match the tops. I stitch the zorb to the tops—a long stitch length 4-5 helps the thickness go through more easily. Stitch the minky tops to the fleece bottoms all the way around, right sides together, with an opening to flip them. Trim edges, flip it, and sew the opening closed. I finish them with polyacetal snaps.

At this point I don’t worry too much about the snaps matching. I just have an odds and ends stash leftover from years of making diapers and pull from that. The snaps work well through the thickness and don’t pull or scratch like hook and loop would. If you live locally, you’re welcome to have some snaps, or trace my patterns, or have me walk you through it.

Let me know if you have any questions or are interested in more posts like this.

Very early on in our marriage inviting people over for meals was a big part of what RJ and I have given our attention to. A week before our first anniversary we moved in with another staff member of our church and invited everyone to celebrate the new Hospitality House. When our oldest son was six months old we moved out of Brian’s house and into a 400 square foot garage apartment, but we kept having everyone over. Standing room only, a kitchen smaller than our bathroom. So when our founding pastors moved, and Brian took over as lead pastor, he and Hailey were happy to stay in the apartment they were sharing, so the church invited RJ and I, with baby and soon to be two, to live in the old parsonage. While we lived there we had 4 or 5 different college student roommates, and hosted a lot of gatherings, but the culture of the church changed too, and suddenly I was inviting people to a lot of things that no one showed up to. There was a tight knit group of newer couples in our church who did a lot together and supported each other’s parties. I went to their dinners, but there were a lot that I hosted that not one of them came to.

Soon before our third son was born we moved to Abilene, and I was attending seminary at Logsdon and attending a small church called the Branch. We lived in a tiny apartment, with no roommate, and I missed our old gatherings, our old way of doing life with our people. Social media was really growing and we all interacted with each other a lot on Facebook. I didn’t want to have really exclusive gatherings, so I would post invitations on facebook and tag a lot of people, but also allow it to be shared, and somehow even with this wide open gate, it was more and more common for me to invite dozens of friends, spend all week preparing our home and all day preparing food, stretching our tight family grocery budget, and literally not a soul showed up. We would sit down at a fancy table to a feast with my husband and I and our babies. It started to feel like something about who I was as a person.

Other people we knew would plan gatherings and everyone would come together. We went to as many things as we could. People I know would be friendly and would seem to have things in common, but when I sent invitations no one could make it, often without any response at all.

For years this pattern continued. Although there was a meal every now and then that would draw a group, but many times not. I started hosting retreats in 2019. My first retreat I marketed diligently, budgeted and shopped for 30, and had 11. Honestly 11 was a great group and we had a wonderful time, but it felt really tough at the time. The next retreat, my partner hosted and we had 50 women. When she said she needed to bow out, my third retreat had 5 women, all of the women who I had asked to help lead a session. No one participated who wasn’t on the leadership team.

So when I started setting goals, and picking a word for the year, there were 2 or 3 years where I put regular hosting on my list of goals, but with mixed effort and results. It started to seem too intimidating to host like I wanted, and it was always in the back of my head that no one would show up.

For a couple of years I just left it off. Covid was a big part of course. I started a business. Marketed a lot. Had a great first few months and then next to nothing. Fewer sales each year, until I made the decision not to pay for web hosting this year. This is not to ask for a pity party. I am writing from the scars of this time, not the wound, but I want to share this because I want you to know that when I say we should all be inviting each other over, I know what disappointment looks like.

This year I made the choice to make hospitality a priority again. I want to know physical people in my community. It got to where the main people I felt connected with were people I knew only on line. I also spent a lot of time pining for a different life that had seemed possible at one point and now seemed far away, and I wanted to create the life I want in the real space that I am in instead of planning a fantasy.

I don’t send out blanket social media invites any more. I send each one personally. I also make them simple though; created in an app on my phone in less than 10 minutes, and most of them sent by text. I am reducing the intimidation threshold for myself. I am inviting 10-15 women to each circle and averaging 2 others and myself, and that’s okay. We are having really quality time, even if it’s not the community I have envisioned. It almost always ends up feeling like just what I needed.

This isn’t an article with tips to solve your problem. It’s just to say I’ve been there. My family have eaten a lot of leftovers from over prepared for parties, and they were delicious. I let it impact my self esteem for a long time, until I decided not to. I know we’re all just really busy sometimes. This season will come and go. I also have learned a lesson over time. Photographers take hundreds of photos to choose the 20 or so best and send them to you. When I host a gathering once a month or so, and keep things really simple, I don’t have quite so much riding on each one. People who are busy get another opportunity. I have a lot more opportunities to make mistakes and consequently a lot more opportunities to learn from them.

So if no one comes to your party, throw another one.

It’s not quite midway. I was so busy I went a little past, but as summer calms down, and it’s not quite back to school yet, I’m checking in with goals. I made myself a little zine as I started homeschool lesson planning and these are the images I used. Akin to a becoming board (see Karin Nordin of Body Brain Alliance) These are images I would like to replace with my own by the end of the year.

I’m looking forward to replacing two this very weekend with our Lugnasadh Circle. I recently sat in a webinar called, “Is Circle Gathering Your Next Step?” And it felt so perfect. I know that all of those free webinar’s include a sales pitch for a membership I don’t have time or money for, but this one definitely helped me clarify the kind of hospitality I want to prioritize as part of my work.

I am still working on learning body care rituals that help me feel like the best version of me, and still iterating natural cotton and hemp undies. I’m still working on getting posts about the garments I would still like to sell as a landing page for people who ask about ordering.

Some of the books on my initial list from the beginning of the year have changed, and a lot have been finished, so this is a little evolution from that. I’m especially excited about this one, Forest Euphoria that I saw at Seven and One, my local bookstore, and had to have immediately in spite of my excessive currently reading pile. After the chaos of summer I am also ready to rein things in with a revisit of Jen Hatmaker’s Se7en and this workbook.

