Last weekend, as an historic April blizzard dropped 18 inches of snow here in Minneapolis, I spent many hours on my laptop moving my blog from the site where it's been for 14 years over to the blog's page on my newer website, The Livelihood Project. (Here's the link for the blog over there.) I haven't closed the old website yet but likely will before year's end, redirecting the URL. As I moved content, I had the chance to revisit some posts I hadn't read in many years. While I didn't transfer over every single post– some of them just need to fade away–I was pleased that many stood the test of time.

Please bookmark the new site and plan on visiting it. If you are a subscriber, you'll soon get posts mailed out from the new site, through Mailchimp, but I still need to do a bit more work to transfer the mailing list. If you don't already subscribe but would like to, click this link. It will also give you option of subscribing to my Dear Reader newsletter as well.

Given that I just took a fresh look at my 740+ posts, I thought it would be fun to choose a post from each year beginning in 2004, a time when blogs were still a new thing. These posts really aren't "the best" but somehow caught my attention now. The links go to the posts on the new site. If you're curious, enjoy!

2004: Day one (the first post)

2005: Comic books as a work of providence

2006: The eye that blinks

2007: When the lights go down

2008: Pick a day, any day

2009: Grace on the floor and in the theater

2010: Mystery at the table

2011: Report from a funeral

2012: The art of work

2013: New Year's intentions

2014: A rule and writing

2015: The person(s) behind a book blurb

2016: To be a person on whom nothing is lost

2017: The free and the brave and the kind

2018: An ordinary day on repeat

~~~

[Photo: taken of the undulating bench designed by Gaudi at the Park Güell in Barcelona. It was the first photo header I had for this blog.]

Welcome to all of you who are immersed in everyday life, the common activities of caring for family and friends, working for an income, contributing to our communities. Conveniently, that opens quite wide the potential readership of this blog. That this blog is for those who are not only immersed in everyday life but also have a strong desire to keep their mind and soul strong and healthy may somewhat limit the potential readership, but not by much. After all, most of us want to move through life with joy and success and it is not hard to appreciate the role of thought and faith in this venture.

In my everyday life, I receive so much encouragement from quick e-mails I receive from friends at various times during the day. E-mails that include a quote, or a reminder of something to think about, or a challenge to think about or do something differently. E-mails that keep pulling me back from the frustrations of work or the overwhelmedness of another load of laundry and keep pushing me toward the deeper realities of life within the context of faith and within a community of friendship.

One of the deeper realities of life is that there is more to it than what we see on our to-do lists or the evening news. A significant part of moving through everyday life with joy and success is reminding ourselves of the abundant and amazing aspects of life, reminding ourselves of sources of strength, reminding ourselves of thoughts of a higher order. That's what I'd like to do in this blog. Remind you--and remind myself at the same time--of things we would do well to be reminded of. My messages to you will be in the form of quick personal thoughts, quotes, excerpts from my reading, and possibly some interviews with authors, as well as with everyday people like you and me.

Here are a couple relevant quotes:

"Certainly we cannot help thinking any more than we can help breathing, but, just as we can choose to breathe pure air in a pine wood on a high hill, we can place our mind where the images it will work upon will be of a higher nature." Ernest Dimnet from The Art of Thinking

"Whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable — if anything is excellent or praiseworthy — think about such things." From the book of Philippians

Grace and peace,

Nancy