extreme love

16 Dec extreme love

I was so excited to chime in on Gwen’s Best of 09 prompt today. Oddly enough, I have been looking forward to sharing my favorite tea! It was totally happenstance that I found Harney & Sons tea sachets. My husband brought the tea tin home last year from a holiday gift exchange from work. I was immediately smitten with the way the tea bags looked like little gifts, each bag an adorable sachet and yet it wasn’t until months later that I ever actually tried one. Who knew that the tea was as delicious as it was beautiful (I love when the two co-exist). I have no idea what flavor it was (my kids took the tin for play and I have yet to see it since) but I held onto my last bag for point of reference when I went on the Harney & Sons great tea hunt. I did find them online(yay!) and even at Facebook(where I am now an official fan) so I do look forward to sleuthing out my favorite flavor.

So, this post in essence was all thought out already. This photograph, my love of the quiet, simple moments I spend alone, working at my computer while my kids are at school and husband at work. Slippers on, candle lit, soothing steam and my morning cup of tea (only second to my first and only cup of coffee of the day-for a little jump start). In these moments, I mindfully cherish my time writing, working and being with all of you here, on your blogs, at Shutter Sisters, on Twitter and Facebook.

And then today Xanthe Berkeley, the amazing photographer I have found via Shutter Sisters and her lovely and prolific Flickr stream shared a story about her two young sons and my original post which was going to be an ode to the calm and peaceful took another turn.

Xanthe’s words spoke volumes of how I often feel. I often urge my girls to chill out when they get too silly. I threaten them in hopes to stop the bickering. I shush them when they get boisterous. But when I take a step back, and I see the love they share through play, conflict and hysteria in both laughter and tears, I remember that this is exactly what love is. And through all of the chaos I can better embrace the chaos. That although I cherish my alone time when all is calm and I can get center myself with quiet, I would never trade the liveliness of my daughters together, filling up this space with whatever it is they choose to do, bringing life to this house, expressing their love freely and to the extreme.

I recently saw a fantastic Iconoclasts episode on the Sundance channel with Mike Myers and Deepak Chopra where Myers said it perfectly, “Enlightenment is lightening up”.

Alas! Let the hi-jinks ensue!