Where I went today

 This morning Hebe and I caught the train up from Hastings to spend the afternoon in London’s Trafalgar Square, joining with several thousand other people of goodwill to sit for peace.

Thich Nhat Hanh, Vietnamese peace activist and Buddhist monk, had brought his fellow monks and nuns from Plum Village, their community in France, to speak about sowing the seeds of peace in our daily lives.

An extraordinarily beautiful soul, he is now 86 years old, and it was a wonderful thing to have the opportunity to sit quietly with so many others who care about the wellbeing of the Earth and the human community, and be led in peaceful reflection on how the way we speak to one another may transform our relationships.

On the video, the song you hear is not just some random music dubbed over, but is a recording of the chant the monks and nuns sang and the people all round the square joined in.

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365 366 Day 91 – Saturday March 31^st   

  (if you don’t know what I’m talking about, see here)  

    

Blige!  (Oh – family exclamation – hailing possibly from an archaic usage of “Oblige me!”)  How many of these darned things did we have?  Obviously we were feeling low and I thought we needed a lot of inspiration!  Well they worked; we were inspired, we did it – we’re OK now (for the time being anyway!).  So we sent them on their way to inspire another set of despairing people.  I think these cards might have come from our days of Maximum Intervention by builders, scaffolders and solar installation engineers.

Queen Wasp

 We had this queen wasp in our house.  She came in through the studio door that leads out onto the veranda, and had a good nose round.  Evidently she was in search of the perfect place to make a nest. 

The studio really appealed to her, full of nooks and crannies and nice little places that looked just right for a wasp.

Best of all – she came back to have another inspection today – she liked the look of the organ stop board that Hebe and Alice are painting on commission for someone with a home organ.  

Wasp heaven.

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365 366 Day 90 – Friday March 30^th 

  (if you don’t know what I’m talking about, see here)  

    

Oh, these were a bit more cheery.  I liked these ones.  But hey, you get the hang of it after a while, if you know what I mean, and start to think, “All right, all right!”

It's about time

I love our clock – well, Hebe’s clock really now.

It doesn’t so much tell the time as just kind of chat about it in a random, roundabout kind of way.  It’s not a very focussed clock, as such. 

Time is obviously its obsession and central purpose, but it has a more philosophical and questioning approach than most clocks, and is essentially committed to mystery.

It yearns toward the greater realm of eternity where time loses its meaning, and the quantum world where electrons can visit the past and the future at will.

All clocks (the old-fashioned ones, not the digital ones) like to tease with a little ambiguity of course; they let you decide for yourself if it’s midnight or noon, but being accurists at heart they don’t make the puzzle too hard.

Not our clock.  It’s the cryptic sort.  You wouldn’t be able to make any kind of deduction at all as to what the time is by looking at the numbers on its dial.  In the picture, for example, you can see it's talking about elevenses (maybe it's feeling peckish?) but that might have been at breakfast time, or some point in the afternoon.

If it told something other than the time, the days of the week for example, conversations might go like this:

Self: What day of the week is it today?

Clock: Yellow.

Self: What?  I mean, is it Thursday?

Clock: Fart! Hahahahaha!!!!

That is the approach it takes to telling the time.  It is the Timothy Leary of clocks, the R.D.Laing of timepieces, sent to liberate us from our mindless slavery to the crushing regime of schedules and timetables by which we become all too easily enthralled.

It may not tell the time exactly, but I think it is telling us something very important – only I’m not 100% certain what that is.

When Alice and Hebe were very small – maybe about three, I got them a teaching clock to learn to tell the time (Ha!  In my dreams!).  They really couldn’t get the hang of this system, no matter whatever which way I tried to explain it to them.  So I took John Holt’s tip of just leaving them to play with the clock, to follow the learning process of a child – which is assembling a vast amount of random data about an object and gradually refining and organising that into coherent usefulness.  The adult method of saying “It works like this” is apparently counter-productive.

Well I left them playing with this clock, and so came upon them one day, Hebe holding the clock and earnestly instructing Alice who was attending diligently.  Hebe had evidently taken in my useless didacticism “Now, the big hand is pointing to the 12 and the little hand is pointing to the 4 . . .” etc., and also internalised the question people always ask (“What’s the time?”), because she was moving the hands around and asking: “Now, Alice – what’s the point?”