My last sewing project for the year, along with a lot of projects I am working on for other people, are a few more button up shirts, since I’m wearing the few I have in pretty heavy rotation and hopefully a more oversized suit, in either linen viscose noile from the local store, or sandwiched cotton from blackbird fabrics. I don’t know if I will get the natural linen one from my board made, it is so dreamy, but will get a lot less regular wear than another dark one.

A new thing is I’m working on making my vanity table feel more like an altar. I have saved a lot of pictures, but this one feels the best. I love it when I catch glimpses of Scarlett Longstreet’s sideboard in her dining room with her pictures of women musicians. I’ll be sharing where I am on my skin care journey soon, along with products I’m making and those I recommend from elsewhere. I have a beautiful jewelry box from my grandmother, but it’s not really meeting all my needs, so I’ve got my eye on a few wooden ones on Etsy.

I’m thinking of this kind of like Wisdom Hour, in Macrina Wiederkehr’s Seven Sacred Pauses: As I near the end of my workday (year), what things from my to do list still feel important, and which am I letting go of. How are you feeling as the Summer starts leaning toward Fall? Are you letting go of some goals? Picking up new ones? What still feels just right?

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

Remember, July 4 1776 is not the day we achieved Independence. Only the day we declared it. I celebrate the reaching for of these ideals, however disingenuous the men who declared them while claiming ownership over other people and denying these freedoms to women, people of color, and anyone who did not own land, including this continent’s original inhabitants.

Today I am actually alone at my quiet house, which maybe serves me better. I’m not one to yearn for loud, crowded backyards, hot dogs, plastic decorations, and fake smiles. I’m distracted at these celebrations by the lack of reflection, lack of meaning.

We have now given 250 years to this project of equality, of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. 250 years to the project of freedom. I will not say that no progress has been made, although it is a strange sort of progress that never acknowledges the lies in the foundation, never makes amends. There is still much work to be done. I celebrate not so much an accomplishment as a path. It’s a good day to call us back to walking it.

So what work does it take to move toward this horizon of life and liberty in equal parts for all people? I think not more men with guns, maybe that is part of where we went wrong. I know that more men in power, using their power for their own ends has never served us well.

An aside, I think of Thomas Jefferson who was the chief writer of these bodies, and at his home had an enslaved girl with whom he conceived many children, in a power dynamic that could never be considered consensual. Jefferson advocated the gradual end to slavery. I don’t think he saw his own hypocrisy. He was what Martin Luther King Jr. later referred to as a “white moderate.” Meaning someone who pays lip service to freedom for their neighbors while wanting on a time line that doesn’t cause any waves or inconveniences to their own comfort. He wanted slavery to eventually end, but as long as the economy was built upon free labor he was content to see his own family bear the label of being less human and less worthy of freedom than himself.

I don’t want to be someone who reposts all the right things on instagram, or even writes eloquent essays about human dignity while refusing to get my hands dirty or make. my life inconvenient. Maybe going to marches and protests is what works for some people, but we’ve seen weekly marches all over this country for the last 10 years while rights have continued to dwindle. We say Cory Booker hold the floor for 24 hours only to end with a call for”the people” to make good trouble because, “I can’t do anything.” What are we protesting for if our elected officials roll over and pretend their hands are tied to represent the demands of their constituency?

I don’t think that life and liberty are down the road of political revolution or legislative reform, although we need some laws to change for sure. Rather than tearing down the facade of democracy in capitals, we work to build our world from the soil of our neighborhoods. The carnival is already crumbling.

So here are three things I do that are important to me, and three things I want to get better at doing in order to work for the equal life and liberty of everyone.

1. I buy stuff from people who are funding their own liberated life without exploiting others. If I can buy something I need from someone who’s name and face (and kid’s names and hometown) I know, who’s house I recognize and hobbies and fave foods I know, I do. If I can’t, I question whether I really need that thing. All those asshole billionaires, unfortunately got their money from us, off of the almost free labor of people who they believe are less worthy than themselves. Everywhere I can opt out of the trickle up economics, I will.

2. I support my local library. I pay for an annual membership to friends of the library, I volunteer at the sale, I vote for people who support the library, I give a friendly wave to the homeless people sitting outside in front of my kids. Two of my kids now have their own library cards, because we exceed the check out limit for one card. the library is the one place my kids can pile up everything that catches their eye. It’s one of the favorite family outings. In addition to libraries, we subscribe to PBS and have a State Park membership. The things that matter are free (or cheap) and while I don’t have a lot of margin in my budget, I want to give it to services that keep those things free and cheap for everyone, and do it in front of my kids and tell them why.

3. I volunteer my time with organizations that promote education and creativity. Every semester I work hard to ensure the quality of the classes I teach at our homeschool co-op. I want to give kids critical thinking skills and empower their creativity. Some of these kids come from homes who have taught them to fight for freedom and have read history from marginalized voices, and a lot of them have not. I want to give them rabbit holes to fall down, a feast of ideas to whet their appetites. I love working with teens because I know how transformative it was for me to be exposed to new ideas as I was emerging from a very sheltered home. I do this with youth ministry too, not exactly volunteer, but above and beyond to the best of my ability. I’m so grateful for a boss who is the mother of the kids in my youth group besides my own, and for the board at my church who give me the freedom to express my beliefs honestly and encourage our young people to ask questions and try on different answers.

   I also am on the board for the writers guild, a progressive women’s ministry group, and facilitate a peer critique writing group that meets at our local bookstore. Sometimes this can be a lot on my plate, and it’s not always clear if the work I do is valuable, but I think critical thinking and creativity are the foundation of any functioning (limping along) democracy and the people’s power to craft a better world.

This felt a lot like tooting my own horn, which isn’t really my thing, but these are things that I can say more about because I have been practicing for a while. There are other things that I would like to be doing better, but admittedly, I don’t have any great advice on them.

