- 4 min read

Self-care Saturdays: October 29, 2016

On Self-care Saturdays I share a collection of things to uplift and encourage from art to recipes to news and more. It’s all about sharing and passing love and beauty around. Have a beautiful weekend and take care of yourself and others.

This article by Zadie Smith on the connection between dancing and writing is inspiring. I used to dance (now I just dance in my living room) and I can easily see how dance can serve writing. I think this is true of all art forms. The two that I operate in the most are photography and writing. I absolutely use one to inspire the other. Though I don’t dance on stage or in classes anymore, don’t paint, don’t draw much anymore, and so on, I love appreciating and spending time with these other art forms and they help my writing and photography.

What can an art of words take from the art that needs none? Yet I often think I’ve learned as much from watching dancers as I have from reading. Dance lessons for writers: lessons of position, attitude, rhythm and style, some of them obvious, some indirect.

Be careful. This video may make you cry. I certainly did.

Children are so inspiring sometimes. This little boy has a beautiful heart.

The Narrative by Sho Baraka is definitely one of my favorite albums of 2016. It’s full of history, truth, the gospel, and more. It’s a beautiful and full body of work. I highly recommend it. Sho recently sat down with Forth District and did a long interview on First Spins where they go track by track. If you have time to watch the whole thing you can listen on sound cloud (below). Otherwise, I’ve also included the first 30 min. which they did in video. Buy the album here! First part of interview

Full interview

Gorgeous places

Rollin’ in #fromwhereidrone ]+[ 📸 by: @jannikobenhoff

A photo posted by From Where I Drone® (@fromwhereidrone) on Oct 29, 2016 at 9:33am PDT

Angry birds #fromwhereidrone ]+[ 📸 by: @gavman18

A photo posted by From Where I Drone® (@fromwhereidrone) on Oct 17, 2016 at 11:11am PDT

Do good.

This is a moment in history. The world is facing the worst refugee crisis since WWII. The number of people forced to flee their homes across the world has exceeded 50 million for the first time since the second world war, an exponential rise that is stretching host countries and aid organisations to breaking point, according to figures released on Friday. Half the world’s refugees are children. Many travelling alone or in groups are falling into the clutches of people traffickers. Sit with this a moment: If displaced people had their own country it would be the 24th most populous in the world. You’ve looked into the wide-eyes terror of those families in this river of refugees streaming out our worst nightmare, you’ve heard that more than 11 million Syrian refugees alone are fleeing their homelands, motivated not by economic betterment for their families —*but motivated to save their very lives* — to dodge any bullets because of war & the incomprehensible destruction that is ISIS. You’ve seen the heart-stopping photographs. And you know that the Love of God, for such a time as now,will not be stopped. You read the love letter to Aylan, the little drowned boy, and you know it in the haunted marrow of your bones that you witnessed the agony of those photos for a reason. The little boy who drowned, his broken-hearted father, he told us the reason: “I just hope that this photo of my son changes everything. We want the whole world to see this — so that they can prevent the same from happening to others.” God’s called you and your people, your community to be a bread carrier in a redemptive story. You’re profoundly moved by this historic crisis — and you are moved to Kingdom action. You and your people want to do something. Like with your hands. You have folded them in prayer — and now you want to become an answer to that prayer. . So we listened to your cry & we’ve partnered with The Justice Conference and World Relief to help connect you & a WHOLE lot of dots around the world — AND WE’VE MADE A PLACE FOR YOU TO RALLY YOUR PEOPLE AND MAKE SURE YOU’VE GOT YOUR NAME HERE: WWW.WEWELCOMEREFUGEES.COM #linkinProfile #WeWelcomeRefugees

A photo posted by annvoskamp (@annvoskamp) on Sep 8, 2015 at 7:49am PDT

Be encouraged.

I will never get over these words as long as I live. There is none like Jesus.

A photo posted by Jen Hatmaker (@jenhatmaker) on Oct 25, 2016 at 5:29am PDT