You can tell it’s her clock.

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365 366 Day 89 – Thursday March 29^th 

  (if you don’t know what I’m talking about, see here)  

     

Oh, these were cool – but just a wee bit bossy.  We kept the inner peace and said bye-bye to the cards.  

World View Wednesday ~ The Gift of LIFE {a tribute to Truman}

All my life, I've been taught that every life is precious and a gift from God. With the birth of a daughter in the past year, and the death of our friends' precious baby, Truman, this truth has only been reinforced in my heart.

photo credit: Molly Whitmore Photography

Little Truman was born with a degenerative muscular disease and God called him home a few weeks ago. But in the four short months he was alive, his life was a real blessing to everyone that knew him. He had an infectious grin and brown eyes that sparkled with joy. Even though he wasn't able to move his arms and legs, he touched us with his heart. His life was precious, a gift from God.

I had to think of the many babies that are ruthlessly aborted, simply because they weren't planned for, or because a handicap of some form is detected before birth. Those precious lives were also a gift! They were created by God, for a purpose, and with love. How tragic that we've destroyed these innocent lives!! Only God knows what they could have accomplished, because in each person He places a small piece of Himself.  And those things that are viewed as "imperfect" often bring God the most glory.

Thank you, Truman, for reminding us that life is a gift. That it is precious. In your life, we see the hand of God. And in your smile, we see a glimpse of heaven.

Sigh

This morning I was woken early out of deep sleep, dragged by a sense of urgency, a voice in the distance calling “Help! Help! Help!”

“Help! Help! Help! Help! Help!”

Cripes!  What?

“Help! Help! Help! Hahahahahahahahaha Help! Help! Help! Hahaha”

Oh, right.  A seagull.

Innermost

 I am more grateful than I can express for the Innermost House Facebook page coming into being.

I’m always alert for people who can help me learn, and the Innermost House conversations have inspired and interested me like nothing much else has in a long time.

The Innermost principle is so beautifully simple it’s more or less self-evident – one of those learning moments that allows you to appropriate what you knew anyway but could never quite find your way to, if you know what I mean.

The Innermost principle is that you start from the inside not the outside, in making any kind of decision or choice.

Looking at the wonderful pictures of Innermost House, oftentimes a wail of frustrated longing goes up from visitors to the Facebook page, along the lines of “But that won’t work where I live because the climate’s different / I have a family / we have too much stuff / I live in a town . . . etc.”

But that would be applying the conventional principle of starting from the outside not the inside.  The frustration comes from looking at the externals – this particular little wooden house in the North California woods – and trying to apply it to different people in a different context.

What makes it “Innermost” is not North Carolina, not the woods, not the lack of electricity, not the wooden structure – but that it expresses the innermost self of who lives in it.

So it cannot – repeat cannot – be copied.  That is to say, it is in the nature of the innermost principle that emulating it won’t work. 

The only way for me to arrive at the Innermost way of living is to start with who I am, not who Diana Lorence is or anyone else.  So every person’s Innermost House will be different. One person’s Innermost House may be large and airy with lofty ceilings and light streaming in through huge windows, someone else’s may be a squat little cob dwelling with a living roof and a goat browsing on it.  The Innermost House of a collector of antiquities would not look like Diana’s place.

The only way to make an Innermost House is to grow it out of one’s own imagination, deepest yearning and most private heart’s vision.

I have been helped immensely in an area of long-term struggle by applying this Innermost principle.

Over the years I have spent a horrendous amount of money on clothes.  I buy economically and seek out bargains – I’ve just bought a lot.  I don’t keep the clothes because they never really end up being what I want, so I never at any given time own a lot of clothes – I just buy a lot.  And a part of me has felt miserable and guilty for the longest time about this.

Applying the Innermost principle to this I can see what the problem has been.  Sometimes, in love with Gandhi’s way of simplicity, I’ve dressed in saris.  Sometimes, seeing the beauty of the Amish way, I’ve worn Plain Dress.  Sometimes, in love with the idea of being an English lady I’ve dressed as English ladies do, twinset and pearls. Sometimes, captivated by the Hutterites, I’ve dressed as they do.  Sometimes my mind hearkens back to Ina May Gaskin’s Caravan and the hippie revolution, and I go all cheesecloth and beads and Janis Joplin. Sometimes, loving the peace and dignity and serenity of Buddhist monks and nuns I try their look.  Or this. Or this. Sometimes, despairing because I look so effing weird I’ve turned to the advice of Trinny and Susannah and re-modelled myself accordingly.  In between I revert to hearing the internalised voice of my mother telling me how much better I’d look if only I wore this thing which oddly enough exactly reflects her own choices and preferences – and I try that.

