REDONDOWRITER'S SACRED ORDINARY

Haiku My Heart Friday: Quinceañera

Quinceañera

Loving mother tends daughter

Womanhood is here.

Two weekends ago I was taking photos at a Peninsula Friends of the Library event at Malaga Cove Library and when I looked into the adjacent park, a photographer was taking the formal photos of this beautiful young girl's Quinceañera. It was just mom, daughter and photographer and I'm sure that later that day or perhaps sometimes later, a huge party marking her 15th year would follow. I popped out the door and shot this photo. Living in Southern California with a large Latino population, this milestone is often celebrated and my own granddaughter was in one when she lived with me. 

I keep my thousands of photos in iPhoto and I had to search for this photo of a young librarian patron I took at the Malaga Cove Library some years ago. I like to imagine that this little girl in her pink dress will somehow be that beautiful woman above. 

Be sure to visit Rebecca's Recuerda mi Corazon to see the posts of all our Haiku Friday participants. 

 

 

 

Haiku My Heart Friday: SoulCollage® Butterflies are Free

Metamorphosis.

Butterflies seek the sacred 

To prove they are free. 

When I made this SoulCollage® card a few weeks ago, I didn't write a haiku but when I read Rebecca's invitation to all of us to encourage us to participate in Haiku My Heart Friday, I knew this card had to speak. This woman, a replica of the divine feminine, is definitely knee-deep in holy! 

In SoulCollage®, we write "I am the one who--" statements to personify the card and place ourselves in it. I am the one who doesn't often sit still long enough for butterflies to think I'm a sweet, inanimate object, but I am reminded how awe-struck I am everytime I see a butterfly. I am the one who is free in so many ways; I just need to take the time to remember. I am the one who will take time tomorrow to sit quietly on the patio in the California sunshine and write in my journal--and I'll be delighted if even one butterfly shows up. 

Haiku My Heart Friday: Children's Garden

Each spring the children

Plant a garden at Christ church.

Sunday they water.  

Behind Christ Episcopal Church in Redondo Beach, CA, there is a small plot of land behind this fence. With some dedicated volunteers, The church's children garden there and on Sundays there is a bucket brigade during Sunday school hour. 

Visit Rebecca's Haiku My Heart Friday to see the wise words and images of other haiku-ers. 

Haiku My Heart Friday: Mary's House at Ephesus, Turkey

Ephesus, Turkey

Stairs near the house of Mary,

Unforgettable.

 There were countless memorable moments during the pilgrimage I went on four years ago to Turkey and Greece, but one that is burned in my memory was visiting the House of the Virgin Mary near Ephesus. There are many stories about this house, but I liked the one at Sacred Destinations best. 

"According to predominant Christian tradition, Mary was brought to Ephesus by the Apostle John after the Resurrection of Christ and lived out her days there. This is based mainly on the traditional belief that John came to Ephesus (see St. John's Basilica) combined with the biblical statement that Jesus consigned her to John's care (John 19:26-27).

Archaeologists who have examined the building identified as the House of the Virgin believe most of the building dates from the 6th or 7th century. But its foundations are much older and may well date from the 1st century AD, the time of Mary. This site had long been a place of pilgrimage for local Orthodox Christians.

The modern history of the Virgin Mary's House is unusual. It was "discovered" in 1812 by a German nun, Sister Anne Catherine Emmerich, who never traveled away from her home.

Sister Emmerich, an invalid confined to bed, awoke in a trance with the stigmata and visions that included the Virgin Mary and Apostle John traveling from Jerusalem to Ephesus. She described Mary's house in detail, which was recorded at her bedside by a writer named Brentano.

Emmerich described a rectangular stone house, which John had built for Mary. It had a fireplace and an apse and a round back wall. The room next to the apse was Mary's bedroom, which had a spring running into it.

The German nun went on to say that the Virgin Mary died at the age of 64 and was buried in a cave near her house. When her coffin was opened soon after, however, the coffin and burial shroud were empty. The house was then turned into a chapel.

Years after Emmerich's visions, a French clergyman named Gouyet read Brentano's account and traveled to Ephesus to find the House of the Virgin. He found a house matching the nun's description and sent word to the bishops of Paris and Rome, but didn't receive much of a response.

On June 27, 1891, two Lazarist preists and two Catholic officials set out to Ephesus to see the house. They found a small chapel in ruins with a damaged statue of the Virgin.

They returned to Izmir with their report, and more priests and specialists were sent out to the site. Since 1892 the House of the Virgin has been a Catholic pilgrimage site. It was restored by 1897 and a shelter for visitors was set up.

The Meryama was later visited by Popes Paul VI and John Paul II, who confirmed its appropriateness as a place of pilgrimage. On November 29, 2006, Pope Benedict XVI celebrated mass here."