1. I wish I knew more of the vulnerable people in my community. Even living below the poverty line, the people I mostly encounter in my daily activities are reasonably secure, like myself. We are not likely to get beat up because of our appearance. If we get pregnant we are able to care for the baby, provided there are no complications that doctors are now afraid to treat. I have the time and tools to access the support I need to pay my bills. I know that people in our own communities are separated from their children, given unfair trials, or taken to concentration camps with no due process. I know that there are kids in our town who aren’t safe to be themselves in their own homes. (My kid is amazing at being a friend to the one in our homeschool co-op. He’s one of the only people some kids can tell the truth about themselves with.) The point is, at a recent church board meeting, while talking about where to give the money that we have received to steward, a member of our church said he wants to get to the source of the problems instead of just putting a bandaid on the causes, but I don’t think we understand the sources of the problems without listening to the people most harmed by our systems, and I don’t know how to be more available to hear from the people who need to tell their story, the people who need a neighbor to put a privileged body between them and the harm sometimes. If I’m honest a lot of things are theoretical problems for me, while my life looks pretty cushy and idyllic.

2. I need to buy less stuff, live within our means, and get out of debt. First of all, because all of that interest is feeding those fat pigs at the top. Second, because how much class solidarity am I showing if I’m always trying to live a little more aesthetically pleasing than I can actually afford. Third, because things are probably going to get worse before they get better. Fourth, because I want more margin to help those worse off than me. Fifth, because I think this is how kids grow up blind to wage gaps and are susceptible to racist ideology, white people in poverty have more in common with their black neighbors than the aspirational ideals we are sold, and we don’t do our kids any favors by cosplaying middle class.

3. I want to keep listening more and better, and to get better at showing up messy with incomplete thoughts. Suleika Jaouad keeps a note above where she writes that says, “If you want to write a good book, write what you don’t want others to know about you. If you want to write a great book, write what you don’t want to know about yourself. I think I have been trying to show up neatly packaged and stay safe. I think that I have a particularly strong defense against seeing the worst in myself. I think I flinch too easily against writing what hurts. I’m working on it.

How are you celebrating the declaration of independence?

First, I am not literal at all with themes. There are certain practices associated with the 8 sabbats, but a lot of the time they just have to do with enjoying light or yearning for the light. What does this time of year mean to you? What is the purpose of the gathering you are hosting, because of course sabbats are just one kind of purposeful gathering you may be hosting. I have also written liturgies for the 13 moons, and again I interpreted the names of the moons very archetypally and leaned into what it meant to me in that season. What do you want to invite your guests into?

Opening words - Why have you gathered everyone today. Say welcome, set an intention, draw the gathering to a focus.

Songs - It’s fun to make playlists for events, and then I often don’t play them, because I want to hear people talk and music can be more noise. I often include songs to sing together, but that may not be suitable for your group.

Scripture, Responsive Readings, and Poetry - Choose your own adventure. Christian scriptures can be an important part of seasonal traditions for some and not for others. I have also used Mary Oliver, Emily Dickinson, and Andrea Gibson poetry before. A lot of the resources below will include responsive readings where you recite things together with a call and response, which can be fun and give a really ritual feel.

Questions - Especially if you are gathering over a meal, questions or guided conversation starters may be ideal. I love to dive into what this season means for each of us in our own unique journeys.

Resources -

Fairytale Gatherings by The Wondersmith : Betsy Guides you through planning a meaningful gathering following the Hero’s Journey by Joseph Campbell. Gorgeous crafts and recipes. Very in depth guide.

Revised Common Lectionary : This has weekly readings for the Church Calendar curated by an ecumenical board.

Daily Office at Northumbria Community : This intentional community shares their daily and seasonal prayers. They also have two volumes of traditional and new prayers for every occasion.

Book of Common Prayer Online : has a collection of traditional prayers for every occasion

Church of the Apostles Reverb Guide : This is designed for people who have offered to guest lead the liturgy at Church of the Apostles in Seattle, and it is chockfull of helpful tips. The listen link at the top goes to all of their incredible music as well.

LaughingBird : Prayers and Readings for Seasons of the Church

Mabon House Wheel of the Year : This has specific resources for the Wheel of the Year and also notes about the different moons.

Kids Moon Club : You can only join this subscription toward the end of the year for the next year, but once you do you will get all kinds of resources for celebrating the 13 full moons with your family.

Full Moon Liturgies : These are guides I wrote ages ago to go with the Grassroots Abbey Newsletter. I missed a few, and there’s an extra in the fall, and I haven’t updated or edited them since they went out, but it’s a peak at an approach I have used, and maybe you will find something useful.

Illustrated Herbiary, Bestiary, Crystallary, & Wild Wisdom Companion by Maia Toll : I love these books so much. They are some of my favorite and most referenced in my library and perfect for nature inspired reflection and growth.

Seven Sacred Pauses by Macrina Wiederkehr : This book provided the structure for the Be Still retreats I used to host. She has excellent prayers and readings for all times of day from a variety of traditions.

Full Moon Liturgies : These are guides I wrote ages ago to go with the Grassroots Abbey Newsletter. I missed a few, and there’s an extra in the fall, and I haven’t updated or edited them since they went out, but it’s a peak at an approach I have used, and maybe you will find something useful.

I could go on and on. Really any of your favorite poetry books, or books on creative practice, like The Artist’s Way, or A Year in Practice, or The Book of Alchemy are great resources. Anything by Morgan Harper Nichols would be perfect. I have a quotes board on my Pinterest that is pretty unwieldy at this point, but if you collect poems and quotes somewhere, that’s a bank just waiting for you.

Quick drying covers and flat cloth diapers are the best combination in my experience. Simpler means less expensive and easy to clean. People will tell you an all in one or a pocket is easier. It’s not. I folded my flat cloth diapers into a rectangle and laid them in the shell and put it on just like a disposable. When we put them in the wash, it’s one layer of fabric, so it comes clean. Really clean. My covers were the best fit of any kind we tried. No one size diapers. They didn’t fit well at any size, and a bad fit means raw skin and leaks. My covers have three sizes, small fit my 6 1/2 pounders almost from birth, large fit almost to three years old, I only needed the toddler size for my two chubbiest kids, and only for about 6 months before they were potty trained.

