Weekend update on DnA, and our Art House Hermitage building project we have been working on for the last few years:

After running an art community for many years, we are finally building an Art House haven on our own lands! A place to store us and all our metaphors, and haven others to integrate their spirituality and creativity under one Big Top Roof!

As our building project progresses, a few things I’m thankful for:
Our landlady in our temporary new place, is a global interior designer, so she gets us.
This amazing lady, helped us on our last renovation, and travels the world finding treasures curated towards her clients! And she gets that we are particular about even doorknobs, and have restored this old house, and met all the previous owners, and kept their story honored while adding our chapters to it! 
We like novels and our house is novel.
Thankful for that this season as we build our art house monastic studio on our lands. This space will also serve our neighborhood with creative workshops, and haven other creative folks and friends.
This lovely landlord gets eccentric and our particularity. Or, as my grandmother used to say of me- he is peculiar, but special.
You gotta watch out for those peculiar special people. We ride the special bus, and work in mysterious ways!
Anyway, thankful today, for our interior designer who is now also our landlady! Artists need other artists to survive, and in our case flourish, and expand “the pleasant lines of our particular inheritance”!
And we are excited about the new art house we got to design and dream up, and now watching incarnate! Working with a great international team of architects, designers, and now contractors, who all are enjoying working on this “soulful” project. More to come on the DnA (Derek and Amy) saga, as it continues!
The only problem so far, is that contractors and builders really like early morning meetings-via zoom and in person. We will never be morning people—alas! And I tend to only like meetings that I can tell jokes in, which is hard on Zoom! Timing is everything in humor!
Also thankful that our window frames for the new build are coming from France, and are hand made! And we’ve met all the folks who make them!
I like integrating the metaphors from our story, as Amy and I lived in Europe for many years. Our house will be international (even the materials), as it is inside of us! A global art house, haven for us and other special ones who will come this way! 
And it’s always good to have a creative and Grace-filled landlord in the meantime! Today’s thanks! In troubled times, we have a good landlord!
Better than I can say for my nation. But that’s another topic.
Today, just thankful for kind and empathetic landlords who care about the stories we are, and the long narrative of this land we are temporarily tending!
I look forward to seeing this dream incarnate, and to seeing all those who come under this Big Top and get blessed farther into their names and journeys and freedom to be themselves.
We are building it, doorknob by doorknob, so that when they come, this magical and hopefully inspiring refined circus like space will be ready for them.
Building requires wisdom, and wisdom always thinks of what comes after you, and what came before, and how you can add your part of the story to The Big Story we all share a part in.
We are trying to write in Love’s ink, our few chapters well, and honor in both directions! Previous generations and future ones-all of whom, I’m sure we will meet again eventually! Wanting to honor them!
We have tried to listen deeply to all those who have lived here (we got to meet the girls-now elderly-women who grew up in this old house! And have their family’s hand written blessing on our wall!), and all those who will be havened here in the future. But also add our own weird eccentric but refined fine art twist in the long tale we are all living in.
Building with awareness of what came before and what will become after, is the only way to go!
Thankful to be given the gift of tending the long story, and adding our touch to the long tone of it. Let’s hope we continue to do it with Love’s listening ears, and with Grace and kindness, as our landlady has shown us.
Because, I suppose, we are all temporary landlords while here.