Living Every Day

“May you live every day of your life.” Jonathan Swift of Gulliver’s Travels fame.

An incredibly small cell somewhere in your body goes awry, as it multiplies, that could be it. There are fetuses, unborn, with leukemia. There are millions of people dying of cancer. Hopefully, for now, you’ve had a reprieve.

I thank God for every day that I wake up at 76, particularly not knowing I have that dreaded disease or the new one on the current frontier of fear, Covid-19. As Jonathan suggests we should LIVE each precious day. We just don’t know what tomorrow brings.

Speaking to the Heart

“One person’s weed is another person’s wildflower.” Susan Wittig Albertsons, an American author.

On the other hand in great art we seem to find the universal or common ground. It would be hard to find someone who found substantial fault with a Frank Lloyd Wright house or a Steinbeck novel or a cherished Rembrandt. Somehow, thank God, great art speaks directly to the heart.

The “Sweetest Songs”

“No poetry lives which reflects only the cheerful emotions. Our sweetest songs are those which tell of saddest thought.” Leslie Stephen, the late English author, and Virginia Woolf’s father.

I think the best of country music comes in the sad ballad when it filters up straight from the heart. It is somehow therapeutic to receive both the melody and the lyrics that come from the deep well of the human condition, mined by the composer/lyricist.

Thank you dear God for creating us in the face of loss with the gift of grieving, a chord that can be touched in song.

Closure

“Don’t let your failures define you. Let them refine you.” Callie Khouri, who wrote Thelma and Louise.

Failures are painful. But humans seem to do a lot better with difficulty than victory.

Watch a tennis match one day if someone is winning, and tries to close out the contest serving. Even Raphael Nadal a few times has lost that critical service from nerves. Some say in tennis, the one who chokes the least wins.

If you are behind, Kris Kristofferson had a point. “Freedom is just another word for nothing left to lose.” The player who is failing not infrequently turns the match around upgrading a failing game. If you are getting beaten, (“…nothing left to lose.”), by the grace of God, you can move and swing with more fluidity because you are free.

When we are failing, let’s view it as an opportunity to get creative in our approach to sport and to LIFE.

Grown-ups

“Women never have young minds. They were born three thousand years old.” Shelagh Delaney, the late English dramatist.

When I was a boy, I couldn’t help but notice even in first grade, the girls socialized a lot more than the boys. We mainly grunted and went down slides. The girls picked up reading readily. I felt like a dunce in their presence. They seemed eons older than me.

Time wore on and I entered adolescence, a period of occasional confusion. Was I a man or a boy?

The girls recognized they were becoming women. The boys grunted and went down slides.

Thankfulness

“There is not one blade of grass, there is no color in this world that is not intended to make us rejoice.” John Calvin.

As we await the joys of America’s Thanksgiving tomorrow, horrible days await some people in other parts of the world. By God’s grace most of you reading this live in safety and comfort. That alone is worth our gratitude tomorrow.

My late mother, who died 15 years ago today, once drove with me near our home in her old age. It was a dark, dreary day and looking just off the street she commented on the beautiful flowers lining the roadway.

Today I miss her gratitude. She meant the world to me, a woman who prayed for her three children each day.

Life and Love

“When I think of what life is, and how seldom love is answered by love; it is one of the moments for which the world was made.” EM Forster, the late English author.

So Kristine and I met in another century. That was slightly more than 3/4 of the 20th century that had passed. Our dating had a nine month gestation, and the marriage God birthed still survives.

Whatever differences we have had we have stayed together because we love each other too much to part. This was the one time in our lives that love was truly answered by love. Thank God for HUGE favors.

Timelessness

Facing the difficult by the grace of God.

Pilgrim on a Long, Long Journey

Aren’t we all on some kind of journey seeking more joy and love in our lives? At many points in our consciousness we are to some degree in our past, our present and our future.

The past would include the good and bad impactful moments of our childhood. We are hopefully in the present in not just a random but a mindful state. We are in the future with both the good plans that drive us and the fears of what might befall us.

That state can be timeless. To the Christ follower like me, it amounts to eternal life, now.

One of the beauties of that life as a follower is the drive to enhance one’s relationship with God and people. It is a long, long journey. However, one finds by experience and the Word of God that our Lord is very, very patient. He is filled with a…

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Uphill

“Everything else you grow out of, but you never recover from childhood.” Beryl Bainbridge, the late English author. She achieved Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire (DBE) in 2000.

We are such fragile creatures as children. We do not possess the defenses/strength we develop with maturity.We are much easier to break.

But nobody sets minimum requirements to parent. Some of those folks can’t get past a barrage of insults or worse.

Even if our parents were ideal others including bullies can stand in our way. For some kids it is remarkable they ever get to adulthood.

I think many of the adults who have managed some recovery did so by the grace and help of God.

Curious

“Strange, when you ask anyone’s advice you see yourself what is right.” Selma Lagerlof, was a Swedish author and the first female writer to achieve a Nobel Prize in Literature. She lived from the mid-19th through the mid-20th century.
I guess the experience she describes has occurred since the dawn of civilization. At least since the advent of civilization, we have spoken a language we could write.
You, the reader, have likely asked for advice and been struck with the right answer before you could even get a response. Perhaps some neuroscientist has an explanation, not an easy thing to google. I’ve tried.
The picture of our window shows a frost pattern I don’t understand as well. I guess it is just one of those mornings.