 

Haiku My Heart Friday: SoulCollage® Poppy the Fairy

Poppy the Fairy

A book that comforted me

As a lonely child. 

Here I am surfacing after a few weeks absence and my offering this week is a SoulCollage® card I made on Monday during our monthly women's group. I'm calling it Poppy the Fairy and it depicts a children's book given to me by my late sister Donna when I was just learning to read: Poppy: The Adventures of a Fairy. I own my original copy still and apparently it has some value according to the Internet Data Base of Fiction, where I found a touching story. 

This is a copy of the cover. To make a long story short, like a lot of kids, I suppose, I had this notion that somehow or other I must have been born into the wrong family. I was born lonely, I think, even though I had four sisters and my parents who loved me dearly. I just seemed to be so different than everybody else. 

I would read this book over and over and I would literally become Poppy, a little fairy lost in the garden who is discovered by a loving family who build her a bed out of a leaf -- and ultimately a little house with tiny furniture. I'll admit I haven't read this book for a very long time, but I did discover it was first published in 1931. A few copies are available on the Internet.

But, here I am making a SoulCollage® card and trusting that this card has a story to tell me about who I was and who I am now that I may not have considered before.

I am the one, in SoulCollage® language, who was literally transported into a magical kingdom and spent hours being Poppy when I was very young. I am the one who wrote other fairy stories and even doodled little drawings of her. I remember sitting on my sis Donna's lap, and my mom, too, and being read to from this book. If I could ask my card a question it would be, "Why did I fantacize so about being you and what can you reveal to me about who I am today?" 

To see more Haiku My Heart posts, visit Rebecca at Recuerda mi Corazon. 

Haiku My Heart Friday: The Tulip Tree

When the tulip tree

Sheds her winter modesty

I know spring is here. 

The Malaga Cove Branch Library of the Palos Verdes Library District is a place I visit and volunteer at frequently. The peacocks wander, even in the winter, but the tulip tree is dormant, bare, but I like to think of her as a lady in waiting. When I park the car to go into the side entrance and the tulip tree has grown into a burst of lavender blooms, I stop, sigh, and get the camera. Now I know that spring is really here. 

Thanks, Rebecca at Recuerda mi Corazon for hosting Haiku my Heart. Take time to visit and you will see that a lot of people are waxing eloquent in haiku. 

Haiku My Heart Friday: Solitary

 

 

At work yesterday I worked with archiving a lot of photos from the past years that the students have used in the school newspaper. I have no idea where this one from 2009 came from, but I doubt it was taken by a student. It sure evoked a lot of emotion in me. 

Solitary me

Longs sometimes to be alone

But loves people too.  

Can you identify? To see the haikus of many others, visit Rebecca at Recuerda mi Corazon. 

Haiku My Heart Friday: Shouting Out Joy

How I wish I had taken this photo but it is by Smoochiemom and was part of The Pioneer Woman blog. 

Heralding sunset

Three  girls shout joy and wonder

Womanhood is near. 

When I spotted this photo after searching joy in Google Images, this photo grabbed my heart. I did wake up this morning with a sense of wonder and joy. The weather is good, my pay-for-money job is over for this week, and four "free" days are ahead of me. I have lovely company visiting and will take the time to tour them in South Bay and the Palos Verdes Peninsula tomorrow. 

Thanks for hosting Haiku Friday, Rebecca. You can see more at Recuerda mi Corazon.  

 

 

Haiku My Heart Friday: Rainbow After Rain

White caps after rain

Then Nature prisms the sky.

Shay snaps this photo.

My friend Shay, who lives in Crescent City, CA where they get a lot of rain, captured this scene this morning. She carries her camera when she walks and said it was fine to share this photo with all of you.

To see more haiku, visit Rebecca's Recuerda mi Corazon. 

Haiku My Heart Friday: School Founders Who Loved

 

 

They founded a school

Seventy six years ago 

It was--and is--good. 

I have the privilege of working at Chadwick School in Palos Verdes--and have since 1991. Now the part-time archivist, I love working with all things historical these days, and though I never met Margaret and Joseph Chadwick, I feel as though I am part of their family. A Naval officer and a teacher met in Chefoo, fell in love, and Mrs. Chadwick writes of it so beautifully in one of her five books, her autobiography, "Looking at the Sunset Upside Down." 

Part of my archival duties include digitizing all the old photos and this particular one, taken by a famous nature  photographer, Cedric Wright, whose children graduated from Chadwick, is a favorite. I am using it as the focal image of an art journal page about love. A colleague of Ansel Adams, I have the pure delight of working with many Adams images he took of the school in the early 1940s, and with Wright's. 

But, it's the Chadwick's romance and life-time love well into old age that I like to read about over and over again. 

To see the words and art of other Friday haiku-ers, visit Rebecca at Recuerda mi Corazon.