The Mess Of Life

The meaning of life. The wasted years of life. The poor choices of life.  

God answers the mess of life with one word: 'grace.'

-Max Lucado

I'm still here. Just wrapped up in warm blankets and big questions and consuming projects. Hope you are well, friends.  -Brin

Handmade Feelings

 When you buy something made by a person,

there is something special there, and you do feel it.

The consciousness with which a thing is made

is often more important than the thing itself.

- J. Donald Waters

I agree with that first part, for sure: when you hold something made by hand, it is special, and you do feel it.

In the process of rebranding Balm & Honey in time for this spring's big honey/candle/soap/lotion introduction, I was told to write 150 words or less on what my little business is about. Uhhhhh... hmmm. It took awhile. Eventually, I typed: 

Balm & Honey came from a heart-aching yearn for simple, authentic products. 

We knit, keep bees, make soap, and dip candles for beloved customers.

It isn't quite what I'm going for, but it's a start.

Last week, I finally (!!) received an invitation to venture inside Ms. Nell's house. Oh, y'all. That place came straight out of a book. Everything she has tells a story... is a story. Whether we were standing in her little sitting room with the coal burning fireplace, or chatting in the huge, bright kitchen, every item came from someone or was made by someone. You could feel it in her house- that special feeling. She knits, too, so we compared handknit cloths. What is that intangible presence we sense when holding something another has made? It's recognition, maybe, that the thing had a life even before it got to us. That someone, somewhere, used their breath and brain and being to add something to the world that wasn't there before, and never would have been had they not been born. Ugh. Call me ridiculous, but I don't know if there's a way to overstate how much this means to me.

Anyway. A big batch of colorful, handknit cloths is in the shop and ready to start their life with someone new. Hurry over if you want to take a peek... five have already sold since I started typing this post!

Wishing you that handmade-special-feeling sort of day. -Brin

Masters and Keepers (The Beauty and Necessity of Bud+Bee+You+Me)

Flowers are the sweetest things God ever made

and forgot to put a soul into.

-Henry Ward Beecher 

We had to chase the Master Gardeners out of my beekeeper's association meeting last night so we could begin on time. The Masters (as I call them)- revered, wise, and weathered- are a motley crew of wrinkled old ladies, sun-beaten old men, and the odd, fresh-faced hipster. I'm in awe of them. They know Latin names for everything and there's nothing they haven't seen.

The Masters line up their latest obsessions in our shared gardening/beekeeping room. (The Masters and the Keepers- as beekeepers are called- are graciously respectful of each other.) The Masters also keep wild-looking, experimental plants under sagging, beaming grow lights in the corner of our room. There are new specimens every month: in January and February there are yellow and white bulbs nodding in test tubes and expertly labeled. March through May ushers in seedlings of all kinds: tomatoes, peppers, squash, and melons. Along June until October, herbs and grasses and so.many.flowers and every vegetable God gave a seed sprawl into the room. November and December roll around and they've vased up Henbit or Camellias or Red Maples. I'm fascinated, always.

Even if you've never given a solitary thought to flowers and bees, both are necessary for your life as you know it. Truly. Buds and blooms provide carbohydrates (nectar) and protein (pollen) for the bees. With it, they make food (honey) to sustain their colony. In doing so, they pollinate roughly one out of every three foods you'll eat today... and many of the wild plants you'll never give a thought to today. The bud-bee-you-me relationship is beautifully symbiotic. God may not have put a soul in flowers or bees, but He did intersect them with ours.

It occurred to me last night, while looking carefully around the room of Masters and Keepers, that these people are the unsung heroes of life as we've come to know it. Forget the athletes and crooners and celebrities. These people, with their borage and bent backs and bee suits, these people are changing the world. While the Masters plant and prune and pull nourishing plants, the Keepers breed and box and bolster the languishing bee. Together, they are fighting a tidal wave of chemicals and disease and urbanization and every dreaded and terrible thing man is doing to kill-off nature and wellness.

God help and bless the Masters and Keepers....

-     -     -     -     -

Yesterday's bee meeting and this morning's Floret Flowers announcement prompted the writing of this intro to a manifesto. (Forgive me.) Want to support or join the Masters/Keepers? Start by planting some bee-friendly seeds this year- in a pot, in a bed or garden, or in a vacant lot. Floret's now selling their beautiful seeds, and, of course, I'm an occasional visitor and longtime fan of Wildseed Farms. Their regional wildflower mixes are perfection. I beg you: plant something, feed a bee, and do what you can this year to support our unsung heroes.

Monday Moment: Daily Bread

Give us today our daily bread.

-Jesus, Matthew 6:11

Commentaries and controversies abound regarding Jesus' model prayer in Matthew 6. Give us this day our daily bread. It sounds straightforward in English. It is not, however, in Luke's Greek or Matthew's (purported...maybe) Hebrew. (Pastors and seminary people, don't crawl out of your skin regarding that last sentence, okay? I'm aware it's fraught with debatable goodies.)

I've done a little reading up on this innocent-seeming verse because it's slammed me so hard this new year. My prayers, I've realized, have gotten selfish. Ridiculous, even. Much of what I'm hearing myself pray for is... telling, I guess... of where my heart has wandered and what treasures I'm wanting to lay up. Ouch. 

