dance my way to heaven

Garrison Keillor had a group on his show singing the following:

"Two Hands" by Townes van Zandt!

"I got two hands
gonna clap my hands together
I got two legs
gonna dance to heaven's door
I got one heart, gonna fill it up with jesus,
and I ain't gonna think about trouble anymore"

That shining bubble of lyrics, rhythm, music and theology jumpstarted my day

Maybe my week.

Maybe even longer.

Lying in one's bed and making it

Lets take the concept of making one's bed.

Each morning, every morning you make your bed, don't you?

Why? You will crawl into it approximately 12 + hours later and mess it all up again.
Some say, why bother?

But bother I must! Nothing makes me feel less like leaving the bedroom and starting the day like an unmade bed! I smooth the spread almost fanatically free of wrinkles and see that the hem is hanging evenly, stepping back with a critical eye.

Somehow it seems to me that in the back of my head, I believe the day will be neater too if that bed is shipshape!

Or is it the desire to banish the night? Any evidence that the darkness was here and may return.

No, for me I think its just a desire to get one small step in the day off to a good start! No Freudian overtones, just, thank God, one thing under control!

Refuge

Take the word "Mama".

Tender. A world of meaning. I always called my mother "Mama" until I was a teenager and moved to the more dignified "Mother". I think all my sibs stuck with "Mama". Years later I was talking with Mother about this and she said she did the same thing as a teenager! I can still hear my aunts and uncles referring to Grandma as "Mom" and my mother using the title "Mother". Now, why I wonder, would we both have done the same thing. Curious.

But one time when I was squarely in the Mama days, my six-year-old friend and I were climbing the willow tree in her backyard. As often developed on those hot summer days, we had to spice up the action by daring ourselves to see who could climb the highest. Higher and higher we crept until I went a branch too far and crack! - the whole branch broke and I fell flat on my back from a substantial height, knocking the breath clear out of me. At the first tiny bit of speech I could generate came to gasp "M...a...m...a!! It is astonishing that I didn't break anything but the branch! And I was truly mortified after it was all over that I played the Mama card!

But there you have it - then and now - I turn to that holy of holies, my mother, in times of deepest emotion. I know it will all feel better if I can just get to her side.

Days which will live in infamy

I am listening to a book called Garden of Stones by Sophie Littlefield - a wrenching, but fascinating story of a young Japanese girl and her mother who were part of the Japanese internment at Manzanar after the bombing of Pearl Harbor. The bleak horror of what they had to endure was not new to me as an adult, but what I'm puzzled by is why I never heard about it as a child. Granted, the camp was closed in 1945 - too early for me to know then, but I never recall studying about it at all. I was expressing my dismay to a friend about how we uprooted thousands of innocent people in one fell swoop and left them essential prey to the climate and the power struggles within the flimsy camps. She said simply, "Remember it was war and we were circling the wagons."

Reminds me again how I hate war in all its grotesque disguises.

Book Group

What is more sweet than a group of women (with a stray man thrown in from time to time) getting together to - excitedly - discuss a book we have all read!

Seriously. What?

I lead a group that has been gathering since 2001. That's a lot of books. A lot of words. A lot of emotion.

But here's the thing. You read a book. I read a book. I think one thing. You think another. Yet in the sharing of those thoughts, edges blur and substance fuses. With my group I can pretty well guess by now, how the dice will fall, but still, I'm always surprised!

I thank God for curious minds, open hearts, kindness and laughter. Mix all those things together and you have a delightful hour dancing between the pages.

least of these

We choose
carefully
our targets
for righteous
indignation.

A child
abused
bullied
left in a hot car
malnourished.

But when they
wander into
politically
mined
borders 
 
we
are
silent.

Elementary, my dear Watson

Whenever I write a note at the Info Desk for a patron - writing down a call number, author, title, phone number - whatever - invariably someone comments on my handwriting. Now its not that I think my handwriting is bad - but compared to my dad's it's pretty ordinary! As a child we copied cursive letters from the large white-on-black alphabet letters that rested atop the blackboard, painstakingly shaping and measuring them to touch the appropriate lines on our special handwriting papers. We spent hours doing this!

In the gentle,spoof bragging that we did in our family, Dad always touted the Palmer method of penmanship he had to learn as a child. And boy, did he learn it! His handwriting held beauty - flowing, even, lovely.

I'm truly shocked to read that children of today are no longer necessarily being taught cursive writing of any kind, let alone Palmer! What kind of milestone have we reached when we assume there is no longer need for cursive writing? Does that mean - no hand-written notes of any kind - thank you, I'm sorry, I miss you, have a safe trip, happy birthday/bar mitzvah/anniversary/baby/graduation/father's day/mother's day/grandparent's day - nothing?

And will we block print both lines where documents say, "print" and "signature"?

And will typing just be the only way to communicate outside of talking?

The other day when a mother complimented me, I stepped on my soapbox. She said, "oh, I couldn't agree more. At our Catholic schools we insist on cursive writing."

To which I say, way to go Catholics!

 C'mon people. Palmer Method or not, we need to learn how to write!

After Arthur

I know on the beach-goers are sighing. Particularly, if this is their cherished summer vacation time. Arthur has brought buckets of rain along the coast, but what it has brought to us here in Northern Virgina is magic! Instead of the drone of a/cs we have open windows/doors and the washed sunny breezes are sweeping the house. Ahhhh.

To amend my mother's cheerful mantra - "Open all the windows, open all the doors, and let the merry sunshine in" I would add "merry wind" as well today.

Usually March winds get my attention, but this July wind is priceless.

last laugh

You know the days when you take to work a special kind of dessert (i.e., biscotti from Costco that are drizzled with chocolate, caramel and sea salt) in a little plastic bag that you intend to last a week – or perhaps just two days – and the sun doesn’t set on those suckers? Yep, that’s today.

What is it about those good intentions? They seem to have the staying power of mist. I step on the scales in the morning and say, “okay, today be mindful of everything you put into your mouth.” And truly, I am mindful – which ratchets up the guilt of indulgence exponentially! Those five pounds, that just seem to dance on and off my body at will, taunt me

 

Why is the last of a lot of things the stickler? I had a member of my book club, who had broken her ankle over winter, tell me that she met a “last step” support group! They were all injury-blessed people who had missed that last step on a staircase! Now going down any flight I look and look again, because I know how that last step gets taken for granted – you made it, crash!

 

I guess that's the key. Be mindful to the very end of everything! Don't just start the process.