And always I end up looking in the mirror wondering what went wrong.

I think two things went wrong.

The first was ever looking in the mirror at all.  Everything has been way better since we passed on the great big mirror that hung in the hallway downstairs.  It was supposed to introduce light but it had an agenda of its own and introduced tyranny as well.

The second thing was that every one of those looks I aspired to came from outside myself.  I was always trying to look like something or someone else.

If I apply the Innermost principle and start with my heart’s core, I find I can interview my soul, and begin a conversation that goes something like this:

Q: So, innermost self, what do you want to wear.

A: Well . . . I like blue.

Q: What?  You aren’t meant to wear blue!  You had your colours done!  Blue is not one of your colours – except midnight navy blue or teal blue.  Is that OK?

A: I do like midnight navy, but I like sea blues and grey blues too.  And I like a kind of soft gentle blue like the mother of Jesus.

Q: OK.  Blue.  Anything else?

A: I like grey too.

Q: Grey?  Brown is your colour, not grey.

A: I do like brown, but I still like grey though, because it’s a quiet colour.

Q: Oh dear.  What about shapes?

A: I like my things to be soft and comfy.  Not tight fitting at all, and stretchy.  I like everything to be stretchy.

Q: But your middle-aged figure needs some definition.  A tailored jacket nipped in at the waist would help – and a gored skirt and some high heels, and make-up.  Don’t you think?

A: I like my Birki sandals.  And my grey fleece hoodies.  And my old blue t-shirt.  And stretchy trousers with high waists.  And I don’t want to wear tights ever again.  And I tell you what else I hate so much they almost make me ill – nylon petticoats.

Q: But surely if you don’t wear nylon petticoats, in cold weather your skirts will stick to your leggings and start bunching up and make walking difficult- you wouldn’t like that, would you?

A:  Well, don’t make me wear skirts then.  Let me wear trousers.

Q: OK, sorry if this sounds cruel: you are a plump middle-aged lady with a bottom the size of a planet.  Do you know what you look like in trousers?

A: Yes.  But I don’t care.

And by thus interviewing my Innermost self I have come up with some answers about the clothes I can be happy in that walk a completely different path from all the advice (and elevated spiritual admonition) I have received.

My Innermost wardrobe can be small and simple, but equipped with things that I (not Gandhi, not the Amish, not the Hutterites, not Trinny & Susannah, not Buddhist nuns, not Gok Wan, not the Duchess of Kent, Gandalf or Beatrix Potter, Yoda, Ina May and not my mother) actually like to wear.

The same Innermost principle can be applied to food, lifestyle, occupation, faith-path – absolutely anything in life; including the thing that sparked it all off in the first place – the kind of house you put forth about you.

I know this all sounds a bit selfish – everyone following their bliss and grabbing for what suits ME while the world goes to hell in a handcart – but that’s not where the Innermost principle takes you.  You can trust your heart, your innermost heart, because that is the place where you are joined on to the Holy Spirit.  What that reaches out for is good.

I have found that following the Innermost principle has taken me back to a contentment and ease I last remember feeling when I was about three.  It has taken me also into decisions that look quite self-sacrificing – doing with less, living more simply – but actually are profoundly fulfilling.  It has given me breathing space and made me feel less harassed.

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365 366 Day 88 – Wednesday March 28^th

  (if you don’t know what I’m talking about, see here)  

     

And there’s the henna powder to go with yesterday's shower cap! 

As if he could never let it go

I think in the US you say “movie” for the thing that many of us in the UK would call a “film”.  In the UK we are so acculturated to US usage that everyone knows what a movie is (just as we are familiar with “stroller” and “sidewalk”).  But I find US friends usually haven’t had the chance to get to know UK English, and so can become bewildered if I talk about a pushchair or a pavement.  So in what follows, just in case it’s an unfamiliar term to you, “film” = “movie”.

