Leanne Shawler, Artist

I promised on Friday to write a post about the women of valor in my life, after having read A Year of Biblical Womanhood by Rachel Held Evans . A woman of valor, or eshet chayil in Hebrew, is a blessing you bestow upon women after an achievement great or small. It might be making something from scratch, fixing a hole in the wall, getting your kids to school on time ... Eshet Chayil! It comes from Proverbs 31, which is a poem about a woman but told using heroic epic language (think David or Hercules). Orthodox Jewish men, according to Evans' book, memorize this to say or sing to their wife during Shabbat. Actually, I have the perfect picture of me from an interactive play space at the art museum when there was a tapestry exhibition... Here are the women of valor in my life in no particular order: Kieu, for fixing my mistake in two places, eshet chayil! Mum, for washing curtains,  eshet chayil! Clare, for her grooving for the Lord on Sundays and encouraging me to ...

Continuing to count the gifts I find during the day... 1,022. a moment beautiful but forgotten 1,023. clementine 1,024. God holding my hand 1,025. red berries on magnolia 1,026. walk to park 1,027. Flakes (of the chocolate variety) 1,028. only having a minor meltdown over cooking 1,029. the smell of burgundy mushrooms throughout the whole house totally forgot to take a photo of what they looked like at the end of the 10+ hr process! 1,030. eshet chayil (woman of valor) 1,031. stomach settles for turkey 1,032. marshmallow topping turns out perfectly 1,033. dog's head nestled against my leg, same dog snoring 1,034. up until after midnight reading due to outraged stomach 1,035. ruining art journal page (in progress) 1,036. but fixing it anyway. 1,037. big hug 1,038. "The King of Glory comes" and dancing on the inside ( like this ) 1,039. the perfect offertory hymn for today's service but no chance to prepare Am linking th...

Last evening, halfway through reading this book, I found myself leaving blog comments of eshet chayil!  (woman of valor) here and there. It's even fun to say because the "ch" sound is kinda as in "loch" with a bit of spit. By Rachel Held Evans, the full title is A Year of Biblical Womanhood: How a Liberated Woman Found Herself Sitting on Her Roof, Covering her Head, and Calling Her Husband "Master" . Thanks to eating too much rich food on an upset stomach (yay Thanksgiving), I stayed up past midnight to finish reading it. This may be the third most influential book for 2012. (Rachel doesn't come in third. It's just the third book this year I've found.) For me, I hasten to qualify, for where I am right now in my faith journey. Your mileage may vary, but it is a darn good read. The other two (in no particular order except the order I read them in) are Ann Voskamp's A Thousand Gifts (which okay, technically I read at the end of ...

Now that's it's been a whole week since I've been back from Australia, how has my week been? Honestly, a lot jet-lagged. I'm still counting gifts even though I achieved 1,000 while I was away. As I'm only linking to one Joy Dare post on Ann's site, if you want to see the vacation lists in order, here they are: Week 1 Week 2 Week 3 (1,000th gift is in this one) And speaking of which (vacation, that is) as I've no pictures this week -- mostly due to jetlag, here's one from my trip of a rainbow lorikeet that my hubby took while it was in Mum's backyard: 1,004. joint choir practice 1,005. my upper "F'" squeaking after 3 weeks of not singing 1,006. realizing I have mental clutter  (although to be honest it took me 3 days to delete the TV soap instead of straight away) 1,007. I have two homes: one, in the house I grew up in with its love and clutter and now my youngest brother's most excellent cooking; and one, the ...

