Tag: life in photos

Poetry & Words, Theology

What People Don’t Understand About Having an Only Child

Gina @ Oaxacaborn

What People Don't Understand About Having an Only Child

Five years ago.  I don’t wish time to stop, because if time had stopped then I wouldn’t have today in all its glorious tumbling mix of beauty and brokenness.

No, I never wish time to stop.

This photo from the past is a femtosecond suspended in space — a single transient moment in time’s flight over us.

We’re in my favorite place on earth, high above the sea overlooking Bodega Bay, and the white-bright sunset is casting slivers of diamonds over us, by the handful. My pants don’t match my shirt, and I’m wearing my brother-in-law’s too-big shoes. She’s set to bolt away and grab fistfuls of sand. The sky is molten. We are hands on a clock, dials on the face of the sun.

And time flies on.

Continue reading “What People Don’t Understand About Having an Only Child” →

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Life in Photos

LIFE IN PHOTOS :: October

Gina @ Oaxacaborn

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“Something I constantly notice is that unembarrassed joy has become rarer. Joy today is increasingly saddled with moral and ideological burdens, so to speak. When someone rejoices, he is afraid of offending against solidarity with the many people who suffer. I don’t have any right to rejoice, people think, in a world where there is so much misery, so much injustice.

I can understand that…But this attitude is nonetheless wrong. The loss of joy does not make the world better — and, conversely, refusing joy for the sake of suffering does not help those who suffer. The contrary is true. The world needs people who discover the good, who rejoice in it and thereby derive the impetus and courage to do good. Joy, then, does not break with solidarity. …This results, then, in the courage to rejoice.” -Joseph Aloisius Ratzinger

Life in Photos

LIFE IN PHOTOS :: Childhood and Summertime

Gina @ Oaxacaborn

Falling asleep reading
backstage at the theatre
Dala horse and ramen
mosaic fountain
Papa and Aveline
Grumpy Aveline and Spanish moss
Post performance blues
Papa and Aveline
sunrise wakeup call
lighting check
big old palm
raincoat indoors
A little too happy to do spelling

“What child, while summer is happening, bothers to think much that summer will end?

What child, when snow is on the ground, stops to remember that not long ago the ground was snowless?

It is by its content rather than its duration that a child knows time, by its quality rather than its quantity—happy times and sad times, the time the rabbit bit your finger, the time you had your first taste of bananas and cream, the time you were crying yourself to sleep when somebody came and lay down beside you in the dark for comfort.

Childhood’s time is Adam and Eve’s time before they left the garden for good and from that time on divided everything into before and after.” -Frederick Buechner

Life in Photos

LIFE IN PHOTOS :: Perfect[ly Imperfect]

Gina @ Oaxacaborn

WEB_March2015_Aveline_grumpy_bed

Have you seen the new photoblog Sham of the Perfect? It’s so beautiful.

Life as it is, life as it’s lived.

No need to make a scene. No need to impress.

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That tangled head of hair, morning’s first light, the one brown crinkled leaf that catches that light….

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…the pent up energy on the afternoons the rain falls down around us, the mismatched pajamas, the out-of-focus blur.

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“What scene would I want to be enveloped in
more than this one,
an ordinary night at the kitchen table,
floral wallpaper pressing in,
white cabinets full of glass,
the telephone silent,
a pen tilted back in my hand?

It gives me time to think
about all that is going on outside–
leaves gathering in corners,
lichen greening the high grey rocks,
while over the dunes the world sails on,
huge, ocean-going, history bubbling in its wake.

But beyond this table
there is nothing that I need,
not even a job that would allow me to row to work,
or a coffee-colored Aston Martin DB4
with cracked green leather seats.

No, it’s all here,
the clear ovals of a glass of water,
a small crate of oranges, a book on Stalin,
not to mention the odd snarling fish
in a frame on the wall,
and the way these three candles–
each a different height–
are singing in perfect harmony.

So forgive me
if I lower my head now and listen
to the short bass candle as he takes a solo
while my heart
thrums under my shirt–
frog at the edge of a pond–
and my thoughts fly off to a province
made of one enormous sky
and about a million empty branches.”

-Billy Collins

Christmas

LIFE IN PHOTOS :: Our Tiny Tree

Gina @ Oaxacaborn

Our tree is tiny and simple — sparkling silver and white and blue, with an exquisite little porcelain doll my best friend brought back from Russia. The tree’s not huge, or even made of real tree, but it’s tucked away under the blue-light-wrapped windows, on a white woolen rug that looks like snow, and makes Aveline so happy.

To me, that’s perfect.

(Do you remember this feeling as a child?) Oaxacaborn / Gina Munsey blog

Oaxacaborn / Gina Munsey blog
Oaxacaborn / Gina Munsey blog

“Shaggy branches curve / Down to the heads of children / Beads shine richly / Overflowing with lights…” “Гнутся ветви мохнатые / Вниз, к головкам детей / Блещут бусы богатые / Переливом огней…” -Raisa Adamovna Kudasheva

Life in Photos

LIFE IN PHOTOS :: Everyday things

Gina @ Oaxacaborn

“Everything is fine —

the first bits of sun are on

the yellow flowers behind the low wall.” -Billy Collins
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“Report from the subtropics:

for one thing, there’s no more snow

to watch from an evening window…

no hexagrams of frost to study

on the cold glass pages of the bathroom.

No black sweater to pull over my head

while I wait for the coffee to brew…..

And the birds with those long white necks?

All they do is swivel their heads

keeping an eye on me as I walk along.” -Billy Collins

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“This love for everyday things,

part natural from the wide eye of Infancy,

part a literary calculation” -Billy Collins

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“yes, there would be enough light

to read a book or write a letter at midnight” -Billy Collins

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“the day mirled and clabbered

into the thick, stony light” -Billy Collins

Life in Photos, Poetry & Words

LIFE IN PHOTOS :: Blanket Fort

Gina @ Oaxacaborn

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I have to stop and remind myself: I don’t get these moments in the frenzy.

I don’t get moments like this if I’m consumed with the tyranny of the urgent, if I’m lost in the self-made chaos, if I measure my worth against how much I’ve achieved or accomplished in the last twenty-four hours.

We’re to run this race with perseverance, yes, but our strength is in quietness and rest. The heart never stops beating, yes, but the stillness between every heartbeat is essential to staying alive.

And I see that stillness in the the way the sun filters through the smudged glass. The way a horse stands motionless in the cool darkness of the county fair, refusing to fear the racket rattling from the midway outside. The way the living room chairs are pushed together, the blankets are tugged from the beds, and her mischievous face peeks up at me through the ramshackle fort.

These are the moments — and yes, He is the God — I want to choose, seek, and hold.

“O Thou who art my quietness, my deep repose,
My rest from strife of tongues, my holy hill,
Fair is Thy pavilion, where I hold me still.
Back let them fall from me, my clamorous foes,
Confusions multiplied;
From crowding things of sense I flee, and in Thee hide.
Until this tyranny be overpast,
Thy hand will hold me fast;
What though the tumult of the storm increase,
Grant to Thy servant strength, O Lord, and bless with peace.”
– Amy Carmichael