Recently I was reading one of those newspaper inserts with advertisements, purporting to be articles, with various guru doctors who are guaranteed to make you better, younger, happier, more fulfilled, and you name it…
But first, they have to tear you down to build you up.
All to create the demand for their services.
Do you see anything wrong with this picture?
I have to say the silliest — or most offensive — or downright aggravating one was the one from the plastic surgeon who would fix my (your) (anyone’s) breasts. He used phrases such as ‘out of harmony’ and ‘deformed’ and ‘aging’ — guaranteed to make me (you) (anyone) run right down and sign up for his services. After all, he corrects other doctors mistakes, that might have left one’s breasts mismatched or deformed or, oh dear, out of harmony.
I have this image of them singing out of tune.
He was describing natural breasts — or breasts where the operations were not successful —
There’s something odd about assuming that what is natural is really artificial — or what is actually artificial is somehow natural. And what is really natural is deformed. From having children or breastfeeding.
Okay, then.
Are you confused yet?
I know there are problems best solved by the experts who will fix what couldn’t be fixed a few generations ago. I am not talking about that. Many, many blessings to those who have had to find solutions no one wants to need.
But creating a false need by playing on women’s vulnerabilities, creating a need for one’s services where one doesn’t really exist, tires me out just thinking about it.
And it makes me mad.
How about you?
If it weren’t so sad, it’d really be funny.
And then there are the doctors who will make my teeth whiter or cure issues I don’t even have — but they’ve tried to plant a seed of doubt and worry for my future years.
I’m not going there — and I hope you don’t either.
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I like each of these. It’s a toss up which one is more appropriate for any given day.
Nurture hope, pack lightly, quell rumors… all speak to Chinese adoption at the moment, and to other things as well.
Be ready for the things life has to offer. Wait patiently, doing what you can today.
Until I no longer had a source for them, I used to give silver rings engraved with ‘hope’ to people, if they were going through deep waters. It was a visible way for them to know that someone cared. I wish I could find them again.
Master something made me laugh. Something! how difficult is that. It could be anything, no matter how small. Master anything. Find something that interests you and go with it.
Which of these speak to you today?
Karin
Accept differences
Be kind
Count your blessings
Dream
Express thanks
Forgive
Give freely
Harm no one
Imagine more
Jettison anger
Keep confidences
Love truly
Master something
Nurture hope
Open your mind
Pack lightly
Quell rumors
Reciprocate
Seek wisdom
Touch hearts
Understand
Value truth
Win graciously
Xeriscape
Yearn for peace
Zealously support a worthy cause
Renee Stewart
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Sometimes I think the harder we look for happiness, the more elusive it can be. It’s like searching for Mr. Goodbar. But if we just sit quietly, appreciating and in the moment, it sneaks up on us.
That’s not to say that we don’t have to work at it or take charge of our own happiness. Like Cathy writes below in the comments section, I often say that I fight for my happiness!
I’ve learned through the years that I need to bring happiness into my moments, if I expect to experience it. I remind myself to do those small things for myself that secure my happiness, to be good to myself, to take time to enjoy the moments that run through our fingers.
I’ve talked with a number of folks over the years and in recent weeks whose concerns are ratcheting up. They are looking to establish (more) joy in their lives in the face of negative reports and a general malaise. Concerns about the world; their finances; life in general; their health, their work, their marriage; retirement funds — anything you can think of — are stealing their peace and occupying their thoughts.
Over the years I’ve looked into happiness, read a number of books, worked on it for myself, and tried to discern what, exactly, is happiness? I don’t know that it is possible to be happy every moment, but even in the midst of problems, it is possible to be a happy person, or at least to experience joy at some level and in some moments. So happiness isn’t determined by whether a person is happy every single moment, but whether it is an attitude of heart and mind.
An analogy that came to me a number of years ago that I’ve often shared with others is this:
Every incident of goodness; every moment of joy; every good thought or deed; every kind word experienced or given; every beautiful thing we notice; every bit of gratitude we express; every note of music we hear or play; every time we appreciate something around us; every time we give or receive a compliment; every time we take time to take time is like a pearl we are stringing in our lives.