Last Saturday the Wretched Wretch and his mummy came to our house to see a film.  At home he has the Disney Robin Hood, which is a great favourite, so I thought it might be time to start enjoying the Disney film of The Jungle Book.  In watching it, incidentally, I noticed that Disney have appropriated the title, crediting Rudyard Kipling’s “Mowgli Stories” as the inspiration for Disney’s “Jungle Book”.  Since Rudyard Kipling’s book was in fact called “The Jungle Book”, I feel that Disney have done something there that if anyone else had done it to they them would have sued them to hell and back – but, hey: that’s big corporation ethics for you. They do at least give a partial glimpse of Kipling's name flicking by on the title page of the book in the opening sequence.

So we got three bags of the right kind of popcorn – we know it was, because it said CINEMA POPCORN on the bag – and invited the Wretched Wretch over at a convenient slot when it wasn’t nap time, closed the curtains to make the front room a cinema, and enjoyed our film together as if we were the happiest people on earth.

And after that we had fun in the garden and got the sandpit out of its winter hiding place, and generally dug things up and scattered things around, and finished off the day with a bath in the kitchen sink.  Then the Wretched Wretch’s mummy reassembled him in his street clothes, which included a sunhat, sunglasses and wellies (gumboots), and it was time to go.

At some point we discussed what to do with the film.  There is some virtue in having a few things at our place that the Wretched Wretch can look forward to knowing will be there – his train set, the box of cars, the Cuisenaire rods, the Schleich animals etc – but some things like films and books a child often likes to see/read again and again, not have to wait.

So we asked him, and he nodded eagerly and said yes please, he’d like the film.  And when I gave it to him, he took it in a particular way that I recognise but find it hard to put into words.  With an enthusiasm that yet had a beat of pause in it, not for hesitation but for reverence – like this was something he really wanted.  And he took it in his hands but drew it close to his heart, as if he couldn’t bear to let it go.

In similar wise, there was a moment when he was taking his bath in the kitchen sink.  On his towel spread on the adjacent counter for some reason there was a big glass of water, and he thought he’d like to pour the water from it into his own little green plastic cup with the reindeer on that he had in the sink to play with.  He did it really carefully, putting the cup down and holding the glass with both hands just the way I showed him to do, but his hands were wet and the glass was heavy and slippery, and it almost slipped from his grasp. And I saw from his face how worried and aghast he was that he nearly let it drop – he understood the responsibility of being allowed to handle breakable things even though he is not yet three.

When I catch sight of these moments – how much things matter to a child, how deeply a child feels, how important everything is to him, it enters my heart in a way that is quite painful and unforgettable.

And I wonder how often a child (not this one!!) has been shouted at or scolded for something that went wrong despite the best efforts of a little one, or had something precious snatched away as unsuitable or not for him.

The responsibilities of caring for small children are terrifying, really.  Especially that of trying to stand between them and the hardship of being misunderstood, the adversities of learning.

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365 366 Day 87 – Tuesday March 27^th  

  (if you don’t know what I’m talking about, see here)  

    

 Aha!  This was a freebie from a lovely hotel where the Badger and I stayed while visiting his family in Penzance.  I never wear a shower-cap, I just wash my hair, but I knew that at home I had a pack of henna powder waiting to be passed on to Buzz for the next time she redded up her hair :0)  so when I spotted the shower I thought “I know who needs that!  I’ll ’ave that*”.  I had it hanging around at home for a long time while I forgot to give it to her.  So today’s item is from the “I really must get round to that” pile.  The 365 project prompted me to actually do it.

*”I’’ll ’ave that”: my family will recognise that as a quotation from Burglar Bill, a most excellent book! 

My tree

Alice took this picture of my tree.  It grows in the park that stretches the length of St Leonards/Hastings where we live – a very beautiful park with everything from grassy spaces for family picnics to formal rose gardens to rare trees to wild spaces and a ghyll.

Every year I look for my tree blooming.  It is a huge magnolia.  This week, as you can see in the photo, it is breath-takingly beautiful.

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365 366 Day 86 – Monday March 26^th   
  (if you don’t know what I’m talking about, see here)  

I loved this hat but found it impractical – too precarious, even with pins when my hair was long.  I have another big shady sunhat that has a big crown, so I kept that and sent this (along with a couple of other unusual hats) to a friend who is often engaged on theatre projects.