What have you been praying for lately?

"Truth is, I think, if God just gave us our daily bread, many of us would be angry. 'That's all you're going to give me? You're just going to give me enough to sustain me for today? What about tomorrow or next year or 10, 20, 30 years from now? I want to know that I'm set up.' And yet Jesus says just pray for your daily provisions." -Francis Chan

Monday Moment is a little devotional to help kick start your week. See you again next time!

(The bread pictured is what we had for yesterday's "daily bread" and is the standard boule recipe made from my favorite bread book of all time.)*

Stillness, Noise and Chasing Out the Agony

In the summer she kept roses in a vase on the piano, 

huge, pungent roses, and when the blooms ripened and the petals fell, 

she put them in a tall Chinese jar, with cloves and thyme and sticks of cinnamon.

-Marilynne Robinson, Housekeeping
 

The roses are still blooming. I mention it again because it's such a marvel to me: frothy, pungent roses in January. I realize, intellectually, that this is a symptom of chaotic weather patterns and even, perhaps, a petaled harbinger of strange weather to come. But today it doesn't matter. Today, I have roses, and today that's beautiful enough for me.

I've been drying and saving petals, just like the "competent" character in Housekeeping. I've also started making my own rose water (watch this pretty 2 minute tutorial here) and using it in a room spray and in a honey-infused, natural face wash. And yesterday I added the delicately scented water to a beeswax and comfrey salve I'm making for my dry, winter-stricken hands. I literally, seriously, gasped when I smoothed it on my hands after washing dishes last night. Oh my. I must, must, must figure out how to make bigger batches and share with others. That salve was... instant solace.

It's quiet here this morning but my mind is a noisy, churning machine. I suppose that's why I appreciate the stillness of an empty, hushed house when I'm alone here; it's so loud in my head that additional sound competes and frustrates. Does anyone else experience that?

Perhaps it's because I'm also knee deep in the book. Ah, the book. The characters are alive now... seemingly as real to me as friends I seldom see. Maya Angelou once said that There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you. That agony has weighed so heavily on me these past 8 years, but the load is shifting now, and soon I'll be able to put it down. The story will, in a couched-in-fiction sort of way, be told this year. It terrifies me and vindicates me and affords me the chance to give that real-life story the ending it will never have. Is this why others write? I sat in Starbucks last week, face toward the wall, silent tears burning channels down my cheeks, and became so overcome by the emotion of it all that I got up and left. Right then.

Okay. So roses and a tutorial and a salve preview/plug and a working book mention. Does this count as a blog post? I'm hitting that bright orange "Publish" button anyway....

Is it Wednesday? Ah. Happy mid week, friends. -Brin

(There was an Amazon affiliate link in there somewhere. I think we're supposed to say that now, right?)

The 2016 Threshold

Hope
Smiles from the threshold of the year to come,
Whispering 'it will be happier'...

-Alfred Lord Tennyson

I was so glad to see 2016. It was welcome even if it did come barreling over the threshold first thing- without knocking- and yank open the drapes and say, without so much as looking over its shoulder, I'm here. Get up and say hello.

Hello, 2016. Come on in. We all just hope you are happier than your predecessor.

How were your holidays? Mine were stuffed- stuffed with miles and meals and masses and musts. I was relieved to pull down the tree this past weekend and start getting the place back in order. I have hopes and prayers and goals for this year. More so than in many years, I'd say. I'm eager to move forward. This year, my heart knows the new year is here.

I've been taking courses, lately, on things I want to accomplish in these dazzling 360-some-odd days that stare blankly back at me from the calendar on the fridge. One course I took was on how Make Your Blog Take Off! and Earn Six Figures From Your Blog and other bright pink and glittery headlines like that. I realized, three minutes in, that the "proven formulas" would never work for me and apparently I don't want to Make My Blog Take Off after all. The advice included things such as: pick one topic and only blog about that one thing... become an expert in your field. There was also talk about thousand dollar branding and social media platform plug-ins and paid content and coding your own sites and areyoukiddingyoudon'tuseyourowndomain and... ugh. No. I slammed my laptop shut and realized, anyway, that the blogs I read every day are just real people blogs... and none of them are professional content payers or paid photographers. I guess I'm the only one left who clicks off things that seem too slick. It's just not (even 2016) me, I said. I don't want a blogging empire. I just want a rose garden in that back corner over there.

One thing I am trotting out, however, is a re-launched and beautifully branded Balm and Honey. (Which is bare-shelved for the next few hours because you wonderful people keep buying me out. Thank you!) I am excited about that. This spring will see, God willing, the rolling out of honey and honey-based products: raw, natural Texas honey... beeswax candles... natural soaps... and lotion potions. And more House Helpers, of course. (Always those. Always.) I tried out my Vanilla Latte honeyed soap as gifts this year and got some rave reviews, which gave me just the confidence I needed to decide to go all out. I suppose I just have this vision of having one of those creaky, old houses that has furniture polished with beeswax in rooms that smell faintly of beeswax candles, honey soap and flowers. I want that, and I want the world to have that, too. Balm and Honey. Solace and sweet for the home. Hope that whispers from the thresholds that this year will be... happier. 

We can only pray and stubbornly hope.

Happy new year, friends. Praying God's kindest and best presence and blessings in your life this year.  -Brin