The knots in the string are life’s problems.
When we look at a strand of pearls, yes, we see the knots, but we don’t focus on them. They only serve to make the strand more beautiful. What we see is the complete strand with the individual pearls. The knots hold the pearls securely, as well as set them apart from each other so that we may better see and appreciate the individual pearls.
That seemed like enough, and for years that is what I strove to understand and share.
But this past week, when talking to someone, it occurred to me to think out loud as we were talking: What is the string?
And in an instant I listened to the idea come out of my mouth that I hadn’t yet had:
The string is happiness.
I loved the idea that there is a string of happiness moving through our lives and that we are stringing together moments of love, joy, goodness, peace — the loveliness of life — on it.
May you be blessed by this idea, as much as I was to receive it, and may today and every day be filled with many beautiful and precious blessings.
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When I say Merry Christmas
that’s just shorthand
for something more.
Because what I’m really wishing
is happiness that spills over
into all the ordinary days, too.
I’m wishing good gifts —
both the kind that unwrap
and the kind
that unfold over time.
I’m wishing that moments
would be sweet
and life would be kind.
And I’m wishing these things
with all my heart
when I say Merry Christmas. by Kelly Chace
May your Christmas day be happy, whether you celebrate it or not, and may it set the tone for a truly joyous and happy year to follow. Thanks for visiting!
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A friend sent me this youtube video today. It seems appropriate to post at this time of year, Thanksgiving in America where I live, and while it is directed at thanking the military men and women who serve us, it is not political, for as the video states, it is about service. It made me think also of firefighters, policemen, and emergency medical services and of those who help after disasters. The average person can hardly envision some of what they face every day.
When is the last time you thanked anyone?
I had a recent occasion when I went back to express my gratitude for service that was exemplary. I don’t think many people return to give thanks, and my family member was puzzled by my desire to do so. Yet the service I had received had been exceptional. Later the same day, while I was out, there was a follow up call from the individual who had helped me. He had not known that I had been in to express my gratitude, even though I had specified that it be passed along. I so appreciated the call, even if I wasn’t there to take it. It’s rare in this life to get a follow up call!
I don’t hesitate to tell someone I appreciate what they are doing
And at the same time, I will gently complain (register comments) if there is need for improvement. I figure they’d rather know why you might never come back, rather than just lose your business.
Our gratitude is riches, complaint is poverty. Vivian Burnett
Oh boy, I so dislike it, when I get in complaint-mode. I try to turn it around pretty fast.
And when I’m with someone who is a constant complainer, I have to fight not to be dragged down by their attitude. Complaint only accentuates the negative, unless it is used to ask for a solution.
For example, bitching about traffic to those in your car, accomplishes nothing but complaint. The other drivers don’t know you are cussing them out. But everyone in your car is tied up in knots.
We really are richer for our gratitude. Appreciation goes a long way to lifting other people’s burdens that we might not even realize are there.
An on-going gratitude list
I keep a couple of on-going gratitude lists. I don’t add to them daily, just whenever there is something significant or different. I decided to update my main list last night, reorganizing it by topic ideas, after reading a few lists others had written — and I even added some of their ideas to mine. It’s surprising how much there is to be grateful for, once you get started thinking about it.
Right at the top are relationships and friendships; family; health; spirituality; love and kindness; supportive people; prayer; the Bible; the online community; nature (trees and sunsets; rain and wind; sunrise; birds…) — and so much more.
If you get in a funk, what do you do to get out of it?
Does it bother you if you feel like you are constantly complaining, even if you don’t express it aloud?
How do you deal with difficult or irregular people in your life? Or are you the difficult person? (ouch) And if you are, how can you change?
Do you try to dwell on the positives of life? What is the latest thing you are grateful for?
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The things of this world
Always, there is far more beauty in this world than we are aware of.