New clothes

I have been thinking about old clothes, new clothes and smart clothes.

I was born in 1957.  At that time, mass production had not really got underway.  I mean, there were sewing machines and factories – but the market was not at that time flooded with cheap items.

My mother had clothes hanging in the wardrobe and shoes laid out on the floor underneath, and a chest of drawers with clothes in too.  And that was enough.  Her hanging clothes were not shoved in or bunched together, there remained plenty of room in between.

As a teenager I had two summer school uniform dresses, two winter school blouses, a school blazer and a school mac. For weekends and holidays I had a few garments fitting easily onto the hanging rail and three shelves of a single wardrobe.

We had Sunday best clothes, and expected to wear them every Sunday until they wore out or we outgrew them.

Shoes were polished carefully, coats brushed and hung up.  Many garments were not washable, and dry-cleaning we thought an extravagant luxury.  So items like my tweed trouser suit were never cleaned at all.  Coats were never cleaned.  We kept them clean, but that was all. 

I suppose everyone looked shabbier, but nobody really noticed because we were all the same.

Something I notice in present day life is that “smart” (UK – meaning tidy or elegant, not US meaning intelligent) clothes implies new clothes.

Waiting in line at the Post Office, looking idly at the other customers in the queue I am struck by the newness of their clothes.  They are often not very nice clothes – poor quality fabric, hurriedly made, in the garish colours of chemical dyes and synthetic fabric.  Being well-cut, well-made, elegant in design, made of good tweeds and fine linen – for this is substituted being new.  Of course you can still get the beautiful clothes, and on the high street too – but they are expensive as they always were.

The girl in front of me in the queue will probably be dressed in new clothes from head to foot – and be carrying a new handbag too.

More new clothes than I can count – and even more second-hand ones – have passed through my life in my adult years; loads and loads of garments.  And I don’t even like new things.  I feel much more at home with something a little worn, a bit faded.

Why do I buy new clothes?  Sometimes because of boredom, often because of dissatisfaction with myself, to bolster confidence, or because I have entered an alien persona of yet another ideological faction that made it clear that unless I looked like them my spirituality was inferior – ie join the tribe or be a loser.  That’s why I get new things – but I don’t keep them.  I hate being cluttered up with stuff, so they only pass through.  I try to dispose of them carefully, to a charity shop or somebody who wants them . . . but it is undeniably wasteful.

I would like very much to make the journey to be a person who is happy with what she has, and doesn’t need new things.  I wonder if I could do that? 

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365 366 Day 85 – Sunday March 25^th       

  (if you don’t know what I’m talking about, see here)     

Oh, fair enough – yes I suppose I have got rid of a huge number of these in the last few months.  And the sequel, The Hour before Dawn, and the new edition of the original trilogy.

DIY ~ All Natural Wood Stain

I kept this set for myself ~ I just loved the colors!

I made tons of these block sets for gifts this past Christmas. I had a blast making them, getting creative with all of the different colors, papers and embellishments. The 'kids' (big and small) were each given a set customized with their names, while the adult recipients received a set with inspirational words.

I decided that I would like to add them into Backyard Dreams, but as is they didn't meet my 'green standards'. I wanted to stain the blocks, but naturally, and so I hopped onto the Internet for some info. What I found was so easy, (as I knew it would be) and I was super excited to get started! But first... rusty water. :)

I poured 2 cups of white vinegar into a glass container, threw in a steel wool pad, and waited. Different websites had different directions, but this is where I started. They all claimed that within a couple of days, a week tops, the water would be nice and rusty. A week passed, and when I saw zero evidence of rust I added in equal parts water, as suggested on another website. Still nothing. I began digging through information stored in the recesses of my brain and thought about how steel wool usually rusts within days, what was missing? Ah-ha! Oxygen, of course, a necessary component of corrosion. So, I fished out the steel wool, put it on a plate and within in hour it was a rusted mess. Success. :)

Looks like something you'd normally want to throw away, right?

Once the rusty water was ready I could get started on my experimental stain. It began with a tea bag, steeped for a couple of hours in hot water. I then painted the cut blocks of woods with 3 coats of tea. The effect was very subtle, probably not even noticeable on its own.