Venice is at the top of my list for overseas destinations (other than Australia obviously). Preferably when the city isn't flooded due to one of the king tides, but any other time would be fine. (OK, except Carnivale, because crowds are not my thing.)  I drool over movies like "Casanova" which are set in Venice. (And "The Merchant of Venice" ) In fact, I even sat through that Angelina Jolie/Johnny Depp film set there. Truly, any movie featuring the gorgeous landscapes and townscapes of Italy has me sighing. Weirdly, I love the idea of getting lost in those twisting Venetian alleyways and the thought of coming upon some hidden from the tourists vignette. But as we just got back from Australia, an European trip isn't on the cards straight away. However ... Today, Mary Ann Moss opened up registration for a new class called "Ticket to Venice" . She's not only going to teach a new binding for the travel journal, but we'll be seeing Veni...

The final week of vacation/holidays and the final week of gifts. List for November 5 to 11 : 981. Flock of pelicans circling over Mum's house -- and 1 minor bird 982. Catching up with lifelong best friend  983. Wise ass husband (he says he likes "adorable" better, which he is but he did comment on my frustration while I typed on my phone, saying "patience" is a gift - which I was not expressing at the time.) 984. Auto- correct (when it works) 985. Fancy dresses, hats and fascinators for the Melbourne Cup (and me in shorts and tshirt) 986. Tea cake 987. Not guessing the winner of the Cup. 988. smell of rain 989. Lightning and brief downpour 990. Catching up with cousins 991. Frogs chirping after rain 992. Hair cut 993. Henny Penny gravy  994. Three red poppies 995. Evening walk in Cooks Hill 996. Walking in gentle rain 997. Thinking of criteria of what kind of house I'd like in Australia 998.  Meandering in Morpeth ...

This is me continuing to catch up on sharing the epic list of gifts God has given. Below I list a couple of  gifts about Rathmines and a Catalina -- this was of note because my grandfather flew in one of these during WWII. Also, I have never seen so many wild kangaroos in my life. Also and also, I made my hubby take a picture of "proper" clouds and forgot to add it as a gift. So consider this image a bonus: On with the list (from October 29 to November 4 ): 953. Painting with nephews 954. Pink-gold almost full moon 955. Kangaroo and joey hopping 956. 4 kangaroos in the "back paddock" 957. The slower pace of a carriage ride (spotting more kangaroos) 958. Standing in front of two draft horses while carriage rigging is fixed. 959. Turkish delight gelato 960. Night time kangaroo spottings (count for the last 2 days is 18 although we may have seen the same family grouping three times now) 961. Countryside night sounds (cicadas, frogs,...

While on vacation/holidays, I kept writing down God's gifts and reached the target of 1,000 gifts while away. It's a three weeks long list, so I'm going to break it up in week-sized posts. Hopefully this will be a slightly less annoying "what I did on my holidays"... Week of October 20 to October 28 (my last Joy Dare post was shortened 'cause I had to post it early) 924. Flight delayed 3+ hours 925. God provides: flight canceled 926. Morning rainbow 927. Stuck on plane waiting for take off 928. Landing  929. Even if 14+ hours later 930. Cozy bed 931. Geese 932.  Jet-lagged 933. Smell of Mum's sheets 934. Finding interment sites of great-grands and gran 935. St. Michael's chapel: the warrior's chapel. They shall not grow old... 936. Painting mum's toenails 937. Mushroom gravy 938. Quiet morning  939. A little bit of art 940. Seeing Dad's new place (and him reaching out) 941. Think I have a col...

I've been on vacation (holidays) to Australia for the past three weeks, hence the silence. There is much to post about, but I am going to start with what is uppermost on my mind. The amount of time I waste. I came home to a DVR that was 99% full (and some episodes had been deleted in our absence) and over 400 blog posts in Google Reader. There would have been more, but I had snuck on a time or two to do some whittling down and had started catching up once we landed in San Francisco and were waiting for the plane home. This is out of control. I actually felt the pinch of wasting time while staying at my Mum's but have come to realize that my getting online in the morning is equivalent to her turning on morning television -- it stops both of us from doing what we want to do, which in my case is morning prayer and meditation. I had plans today to spend a good chunk of quiet time just being, but now I think I need to clear some mental clutter first. I am going to stop wat...