Août (August)

I walk without flinching through the burning cathedral of the summer.  My bank of wild grass is majestic and full of music.  It is a fire that solitude presses against my lips.  ~Violette Leduc

Tomorrow is the first day of August.

The last full month of summer, and the eight month of the year.

I have always looked at August as the prelude to autumn...the first notes of the golden orange and brown symphony that is close at hand.

I'm not sure what I think about all summer being so close to an end. I feel like I've barely scratched the surface of what I want to accomplish before the days grow short and the prologue to snow arrives.

The colour schemes of nature will change from the fresh summery greens and purples...fading into the rich and fragrant reds and gold tones of harvest.

I'm honestly not sure if I'm ready for the seasonal change.

Yes, I am going to eventually embrace the inevitability that the promises of God are eternal....autumn follows summer, an unbroken cycle until the end of days. And yes, I soak in the beauty of every season...I do not have a favourite, for each one has its own glories of inspiration.

But summer has not ended yet...I still have time.

Time to continue to work on my production of OZ!, which I do promise to write more about in the coming weeks....

...to have picnics of sandwiches and lemon drop fudge, to sip lemonade and eat ice cream cones by the riverfront...

...time to chase fireflies and count the endless stars in the clear country skies..,

...time to taste the freshness of sun-ripened fruit against my lips, and embrace the delicate flavour of every sort of berry imaginable.

August arrives tomorrow.

Fall will have to wait

just a bit longer.

Autumn is a second spring when every leaf is a flower.  ~Albert Camus

Village

Small-town USA
Photo by DramaticElegance 

Just a small town girl
Livin' in a lonely world
She took the midnight train
Goin' anywhere ~Don't Stop Believing, Journey


All of my life, I have been a small-town girl. 


While my heart is a little more big-city style...


...while I always complained throughout my entire teen years about how I can't wait to "get out of this town,"...


...how I spent summer upon summer planning my star-studded future in Chicago or NYC...


...my heart is melted here now. 


Tonight while my husband was at work, my mummy, daddy, and I piled into my parents' Jeep...


...complete with pillows, popcorn buckets, reclining armchairs, and fluffy blankets...


...and headed to downtown movie night!


Honestly, there is nothing better than Tangled to the tune of fireflies...complete with rather awful small-town guitar music, and right up next to the local ice cream parlour where white-chocolate-raspberry-fudge waffle cones await. 


This is the town I grew up in, the town in which I do theater.


This is a town so sweet and small that the police shut down an entire street for the locals to fill with lawn chairs and blankets, and the bank supplies steaming hot popcorn without a single cent in exchange. 


Spending the evening with my parents...

My amazing and wonderfully still-in-love parents
Photo by DramaticElegance

...laughing at the antics of my sugar-hyper daddy, recording snippets of video pre-movie for my sister overseas, and snuggling under blankets with my mummy while my daddy chats up almost everyone in town...


...that's a place I love to be. 


Small town girl. 


Big city dreams.


Here the two meet, 


and they meet well.

Just smell the grass! The dirt! Just like I dreamed they'd be! / Just feel that summer breeze - the way it's calling me / For like the first time ever, I'm completely free! / I could go running / And racing / And dancing / And chasing / And leaping / And bounding / Hair flying / Heart pounding / And splashing / And reeling / And finally feeling / Now's when my life begins! ~When My Life Begins, Tangled

(Also, speaking of adorable villages, Carlotta at Pastor's Girl's Ponderings is having an adorable Parisan giveaway! It ends tomorrow, so be sure to check it out and enter soon!)

Freedom

Do you hear the people sing? / Singing a song of angry men? / It is the music of a people / Who will not be slaves again! / When the beating of your heart / Echoes the beating of the drums. / There is a life about to start /When tomorrow comes! ~When Tomorrow Comes, Les Miserables

4th of July. 

To the rest of the world, this is just another day on the calender. No different than the 9th of March or the 24th of October. 

But to the United States of America, this day is monumental. 

Today we declared our freedom. 

Today we stood against the background of red, white, and blue, and took our place among the nations. 

We stepped from black and white to colour...from darkness to light...from candlelight to sparklers. 

We became the United States of America. 

But now, we are starting to fall back into our own habits. 

We are slipping from the light of freedom to the darkness of our own slavery.

We are not under the dominion of the King of England anymore...but nor are we allowing ourselves to be under the reign of the ultimate Holy King. We have switched from rebelling against the laws of man to pushing our backs against the laws of God. 

We have fallen so in love with freedom that we have fallen out of love with the One who held our hands and guided us here in the first place. 

If we try to erase God from every cornerstone of our nation's foundation, we will grind the stones to nothing and leave us in a pile of rubble.

Lives were lost and the streams ran red with blood to make our country free.

One life was lost and His heart was pierced to make our souls free.

We must never separate the two. 

If these two threads untangle, our freedom will unravel. 

"One nation under God." 

Photo by Abigail Dahl
PinkStudios Photography

In Him, we are free. 

Without Him, we are lost. 

So tonight,as lemonade mingles with the ice cubes in our glasses and watermelon juice drips down your chin...

...as the anthem plays and the star-spangled banner flutters in the breeze... 

...as sparklers flash and fireworks explode against the backdrop of the midnight sky...

...never forget the ones who died to give us this freedom, and never forget the One who died to give us the ultimate freedom.

Embrace your freedom,

but cling to Him.  

Do you hear the people sing? / Lost in the valley of the night / It is the music of a people who are climbing to the light / For the wretched of the earth there is a flame that never dies / Even the darkest night will end and the sun will rise. / They will live again in freedom in the garden of the Lord. / They will walk behind the plough-share / they will put away the sword. / The chain will be broken and all men will have their reward...~Epilogue, Les Miserables 

(I did a guest post today over at The Cupcake Dictionary, which you can read here.)