this bright world

Let Us Remember

24 February 2020 by Kortney

…that we are in the holy presence of God

….that we are dust and to dust returneth

One way to think about the coming season of Lent is that it’s a season of remembering. Remembering that tending what is hidden is holy work, remembering the life and death of Jesus, remembering that his death is not the end of the story.

For a few years, I’ve been using the four-fold image of a compass to help me conceive of practices that will draw me closer and help me remember. Help turn my heart of stone into a heart of flesh. Here’s what I’m contemplating for this year.

North :: Scripture Every Day

I want to read each day’s scripture + reflection in Sacred Space. I have last year’s edition, so I have to juggle the dates. But it still works! Pray As You Go is another excellent way to experience scripture as a touchstone, a way to remember and return to our North Star.

East :: Digital Sabbath

From sundown on Saturday to sundown on Sunday, I want to have my computer and phone turned off. This is going to be the most disruptive practice! I use Sunday afternoons to both work on lesson plans for the coming week + to listen to lectures in my poetry class. Of course these good uses of technology tend to slip into mindless scrolling, and that’s the opposite of remembering. I’ll have to find alternate places for this work to live, and I don’t know where that’s going to be yet.

South :: Meatless Fridays

Mostly I’ll need to rethink lunches and make sure that we have meatless options. We eat beans + rice every week already, but I’m moving them to Fridays so that we can be more mindful of this choice.

West : Sacred Reading

Along with a class on formal poetry with Sally Thomas and monthly workshops with Holly Wren Spaulding, I stumbled into a wonderful Shakespeare class at Schole Sisters taught by Kelly Cumbee. It’s weaving together a few different strands of study for me–fairy tales, Greek myths, as well as some Lewis + Tolkien lectures. You can listen to interviews at Schole Sisters and The Literary Life podcasts to get a taste of Kelly’s gentle, erudite teaching.

My work as a poet + home educator is my vocation, part of my path to Heaven. Learning myself and being a lively guide for my children are spiritual pursuits at heart. Through them I am being renewed and transformed. Attending to them in a focused way helps me remember.

If you’d like to read a few more simple ideas that will help you keep Lent with your family, I’d love to send you my ebook called Observing Lent with Our Families. Just click here to enter your email, and I’ll send it right over!

Lent Means Spring

4 March 2019 by Kortney

Let’s welcome this new season with simple practices that make space for what’s most important.

I’ve written a wee book with a few ideas. Just click on the picture to download the book!

Meeting the Equinox with Poems

28 February 2019 by Kortney

Ah, the last day of Peace Poetry month. That’s the last of my postcards going out. The month started with Botticelli postcards and ending with Picasso–quite a leap!

In 2001 poet Samuel Green wrote a poem and sent that first draft out on a postcard. (Listen to him tell about the poems and then read a few more yourself.) His poems are rooted in the daily and in close observance of the natural world.

I’m going to try meeting this turning season with poems fresh each day. I’ll be using these reliable seasonal prompts from Amanda, and looking for a few lines to record. I put an armful of Poetry for Young People books on hold including Yeats, and Williams, and Millay. That way the “young people” who live here can read alongside me.

I’d love to have your company! Or even send you a postcard if you let me know in the comments!

Ursula’s Landscape

24 January 2018 by Kortney

Ursula K. Le Guin 1929-2018

Ursula K Le Guin lived just over the West Hills. Hills obscured with rain this morning. From the sunporch you could look across the river to the hills and think of her in the house on the hill. Maybe she was curled up too–with a book and a cat.

From the Bridge, you could see the flattened top and lumpy sides of St Helen’s deep in snow. The mountain is hers as well.

We live and move in her world.

Because she was my teacher’s teacher, I have been her student.

I hold close her vision of a school that meets in the morning outside under an apple tree, her inquiry into the relationships between women and men, her questions about citizenship and the individual, the way to catch fish with your bare hands.

On her recommendation I’ll be reading Mansfield Park in the coming months. You too?