Asides

A Small Loveliness

Aside | | Melinda Johnson

Found on a long-ago Blogger account. This was originally published on November 3, 2014, at 11:13 PM.

Today, I watched my daughter dance. It wasn’t a performance, just a class. I watched the light playing on her skin, watched her bright dark eyes, watched the expressions come and go – the queenly prima, the tired child, the imp, the infant, the wise old woman. She is everything human, dancing.

And above me, in the air, I saw a tiny pink feather, a fragment more graceful than dust but not much larger, flitting and skipping on the warm currents, drifting above me, drifting away, a little memory of tulle and velvet and sweat.

#bloginstead – the WHOLE list

Aside | | Melinda Johnson

This is just a quick reminder that the list of blogs to follow has been updated because some new people joined us, so be sure you scroll all the way and follow the 4 newest group members!

Here are the most recent members:

And Susan! https://kindlerofjoy.com/

And Amanda at https://emberings.com/

Martha at http://thescrumptiouslife.blogspot.com/

Heather at https://sleightholmfolk.com/

Emmie at https://justonerobin.com/

Kristi at https://raisingorthodoxchristians.com/

Angelina at https://angelinasgarden.wordpress.com/

Our group now has 28 members!

Fair Winds and Following Seas

Blue ocean water showing a small wave
Aside | | Melinda Johnson

Three years ago, we said goodbye to the Navy. If someone were to ask, “What’s it like, being a military family?”, I’d say, “The most lasting of my memories is the way that good things and hard things were so completely welded to each other. Being proud, being lonely, laughing hysterically, crying inconsolably, loving a place and wanting to leave it, missing a time you wouldn’t want to live through again. It changed everything, sometimes at high cost. But I would do it again, in a heartbeat.”

-Photo by Gaetano Cessati on Unsplash

God Writing

Aside | | Melinda Johnson

Writing makes me think about God. Imagine writing a chapter. What’s in it – characters, plot twists, setting, subtext? Planning goes into that. Word choice. Looking at the other chapters. Thinking how you’re moving the action, developing the characters. But then, look at one day of your real life. One. What’s in it? SO many characters playing roles you know little to nothing about, and every one of them has an entire lifetime full of meanings and memories you know nothing about, and you and these other characters are interacting with each other, with yourselves, with your multi-faceted setting, with time, space, memory, love. And the collective intelligence and imagination of the human race to date has not come up with a way to predict what will happen in the next chapter.

Immensity.

-Photo by Jacek Dylag on Unsplash

Question by the River

Aside | | Melinda Johnson

I have lived in several worlds in my life, and I don’t suffer homesickness in the ordinary way. But sometimes, in the middle of a song, in a cloud of flower scent, at a moment of child-like peace, a wave of grief will rise over me because I can no longer go back to any good thing I remember. When I reach the river that flows by the throne, that might be my question – why couldn’t I bring together all the fragments of pure beauty I have seen and felt? I hope that’s what awaits me on the other side of the river. All those lost moments, the bouquet that was too much for human hands to grasp.

-Photo by Nathan Anderson on Unsplash