Ballet has shaped how I think about exercise and movement. My experience with ballet was marked with beauty and strength, focus and challenge. And that’s how I want to move now. I want to move within beauty. I want to grow stronger. I want to learn to focus, control, and challenge both my mind…
Month: April 2013
Eating for Health, Eating for Creativity
For my 27th birthday my grandfather gave me a freezer full of pheasant. Actually, the pheasant was left over from a South Dakota hunting trip, and that Christmas anyone was welcome to it. I don’t have a great penchant for pheasant (there is a reason the chicken was domesticated), but it was the perfect…
The Joy of Reading
When my mother was a little girl, her Aunt Janice sent her a copy of CS Lewis’ The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe. It just sat on the living room bookshelf, and one day with no prompting or introduction my mom picked it up. I could, as a child, always imagine this…
Imagining Prayer
My very earliest memories of prayer are of lying on my bed, eyes closed with the little lights that dance across like my own personal night sky. And I would talk to Jesus, imagining him taking me by the hand past galaxies to heaven, like he would—I was convinced—when I would die. My sweet…
Making Time to Rest
Seven Springs ago, when Evan and I were falling in love, we spent a lot of time outside walking, picnicking, and just being out in the sunshine after the long Illinois winter. One of our best early dates was to the gorgeous local arboretum. That summer when he visited me in northern Wisconsin,…
The Rituals & Rhythms of Creative (Coffee) Time
The Paradox of Making Creative Space
When I was a little, my younger brother, Jon, and I would create elaborate adventures for our stuffed animals. Together the brown teddy bear (Doc Bear), the well-loved Carebear (Bluebell), and the orange dinosaur (Anna Kate) would sail around the world on the guest bed, or scale castle walls via a bunk bed ladder….