Beca’s Blog

This is the time of year when I get to the point that I feel that if one more person gives me advice, I think I might explode. This is laughable because I learned a long time ago that I am full of advice. And I like to give it. However, by late November I [...]

I imagined little monsters, fairies, and witches walking by my house wanting something from me and I was terrified. So terrified, I was huddled behind the couch in the dark. As I huddled behind the couch, I knew I was being irrational. No one would think I was home. After all, it was just children [...]

We were sharing snail jokes. One of my favorites is what a snail would say if she was riding on top of a turtle. The answer I loved was “Wheeee!” But there is another punchline to this joke. In this one, the snail says to the turtle, “Slow down you lunkhead.” For a snail traveling [...]

In a world that seems to have turned upside down and has a massive and ugly dividing line between so many people, perhaps it is helpful to look both backward and forward. Did you know that America was entirely up in arms about the possibility of a Catholic being elected for office back in 1928? [...]

Just because a watermelon calls you, you don’t have to take it home. This is a critical thing to know. And of course, I’m not talking just about watermelons. Come with me. I promise it will make sense. As long as I have been buying watermelons, I’ve bought them in a particular way. And I [...]

One morning after watching Del drive off to his work in the woods, I headed to my home office to do my work. I had already taken care of answering pressing emails, and I was all set to do my writing for the day. Writing is not a simple or easy thing to do. Being [...]

Have you ever stopped to think how often you’ve been protected and didn’t notice? Protection is something that happens so often we often don’t realize it. But, what about all the times we’ve tripped, almost pulled over into a car beside us, banged our head, walked into the street without looking, and were protected? Thinking [...]

Looking for writing ideas, I decided to go for a walk. Out into the world, where all ideas are waiting for me to catch a glimpse of them I didn’t have to go far. I stepped off the back deck just in time to see a tiny house wren hopping after a moth and catch [...]

This is the year of the chipmunks. Not sure why. Maybe there was a blackout one night, and all the chipmunks in our area spent the night making babies. For whatever reason, this year chipmunks had taken over our garden. Chipmunks are adorable. And destructive. Put the two together, and that means we trap them. [...]

I looked up and saw a miniature Native American chief in full dress walking on the edge of my deck. Okay. Not. But, for a minute my imagination took me there. And what I really saw was almost as astonishing as what I imagined. I have been reading the She Who Remembers book series by [...]

Mother’s day is a day we all celebrate because every one of us has had a mother. But, it could be more than a day of gifts and food. It is the perfect time to reevaluate how well we mother the people, places, and things in our lives. How well are we doing? Because not [...]

Sometimes I have no idea what to do with myself. Usually it is because there is so much to do. When it gets to be too much, I don’t want to do anything. Or I have so much on my mind, I don’t know what is the most important, so I don’t feel like thinking [...]

My sister wrote me and told me I was pronoid. Was she saying something nice? It had to be, it was my sister. So I looked it up in the urban dictionary. Yes, I am. Are you? It appears to be a condition I was born with. I can’t remember a time that I didn’t [...]

For a few winters, I forced Narcissus bulbs to bloom in our home. I wanted their beauty while the wind raged and the snow fell. We watched their growth from bulb to bloom with anticipation and joy. One year I put the bulbs in different glass containers on top of rocks, added water, and placed [...]

Football and I are casually acquainted, but it often inspires me. What I love most about it is the artistry and awareness that can develop between players. The most visible sign of this connection is between the quarterback and the receiver of his passes. There is nothing more glorious than watching a receiver make a [...]

I didn’t always have bird restaurants at my house. In fact, living in the city, spending twelve hours a day in my thirty sixth-floor office, I rarely saw them. Until one day, a bird ate my peanut and then something shifted, and I became a bird watcher. I had gone away for a week by [...]

We run three bird restaurants at our house. We placed them as close as possible to windows, so we always have a clear view of the endless stream of the many kinds of birds that come to dine. While I watch the birds through the window, I often carry on conversations with them, although probably [...]

To do great work a man must be very idle as well as very industrious. — Samuel Butler In front of me, the clouds swirled patterns of multiple shades of gray like a watercolor on canvas. Behind me, wisps of gray were taking over the white clouds in the blue sky. Around my feet the [...]

At our resent Shift Gathering Retreat, Del had the members of the group sit outside for about fifty minutes every day. Their task was to be still in nature, and to note what they saw, felt, smelled, and touched. In addition, they were to notice where they were sitting within the bigger landscape. Each person [...]

So sayeth the birds, animals, insects, and plants of nature. All nature not only knows this truth, but also lives it. We are different. We may know this truth, but we rarely live it. Instead, we pride ourselves on being able to do anything, and everything. When we are young, it’s good to know we [...]

They walked right through my screen door. I assured them I had done it myself, and I knew how to fix it. It’s a retractable screen door. This means that instead of stopping forward progress as a regular screen door would, it pops out of its tracks, and before you know it, you are on [...]

I love the idea of making the right thing easy, and the wrong thing hard. It’s simple, and at the same time has layers and layers of meanings. I first heard a horse trainer use it, but since we are always training our human minds, it is a perfect idea for us too. The obvious [...]

Have you ever stood in an empty football stadium? It is an awe-inspiring experience to stand in that huge open space. A space just waiting to be filled, a space with a complete understanding of its purpose, a space perfectly designed to fulfill that purpose. I had this experience during my high school reunion when [...]

One night I dreamed about a mouse. That’s all I remembered about the dream – a mouse telling me, “One thing at a time.” Del, with his years of nature and American Indian study, shared the meaning of mouse with me. It turns out that one thing at a time is exactly what a mouse [...]