I am working on getting my pattern ready for release, but after trying dozens of diapers, and not liking any as well as my own, right toward the end of my diapering journey the brand Esembly came around. That’s what I would use if I wasn’t going to sew. They’re the most similar to mine. Just two layers of PUL, elastic on four sides, angled snaps. The biggest differences are their pattern is still shaped more like an I where mine is like an X or a dog bone, the angled wings help the legs grow as the waist grows. Also theirs has the soft side of the PUL facing inside and out. I get the preference for that. I out the slick side out on the inside of mine because they wipe clean, stain less, and are, frankly, easier to sew straight. I will still make diapers on request. I let my Etsy listings expire about a year ago, and hid the diaper listings on my temporarily closed website, but I still am happy to do it. I also have no problem recommending Esembly, but if you have basic sewing skills you can make your own with my pattern cheaper, more color options and a little better fit. I would not use their fitted diapers because they are very expensive per change, and slow/difficult to wash and dry compared to flat diapers. I get flat diapers from Green Mountain Diapers. They are the highest quality and have been around for decades. Flour sack towels from the store work okay too, but a little more expensive. Whatever you do, do not buy any Gerber diapers.

I buy my PUL, which is the waterproof fabric, from Nature’s Fabrics. They have a huge selection and good quality. Two 22” cuts will make 5 large diaper covers. I prefer solids. There are so many cute prints, but I had a basket or shelf of these in a public area of my home for over a decade and prints are a lot of visual clutter. When you are picking colors and prints, don’t think of it as underwear no one will see under your baby’s clothes, think of them as something that will be on display in your home, like a dish towel. You will need 6-12 covers, depending how on top of things you are. You will need 24-36 flats.

For a newborn, I would use our smaller covers, once the cord stump falls off, and a fitted instead of flats, because their poop is explosive, and the covers will still be a little big. I know I said fitted diapers are expensive and slow to wash and dry. This is the exception: I used Rita’s Rump Pocket pattern, printed at 80% scale. This is a tried and true pattern that has been around and used for decades, and it's terrific. I don’t pin them, just like I don’t pin my flats. The elastic around the legs still keeps messes in and the tabs overlap by enough to stay put under a cover. I used a few yards of plain flannel, and this is important: two layers of Zorb for a sewn in pad. I prefer first generation with no dimples and other layers built in. It is the only thing I have used for diapers or cloth menstrual pads that will get clean and dry. Don’t use more than two layers. These were the cutest tiny diapers, I wish I had pictures. That said, there is no shame in newborn disposables. They will poop 12 times a day, which means you would need an enormous stash, and they will outgrow it in less than 2 months.

Last recommendation: Get the sprayer. We put it off for too long. There was a time when $60 seemed like a luxury. And so RJ was responsible for dunking and rinsing out dirty diapers into the toilet for all the months of pregnancy and breastfeeding that I couldn’t stomach it or bend over for that long. If he was working long hours the piled up. JUST GET THE SPRAYER. You don’t need it for a newborn or exclusively breastfed baby. So consider it an upgrade at 6 months when you get a high chair and spoons. It makes the messiest part no big deal.

1. So you’ll do it.

   I know I’m not the only one who sits down every day, or every week and makes a to do list that I will never get done. Why do our expectations of ourselves tend to border on delusional? We have seen time and time again how much we are likely to actually have time for in a week, and yet we keep planning at 125% of that capacity or even 150%. Lower the bar for what counts as a good gathering, because if you don’t it will never get done.

   

2. Because we need each other, not a performance.

   Here’s what we’re missing out on when we want to make beautiful Pinterest-worthy parties every time, we are missing out on finding out that we are all messy and imperfect in similar ways. I can’t tell you how many years I sat, overwhelmed in my messy house convinced that everyone else’s looked as nice all the time as they did when I came over. Even though I cleaned like the dickens, snapping at my kids, stressing over every detail, before I had people over. We need connections and we need to spend time together, and if we are waiting for things to be perfect we won’t do it, but just as importantly, perfect isn’t the real you, and your friends need the real you. As long as we’re only inviting people over when our house is spotless and we’ve cooked five courses, and the table setting is perfectly on theme, we are holding them at a distance. We’re showing a projection of our best selves, and we will miss out on the deeper connection we reach by being true.

3. Make invitations easy.

   In the past I have made two mistakes that are opposite side of the same coin. I would either make one large post on social media, inviting anyone and everyone, or I would curate down just a handful of people, the number I thought I could easily accommodate, and give them a hand made hard paper invitation. More often, I aimed for the second and never got them finished with enough lead time. I overthought every detail. I’m learning the sweet spot in the middle. First, start before you know all the details. Give people 2-4 weeks notice. Make a basic digital invitation with the pertinent information: what the party is, when, where, what they can bring. I use the adobe spark app, or use keynote on my laptop, screenshot, air drop. Then send it to one person at a time, over text or email, but send it to everyone you can imagine enjoying the event, everyone you’ve been wanting to catch up with, to cool people you only know a little and imagine don’t care about hanging out with you, and to the friend you already see three times a week. Then don’t get your feelings hurt when the regrets start rolling in. I’ve been inviting 12-18 people and having 2 or 3, but we have such a good time. It wouldn’t even be fun if all 18 showed up, it would be crowded and overwhelming, but if I only send out two or three invites, it’d be pretty likely to be the ones who have competing plans. So invite everyone, individually, and be happy for whoever gets to come.

   

4. Make it pot luck.

   This flows from the above. If you try to plan exactly the right amount of food and you have no idea how many people can come, what they’re allergic to, etc. You're going to be stressed. You’re probably going to try to cook too many fancy things and you’ll have a huge mess, lots of leftovers and say, “Well I can’t do that for another 6 months.” People want to bring stuff, we all like to contribute, and to show people the foods we love. Also, be cool with somethings being packaged, both from you, and from others. The fanciness of the food is not the point, although it usually still turns out to be delicious.