Before...

After. Subtle, right?

Once the blocks had completely dried (and this is when I got excited!) I began painting them with a coat of the rusty water. The results were instantaneous and just kept darkening with each coat, and the longer they sat.

If I remember correctly, the block on the left has two coats, while the one on the right only has the first coat applied. (Sorry, it's been awhile since I did my experimenting!)

The final result, pretty drastic, huh? I think that the block on the right has 3 coats of rusty water, on top of the tea stain

Of course there's some chemistry involved in the whole process. The rusty water is reacting to the tannins in both the wood and the tea, creating this grayish, weathered color, perfect for the look I was reaching for. I read one article online where a variety of different teas were used and consequently a delightful range of colors were created, from browns to black.

Here is my finished product, Journey Block Set

I'd love to add more sets to the shop, I have such fun creating them. First though, I think I'll experiment with some different teas and see what kinds of colors I can manifest. I'd love to see a nice honey brown... stay tuned! :)

Another set, using just the natural beauty of wood ~ Love Block Set

Dream Block Set

So, there you have it, nature to the rescue once again. No toxic chemicals, no dangerous fumes, no hazardous consequences. Living green can be so simple and easy, why did we ever think that we could do better?

Before I head out, I'd just like to mention that I've managed to add in a couple of new recipes onto my Scrumptious Recipes Page. I'm hoping to get some more in there this weekend, but... we'll see. ;)

Have an amazingly creative day friends! :)

Peace & Blessings ~ Melinda

Saturday

While the ladies chill out in the kitchen

The men are hard at work in the garden

Then a well-earned bath once everything is dug up and the contents of the sandpit liberally scattered round the universe as we presently know it.

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365 366 Day 84 – Saturday March 24^th  

  (if you don’t know what I’m talking about, see here)     

 Oh, this was just the lid.  The other half had already gone in the car.  A rhubarb forcer.  Very beautiful, and we liked it a lot – but nowadays rhubarb is too acidic for me and the amount of sugar it requires beyond what my system copes with easily – so it went with love to another member of the family who likes to grow rhubarb.

The Last Time

Today I read two things that affected me profoundly.

My “reading book” at the moment is Babylon’s Ark by Lawrence Anthony (with Graham Spence).

 Lawrence Anthony, who died very recently at the age of 61 was a conservationist of tremendous vision, founder of the Earth Organisation.  His wonderful book The Elephant Whisperer tells of the friendship he built with wild elephants at Thula Thula, the patch of Zululand he gave back to the animals.  He received the UN’s Earth Day award for his work in Baghdad (the subject of Babylon’s Ark), where he went into the chaos after the fall of that city to find and help the animals trapped there in the Baghdad Zoo.

When he arrived he found that anything not nailed to the ground (and a great deal that was) fell prey to systematic looting in the lawlessness of a theatre of war.

In describing the looting, he said:

“I watched all this with old, tired eyes. The symbolism was stark.  This wasn’t only about Baghdad; it wasn’t about Iraq.

It was about all of us.

It’s what we are doing to our planet.  Looting it.”

Indeed.

Then today also, I read an interview with Thich Nhat Hanh (revered Buddhist teacher and monk) about our relationship with the Earth.

The interview came in two parts.  Part One is here.  Part Two is here. I strongly recommend you read them both.

In the second part, Thich Nhat Hanh talks about the attitudes we can bring to life and human community that can result in the healing and wellbeing of all creation and of human society.

In the first part, he addresses the stark fact that if we continue to follow our present choices, we probably have 100 years left on Earth.  100 years.

I would trust Thich Nhat Hanh.  He is intelligent, realistic, well-researched, capable of both empathy and objective thinking.  A wise, compassionate and supremely rational man. His spiritual training has served him well.  He lays before us the facts: that every day a hundred species go into extinction because of us – because of our merciless depredation of the rainforest.  About two hundred thousand species every year.

Every day I live on this beautiful Earth makes it clearer to me why I feel the desperate urgency I do to really live and really love; not to be distracted or preoccupied; to struggle free if I can from consumerism and the rat race; to have time to look at – really gaze upon and love – the azure sky, the sparkling ocean, the new green growth of Spring, intoxicating in overflowing life.  To love the Earth in all her weathers and moods, and keep coming back again and again to the task at which I repeatedly fail – to live faithfully in this task that God in ancient days entrusted to my race; the unbelievable honour of being the stewards of the Earth.