But enter the prodigious talents of someone like Jarbus Agnelli who transcribed the notes represented by birds on a wire. He reminds us of possibilities yet unseen and still unheard. Figuratively, he listened to the music of the spheres.
It reminds me of Hamlet:
There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy. Shakespeare
How do we open the doors of our inner vision to see more of the good that is around us!
Perhaps the willingness
… to be different, to walk a different path
… to be open to possibilities
… to look at things differently
… to take a second — or even a third — look
… to listen for new ideas
… to look up
… to take whatever time is necessary — or to realize that time cannot restrict us
… to develop the skills that are uniquely our own
… to admit the possibility that there might be something more
… to seek for it
… to share it
… to be thankful for it.
What do you think it might be like if we could translate things and events into music?
What if we could hear music in the way that Mozart or Beethoven did? What if we could hear what they never transcribed?
What if we could translate words into a ballet?
Somehow the whole is greater than the parts.
And remember, the melody always includes you.
Do you suppose that is some indication of divine supply?
Everywhere around us — and where we are — is filled with more than we can imagine. Count on it!
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The Third Man Factor is an interesting concept. Evidently it should be The Fourth Man Factor, but
It was [Sir Ernest] Shackleton’s experience that inspired the term “Third Man factor” (although for his group it was actually a “fourth man” — T.S. Eliot misremembered the number when he wrote his poem The Waste Land, which popularized the idea). Geiger
The new book out by John Geiger sounds like a fascinating read.
Plus you can get this book for your Kindle.
The Third Man Factor is an extraordinary account of how people at the very edge of death experience the sense of an unseen presence beside them who encourages them to make one final effort to survive. This incorporeal being offered them a feeling of hope, protection, and guidance, and left the person convinced he or she was not alone. There is a name for this phenomenon: It’s called the Third Man Factor.
If only a handful of people had ever encountered the Third Man, it might be dismissed as an unusual delusion shared by a few overstressed minds. But over the years, the experience has occurred again and again, to 9/11 survivors, mountaineers, divers, polar explorers, prisoners of war, sailors, shipwreck survivors, aviators, and astronauts. All have escaped traumatic events only to tell strikingly similar stories of having sensed the close presence of a helper or guardian. The force has been explained as everything from hallucination to divine intervention. Recent neurological research suggests something else. Amazon
You can read a long excerpt from his book here. One of the stories he relates is of Ron DiFrancesco who was the last person to make it out of the South Tower alive. He felt such a presence. It came to him as a voice, telling him what to do, encouraging him to survive, changing the direction in which he headed.
One of the interesting things to me was to learn this phenomena has existed in many places. I suppose I would prefer to think of the man as an angel or of Christ. It reminds me of the Biblical story of the three men thrown in the fiery furnace, but witnesses saw a fourth man walking.
He answered and said, Lo, I see four men loose, walking in the midst of the fire, and they have no hurt; and the form of the fourth is like the Son of God. Dan 3:25
Do you find this interesting?
Do you find it as interesting as I do to have a kind of substantiation of the Bible story by modern day experiences? I take things on faith, but it is good to have proofs of a sort anyway, not that all the proofs in the world would change someone’s mind that is already made up.
I can’t say I’ve ever felt a presence per se, but I have had words come to me as thoughts. I have never been in any extreme survival situation.
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One of my favorite Bible passages is when God speaks to Abram, calling him out of Ur of the Chaldees to a place he yet does not know.
2 And I will make of thee a great nation, and I will bless thee, and make thy name great; and thou shalt be a blessing [my emphasis]: 3 …and in thee shall all families of the earth be blessed. Genesis 12
I realize that this was a divine message to Abram, but I feel God says something similar to each of us every moment, that we can use our moments to be a blessing, not simply to give one. Perhaps we need to learn to listen to the extent that Abram did.
If we believe that all life is interconnected, then when we are being a blessing in some way it does bless the whole world. (I don’t like to think about the converse. Ouch.)
It pays to be mindful of our moments, rather than rushing through them to get to the next place or moment. And maybe that gives a small insight into the popular phrase pay it forward.