5. Change it up.

   Try long time frames, so people with different schedules can make part of it. Invite people to your messy weeknight home, and to Saturday afternoon at the local park. Give a direction to the potluck or none at all. Plan a messy craft, watch a movie, read beautiful words together, or just plop down and talk for hours about nothing in particular. Co-hosting can be fun, but I feel like the main barrier to actually having events is indecision, so trying to agree on everything can be a contributor. Trying a variety of things, means you don’t have to get it right every time. Decide quickly, and do it differently next time.

Remember when instagram was just interesting things people saw throughout their day, and “felt cute” selfies? Then it became a job and we all want to get the rich background and lighting and when we see the picture decide not to share after all? I am so grateful for online community, I have met people there who have changed my life. The sewing community and others have given me the support and the push I need to become the person I was struggling to find, and yet… so much of the world is under the control of just a few rich guys, we are dependent on them for all of that. What we share online is just a small part of ourselves, and even the truths we share there have such limited impact on the real world. We need the real world, real community, physical connections and engagement so badly. We don’t create the world we want to be apart of in stories and reels, but in our neighborhoods. So show up, messy and real. Fling open the doors and invite people into your life as well as your home. It is vulnerable, but that is what we are all craving. There’s no reward without risk.

By the time this year came around it was starting to feel urgent, but I also started to take to heart my own advice to keep things simple, scruffy hospitality, as it’s sometimes called. The first of the year was an Imbolc gathering. It fell on a Sunday, so it had to be after youth game night. It was full dark, and 40-45 degrees. We were in a burn ban. I made a plan to bring my coffee table (which had to be fixed first) and cover it with candles in lieu of a bonfire. I made a white dress. I finished it as my alarm was telling me to head out the door. One quick try on. No pictures. One by one my friends had things come up and couldn’t make it. I knew one friend was coming and that was enough to keep going. The candles wouldn’t light in the cold wind. But we had such a beautiful conversation. We shared what we needed to share, without knowing what it was before we got there. We heard each other, and got to know one another better. I intended to have some fancy words to say and I didn’t need them at all. I decided, this is the plan. Fire in the park. Invite everyone. No attachment to who may or may not come. Pot luck. White Dress.

For spring equinox another friend recommended we use the grill in the park for the fire. Sounds good. I went with it even though I usually just serve a big salad for Spring Equinox. We had sausages too. It was 96 degrees this time. And again as the day approached the regret RSVPs rolled in. This time there were three of us. I scheduled from 4-8 trying to catch people with different schedules who might come and go, but the three of us alone talked for 4 hours over delicious food, (Nelly cooked a lot more than sausages) in the windy park.

The early church met mostly for dinner and most of the time dinner is all the church I need, and I have also had friends that quit coming to dinner when I called it church, and I’m aware I probably need a better name for it, but I haven’t got one yet. Maybe it’s a coven. Back on the Grassroots Abbey website, the goal was to set up a live map where people could add their own iterations and welcome people near them to dinner gatherings wherever they happened to be. As it is, I create a little invite in adobe spark and text it to everyone I can think of. Well, more correctly, this year I text it to women and girls.

All this is to say that the best bar to set is a very low bar, but there are four things I think that make it the kind of gathering we are talking about.

1. Purpose

   This year I am setting the gatherings around the wheel of the year. I want to state that I am just learning about these traditions as I go, and make up a good deal of the ways that I celebrate. In some ways I am sure it could be considered cultural appropriation, since I am sure I have ancestors who persecuted Celtic Pagans. I also most certainly have ancestors who were Celtic Pagans, so I concentrate on getting back in touch with them. Also, it’s hard to say that anyone owns celestial events. These points throughout the year mirror our own cycles and growth spirals, and so that is what we talk about. Also, six weeks is a handy measure of when to get together. A little less demanding than monthly, but better than quarterly. We don’t have a complicated agenda, but we’re getting together to check in, to share, and release, and set an intention. That’s the purpose.

2. Guest List

   As I said, this year I am inviting women, and some of my favorite teenage girls who are the daughters of some of my favorite women. I cast a generous net, but intentional. It seems like historically these rites belong to women, and we could certainly use our own spaces. I also hold it loosely. I know that whoever comes we will have a meaningful experience, and that whoever needs it most will make it a priority, or communicate with me about barriers.

3. Menu

   For Imbolc, since it was late we just had snacks. Specifically, since I was heading from one event to another and it was cold, I ordered Little Caesar’s Breadsticks for pick up. For Equinox we had a full pot luck because it was dinner time. For Independence Day or Buck Moon gatherings I have traditionally served an animal liberation (vegan) meal. There’s no hard and fast rules, and it can be as elaborate or as simple as seems fitting to you at the time. I think that May Day will be during our homeschool co-op’s weekly park gathering, so I will not provide a meal since most people already bring their own. I will just bring cookies or something.

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4. Words

   Even though I said before I failed to get specific liturgy planned beforehand for these, it is one of my favorite things to do to set a gathering apart as special. I love to have a simple welcome to set the intention, 2-5 questions or prompts to get everyone engaged, and then a benediction to recite in unison which brings us all together at the end. In particular, I like to give thanks for our food systems, and the workers and animals that feed us at the equinoxes. On Winter Solstice we remind one another we are halfway out of the dark (and I often keep this just our nuclear family or very small because the season is so hectic) Imbolc we give thanks for our inner fire or for seeds, on May Day for workers and fertility, Summer Solstice for the sun and for cool water, for perseverance and provision at Lammas, and for our ancestors and how we can learn to be good ancestors at All Saints.

