For my first entry on my blog, I thought I would explain what inspired the title, Sunday View. Like so many all over the United States, 2009 was a very difficult year for my husband and me. September 22, 2009 marked our 25th anniversary, as well as the third year that we had been underemployed. We've really had to learn how to once again appreciate the small (and inexpensive) things in life, like playing Scrabble, going for walks, and just being with each other.
One Sunday after church, we drove by a local Chumash Indian Museum, and in perfect sync we both said "I've always wanted to go there." That moment showed us just how carefully fused our souls had become in the past three years and should have been a sign to us of the enchantment to come. We opted out of the museum tour, and instead took the free walk through the wooded grounds that surrounded it. We felt as though we had journeyed into an undiscovered world as we stepped onto the path covered with trees that towered over us and expanded into the sky, letting in just enough sunlight to play with the squirrels that bounced and ran through the knee-high sage brush. Chunks of massive stone cliffs met the sky in the distance, and a bright, trickle of a creek wound around the trail.
Our cares left behind in another world, we began to relax and breathe again. Time seemed to stop in those woods, just as it had for me when a little girl, swaying back and forth and turning ever so gently in a tire swing tied to a great elm in the back yard of our house in Tennessee. The same view as I looked up into the strong trees that expanded over me now. The same reassuring sun asserting its presence through the branches. Time seemed to stop that day, just as it had when I was a girl. We could relax. We could breathe. Time was suspended just so we could appreciate the beauty and be part of it. I knew this was a special view of the world that usually doesn't happen amidst the busyness of the week. It was a Sunday View, and I wanted to capture it in my spirit and hang onto it all week.