I came across a lovely blog this morning, Jake’s World. He brings out the importance in music, as in life, of not hurrying to the last note, but savoring the entire piece. (I am guilty sometimes of moving the cursor in youtubes, are you?)
But in “the waiting game,” we can be so focused on what will be (the final note of music) that we miss what is. Within the waiting game is a subtle (or not-so-subtle) belief that tomorrow will be better than today. Now, that may be true. But today is the time and place to make a difference. It’s the only time and place we have any influence over. Jake
And he was listening to this, as I am thanks to him, as he wrote:
Gerald Finzi – Eclogue for Piano and Strings
He goes on to say:
Benjamin Zander, author of “The Art of Possibility” and conductor of the Boston Philharmonic, has a phrase that fits for me. He encourages people to be a contribution. Not to “make” a contribution, but to “be” one. Putting this idea into practice is as simple as throwing yourself into life as someone who makes a difference, accepting that you may not understand how or why. And, by being a contribution, you are one—not tomorrow, not when the waiting ends, but during the waiting! Now. Jake
Try to recognize today the places where you are making a difference, because you are and you do. We are more than a place-holder, we are ourselves the place God shines through.
Here’s something I wrote a while ago:
The Lord is my secret place of calm
written for one whose life is unraveling
Order my steps in your word. Ps 119:133
Psalm 23 and Psalm 91
karin@savvythinker.com
The Lord is my sense of calm; I will not be frenzied.
Calm me down, Lord, and let me hear Your peaceful thoughts.
Today was a rush from the word ‘go.’
Too many things, too many demands –
some for work, some for fun –
(even the fun seems a demand when worked in at top speed)
writing this as I drive – trying to hold the thoughts –
working it in – getting it done – more than I thought –
still it’s a race – calm me down, Lord, –
let me feel Your presence in my walk today.
Let me show forth Your face to all I see:
peace that includes all, that lets You order my day.
Calm me down Lord, so I can pray.
This is a prayer, for all that I meet,
for all that I talk to or see today,
that all they will find, or all they will see,
is Your peace in mine: deep peace of Mind.
Limits drop off, constraints fall away.
I can do three things at once today.
All will get done –
the accomplishment’s Yours.
I feel Your presence opening doors.
Lines were not long.
Traffic was light.
I prayed through it all
that it would not be just flight.
And running an errand (and running it was)
I heard myself paged before I was gone:
my credit card was returned without any muss
or having to retrace my steps while I fussed.
Your calm was there to quiet me down:
I never hurried, I just got it done.
Surely Your peace and calm have followed me all the days of my life,
and I will dwell (never hurried) in Your secret place of calm forever.
Thanks be to God for His wonderful sense of calm!
Karin
www.savvythinker.com
don’t steal my posts you know who you are
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Somehow when I think of the phrase mixed blessings, I think of what I can remember from the movie Tender Mercies. Even the expressions seem to go together.
Perhaps mixed blessings are evidence of tender mercies.
Or perhaps it is that blessings come in the midst of life, where the whole package deal is not necessarily only blessings. We can have blessings in the midst of difficult times or difficult circumstances. When that happens, I always feel a sort of angel’s wing on my shoulder, an encouragement to keep on going.
Recently I heard an older man speak about the importance of doing something or doing something good, even if we can’t do it perfectly. Because, presumably, if we wait until we can do it perfectly, it would never be done. Even doing something half way or partially completed may be better than doing nothing.
It reminds me of doing errands. They are never finished.
John Updike’s stories of a troubled marriage are gathered for the first time in hardback, The Maples Stories. I doubt I will read them.
I have a hard time getting into Updike’s writing style. I also found them difficult to read for their, I think, negativity, and I suppose when they first came out, I was too young to appreciate them. I found them dated and misogynistic even them. But:
They are as true today as when they were written. Heller McAlpin 8-23-09 Christian Science Monitor p 43
The moral of these stories is that all blessings are mixed. Also, that people are incorrigibly themselves. John Updike
That last sentence made me laugh — people are incorrigibly themselves. Best not to try to change them, that is a place only for the divine, unless you are moved by an angel.