Extras -

You can go all out if you want with a playlist or a table setting. You can have specific outfits, I think I’m just wearing the same one every time now, or at least for this year. You can plan crafts or other rituals for material reminders of the season. I may get into some of these fancier plans later this year, but for now I am removing barriers that keep me from gathering often. What about you?

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It’s broken up into three little capsules. Starting with fabrics I already have and buying only what I need, because I have limited storage space. The black blazer and vest are my last hold outs from last year’s list. I have a tendency to procrastinate the longest on the most essential pieces I would wear all the time because I’m afraid of getting them wrong. The dress is actually a finished project from September, but it’s soooo big I need to make a lot of alterations to it. White tee has been something I’ve been trying to nail for a while, and I actually have a handful of jeans right now, but none of them are just right. I have a piece of gorgeous Japanese denim from a friend’s clear out sale, so I’m excited to try a couple of things. That sounds casual, but I have been pouring over all my Pinterest boards collecting images of relaxed yet tapered tomboyish jeans, and making lists of pattern pieces to stack on top of each other to get the fit and shape just right. I have been wanting an all over baggy pair, but I want a lighter denim with a little stretch for those, so I am starting with what I have first. I’m hoping to get the rose suit with my gorgeous iridescent fabric from Motif Handmade done by my 40th birthday in April, but I’m painfully slow. I was originally planning to wear it to the wedding I ended up making that dress for in October, so…

I don’t really need a lot more clothes. For the first time in a long time. So there’s definitely a part of me who feels a twinge of guilt at the materialism of continuing to make things, but it is my creative process and we all need that. It’s the same as a painter buying paints.

Also, this is all representational. I wanted a quick visual reference for myself, so I did not match fabrics or necklines perfectly. All undies are actually meant to be Eventide Undies by Sophie Hines, and matching bras with a new pattern tweak I’m working on. All tees are actually a blend of Honeygirl by Paradise Patterns and an old favorite I traced off when it got too full of holes too threadbare to be mended. The fabric for the teal pieces actually has pretty little white flowers with a hint of purple inspired by this tomboy X set I was obsessed with last year. I hope in a year I can show you all the real pieces on my body.

I also want to work on a little project that is trying all of these different button up styles in some light weight shirtings — white, stripe, chambray. I love a classic with a twist, pun intended. Above are Hortense Shirt by Ready to Sew, Townsend Shirt by Elbe Textiles (my two favorite pattern companies), Malibu Shirt by Staystitch Pattern Co, and Oversized shirt #5105 by Dressy Talk, which I have never tried before.

So this is another question that’s been on my mind in regards to my last post. A lot of people that I adore and respect work other day jobs, and as a hobby share their sewing journey on social media. They educate about the craft of sewing and inspire people with their personal style, along with promoting body positivity, sustainability, and celebrating handmade-ness. That seems like a really sensible path for me with a design business that’s going nowhere and a trash economy and a full schedule, but it just doesn’t appeal to me, and I’m trying to tease out why. I think, in part, it’s because I don’t just love sewing for the sake of it. I prefer my time at the drafting table. I definitely want my taste to be what draws people, not the nitty gritty of techniques. We’ll see how it goes.

Where is the line between the big dreams you work hard for and a fantasy life that is unobtainable no matter how hard you work? You know what I’m talking about. We’re encouraged to reach for it, not to settle, but what is a possible future, something that would actually make me happy, and what is just escapism? It is easy to say that if I lived in a beautiful walkable city with a successful business and a clean house I’d be happy. I’m just creating a picture without the things I don’t like in my life right now and calling it a dream, but we all know real life will always have frustrations, wherever you live there will still be dishes, and businesses are always hard work.

On the other end, where is the line between gratitude and settling? I honestly like my days with my family. I know all of us wanted more out of life, but we wouldn’t trade the actual kids we’ve gotten to know. That is a cliche and it’s true, but there’s more than that. A big part of me really just loves dinner and movie and board games and park trips with these people. If how we spend our days is how we spend our lives, I’ve got it pretty good. And still, if I get to 70, and my days are still slowly picking away at a messy broken house, paycheck to paycheck, and only my real life friends read my writing and buy my clothes, I am going to feel defeated and like a failure. Forget 70, it feels a little like that now.

Somewhere between those, less than a fantasy, more than settling, some combination of gratitude and big dreams and hard work is the life I think. I sketched a rough floor plan in my journal yesterday for what an atelier in the open commercial space next to our church would look like. complete with a space for my youngest three to homeschool and chill while I work. The rent is probably more in a month than I have made in the last 3 years of business. I don’t have the exact number yet, my friend said she’d look at her notes from when they met with the landlord, but I imagine one would have to sell a lot of underwear to stay in the black. I’d need machine repairs and bulk fabric orders and a marketing assistant. I’d need a small business loan. And would I be able to pay it off? There’s no tailor in town.

I dream about an alternative economy, one where we opt out of giving all of our hard earned money to corporate greed goblins. My friend Arlene, who owns our local bookstore, paints a really exciting picture, independent bookstores have seen growing profits as more and more people opt out of lining Jeff Bezos’ vacation home. My friends all say my clothes are brilliant. And we’re all too broke to buy anything.

Which brings me to the other part of this. Best case scenario, we spend the next 25 years rebuilding democracy. Worst case, we spend the next 10 just trying to help each other survive. I mean, people in revolutions need underwear, and even suits maybe, but there’s enough clothes on the planet to clothe the next 7 generations already. Of course there are enough books too. The library is just a block and a half away from the bookstore, and I spend a lot of time at both.

On another note, what is it that makes us feel like a failure for living in the same place where you graduated high school? I always thought I would “go somewhere.” What does that really mean. It feels weird living in a community where the dominant worldview is so different than your own, but in real life people don’t all relocate to cities where everyone has the same ideology. Would I really be happier in a city? I’ve wanted it my whole life, and people will say the only way to ind out is to try. That’s a pretty expensive experiment with a family of seven. I also have friends telling my family is all about to be grown up and we’ll be empty nesters and the world will be our oyster, etc. But the future isn’t ever certain or promised. Also my youngest child is 6, so we’ve got a ways to go.

