What is all this juice and all this joy?
A strain of the earth’s sweet being in the beginning
In Eden garden. – Have, get, before it cloy,
Before it cloud, Christ, lord, and sour with sinning,
Innocent mind and Mayday in girl and boy,
Most, O maid’s child, thy choice and worth the winning.
“Spring”, Gerard Manley Hopkins
The warmer temperatures this week have made for some lovely days. The cherry and magnolia trees around the neighbourhood are in full bloom, there are daffodils all over town. The girls have been having some lovely play together in the backyard and we did some of our first planting of the year.
Last weekend we had the chance to join with a few other people for a casual worship session together on a friend’s farm. Gathered together in a covered area, rain pouring down, singing together was beautiful. Having been in church only a handful of times over the past 2 years, I have missed corporate worship.
It is the voice of the Church that is heard in singing together. It is not you that sings, it is the Church that is singing, and you, as a member of the Church, may share in its song. Thus all singing together that is right must serve to widen our spiritual horizon, make us see our little company as a member of the great Christian Church on earth, and help us willingly and gladly to join our singing, be it feeble or good, to the song of the Church.
Life Together, Dietrich Bonhoeffer
I was given a beautiful gift by a friend this week. Someone in my community who I haven’t seen much of in the past two years; she unexpectedly knocked on my door to present me with her gift and tell me that she has been thinking of me and praying for our family.
The girls began their new sessions of swim lessons this week (they both moved up a level) and their excitement about it was contagious. This is a new stage of parenting for us – where they both have more two extra-curricular activities going on. We’ve always intentionally limited their activities with an eye to prioritizing rest and family time, as well as activities being limited over the past two years, so this is the most we’ve had going on in a long time.
Slow Saturdays with nowhere to go.
Karissa Reads Books 
They do swimming lessons; what are the other two activities?
Rose is in a group music class and Pearl started piano lessons in January.
Ooooo, nice.
Learning to rest is often overlooked but it’s so important – time for contemplation and imagination and generally recuperation from the stresses and strains of life. We are all so busy now that sometimes we forget to look at the daffodils! Not that we have daffodils to look at here – a big freeze followed by rain, rain and more rain means spring has not yet properly sprung…
We had another crazy rainfall over the weekend and the temperatures dropped so it is not at all feeling like spring now!