Building Joy

Growing up I lived in many different places, city and country. We had modern tract homes, lived in Victorians, run-of-the-mill city homes, apartments and out-of-the-way hovels with treehouses. We lived in a tent one summer, and a lean-to another. Our family built a log house from scratch, and we lived many years there without water or electricity.

We moved at least once a year every year of my children, many years we changed residences several times. This had a lot of effect on various aspects of my life, and it really impacted my creative urges. I take great joy from the re-modeling, renovation or creation of a dwelling. I love to make a place my own.

Many times in my life I have dreamed of creating a home from out of the earth, a more roundy, eccentric amorphous earthy green-energy based structure. I’ve seen it in my dreams, visited it in visions, and held that I would actually live there someday. It has much the feel and look of the house built by Simon Dale for his family in Wales. I just look at those photos or photos of the Hobbit homes and I am nostalgic for my dreams.

Several years ago, my good friend Jeralynn bought a place with a bunch of acres on the Consumnes River. She shares many of the same dreams as I when it comes to building practices and being gentle on the earth. I get the great joy of staying in the guest cabin with a cob stove for New Years. Our band, Souls Journey, is going to play and lead a Kiirtan/sing-a-long for whoever shows up to celebrate. Building joy in community.

The Joy of Tea

My friends and I enjoy doing High Tea up in the mountains every year. One of my best friends has a cabin at a private lake with a clubhouse. It has been in her family for generations. I have many great memories of going up there in the alpine forest, camping, hiking, sunning, visiting and having High Tea, with all the ladies.

One year we invited men too. Husbands and boyfriends dressed up and hung towels on their arms. They waited on us, serenaded us, and generally treated us like queens. It was an exciting year.

I have not got to attend for a time or two, and I have missed it. So, today, Oh Joy, I am headed up for the annual Ladies High Tea. We will have little fancy scones and things, fruits and treats. We will have at least half a dozen different fancy teapots with different flavors of tea. Mostly, we will have some time away from the hustle and bustle of our lives, separated by time and space from all the daily concerns. Time to visit in peace, time to sit joyfully by the peaceful lake and reconnect.

And, time to play! Big hats and feathers, dressed up or down as much as each decides, we will fill up our hearts with the camraderie and sisterhood. It is time to fill my creative coffers, renewing the connection to the artesian well of Joy in my heart. Off to tea!