Here’s a quote I like about angel’s doing our errands:
And how is man, seen through the lens of Spirit, enlarged, and how counterpoised his origin from dust, and how he presses to his original, never severed from Spirit! …Then will angels administer grace, do thy errands, and be thy dearest allies. The divine law gives to man health and life everlasting — gives a soul to Soul, a present harmony wherein the good man’s heart takes hold on heaven, and whose feet can never be moved. These are His green pastures beside still waters, where faith mounts upward, expatiates, strengthens, and exults. Mary Baker Eddy
Do you like Updike’s works?
If so, what should I try to read?
And how about blessings?
Do you make them count? Do you gather them up in a journal perhaps so you don’t forget them? Try to find a few blessings every day in your days — and make them count! Don’t forget some of these blessings are how you bless someone else.
Karin
www.savvythinker.com
don’t steal my posts — you know who you are!
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Nicholas Winton, now 100 years old, was a 29 year old London stockbroker who traveled to Czechoslovakia in 1938, where he rescued hundreds of Jewish children from likely or certain death. Winton’s parents were of German Jewish descent.
Even his wife didn’t know about it until 40 years after they were married, he remarked in 1999.
Everything that happened before the war actually didn’t feel important in the light of the war itself.
Winton, alarmed at the time — and rightly — that Czechoslovakia would be invaded by the Nazis and Jewish residents sent to concentration camps, persuaded British officials to accept the children as long as foster homes were found and a 50 pound guarantee was paid for each child. He set about raising funds and organizing passage.
Eight trains carried the children to Britain in the months before the war. A few went to Sweden. Many never saw their parents again, because of the Holocaust.
To celebrate the 70th anniversary of the rescue, a vintage train carrying about two dozen survivors and their families pulled into London’s Liverpool Street Station this past Friday after three days journey by rail and ferry from Prague. They greeted Nicholas, frail though he was.
It’s wonderful to see you all after 70 years. Don’t leave it quite so long until we meet here again. Nicholas Winton
I never heard about him until today when the story of the kindertransports was retold in our paper.
It’s quite remarkable that someone in the heat of confusing times would be led to act decisively in a timely fashion without regard to himself to save others and give them life. It looks easy in retrospect, but I bet we don’t know the half of it or the persuading that needed to take place. And I don’t suppose that 50 pounds each was a small sum in those days, not to mention the cost of passage.
To me, he is a righteous man. The world would have been poorer without him. He’s another man I’d like to know. I was glad he lived long enough to be recognized for his part. And not to forget the part of all those who aided in giving funds, some of whom might have been their own families. May their memories be for a blessing.
Had you heard of him before?
Don’t be prepared in your life only to do no wrong; Be prepared every day to try to do some good. Sir Nicholas Winton
Karin
www.savvythinker.com
don’t steal my posts — you know who you are!
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Nearly every day I take my youngest to her elementary school. I enjoy spending this time spent with her, as I enjoyed spending it with her siblings. Some days it gives us the only real private time we have together. And we talk about anything or nothing, sometimes singing silly songs and being goofy.
One day last winter, against all odds, there was so much frost on the ground covering the golf course, that it looked like there had been a hard snow in the night. I don’t ever remember seeing it like that in all the years that we have lived here. If I hadn’t been driving my daughter, I would not have seen it, because later in the day it would have disappeared in the sunshine. I promised myself to take my camera with me this winter, so that I can snap a picture or three, if I get this opportunity again.
Fast forward to this year. The safety patrol is made up of a lot of good kids, as it is every year. They have to have good grades and good citizenship. They have to want to do it, in all kinds of weather (though not snow.) And they are pretty faithful, being on time and dependable.
These kids help the other kids out of their cars and make sure the car doors are shut. They usually say something like, “Have a nice day.” And it all becomes part of a ritual of good will without a whole lot of meaning, just a nice gesture and good manners.