What does it look like to plan a realistic life? Not realistic in the boring way, but with an appreciation for the ordinary, with gratitude for what you’ve got, and an urge to love the (city) you’re with? I can’t be the only one trying to figure all of this out right now. What makes you want to get out? What makes you want to stay? What do you love about the ordinary? What dreams are still tugging on you? How do we find a bridge to what’s next?

Do you know who is dangerous? Do you even know or care any more?

The people you have handed our nation to, and to be honest the ones who had it before, but quieter, orchestrated the media of my entire childhood, not to make us worldly, but to make us palatable. to make us meek and obedient and tasteful.

I don’t know what my parents think about specific things in the news, because any discussion of politics turns to deflection and anger, and a bitter stalemate that lasts for months, and I have decided to try and maintain a relationship with them, because I love them unconditionally, and I want to give my children a chance to do the same. But I know they are awfully loud when they want to be, and when infants are dying in concentration camps, when they’re politicians are all murderers and rapists, when a private army is executing dissidents in the streets, when trans people aren’t grooming little girls, but pastors are, silence.

I don’t know what to say to my kids. In what way is it good parenting to tell them each day what the people in charge are doing to children? My son’s therapist recently read the results of an evaluation to us and said that our 16 year old is unmotivated because he isn’t optimistic that the future can be good. I want to scream. How can I tell him that there is a good future if he works hard enough? Instead I tell him, people have beautiful days in spite of struggle, and fight to stay alive even when it’s hard to say what for. I tell them that human lives are all, every one of them, so unimaginably beautiful and powerful, and worth fighting for and just adoring.

And I read the Scholar’s Tale in Canterbury Tales and I weep on the inside, because it’s just a story if it’s not your life. “Besides her beauty, Griselda had every quality perfect in the eyes of a man. She never stopped working… She never giggled or gossiped… She never lost her temper… She had never been heard to complain—even when she tore her only miserable dress on a thorn bush; even when her overworked hands were blue with cold; even when she hadn’t eaten in two days.” And so her children are taken away, and she is asked to host a wedding for a child bride with a smile on her face. I cracked. I told them all a little bit of the truth.

We are not surprised that the men are all wolves. We’ve been listening to each other for a long time now. What hurts is that the people who have told us they loved us. Who told us they were protecting us, don’t seem to care. In fact they still want us to smile blandly and stop complaining.

I need community with people I don’t have everything in common with and may not agree with on some things. Even some of the goals listed above. Part of building a thriving world is a commitment to connect with and relate to people that are not just copies of us. We get this in marriage. We get this in church. We can get this in neighborhoods with a little effort. I see a lot of movement toward not having anything to do with people when your values don’t align, because it feels like an endorsement, and I understand that. I also struggle with that tension. I have struggled with whether or not to align myself with an institution that has been the source of so much harm. Right now, in the community I serve, in the denomination I serve (christian church disciples of christ), whose stated priority is the worshipping and serving together of people with differing beliefs— right now my decision is yes. That could change in the future, but I’m here for now.

I love worship. I believe that there is a personable force of life and love and creativity in the universe, and while I think most of our language for that being is too small, I love grasping at it. I love the trying to get the words right and having a bit of a romance with this being, because I think that’s what they want. I let myself be wooed and awed and I reciprocate by communicating that awe, that gratitude, by admiring all the things they make, putting them to good use, showing them off. I love singing in a group. I love curating beautiful spaces and experiences.

I need a hub for organized service that is not based on how much money I can give. I give to what I can, when I can, and my local congregation is not the priority in that equation. What I do have to give is time and talents, and frankly a lot of non-profits aren’t set up to use those. My church is a group of people that I make plans with to serve our community on a regular basis. This is a central part of our purpose for gathering and one of the things that we do all have in common. We also serve each other. There are older people who have been a part of our community for a long time, and even though they can’t come to worship or vote on things any more, they are a part of us, and we are a part of their safety net.

I love these stories. Don’t get me wrong there are things in the Bible that I take issue with. I think it’s essential we all are just honest that there are parts of the Bible that we consider more authoritative than others. That is certainly true for the masses of evangelicals who will deny it, because the sweeping message of this book is love and liberation and welcome, and there are a lot of people out there toting this book around, calling their authority, who have really lost the plot. What I hate is that they and the people they have driven away are missing out on the beauty it has to offer. I want to tell better stories. They are there in abundance.

Can I do these things without church, absolutely. That is a lot of what I want to do here. I think there is a network of people who value these things who have left the church or need to. I think we need to find each other and do this work, and the name of the organization has little importance. I want to help us find each other and do this work together even when we live far apart, but also to find people in our local physical communities. I want to share about the tools that serve me in my work, and learn about new ones from you. I want to agree that we can radically change the world and keep you believing it and let you keep me believing it on the days that are hard. I want us to find ways to do it that don’t depend on any of these collapsing hierarchical institutions of empire. I want to do it from the ground up.

I want to know if it’s problematic for you. Affiliation with a church, the use of church language, the use of Bible stories and metaphors. Does the benefit outweigh the harm. I think it’s a valid conversation and I don’t have all of the answers, in fact I feel conflicted.

I started college in 2004 and I had no idea what for. I had imagined high school since I was a five year old with a youth minister dad. I had imagined being a mom since before I even had a baby sister, but I hadn’t imagined college. I didn’t know what to expect. And every time I sat down in the cafeteria an upperclassman I didn’t know came and started asking me questions about myself. It wasn’t that I hadn’t imagined a career. I had been planning dozens all my life, but I couldn’t pick just one, and I didn’t know what training I needed for any of them. All I knew, after 12 years of serving and following my family’s ministry around the country, was that no work was meaningful for me that didn’t make things better for people in real relational ways, and that I didn’t want to stay in one place for too long.