Our failure has been absolute.  There is not long left.  But even with all we have done to it – and with the coarse, selfish, blind greed of my species blaring from every political podium, every store, every television set, every magazine, every complacent assumption – I love this beautiful Earth that God made and gave us to love.  I love her so much.

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365 366 Day 83 – Friday March 23^rd 

 (if you don’t know what I’m talking about, see here) 

    

This has made one small child after another most happy :0)  

Caution....and Kindness

On my way to work every morning, I pass a house located on a corner prone to flooding after heavy rain. I've noticed it's for sale.  I have so much empathy for those owners!  I know they must pray for dry weather when a potential buyer comes by, because they know if their yard is flooded, no one will touch their house with 10-foot pole.  Their yard is indeed dry 95% of the time, but that other 5% - well, it's a mess.  Of course, from the viewpoint of the buyer, one does have to check into these kinds of things.  The experts tells us that it is ideal to see a property in all kinds of weather and seasons before you sign that contract.  At this specific house, a beautiful dry day in summer looks vastly different from a spring day after a storm has moved through.

On the other hand, maybe it's the opposite with relationships.  Here, you aren't trying to make a huge financial investment and want your risks minimized; you are just encountering fellow human beings on good days and bad.  On my way home from work, I usually stop in at the grocery or another shop for an errand.  Most of the cashiers and salespeople I interact with are cheerful and smiling, but occasionally I get a grumpy one.   My first reaction is to be apathetic or even irritable myself.   Then I started wondering, "Am I seeing a normally nice person on a bad day?"  Hmmm....maybe 95% of the year they are charming and the other 5%, for whatever reason, they are not at their best?  Of course, there are some people who are 100% grumpy - we all know them.  But it is unkind, I think, to automatically judge a stranger based on one interaction.   Did they get some bad news?  Are they worried about their kids?  Are they afraid of losing their jobs?  Going through a divorce?  Fighting an addiction?  Burying a parent?  Or - maybe they just have indigestion or diarrhea and find it intolerable to think about 6 more hours trying to be friendly?  There's no way to know, and we probably ought to let our good natures shine and give them the benefit of the doubt.

It all reminded me of an article my sister wrote once about Mom.  Here is an excerpt from her touching tribute:

She was always especially fond of store cashiers, perhaps because she was once one herself in an earlier life, a life that existed “before motherhood.”  I remember Mother’s encounter with a particularly challenging cashier once, a woman who at first appeared to be completely impervious to Mother’s friendly banter.  We were at the grocery store on a very busy day.  The line was long, and it inched forward ever so slowly.   It was a stressful environment, to say the least, and it obviously was taking a toll on the lady behind the register, too.  She said little, and when she did open her mouth, the words that came out were surly and borderline rude. 

“My goodness, it sure is busy today!” Mother said cheerily.  No response.  “That’s a really pretty necklace you’ve got on,” Mother went on.  A gruff “Mmm-hmm” emanated from the woman’s lips, but I could see that the tightly drawn corners of her mouth were beginning to soften.  “Honey, it must be awfully frustrating to do your job,” Mother cooed.  “I really don’t see how you do it.  You must be worn out by the end of the day.”   

That did it.  With tears in her eyes, the cashier turned to Mother and began to pour out her heart.  I stood there in amazement, watching while Mother listened intently to the woman’s tale of woe.  That was years ago, and now I don’t even remember what the lady said.  All I know is that Mother’s willing ear and caring heart allowed that cashier to unburden herself to a complete stranger.  And as I watched the two of them together, for the first time, I realized that Mother was more than just a hospitable giver.  She was also a recipient.  She found a deep joy and satisfaction in encouraging someone else, even if it was just by offering a glass of tea or an attentive ear. 

The exchange only lasted a few minutes.  Once the sacker had finished bagging the groceries, we paid the bill and Mother grasped the cashier’s hand with a sweet, “Honey, now don’t you work too hard!”  As we pushed our cart toward the exit, I turned back to see the woman standing a shade taller, her shoulders pulled back and her head held high.  She looked as if she couldn’t stop smiling.   

And neither could Mother.