Sunday Collection - living is better than shopping!

I’ve missed my blogging community the last few days - so busy at work, getting in at midnight most nights, I’ve barely had time to read posts, let alone write any.

But the reward today is to indulge myself in catching up all at once as I sit here, drinking fresh coffee, eating warm pastries and listening to Astral Weeks by Van Morrison, one of my all-time favourite albums from the late 60s. Want a quick listen to one of the tracks before we go on? Click the link just below.

Sweet Thing

And I will walk and talk
In gardens all wet with rain
And I will never, ever, ever, ever
Grow so old again.

Van Morrison, Sweet Thing

The theme that stands out to me from what I’m reading this morning is that we should look beyond the frantic consuming most of us do, sometimes as a displacement activity.

Hearty Heresy links to an article in Sojourner called What Would Jesus Buy?, detailing the activities of the self-styled Reverend Billy and his Church of Shop Shopping as they stage “retail interventions” in the big consumer chain shops and restaurants. It’s tongue-in-cheek, but with a very serious purpose. Here’s what they say:

The first job of a church is to save souls. Pulling out of the advertising/debt/waste cycle of Consumerism is our idea of deliverance. Our soul-saving mission work is dramatic rituals and plays inside retail environments.

The Church of Stop Shopping is not supposed to be a real church, but I wonder…

So subscribe to The RevBilly Blog. And Buy Nothing on 24 November. Be Saved. Blogalujah!

Christmas: the very word brings my inner bah humbug snapping and snarling to the surface. It’s just so - I can’t think of an expression less hackneyed - over-commercialised. What I really hate is the enforced jollity, much of which is work-related. I can feel my heels digging in at the thought of going to the office Christmas party.

So I’m a big supporter of bringing back a home-made element to the festivities. You can find wonderful ideas for presents with soul at Magpie Girl, including links to items for sale from Christine, Jen and Vivienne as well as La Magpie herself. Or you could check out the gorgeous stuff at Kirbanita. Support your favourite blogger!

Or get some inspiration to make parcels of food as presents. Try Mel’s soda bread, Pastry Studio’s Espresso Cookies, or Christine’s Bread Pudding. Or go buy yourself a copy of Sensational Preserves or The Bread Book and get cooking. Then you could get some ideas for making everything really special from Gift Wraps, Baskets & Bows.

The thing about this approach to the holidays, though, is that you have to plan ahead, can’t just go out to the store and grab stuff. But then that makes the whole time a gift to yourself as well as to others.

And one of the best gifts you can give yourself or anyone is to go out of your front door and find somewhere you can see something natural, whether it’s a roadside weed or the Hunter’s Moon, which I now learn from Beyond the Fields we Know can be known by any number of other names, such as Blood Moon, Leaf Dance Moon and my favourite: Moon When the Water Begins to Freeze on the Edge of the Streams.

So go on out and look around you, but you never know where it might take you. Remember:

It’s a dangerous business going out your front door

J R R Tokien

If you want some heartfelt suggestions on the important things in life, read them at Chasing Grace. She begins:

Live passionately, love deeply, and read as many books as you can.

Embrace what Gary Snyder has to say (found at Closely Observed):

We know that science and art can be allies. We need far more women in politics. We need a religious view that embraces nature and does not fear science; business leaders who know and accept ecological and spiritual limits; political leaders who have spent time working in schools, factories or farms and who still write poems. We need intellectual and academic leaders who have studied both history and ecology, and like to dance and cook. We need poets and novelists who pay no attention to literary critics. But what we ultimately need most is human beings who love the world.

So to end, speaking of crass commercialisation, enjoy Burger King of the Jews (warning, do not watch this video if you are easily offended and/or do not understand the concept of satire!) :

Have a blessed week, everyone.