Then I met RJ, who would eventually become my husband, and our parents were concerned because we had grown up in different (but very similar) evangelical denominations. “Don’t worry”, we told them, “Neither of us is at all interested in continuing to do church like the ones we grew up in.” Of course we didn’t know what we planned to do instead, but lucky for us a few professors started offering classes like Emergent Church and Emerging Theologies, where we read books by 50 year old men explaining to their peers how young people these days see the world differently and the church has to shift too. The academic content of these courses was a little lackluster, but the trips we got to go on to meet creative new expressions of church were life changing. In particular, hearing Shane Claiborne speak at Ekklesia in Houston, and attending a planning meeting and worship service of Church of the Apostles in Seattle. There were no Shane Claiborne books on our Syllabi, but we had soon read them all, and all of the books he referenced. RJ and I were sold on New Monasticism. A movement for simplicity, community, and a shared way of life among Christ followers living in close geographic proximity.

We joined a church started by some of our friends from these classes, and had the opportunity to ask anew what was the purpose in the world of people who are trying to follow the example of Jesus. We started looking for our community of people to live out these monastic lifestyle principles, but it never came. We were a part of a few really special communities over the years, but no one really had the same vision for a church that we did, or a lot of interest in jumping in on the experiment with us. We often had roommates and practiced a lot of hospitality, but none of it felt like the whole thing. In 2016 I graduated from seminary with my Mdiv in Pastoral Theology (how the study of God informs the leadership and care of a gathered group of people.) I had been itching to get out of Texas for a long time, and our rental contract as up, so we prayed about whether we should look to move somewhere new, or continue to invest in this community. I was pregnant with our fourth son, and our pastor was being moved by the church hierarchy to another location, dissolving the current community we were in. Two of the four families in our small group were moving away to pursue their own ministry, but we also had a group of neighbors that we had breakfast with every Sunday morning. We felt like we should stay, but it was harder than we thought losing so many people at once. The church that ended met on Sunday nights, so if we wanted to keep going somewhere we had to break up the Sunday morning group. Maybe. We asked whether the others would be interested in having some more intentional discussion about spirituality and community service. WE WON’T CALL IT A CHURCH, we said, IT DOESN’T HAVE TO BE A CHURCH! But everyone quit coming around. Maybe we shouldn’t have pushed it. Maybe we should have kept to Sunday mornings. Maybe the other nights were too hard to stick to, and all of our lives were just changing so fast.

Still I had this degree and this call and I wanted to do something, but the mumming of it all seemed to be burying me. I prayed to be content with my circumstances or to have a way to do something else, and then I had a vision for a “women’s prayer and nature retreat” called Be Still. And I also got pregnant again. A friend helped me with the planning and six months pregnant we met at the state park for a weekend to study Macrina Weiderkehr’s Seven Sacred Pauses together, and talk about bringing spiritual breath and wisdom into our homemaking. Afterward we wanted to stay in touch, so I made a newsletter and a website, and if I had a website it might as well have some other pages, so I came up with some other goals and called it all Grassroots Abbey. A network of spiritual practitioners living in community, even when we didn’t have geographical proximity on our side. Then covid. Then everything. Then making underwear. But it’s all still been there. The content, the principles, the ways we can cultivate something essential and close to the ground wherever we are. in our own homes and third places. So I want to share with you here this year about Dinner Church, and about Retreating. About creating a rule of life and a physical sanctuary for prayer. None of us have to be seminary trained or hired as a pastor some place to create spiritual safe havens for people in our communities.

This is all coming out of a place of feeling like there is so much hurt and we have so little power. Not very many of us are political or corporate leaders or have the ability to create and sustain some kind of radical movement that will turn the tide of suffering and alienation in our country or our world. So we create what we can with what we have. Whatever space fall under your sphere of influence. These are practices that have been meaningful for me and are very simple, so I want to pass on what I have. There will continue to be fashion and poetic content on here, and this, I hope, will just be like a thread running through it all this year.

I have also been reading this book, which I got over a year ago, and am just now getting to:

It’s about women writers who made a practice of taking long walks. It was part of their lifestyle and something they talked about. It’s making me very jealous of people who live in the UK and can roam the country side, but there are city walkers too like Virginia Woolf and Anaïs Nin.

I also have this book which I picked up at the Friends of the Library sale, so I’ll be dipping into that soon.

There are a variety of movement classes that have been on my list and I would really like to find some joyful ways to move more, but I am trying to be very low pressure about it. I don’t have a lot of time or money to budget for that right now, and how beautiful is it that walking is free and not only moves my body, but connects me to the real physical community that I live in. It is a really high priority for me to live more locally and get to know more of the people in my city. We also have a state park pass again this year, so I really should head out there more often, and their renovating our downtown are to be “more walkable” so I’ll head over there some times. We go to the local parks a lot and they have walking trails, but I know 90 percent of my walks will be in my neighborhood.

I’ve got some new shoes that are very supportive and that is a big deal, because I was walking a lot a few years ago, and then had an injury, so it’s been a barrier. Other than shoes the nice thing is I don’t need any particular clothes or to shower and change after, at least for now. When it starts getting hotter I will need to start earlier, but I will also give myself grace on the weeks it’s over 100 most of the time. Maybe that will be the time to try some indoor video classes or a gym membership. Who knows.

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This year’s playlist is still a work in progress, a first draft, sand poured into a sandbox, if you will. I have really settled into listening to a lot of favorites on repeat this year, and haven’t added a lot of new things. So this may be more of the same as all my other playlists. I am working on adding a little novelty, and taking off things that aren’t quite right, and eventually I will even arrange it, but here is what I’m listening to. It will change. I did intentionally choose the top four for an aesthetic cover. I have thought about making a Spotify version for those of you who are still over there. If I am allowed to do that without a paid account. Idk. Let me know if you’re interested. Or switch to Tidal which pays artists more and doesn’t invest in AI drone weapons. Also, if you have any song recommendations that feel like a home away from home, let me know.