shouts of joy

Here we are at #teachersummercamp. Two of my teacher friends, Sonya and Chelsea, also took summer classes this summer. Sonya is a teaching principal at a small school in Oakhurst, CA and Chelsea is a teacher/chaplain at a school in Sacramento, CA. They are some of the best teachers I know with huge hearts and a passion for teaching about Jesus. I have enjoyed our #teachersummercamp adventures even though Sonya was at another campus several hours away, we've kept in touch. And every Monday we share/exchange articles, YouTube videos, or stories that we found entertaining or intriguing. These two women have been lifesavers over the past year. We started #teachersummercamp 6 weeks ago and have finally finished. They will start school again in just a couple of weeks. I'm glad that they are allowing me to stay a member in the teaching club even though I will be taking classes this year and substituting instead of teaching full-time. They bring sunshine to a cloudy day. Bes...

She said, "I was too afraid to change." And he answered, " We are afraid to change because we think that, after so much effort and sacrifice, we know our present world. We see that the mountains always stay in the same place. We see that fully grown trees, when transplanted usually die. So we say: "We want to be like the mountains and the trees. Solid and respectable." Even though, during the night, we wake up thinking: "I wish I was like the birds, who can visit Damascus and Baghdad and come back whenever they want to." Or: "I wish I was like the wind, for no one knows where it comes from nor where it goes, and it can change direction without ever having to explain why." It's nice to have dreams that we will have plenty of time in the future to do our traveling, and that, one day, we will travel. It cheers us up because we know that we are capable of doing more than we do. Dreaming carries no risks. The dangerous thing is trying...

It is unearned love -- the love that goes before, that greets us on the way. It's the help you receive when you have no bright ideas left, when you are empty and desperate and have discovered that your best thinking and most charming charm have failed you. Grace is the light or electricity or juice or breeze that takes you from that isolated place and puts you with others who are as startled and embarrassed and eventually grateful as you are to be there.  Sometimes grace is like a ribbon of mountain air that gets in through the cracks. -Anne Lammott