This year there is a kiddo who is a little cherub. He reminds me a bit of pictures of my uncle as a young boy. He has the smile of an angel that just lights up his face, and when he says, “Have a nice day,” I feel that have I truly received a blessing. He’s someone I’d like to follow up with through the years to see him as a young man, to see what field of work he is led into.
It’s always nice to start out the day with a blessing.
And it’s good to realize we’ve received one, to be self-aware enough that we allow the blessings we receive to permeate our being, not just roll off us like water from a duck’s back.
Is it still a blessing, if we are unaware that we’ve received one? I think so. But being aware of a blessing might be the equivalent of giving us a double portion of blessing — the blessing and the recognition of it.
I don’t know about you, but I need all the blessing I can get!
And you know, I don’t think this boy has any awareness that he has given me a blessing. The difference in the words as he says them is he really means them.
There’s a lesson in there for me also. I don’t think we half know the times we have blessed someone else, unless they tell us, but perhaps intention and presence, being in the now, truly being with someone, with the words we say to them, takes the mundane and makes it divine.
Were you blessed by something or someone today? Or did you bring a blessing to someone else? I’d love to hear about it!
Karin
www.savvythinker.com
don’t steal my posts — you know who you are!
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I’m currently reading Fire in the Soul: A New Psychology of Spiritual optimism. Again, I got this from the library until I knew if I would like to own it. (I’m currently reading several of her books, serially.) Much of the book has illustrations of various types of new-agey helps that she investigates and actually found help in, at this point in her life.
I found the chapter on Hope and Surrender, p 153-157, fascinating. I’m always on the lookout for more about hope. Maybe you are too? Have you read any of her books? Have you read this one?
What are you currently reading? My sister brought me a book to read, but I need to finish these heavy-duty ones first.
Karin
Hope is a term usually applied to the future. This kind of hope is directive, willful. Like spiritual courage, spiritual hope is most likely to emerge when we let go of will and open ourselves to trust…
Some people imagine that hope is the highest degree of optimism, a kind of super-optimism. A far more accurate picture would be that hope happens when the bottom drops out of our pessimism. We have nowhere to fall but into the ultimate reality of God’s motherly caring. Gratefulness, The Heart of Prayer: An Approach to Life in Fullnessby Brother David Steindl-Rast, Benedictine monk, p 136
Steindl-Rast points out that the ordeals we suffer purge us of unfounded optimism. When the “bottom drops out of our pessimism” we are forced to let go of the idea that we are “doers” who can conquer life by the application of our individual will. We might apply this attitude of surrender to any area of life in which we have struggled fruitlessly to change [as in the first step of a 12 step program.]
Hope and surrender may seem to be strange bedfellows. But when, as Steindl-Rast says, we “fall into the ultimate reality of God’s motherly caring,” we find that we have landed in the lap of hope itself. Hope, he asserts, is a patient waiting for God, a stillness that allows us to hear the inner voice of guidance.
As long as we wait for an improvement of the situation our desires will make a great deal of noise. And if we wait for a deterioration of the situation, our fears will be noisy. The stillness that waits for the Lord’s coming in any situation — that is the stillness of Biblical hope. Not only is that stillness compatible with strenuous effort to change the situation, if that is our God-given task. It is only in that stillness that we shall clearly hear what our task is. The stillness of hope is the expression of a perfect focusing of energy on the task at hand. The stillness of hope is…the stillness of integrity. Hope integrates. It makes whole. Pp 138-139 [italics added by JB]
Buddhists have a similar approach to finding hope in times of adversity and behaving in what they would call “right action.” Rather than specifying to the universe what the situation means and what is required for it to be fixed, the Buddhist approach is one of openness, an attitude of “don’t know.” “Don’t know” allows for stillness, and stillness for wisdom. From this perspective, hope is not at all a future wish, but a depth of understanding [sic] that can transform past and future as well as lead to conscious action that helps to shape future events.
Hope is really a matter of perspective. …from Latin root perspicere, meaning “to look through.”…with the courage that comes from seeing clearly. In discouragement, the opposite pertains, vision is clouded.
