Friday, August 11, 2017

Abundant beauty


Listen, feel, look. Something will be beautiful, even just for a moment, if you are present and open.

How much beauty would make a beautiful moment?

What could be set aside so that beauty could fill its place?

Turn your face toward beauty.
Turn your heart toward beauty.

SandraDodd.com/angles
photo by Sandra Dodd

Thursday, August 10, 2017

Just add peace and stir


"Reading 'Just Add Light & Stir', then the link-following that follows has saved me from negative-mind-spiraling quite often recently."
She wrote that after having quoted this:

"The more local and personal peace there is, the more peace there will be in the world."
—Sandra Dodd


Knowing Peace
photo by Sarah Dickinson
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Wednesday, August 9, 2017

Sunny and dry

Look for usefulness.

Look for beauty.

Hang out, you and your laundry.



SandraDodd.com/howto
photo by Sandra Dodd
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Tuesday, August 8, 2017

Choose to live lightly

I think to move toward humor, live lightly and not so ponderously.

Problems can be seen as temporary setbacks instead of life-ruining horrors, if you remember to choose to live lightly.

Humor (chat transcript)
photo by Julie D
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Monday, August 7, 2017

Change in ourselves

"Unschooling is *much* harder than school at home because it takes a great deal of self examination and change in ourselves to help our kids and not get in their way!"
—Joyce Fetteroll

SandraDodd.com/quotes
photo by Megan Valnes
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Sunday, August 6, 2017

Two things, two words

I wrote "two things, two words" as a title but most things have more than one name, most words mean more than one thing, and "two" is too small a number for this.

I've brought a photo by Lisa Jonick to help you consider this. If you try to say in one word, or two, what the photo shows, you will leave out three or four important parts.



What is the glass? Mirror. Window. Barrier.
What is the cloth? Backdrop. Projection screen. Drapery.

Is the tree touching the cat? Not really, but it envelopes him and his eyes turn to tree. Behind the cat is the reflection of mountains. It seems to be a continuation of his back. And as this is not "a photo of the mountains," the mountain seems to be inside the house, with the cat.

Lisa saw this, photographed it, saved it, shared it.

There will be many things in your life that you see, or fail to see. Seeing, thinking, naming, all have to do with thought, and categorization, and learning. Take a moment to see what you see richly, and deeply.
SandraDodd.com/mindfulofwords
SandraDodd.com/wonder
photo by Lisa Jonick

Saturday, August 5, 2017

Don't taint the ice cream.


It creates a trap, a trick question, an adversarial relationship, an opportunity for failure, if there is "a right answer" to the question "What do you want to eat?" Or if an overjoyed "can I have some ice cream?" is met with a sigh, and eyes rolling, and another sigh, and a dirty look, and a summary of what the child has already eaten that day, and a reminder of when the next meal is, and a head shake, and a mention of ingredients... or even ONE of those, it taints the ice cream. It harms the relationship. It makes the child smaller. It does not, correspondingly, though, make the parent larger.

SandraDodd.com/eating/peace
photo by Sandra Dodd