Fostering a new renaissance through creativity, authenticity, spirituality, and art
Polly Castor 
Here are some haiku by my friend Jobina (Check out her blog here)… Life is not just mine. It’s all about how Love does shine – through all, for All. Confusion, mayhem upheaval … ‘til dove alights, peace breaks, love wakens. Lost in my own trap, I think I’m done, zoned out, gone …. then … Read more
As part of my New Year’s project, I’m giving myself some self-directed painting exercises. Since I am a photographer, I’m interested in a more stylized approach to painting than a photorealistic one, but I thought some representational exercises might be a growing experience. I’m not spending very long on these; they are quickly done in … Read more
Our youngest daughter is deep in her 11th grade year, when a lot of kids feel an enormous amount of stress. She just took the ACT for the first time last Saturday, and she’s got the SAT as well as SAT Subject tests coming in a couple months, which is a lot for a homeschooler … Read more
Somewhere in the bowels of this blog I’ve had a post similar to this one, where I showed my page spread of weekly notes on the topical Christian Science Bible Lessons. Well, I still do this. I find it very helpful to capture the thematic focus of the week, to ponder it better at the … Read more
I absolutely love the work of Sven Birger Sandzen. The painting above is my favorite of his, with a few close runners-up shown below. Born in Sweden in 1871, he received his art training there. Then in 1894 he immigrated to Kansas, where he taught art on the college level. But it was later, when … Read more
I had a pleasant day. It was fun to get so many good wishes on Facebook and my husband’s treat of a gougère was delicious. Our daughter gave me two books on farming and I also got a book of quotes from all sorts of great thinkers from the fountain of the Mary Baker Eddy … Read more
We don’t eat a lot of potatoes. They don’t freeze well in soups, and unless they are chips, they never seem to be worth the carbs involved. But last Thanksgiving in Texas, cousin Elaine made some awesome twice baked potatoes that really turned my head. I’ve been experimenting a bit since then and these really … Read more
At long last, I’m finally going through my office, getting rid of stuff. The two books above are examples of some of the myriad books I am getting rid of. One is from 1990 and the other is from 1996. Back then I was still highlighting books, which I think is sacrilegious now, as I … Read more
Your Innocence is Your Protection You’ve done nothing wrong. You have obeyed a higher tribunal. The charges are ridiculous, trumped up, and manipulated. Human nature, craving personal dominance instead of shared dominion is jealous and afraid of spiritual power and systematically discerned integrity, applied. You were cruelly cast out, into the lion’s den, so … Read more
This is delicious and tastes like summer. It would be great to make when the basil is lushly bursting out in the garden, but sometimes it is good to have a taste of sunshine in the winter as well. 1 (15 oz) package of organic soft silken tofu, drained 3 or 4 cloves of garlic, … Read more
This one-of-a-kind collage was done merging hand painted silk with a wide range of papers, all encased in archival acrylic. This is something I’ve wanted to do for a long time; I painted the silk over a decade ago, and just recently took the plunge to collage it as seen here. The work is large, … Read more
We visited Marlboro College last November, on the same day we visited Smith College. The day after, we visited Olin and Wellesley. Smith and Olin she liked right off. Wellesley she did not care for at all, and immediately ruled it off her list. Marlboro, however, was a lot to take in because it is … Read more
Feeling Grateful for My Husband He’s good at a lot of things. He knows the Bible inside and out and is my go-to theologian. The King James Bible sounds perfectly normal when he reads it aloud. He has been growing plants organically since before most people knew what that meant. His garden is amazing, and … Read more
When I became a vegetarian 35 years ago, there weren’t many cookbooks relevant to me, which is why Mollie Katzen’s soon-to-be-classic Moosewood Cookbook became a standby. I grew up as a cook by her side, so to speak, and who would have imagined all those years ago that we’d become actually acquainted over something called … Read more
Nothing like being the flower committee at church to have an excuse to have a bunch of amaryllis blooming in your house! Each year we get a few new bulbs and nurse back to blooming those from the several previous years. So it may be wicked cold outside, but over here, it is blooming inside!
“For a long time it seemed to me that life was about to begin – real life. But there was always some obstacle in the way, something to be gotten through first, some unfinished business, time still to be served, a debt to be paid. At last it dawned on me that these obstacles were … Read more
