From the Archives: Creating a Lifegiving Home, Preparing a Lifegiving Table

Sally Clarkson (0:10)

Hello, my friends, and welcome to Life with Sally podcast. I'm so glad you're here. So please make yourself a cup of tea and come on in.

Hello, my friends, I'm greeting you today from my third floor apartment, my third floor flat in Oxford. It's a gorgeous day. I just had a little breakfast with my son, Joel. I've been seeing my, all of my grandchildren. I have five from Sarah. And of course, Joy has the most beautiful little boy that we're visiting off and on this week. And I couldn't be happier. It's so fun for me to be speaking to you from Oxford because it's one of my favorite places in the world, primarily because my people are here, and secondarily is because it is such a familiar place. I know where the stores are. I know where the, just the beautiful buildings. I know where the theater is, the grocery store, the river, the places to walk. It's my place because it's familiar to me in ways that I love. And I know that I have had the most wonderful staff and help who have been putting up my podcasts on Tuesdays. But evidently, some of you haven't been able to find them. So today, one of my lovely assistants is going to attach this week's podcast to my social media so that you can listen to one of the favorites of all the podcasts that women have gone back to over and over again.

And so I'm so glad that you are here. I'm approaching 10 years of podcasts and 1,000 episodes. Can you believe it? And some of you have been there the whole time. But after all these years of sharing my life and encouragement with you, there are these episodes, some episodes, that have particularly resonated with my listeners. I'm looking forward to sharing several of these episodes with you over the next few weeks while I take a little bit of a break. I don't know. I think at 73, I might need to take a break from some of the constant work that I love and is coming my way. But I'm kind of trying to figure out how I can spend more time with friends and family.

My podcast is kind of like opening the door to my home and welcoming you in and saying, this is what I've been thinking this week, or how I would love to spend time with each of you, over a cup of tea, coffee, coke, whatever. My heart to encourage and to equip women, mothers, and families, led me to create another place where you can hear me. And that's in my membership site, Life with Sally. It's a treasure trove. I mean, literally a treasure trove of resources that we have created for a membership site.

I try to invite you into the different rooms of my mind and my heart and my soul. And we might sit in my library with a cup of tea and discuss education and Awaking Wonder or books. We have lots of book reviews and Awaking Wonder unit studies every single week. We explore nature, we explore reading aloud. Then we might go into my kitchen and prepare some of my favorite meals. I have so many recipes that my gourmet cook, brandy friend has put on the line online.

And to discuss the importance of a life giving table, rich with words, with meaningful conversations, with rhythms and feasting. We may go to some of my favorite places in the house, the living room, sharing a Bible study together, where I've had many, many women there for counseling, for Bible studies, and for discussion. We might discuss how to create a life giving home, listening to the great composers. We have a whole unit on the great composers, as well as some of the greatest artists. We might look at beautiful works of art together. All of these discussions and more, a whole, like all of my tapes that we recorded for my conferences for 23 years are also on my membership. So as I share some of my favorite episodes with you from the archives in the coming weeks, I hope that the post and the show notes for that episode will include samples of how you can dig deeper and receive more encouragement by finding more of these podcasts and more resources by joining Life with Sally. And I have to tell you that I'm so grateful for so many people to be a part of it because it truly helps us pay our many staff that we have and our translators for Spanish resources which we keep getting more permission to do.

It helps pay for our secretarial and all the charges that we have to make on outreach and computer and just all the different things. So thank you for being a part of that. But mostly, I just want to wish all of you really well. I want to wish you a time where you can find peace and relax and not feel compelled to do all the work. That's where I am right now. I'm absolutely having such a blast. I may never go back to anything again. I may just sleep and eat and have fun the rest of my life.