Perspective

The night the first FBI bombshell announcement came out we were on our way to a Brahms concert given by a local choir. My anger/distress level was so high at that point, I thought - why am I even here in the quietness of this church. My soul is not ready.

But when the opening strands of music began, they seemed to begin plucking at the knotted chords of my anxiety and loosened them one by one. And my spirit began to lift above the debris of this election season. The exquisite harmony of these voices poured over me. I thought about what a gift these singers gave to me - a gift that took hours and hours of practicing and discipline - and here it was, handed to me, unwrapped but precious as jewels,

And I thought of Brahms and Trump.

Some things endure.

Some wash away with the first rain. 

I hope tomorrow we will be washed clean.

and the winner is

One of the clues to my morning crossword puzzle was "reply to Little Red Hen request" and as I joyously printed "not I" my mind flew back to a sunny kitchen in Hinkletown. I was at the home of a friend and we were playing the game Little Red Hen! I have no idea how it was "played" but I remember so clearly "who's going to help me grind this wheat?" and the defiant, "not I". No one wanted to help but everyone wanted to be in on the party when it was done. I never forgot the lesson through all these years. And I'm not sure we even played the game that many times because I have only the vaguest memories of the details, but the moral sure stuck!

Games, games, games - what did/do we learn through them? I think the strategy and execution is a high component - but surely the ability to gracefully lose as well as win has to be paramount. It is a life lesson that has to be swallowed over and over and over!

And it doesn't get any easier!

One-for One, Two for Two

The moment I enter the Antique Emporium I am transported back to my childhood - whether if be the metal lunch boxes, the tabletop radios, rolling pins, irons, depression glassware, glasses with flowers painted on them that were once filled with peanut butter, washboards, wooden high chairs, posters of 40's movies/songs/fashions - a whole world of nostalgia descends softly on my shoulders and I wander for hours, lost in the past.

Wednesday was no different. But when my eyes lit on a small square red box with the huge, bold letters in black," PIT", I stopped in my tracks! That was a game that hadn't even crossed my mind in 60 years! I opened it carefully and there on the first card that had "Flax" up in one corner, my eyes went to the middle of the card where men of the 30's, 40's (?) dressed in three-piece suits and hats were mobbed on the floor of Wall Street! I never knew what on earth we were trading as we yelled "two for two" or "four for four" at noisy games with the cousins on Sunday afternoons! Commodities and Hinkletown had very little in common!!

I was reminded again how time, though it gradually weakens the physical eyes, it sharpens the lens of understanding.

As I continued on I saw a Flinch box as well, which I hadn't revisited for years either - had I seen a Touring box, I'd have hit the long-lost Triumvirate!

That old time religion....games, games, games, in the "flesh" not on a flickering monitor. How they sweetened our hours.

all is well

This morning when I was walking around the lake, early, I looked up and saw the faint, full, outline of the moon.

Last night when I looked out the bedroom window I caught my breath! The moon was huge, lemony against the inky sky, riding high above the trees.

And now the sun was beginning to gild the day. I saw an overhead V flock of geese reflected in the lake. One flaming tree also deep in the lake as well.

The sun by day, the moon by night. Lovely symmetry. Safeguards from the world beyond.

straight from the heat

I heard the author Mary Carr say early this morning that nature means nothing to her.

Wow, that woke me up!

Nature means everything to me.

I know she grew up in a very harsh environment with alcoholic parents and the core of her existence was chaotic. On the other hand, I grew up in a loving wave of comfort and safety - and the wonders of the natural world were highlighted daily. Mother constantly pointed out the nuances of beauty each day, so the absorption of nature around us became as natural as breathing.

I understand how privileged I have been, nature-wise, all my life. I have fed off the beauty of the farmland and creek beds of Lancaster County, the forests of the Adirondacks, the rolling splendor of the Shenandoah Valley, the high wide skies of Kansas, the rocky crash of Newfoundland and now the last thirty years of Reston's architectural and natural exquisite construction. My soul is sated with beauty.

If I go to a city of concrete, steel, rushing people and traffic, lights, buildings, noise - cacophonies of the senses, I love it. For a day or two.

Beyond that I grow lean with longing for the sass of a jay, the disappearing twitch of a squirrel's tail, the crunch of leaves underfoot, the hard high blue skies, the lake diamonded in the rising sun, the scent of decaying wood - organic life coming at me straight from the source.

I'm a country girl, through and through.

This little light of mine

This morning I heard a quote from a Martin Luther King speech in 1968 - had to be just before he died - that contained the thought that Lincoln enacted the Emancipation Proclamation but there were no accompanying tools to go with it. He said it was like telling a prisoner who had spent years and years in prison for some crime he never committed in the first place - "you're free to go" but then never even giving him bus fare to get to town. You need to build infrastructures to freedom and justice.

How true.

And how quickly society judges failure as proof the experiment never should have been tried.

From our individual corners we can't solve all the social problems of the world, but we can be kind each day. Kindness. The world cries out for it.

 And who knows, those random actions may morph into bus fare.

In the moment

An NPR Storycorps segment on Friday featured a Hospice chaplain and her 9-yr-old son. The son had accompanied his mother on one of her workdays to visit patients with Alzheimer's. She commented how she loved that he talked to them completely in their moment, not trying to correct them about anything.

And I thought, how beautiful.

It seems to me that it is one of the toughest things to do - employing  that childlike acceptance and just listening to people, particularly people in pain. It is so instinctive to rush in with advice or personal experience or counsel of any kind. We want the pain to be corrected and thus disappear, making their lives and ours consequently smooth again.

The young boy listened.

When she asked him what he took away from the visit he said that he thinks he understands that he should enjoy the good things in life, because sometimes there are bad times.

Wow. Message of the morning received.