Weekly Series on the Soul, Part 24

+JMJ+ Welcome to part 24 of our weekly series on the soul and tonight I’m doing something different. With all that’s going on in the world—the craziness, the violence—I decided to focus on feeding my soul. And I’ll share what I found to help you feed yours, too.

I found and downloaded an ebook of the Complete Works of George MacDonald (1) after watching a film about him and his effect on Tolkien and Lewis. (2)
I’ve bought an inexpensive Lap Steel Guitar (3) and have been driving myself batty trying to play it. It’s quite different from a regular guitar.
I’ve been making friends with a cat who’s been living on my deck for the last few months. I can pet him when I feed him now. (And he’s only popped me once. Ouch!)
I’ve watched an inordinate amount of documentaries and nature programs. And I discovered a YouTube channel that is simply charming. Emma Massingale, horse, pony, dawg, cat, and who-knows-what-else whisperer. Warms my heart watching her with her animals, playing in the sand and surf in and around beautiful Scotland (I think they live in Devon, actually, but they do spend time in Scotland and other places).
And after a very long hiatus I finally have a poem project in the works. Here’s an early version of the first one so far. It’s a work-in-progress and the completed set may end up being different. Yep, there are other parts to it. I hope. ;) As the poetry project continues, I’ll open up a page for it and put it in the navigation menu at the top of the blog. :)

Thank you for visiting and reading. Until next time, whoever and wherever you are, I pray you are staying safe and well. May the Lord bless and keep you and yours, and may His peace be always with you. And don’t forget to tend to your soul, sacramentally if you can, but at least through prayer, Scripture, the Mass readings, the Rosary (join me on Twitter on Tuesdays and Fridays for that), and in other ways, too. +JMJ+

Notes and Links

The Complete Works of George MacDonald: Kindle. (I’ve noticed some annoying spelling errors so far and I’m sure they’re uncorrected OCR errors. But it’s really inexpensive so what the hey. (Affiliate link. See below for full disclosure.)
The Fantasy Makers: Tolkien, Lewis and MacDonald, video included with Amazon Prime. Interesting. It got me to finally go dig up some MacDonald to read and I learned even more about him after doing some research yesterday. I’ll be sharing more about him in time.
SX 8-String Lap Steel Guitar, electric, with detachable stand and gig bag: I got this one at Amazon. (Affiliate link, see below.) I’m enjoying making strange sounds with this thing, but I’m pretty sure Miss Lucy Dawg wishes it would break into pieces and throw itself out the back door or spontaneously combust. (Dang it, mom, how’d you know?) I’m keeping my eye on you, Miss Lucy. Nothing better happen to my guitar, ya hear? ;)
Emma Massingale, trainer of horses and ponies in the liberty style (No Reins, No Rules, No Limits! And lots and lots of fun and beautiful scenery and film.) Something about horses, ponies and all those other animals and the beautiful Scottish landscape (and all those other places, too) just makes my soul and my heart happy. I hope it makes you happy, too. We could all use some happiness right about now.

Images: a. The Antennae Galaxies are colliding. Astronomy always helps me feel better. The beautiful images from Hubble and other telescopes help me realize that the world is a much bigger place than I can even imagine. And stranger, too. b. The black and white image is mine. I loathe the way this WordPress theme renders poetry and I haven’t taken the time to work on the CSS yet. So I just put my poem, The Path, in an image and uploaded it. I have something a little fancier in mind for it later when I’ve gotten a bit further along. c. The image below it is The Flight of the Apostles, by James Tissot. Public domain. Oh, if only I could draw…

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