It's Not About the Wreath

OK, maybe it's a little about the wreath. It's glorious.

We cobbled this together last week with some things we found around the house. It hangs in my kitchen and reminds me of all that's fabulous.

It's a little bizarre, I suppose, that we had all of this stuff just lying around the house.

We walk in glitter, we dwell with painted plumes. 
The jingling of shiny bells grace our footsteps 
and disposable cookware is always handy. 

You know it made me think. You were expecting this. You know it's not about the wreath. Although it is a glorious wreath and one, I believe, should be left up year round. We shall see about that.

In the meantime, it's not about the wreath.

We do not, in fact, leave trails of glitter like fairy dust behind us when we walk. We leave mud and leaves and sometimes mysteriously bad smells behind us around here. We also leave doll clothes and Legos and socks and crumbs and yarn and tiny bits of paper. I sat on my couch the other day, knitting. I wondered rather suddenly Why does it smell like feet in here? I wondered this because, lest you gag and never visit me, it doesn't always smell like feet in here. Of course I did what any reasonable person would do and breathed through my mouth and went back to my knitting. Later I was vacuuming the couch (it happens) and removed the cushion to find no less than six pairs of dirty, smelly little monkey socks stuffed between the cushions. There was some blustering, perhaps some roaring This is disgusting! There was some scrambling and some apologizing and some whisking away of dirty socks - probably to be stuffed behind beds.

But it's not about the socks, either. Not really. (Although I can tell you, that afternoon it was all about the socks.) It's about this: life is messy and it sometimes stinks. Really, really stinks. It's so easy to walk around the chaos and see only the work to be done, only the clutter and disaster and to smell what is rancid. Sometimes you have to bellow about it and get stuff straightened up to your liking. Sometimes you have to stop and make a wreath from a disposable pie tin.

All that beautiful glittery fantastic stuff was already in our house. It was there all along. It wasn't all put together nicely, it wasn't even in the same rooms. Some of it was hidden in cupboards, some of it we pulled off of other things. Some of it we forgot we had. If I had grabbed what was immediately at hand, our wreath would have been made of smelly socks and half-eaten sandwiches, coffee grounds and leaves tracked in on shoes.

We had to look for what was beautiful. We had to make the effort. We had to see new uses for old things, we had to alter some of the things we had, we had to think hard about where we might find things to add to our creation. It was a collaborative effort, with each adding their own ideas, bringing their own bits of treasure to share.

The act of creation.
The act of collaboration.
The act of finding what is beautiful.
The act of bringing all that together in a greater whole.
These are sacred acts. They are acts that move mountains.

They are also the acts which decorate my kitchen on a budget.

But it's not about the wreath, is it?