available from Wiseblood Books

"To become a child is a challenge to our courage. It demands, first of all, that we dare to grow up, to give ourselves to life, to accept life as it is, and above all, to accept ourselves as we are ….  

"One immediate result of accepting ourselves as we are — which is becoming simple — is that we stop striving to reach a goal which means becoming something that the world admires, but which is not really worth while. Instead, we realise the things that really do contribute to our happiness, and work for those. For example, we cease to want to be rich or successful or popular, and want instead the things that satisfy our deeper instincts; to be at home, to make things with our hands, to have time to see and wonder at the beauty of the earth, to love and to be loved."

~Caryll Houselander

My husband and I have lived a bit of all over the place but we currently live in California. Yosemite is probably my favorite place we’ve been. — Yosemite, and home. 

I read slowly, and reread what I love endlessly, so it is hard to choose favorites. But some of the authors I keep returning to are James Marshall, A. A. Milne, Beatrix Potter, Hans Christian Andersen, Katherine Mansfield, C. S. Lewis, Jane Austen, Ruth Pitter, Kathleen Raine, Sara Teasdale, Robert Hayden, Amado Nervo, Boethius, Dante, Aeschylus, Isaiah, the apostle John.  

I would love to hear anything you would like to tell me: isabelchenot@protonmail.com

When I see the land at evening,

When I hear its quiet heart,

I cannot hold onto sin.

I can grudge nothing.

I do not doubt.

When I see the silent mountain

and the dusky moth wing

sky; the fragile, tangled

grass; I know I will go out

with them. Touching their silence

and unaltering

spareness, and their honest meaning.

God, let me be what I ought to be by then.

Let me be worthy of these things.

Let me be such that I can make a part

of evening.

While all the frenzied living pass

let me touch God, and tender earth,

and tangled grass.