One Year of Blogging
It’s now been a year since I started blogging! I’ve posted on this page almost every week since our arrival in N. India last March. I wondered then if I would be able to find something interesting to write about (interesting to me, anyway) each week. As it turns out, that was the easy part. Finding the time to reflect and compose my thoughts has been more challenging, as has connecting to reliable internet!
When I chose a title for my blog, I used a line from the last part of the poem “Starfish” by Mary Daniels:
What good does it do/ to lie all day in the sun/ loving what is easy?
It never grew easy,/ but at last I grew peaceful:
all summer/ my fear diminished
as they bloomed through the water
like flowers, like flecks/ of an uncertain dream,
while I lay on the rocks, reaching/ into the darkness, learning
little by little to love our only world.
My hope was that writing this blog would help me see more clearly and appreciate the beauty around me through sharing it. I have discovered many kinds of beauty in the last year: natural beauty, cultural beauty, and the beauty of new relationships. Writing about them in this blog pushes me toward taking more time, paying closer attention, and reflecting more deeply on the new things I am learning to love. 
But it hasn’t always been easy, and I’ve often felt far from peaceful. This photo was taken at the lake near our home. We drank our afternoon chai here enjoying the view between rain showers. It’s a calm scene now, but the place where I’m standing was under 10 feet of water during last September’s flood. Natural disasters aside, this area has been known for conflict from its earliest history to the present day; most of the “darkness” has its origin in human hearts. I’ve learned that much of the beauty around us lies beyond “what is easy” and our love has to stretch far. Writing this blog helps me see the darkness for what it is, even as I keep reaching.
Posted in Uncategorized by Lisa