A Prayer

In the book, "Home", by Marilynne Robinson, Jack struggles with alcohol addiction and is alienated from his large family. He returns as his minister father is dying, and one night at a family dinner, he reads the following prayer which he has written out on paper:

"Dear Father, you are patient and gracious beyond our understanding. . .You let us hope for forgiveness when we can find no way to forgive ourselves. You bless our lives even when we have shown ourselves to be utterly ungrateful and unworthy. May we be strengthened and renewed--to make us less unworthy of blessing, through these your gifts of sustenance, of friendship, and family."

Egret World

I follow an egret, white as bleached linen, as he shops in the high tide. The ocean breeze gives him a wild "bad hair" day. Daintily he paces on his spindly black legs, then, standing stock-still, he executes a deadly stab to a tiny silvery fish. With rhythmic gulping, the glimmering, twitching creature becomes breakfast. Suddenly he stops and stares directly at me from a distance of less than three feet. No fear of humans, he has seen too many tromping along this beach. He wings away, and dive-bombs at another egret several yards away who apparently has infringed on his territory. A brief glimpse into the World of Egret. . .feral, fierce, and fragile.

Long-time friends invited us to share in a fifth week of the year retreat to Puerto Vallarta, a welcome break from Midwestern cold!

A Favorite Quote

"Ancora impora" or "I am still learning" was scribbled in the margins of a sketch
by Michelangelo at age 87. Learning something new is one of the great pleasures of life!

Keeping Score

Ann Herbert has written a crazy parable about our fixation with numbers and keeping score. Think about test scores, salaries, bank accounts, etc.

In the beginning God didn’t make just one or two people; he made a abunch of us. Because he wanted us to have a lot of fun and he said you can’t really have fun unless there is a whole gang of you. So he put us all in this sort of playground park place called Eden and told us to enjoy.
At first we did have fun just like He expected. We played all the time. We rolled down the hills, waded in the streams, climbed trees, swung on the vines, ran in the meadows, frolicked in the woods, hid in the forest, and acted silly. We laughed a lot.
Then one day this snake told us that we weren't having real fun because we weren’t keep score. Back then we didn’t know what score was. When he explained it, we still couldn’t see the fun. But he said that we should give an apple to the person who was best at playing and we’d never know who was best unless we kept score. We could all see the fun of that. We were all sure we were the best.
It was different after that. We yelled a lot. We had to make up new scoring rules for most of the games to be played. Other games, like frolicking, we stopped playing because they were too hard to score. By the time God found out about our new fun, we were spending about forty-five minutes a day in actual playing and the rest of the time working out the score. God was wroth about that –very very wroth.
He said we couldn’t use his garden anymore because we weren’t having any fun. We said we were having lots of fun and we were. He shouldn’t have got upset just because it wasn’t exactly the kind of fun He had in mind.
God wouldn’t listen. He kicked us out and said we couldn’t come back until we stopped keeping score. To rub it in (to get our attention, He said), He told us we were all going to die anyway, and our scores wouldn’t mean anything.
God was wrong. My cumulative all-game score is now 16,548 and that means a lot to me. If I can raise it to 20,000 before I die, I will know I have accomplished something. Even if I can’t, my life has a great deal of meaning because I have taught my children to score high and they will all be able to reach 20,000 or even 30,000, I know.
Really, life in Eden didn't mean anything. Fun is great in its place, but without scoring there is no reason for it. . . We are all very grateful to the snake.

Reflecting on Thoreau

If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is that he hears a different drummer. Let him step to that which he hears, however measured and far away. Thoreau

As an adult, I respectfully acknowledge a number of friends and acquaintances who live their lives in highly original ways. The "different drummer" quote calls for a comfortable acceptance of others, and I deeply appreciate that attitude.

As a retired mental health professional,however, I grieve for the people I encountered who heard no drummer. They failed to march to any music, just wandered aimlessly over a vast plain of life with no fixed boundaries. Chaotic bouncing from one crises to the next.

One should be thankful to hear that invisible percussion that suggests a pace and a path to follow.

Carriage ride at the Plaza

(Locked out of my account for some strange reason, but I am back again now!)

On the day after Christmas, we went to the Plaza to take the younger six grandsons on a carriage ride to view the buildings outlined in colored lights. Crowded with shoppers, it was a magical ride in the darkness of early evening. After our ride,
we went to Winstead's for hamburgers. Richard asked for one ticket for our throng of people. My son-in-law protested and felt he should pay for his family. My husband replied, "No, I insist. The bill is much less than what it is going to cost you for one day at the nursing home for Carol and me!"

Just a little humor to get us through the current economic gloom. . .

"The Reivers"

"As jewels are polished bright by diamond dust, so minds are polished bright by other minds." Friends who love books gathered one day last week to talk about the novel, "The Reivers", and to watch the 1969 movie. Dialogue as written by Faulkner
was part of the screenplay, one of the best ever conversions of a book to a movie.
An intellectually stimulating day!