I have only just a minute

One month of 2019 is essentially in the books!

How can that be? I could go into a full tilt panic to realize Christmas is just 11 months away!! It's fascinating to me to look back over the years and see how my concept of time has changed. I guess the lens is especially clear with the advent of retirement - and the savoring of every sweet unscheduled moment. 33 years of happy service, but oh the stark contrast of open calendars now! So to me it should naturally follow that I can slow time down appreciably.

Wrong.

It's not that I feel busy, but despite the fact of little external structure, daily self-imposed routines shepherd the moments along just as surely as a work schedule. True, they can be hijacked at a moment's notice because you are your own supervisor, but I think one would have to be in a world without people or purpose of any sort to truly rein in the moments.

The days are like incidents way, way back in my memory when we attempted to cross a brook or stream. We jumped to the first stone, wobbled and looked for the next safe landing, and the next and the next until we reached the other side. We rarely retreated, but were drawn on by the precarious position of being midstream.

And before you can say "bob's your uncle" the day is done!

I dare not mourn one single moment passing too quickly as long as I have a happy heart, healthy body and comforts of the hearth.

 Bring on life however fleeting! - and frigid at the moment!

Little grains of sand

When I taught Literature to Grades 8-11 in a small fishing village in Newfoundland many years ago, it would have been hard for me to envision where those intent faces staring back at me might end up in the years to come! When we arrived at our village in the mid-60's the rest of the world was just beginning to encroach through the magic of electricity - and thus TV, of course. Before that most of their entertainment was home-grown: now the world came calling. 

I had the usual curve of bright students at the top, normal achievers, and under-achievers. One girl in Grade 9 had a particular sparkle in her eyes. She had us to dinner at her house in a nearby village and I believe we had lobster, pulled from her father's trap that morning. I sensed in that family a curiosity about the world.

Several months ago - now fifty plus years later - I discovered that girl is now the author of at least eight books, president of some worldwide motivational organization, and according to Facebook a world traveler!! I am flabbergasted! When we connected through FB she quipped that were it not for encouragement from people like me she still would be gutting fish in NFLD!

Well God bless the fish-gutters and the world travelers both - we need each of them! But it just illustrates the point that teachers never, ever know what type of soil may receive those randomly flung seeds of knowledge! And how far those who sat and listened might travel beyond their guides!

Poison ivy and bare feet

I am struck each time I get together with any of my sibs and we start reminiscing, how much it seems like we are talking about some imaginary family! It just feels so removed from the person I am now. And how delightful the story! In viewing anything from a distance you fail to see the warts and imagine only smooth, seamless surfaces. Of course there was many a skinned knee along the way! 

But reading an account of my father - whom I adore in long-range, short-range, any range you pick - of how he picked up my brother and lifted him over a stone threshold because there was poison ivy growing there and my brother was bare-footed, brought such a rush of new love for him through my veins. 

There is generalized love and then there is the straight to the heart love of a father who lifts one above the poison ivy of life.

no problem

Oh the blessed relief of a doctor's pronouncement that a skin discoloration you had agonized about for weeks, was just fine! A plague on that age-old conundrum of worrying without verification. Do we really think things are going to "go away" on their own? Well, in truth, some things do, but I have to constantly preach to myself, if that little ailment is just hanging around, bite the bullet and get it tended to - be it teeth, skin, aches, pains, palpitations! I can talk myself out of them all! But finally there comes a day! 

And in light of the times that unexpected real horrors pop up out of nowhere, give thanks for the strawmen that we created who are destroyed with a kindly smile.

ammendment

My friend
once
drew 
harsh,
red,
sand lines 
about
abortion,
homosexuality,
transgender issues.
divorce,
etc.

Until 
death
came
knocking,
on her family door.

Now
her aching heart
is
ajar.

Black
and
white
merged gray,
because 
Life is
too winged
for
never.

the light of mine

The good lord knows I love candles!

Candles automatically mellow my mind. I love the flicker of drafts, I love the smoke, I love the waxy puddles, but most of all I love the sense of light. A flick of a match and you have created light! What was previously ambient light from electrical fixtures or sunlight is now an intensified flame of warmth - physical and spiritual.

We have always burned lots of candles in our homes wherever we are, and not just at holidays, but the day by days. Candles bring that inexpressible softening to a dinner table, bedroom, bathroom, easy chair table. Dancing life in the midst of systems.

In this present world where the systems seem so muddled and despair so imminent, I will light my candle. I won't change the world, but my heart will sing a small song. 

And who knows, more people might join in the chorus!

blow the man down!

This is a day for the "fisherman's horn" to blow! 

I think I've written before about the transom on the front door of my childhood home that had some crack in it - or at least a space for the wind to elbow in on a really blustery day and set off a racket! In some ways it reminded me of an eerie foghorn at sea. It certainly got our attention as kids! I can't remember the first time it blew of course, but I do know that no matter how old I got in that house and heard the blow, my imagination soared! In my current house I hung a windchime outside my bedroom window ages ago and while it is getting a tinkling workout these days, it is but a weak emulation of the transom of old.

 Wind is a magical thing! As I age - though I love it still - to me wind is the most feared of all the elements. True, snow/rain/sleet/fog can cause as lot of havoc depended on your location at the time. But if you are home, safe and sound, and all those elements fall upon you, it's not a crisis. Whereas, the constant roar of the wind these past two days is truly ominous, inside and out. 

Man proposes - but the powerful, prowl of wind disposes.