Another MOP and The First Post On DC And Deliberate Beauty

Remember April of last year, when Emily, Jenny, and I had a Month of Posting on our blogs? We decided to try it again.

The plan is that we will post on weekdays.  Emily will post on alternate days, and Jenny and I will take turns posting on the leftover days.

You can find Emily at The Girl In the Red Rubber Boots.

And Jenny is at Dreaming of Dragonflies.

This last month has been crazy crazy CRAZY.

Travel, school convention, a tragic death in the family, speaking engagements, a writers' conference, more travel.  With no time to catch my breath, much less process, in between--a situation that pushes an introvert off the insanity cliff pretty quickly.

So [most likely] my MOP posts will be a hodge-podge of processing, picking a memory in no particular order and examining it.

Right now we're waiting in the Denver airport, and I'm posting Instagram pictures of our two days in Washington, D.C, because DC is just so beautiful.

Well, we all know that the city is a bizarre mix of breathtaking beauty and seedy ugliness, but that is a subject for another post.

I am thinking of the Capitol part of the city.  It is huge, as anyone knows who has tried to sightsee on a hot summer day.  Just hitting the high points of Lincoln Memorial, Air and Space Museum, Jefferson Memorial, Capitol, and WWII memorial, you will cover miles.


The lawns are beautiful, the buildings are breathtaking, the memorials are unbelievable. 

It's not hard to tell that everything was carefully designed to be visually attractive.  Some things are simple, such as the reflecting pool and the walkways around it.  Others are amazingly detailed, such as the WWII Memorial, with its rising granite walkways lined with a large block for each state, pool and fountains, detailed sculpted pictures in the walls showing the story of the war for ordinary people, and careful overall balance and design.

So many government buildings and memorials are massive in size, heavy with marble, giving a sense of solidity, permanence, and protection.

And they are beautiful.

It all communicates what this nation thinks of itself and what it is worth.

And it communicates a welcome.

Some lingering cherry blossoms.

So it makes me think about the environment I create in our family's little capitol.  What does it say about who we are or who we think we are and what we are worth?  What sort of welcome does it give to visitors?

Jesus told the disciples He's going to go and prepare a place for them.  We know from Revelation that it's going to be well-designed and astonishingly beautiful.

So I conclude that it isn't a waste of energy and resources to create a beautiful place for myself and the ones I love.

Although I suppose it can be overdone--

Quote of the Day:
Me: How are your neighbors doing?
Young man: They watch all my comings and goings and know everything I do.  It's kind of creepy.
Me: Do they live vicariously through other people's lives because they don't have a life?
Young man: No, they live vicariously through their LAWN!

One last walk by the Reflecting Pool before we headed home.