Laura Bruno Lilly

The road ends, but the journey continues...

Tag: inspiration (Page 7 of 7)

You Are My Only One (these 36 years) And I Still Believe In We

June 17, 2014 /

James Taylor with attitude

My hubby Terry’s twin (?)


Those baby blues.  That attitude.
My future husband, my lover, my BE-ONE…and oh yes, he looks just like James Taylor.
What’s not to like?
Most of our family and friends know the story of how we met.  Truncated version: Terry as best friend of my then fiancé convinces said fiancé to dump me and the rest is history.  While it certainly was God’s plan for us to be married, it might not have been exactly His way of getting us together.
Over these past years we have celebrated June 17th in various ways.  Our first anniversary we did the ‘eat the frozen wedding cake top’ thing in our little square cinder block married student housing house.  Living on love in the midst of typical newlywed poverty those first years proved to produce a firm foundation to our new union; along with three children!
Our tenth anniversary we threw a huge backyard party celebrating the fact that we had made it together that long.  Sadly, many we knew who married the same year as we did, were no longer together.  This was also the year in which we followed the dream and took a leap of faith in starting our own business. Continue reading

Celebrations & Inspirations

May 16, 2014 /

Note: In keeping with the theme of this previously written Swimming with Swans vignette (2012), we celebrate in spirit with our daughter Hava as she receives her J.D. degree this weekend (2014).

Celebrations and Inspirations

from-Swimming with Swans: vignettes of our three journey between homes
May 2012 (Westminster, CO)

In honor of this time of year: a time of graduations, weddings and new beginnings.  It is a time of celebrations and inspirations.

  • Bobby is graduating College with a BFA in Studio Art this weekend.
  • Our daughter Michelle is getting married in September.
  • Our son Joe is in a few new bands and learning to balance work, play and school as a bachelor guy.
  • My husband and I are faithfully walking the life-path before us regardless of its many mysteries.
  • A colleague and friend Bill, has survived two years of intense cancer treatment and is entering into a new cancer-free life.

And there’s more, oh so much more to be thankful for and to celebrate… Continue reading

Peace Post – Passion Scars

May 9, 2014 /

Peace, love and happiness don’t just happen.Passion Scars by Peter Steele

These qualities arise from a life of intent, purpose and passion.
Passion leaves scars.  Scars are not bad.  Scars are proof.

Imagine the scars of love on the risen Christ while walking the road beside Thomas.

“Reach here your finger, and see My hands; reach here your hand, and put it into My side; and be not unbelieving, but believing.”*

Proof that it is He.
Passion leaves a legacy.
Consider the statues of Easter Island.  horses on Easter IslandLong thought to be created using slave labor, researchers now believe the Moai were fashioned as part of a community ‘Passion Project.’  Many generations hauling and carving stone, raising the giant heads all to honor those who had gone on before them.  Passion to make those they loved ‘known’ beyond their short time on earth.
Peace, love and happiness don’t just happen.
Passion is not without its costs. 
Passion leaves scars.  Scars are not bad.  Scars are proof.
*John 20:27

Credits: Photographer Peter Steele’s latest body of work, Passion Scars Peace, Love and Happiness documents the carving in aspen trees from Steamboat Springs to Telluride, Colorado. Steele has identified four groups of people who carve in the aspen trees: sheep herders, elk hunters, the casual car camper, and homesteaders.Steele’s image of the oldest carving in the collection, dated 1922, was taken in an old growth aspen grove outside Telluride, CO. While Steele does not condone the act of aspen graffiti, and does not carve in trees, he enjoys searching and documenting these sacred messages that people have passionately expressed on the smooth canvas of the bark of the aspen tree. Peter Steele’s collection consists of 2000 tattooed aspen photographs recorded while hiking hundreds of miles of trails throughout Colorado.

Story of a Kitty & Remembering Tripod

December 7, 2013 /

Once again I find myself in Colorado visiting Dad while in the midst of record breaking weather.  The Deep Freeze temps that usually occur during the National Western Stock Show in January have arrived earlier this year.  Family and friends are beginning to joke about my visits bringing crazy weather; first the 1000 year flood and now this.  If this keeps up, those same friends and family might not be so happy to hear of any further visits I’ll be making!

The unseasonably bitter cold has brought out concerns for the neighborhood stray cat where my brother and sister-in-law live.  It seems there is this kitty who was once a beloved house cat, living an indoor life in a home just kitty corner (!) from my brother and sister-in-law.  This lovely feline had an adoring owner who passed on about three years ago.  Kitty’s inherited owner took no interest in claiming her, causing Kitty to become an unwilling outdoor cat.

As with most strays, she makes her daily rounds; surviving better than most because of her winning personality and because her territory is within a nice neighborhood.  According to my brother, she is the perfect stray to take in and call your own.  Kitty has tried to adopt various humans, but with little success.  Mostly because she is technically someone else’s pet.  In the case of my brother and sister-in-law, they accepted Kitty’s offer at one time, trying to incorporate her into the family.  Unfortunately, the household’s menagerie of permanent and semi-permanent pets didn’t accept Kitty into their gang.

So adopting Kitty was not an option. Continue reading

Dad's Got His Groove On

October 1, 2013 /

Right now, this very moment, something normal, something comfortable, something so very ‘Family’ is happening: Dad is blowing his horn. After weeks of fooling around with re-organizing his music, the bane of us musicians which can become more procrastination than need, Dad’s got his groove on.  He is blowing long tones on the mouth piece, testing out his own custom hand-shaved reeds, adjusting tension on the ligature; just about all the stuff a sax-man needs to get ready to start in on a serious practice session.  Ahh, the riffs, the scales, the bits of favorite tunes, with squeaks here and there as attempts are made to blow those flashy odd harmonics, reachable only by a select and sacred few like my dad.

Dad in his new digs

Dad in his new digs

Even with those super sax-man lungs he’s developed over the years, at age 90 Dad’s biggest hurdle at the moment is more with the stamina required to play a full set.  And yet, I’d give it a couple weeks at the most for him to break through that temporary barrier.

Dad is my inspiration as a musician.  Dealing with skin cancer on the top of his bald head, he loves to recount the story of how he got it in the first place…all my friends had to work days, but I got to lay out on the beach along Lake Michigan and sunbathe since I worked the clubs and joints at night.  It’s almost a badge of professionalism for him, though he advises this generation to stay out of the sun.

Dad at cemetery

A private moment

For the six years since Ma passed away, he put his sax down.  While he kept up a semi-regular practice routine, his (he)art just wasn’t in it.  In this difficult stage of his life, he laced up his dance shoes and began stepping to the music of others. An odd juxtaposition as the pull to play the music was ever nipping at his cha-cha heels.

Just two days moved into this Independent Living apartment and I get to listen to the sounds of my childhood, the background noises of everyday living in our home, the ever present music.  Not from some recording or old radio  show, but coming from the (he)art of our Family’s home: Dad’s horn.

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