Pages – Becoming Mrs. Lewis and Hoopla

I’ve been planting in the garden like a madwoman, hence, not as much time as I’d like to blog and keep up with the never-ending housework. Happily though, I’ve been reading, or should I say listening, to a good book while I am tending to the weeds and seeds. Becoming Mrs. Lewis by Patti Callahan is a wonderful novel about the friendship and love of Joy Davidman and C.S. Lewis. As with the best of books, any nagging thought or worry I’m facing at the moment disappears when I’m listening to the story. You can read a good synopsis of the story on GoodReads/Becoming Mrs. Lewis. I’ve found that fiction based on true-life often prompts me to delve further into biographies and photo records of the subjects; this has been the case with Joy Davidman and C.S. Lewis, the main characters in the novel.

I’m listening to this book on a digital streaming service called Hoopla.

Hoopla Digital is a web and mobile library media streaming platform for audio books, movies, music, ebooks, comics, and TV. Hoopla allows library patrons to download or stream media content. Hoopla Digital is a division of the Holland, Ohio-based company Midwest Tape, and is housed in the same facility.” Wikipedia

I joined Hoopla free through my local library. Many libraries offer Hoopla. Check with yours to see if you can download and use this free service.

I am sometimes hesitant to use photo images of book jackets for my ‘pages’ reviews. Here’s a good article written by The Librarian Who Doesn’t Say Shhh, that puts most of my fears to rest over violating copyright laws when I use a book cover image on my blog: Book Cover Images.

Praise – Looking Up

“To bear witness to God the Father, to follow the teachings of Jesus Christ, and to be guided by the Holy Spirit.”
~ Parish of St. Michael the Archangel

I love the mission statement, quoted above, of the Parish of St Michael the Archangel. What an amazing goal and purpose for a church in this modern age.

We were on a drive and spotted this beautiful bird on the steeple of St. Catherine of Sienna. (Merged in 2010 with Parish of St. Michael the Archangel.)

““As long as you are proud you cannot know God. A proud man is always looking down on things and people: and, of course, as long as you are looking down you cannot see something that is above you.”
― C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity

“There are joys which long to be ours. God sends ten thousands truths, which come about us like birds seeking inlet; but we are shut up to them, and so they bring us nothing, but sit and sing awhile upon the roof, and then fly away.”
~Henry Ward Beecher

The modern world chooses not to honor God’s truths or hear his voice. In many churches world views contrary to God’s word are condoned in the name of love. I plan to keep looking up, my eyes and spirit focused on God’s truths, instead of being in agreement with what the world considers politically correct.

This post is part of Skywatch Friday.

Pleasures – A Passion for Stones/Nurturing Thursday

I’m easy to please. I love stones…rocks…pebbles and consider them treasures. If I see one with promise I will pick it up. I once spent a week on Block Island beaches searching for hearts of stone. You can see the resultant video at the bottom of this post. I’ve shared it before, but as is the case with many posts, it is buried way back in the blog archives.

Have you ever attended a craft show and been entranced by a large bowl of polished stones? I love these stones and have bought them in the past always wishing I could polish stones too. Now, thanks to a rock polisher given to me by one of my sons on my 60th birthday, I polish my own. The stones in the photograph were collected from a creek near my home, Atlantic Ocean beaches, the Delaware and Chesapeake Bays, and Cape May’s Diamond Beach.

It took me a few tumbles to figure out how to process the rocks, and every attempt was worth the finished products. They are not without flaws, the prettiest ones are hardest to get smooth as their stripes and mottled appearance means they have different levels of hardness within the stone. The flaws don’t bother me, I’m going to dab them with a bit of polish and consider them finished. Tumbling and polishing stones is one of the ways I nurture myself. My stones seem a perfect fit for the Nurturing Thursday Challenge hosted by Becca at ‘On Dragonfly Wings with Buttercup Tea.‘ It’s never too late to start a hobby you’ve always wanted to try to nurture yourself every now and then.

“You are never too old to set another goal or to dream a new dream.” ~ C.S. Lewis