Madame Aboulker-Muscat [psychotherapist with international ability to heal people physically and emotionally through the creative engagement of their imagination] told Epstein [psychiatrist Gerald Epstein tells this in his book Healing Visualizations] that Freud likened psychoanalysis to a train. Looking out at the passing landscape, patients would describe what they saw to the analyst sitting in the next seat. Turning to Epstein, she suddenly demanded of him, “In what direction does the train go?” [He indicated horizontally.] [She] suddenly changed Epstein’s perspective by moving her hand upward, “Well, what if the direction were changed to this axis?”
It was an epiphany…seemed to lift me from the horizontal hold of the given, the ordinary patterns of everyday cause and effect. I leapt into freedom, and I saw the task of therapy “the task of being human” was to help realize freedom, to go beyond the given, to the newness that we all are capable of, and to our capacity to renew and re-create 9p 126)
[Joan looked at her teenage son with hopeful eyes, looking for the best in him.]
Hope looks at all things the way a mother looks at her child with a passion for the possible. More than that, the eyes of hope look through all imperfections to the heart of all things and find it perfect. [JB added italics] GTHoP p 142 Steindl-Rast]
Put this way, hope is really a form of blessing. To bless is to increase, to allow something to unfold to its fullness. To hope is to create a sacred space, a space of possibility, in which the goodness of the Universe can express itself. The stance we adopt in that sacred space is one of readiness, openness and non-attachment to a particular outcome.
Hope…is neither passive waiting nor is it unrealistic forcing of circumstances that cannot occur. It is like the crouched tiger, which will jump only when the moment for jumping has come. To hope means to be ready at every moment for that which is not yet born, and yet not become desperate if there is no birth in our lifetime. Erich Fromm p 9 The Revolution of Hope, Toward a Humanized Technology.
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As a child, I would lay in the grass face up looking at clouds and find pictures in them. Today, I’m more apt to just appreciate them as I drive along.
I like a cloudy day as it cuts the heat by 10 degrees, and it’s rare to have a day that is entirely cloudy. In Michigan, it would be cloudy for days, so we welcomed the sun. Now that I don’t sit out in the sun, the clouds are just fine by me.
I had a friend call about a week ago and ask me if it being overcast bothered me. Nope, I like it. (It was bothering her.) (We’ve needed rain, and it is such a blessing to have it.)
I know I’ve said before that I like storms. I don’t even mind hurricanes so much except for the aftermath with no electricity. (Obviously I take that back for the huge storms that cause loss of life or homes.) (And I don’t like wind-swept fire, as a result of lightening strikes on dry flora.)
One of my children was very afraid of storms, the thunder especially. I doubt she’d ever been outside her orphanage until I adopted her. I don’t know what kind of storms they had there, if many, but her sense of hearing was acute, so she noticed all the sounds that we know to filter out, because she had never heard them before. Once in a while, even today, she’ll say, what is that sound, or look startled, and I’ll say, that’s the refrigerator, for example.
We would sit on either our front porch or our back porch, where I would rock her and we would watch the rain. I’d make a game of it so she knew I liked the storm and that it would hurt us.
Today, there was a line of black clouds lying low. At mid point there were some fluffs of white. Peaking at 12 o’clock was a tiny sliver of blue. It’s never rained, so far, but it sprinkled.
One time I saw a striking line of clouds, like a V pointed to the earth, but not a tornado.
If you’ve ever been around tornadoes (thanks to Michigan I have) you know there is a peculiar color to the clouds when one is near. One time I was struck by it here, and I said, there’s a tornado close by. Sure enough, there was. But I’m glad we don’t have as many as we had in Michigan. There we had a basement; here, we do not.
And one time I saw a fist above the road. It kind of went along with the news that day, which was interesting. I wasn’t looking for it, but you couldn’t miss it.
I can’t say I appreciate the darker clouds of life, when used in a metaphorical sense, but I do appreciate them in the sky.
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