Dear Reader:

Last Christmas, Marcia sent a box of “fake” snowballs (from New Hampshire) for us poor southerners who rarely see snow or a white Christmas. The grandchildren went wild…as well as the adults…it just made the Christmas Eve gathering!

Four snowballs turned up behind sofa cushions or under the sofas for months after the party…so I decided this year to add on to the fun…not cute like Marcia’s with little faces on them…but still…big and white…and thank goodness soft!

Hopefully, weather permitting, this year… since we are doing a Christmas Eve brunch…following my Christmas Eve story at the regular morning service… the grandchildren can go outside and have the snowball fight in my front yard. Get all that energy out to go home and take a long nap for mom and dad.

I want the grandchildren to remember Christmas Eve at Boo Boo’s as fun, crazy, and messy…just the way Christmas should be. Quinn Caldwell in his Advent Devotional titled, All I Really Want, explains this sentiment quite well when he says:

“I mean this is CHRISTMAS we’re talking about, people! CHRISTMAS! The day that unto us a child was born? The day that made all of heaven sing in wonderment and joy…the day the Creator of the cosmos entered history and changed it forever!!! 

This calls for tinsel…and projects made in first grade with gobs of hardened glue and glitter. It calls for colored lights- big colored lights, ideally with water bubbling in them. It calls for blinking stars, construction paper chains and singing ornaments.

Christmas is not a day for restraint…I’m not saying you have to decorate but if you are going to do anyway…you best make it look like a party. After all it IS a birthday party! Bring out the children’s ornaments. 

When God decided to decorate for Christmas, God hung an enormous star in the heavens, not a string of demure white lights. No doubt the neighbors were appalled, but it sure did draw a crowd. 

So put on some music, loud and start decorating…it is time to party and praise God’s Holy name!

…………………………………………………………………………………………………….

So until tomorrow…We all know, deep down, that no matter how hard we try…Christmas will be messy…just like life…wonderful life. So instead of dreaming of the perfect soap opera or Hallmark Christmas just start throwing snowballs…the real ones or the southern kind and let Christmas be loud, boisterous, and crazy. Crazy in love with a little baby in a manger!

“Today is my favorite day”  Winnie the Pooh

I found two items left over from past Christmases when my children were little…both by Tommy. It made me stop and remember when…

Remembering the cowboy Christmas from my past with my cousins…I am  the cowgirl in the front with the plaid shirt loading my pistol.

Tomorrow I will take you on a tour of the house…I love decorating for Christmas…and yes I do use white lights and I love things pretty…but I do agree with Caldwell that a pretty house without people, noise, and craziness is a museum…not a home.

The cold is settling in….it is definitely beginning to feel a lot like Christmas…even little Maggie had to wear her new red Christmas sweater when Vickie and her son (who is visiting) John went for a walk yesterday!

Speaking of crazy Christmases…I found these blinking Christmas tree glasses and thought they would be fun for the grandchildren only to discover when I got them home that they were for adults only….so I decided to keep one to have fun Christmas Eve and gave the other pair to Gin-g to be a hit with her grandchildren.

So when Gin-g stopped by yesterday afternoon she came bearing gifts. I gave her her present and the fun Christmas Tree glasses…kids shouldn’t have all the fun! Thank you Gin-g for all the goodies!

I  called Anne yesterday morning and told her I was making soup and grilled cheese sandwiches…to come on over and eat…which she did and her gifts were from her wonderful talents…including one with “Three Trees”…We both miss Armand Gamache and the Louise Penny detective series. Hurry up Penny and write another book!

Dear Reader:

What a wonderful day I had yesterday…I made such progress in finishing up as much of Christmas giving as possible! I knew the rains were coming and time was limited. I finished up just as the first drops began to fall yesterday afternoon. (We are in for a cold rainy few days which will get even colder this weekend…below freezing at night. * I will have to try carefully to bring “Big Red” in ( It has gotten too big for the doorway) because it has new blooms just waiting to pop and any cloth over it might snap its fragile stems.)

But oh my! Is “Big Red” ever putting on a show…cars slow down as they go past the house. “Big Red” is so proud and so am I!

This day probably won’t stand out in my long-term memory retention but to me it was special while living it. I had one of those days that just clicked…I discovered new ideas for gifts to finish up with my Christmas shopping, everyone was helpful and kind, I picked up some lunch and while re-energized got some errands done I had been putting off like going to the bank and returning a broken toy.

By the time I got home the rain and I had both settled in for the rest of the day…a great day for wrapping…definitely not one of my favorite parts of Christmas but now done. Check! It was a day that left me feeling a sense of accomplishment and that is always a great feeling.

When I came across this excerpt from the book: Small Graces by Kent Nerburn…I thought to myself…this is it…what I feel so many times at the end of the day as I do my mental assessment…did I get some “stuff” done that I wanted to do or did I pittle the time away…not doing anything important. Or was the “pittling time” more important than my daily check-off list?

See if you can identify with Kent Nerburn’s thoughts about this common dilemma among us…the need to do more each day…or not?

Excerpt from Small Graces 

(Awakin Weekly)

Night is closing in. It is time for sleep.

I have walked a quiet path today. I have done no great good, no great harm. I might have wished for more — some dramatic occurrence, something memorable. But there was no more. This was the day I was given, and I have tried to meet it with a humble heart.

How little it seems. We seek perfection in our days, always wanting more for ourselves and our lives, and striving for goals unattainable. We live between the vast infinites of past and future in the thin shaft of light we call ‘today.’ And yet today is never enough.

Where does it come from, this strange unquenchable human urge for ‘more’ that is both our blessing and our curse? It has caused us to lift our eyes to the heavens and thread together pieces of the universe until we can glimpse a shadow of the divine creation. Yet to gain this knowledge, we have sometimes lost the mystery of a cloud, the beauty of a garden, the joy of a single step.

We must learn to value the small as well as the great. […]

“Confucius told his followers, ‘Bring peace to the old, have trust in your friends, and cherish the young.’

“Do we really need much more than this? To honor the dawn. To visit a garden. To talk to a friend. To contemplate a cloud. To cherish a meal. To bow our heads before the mystery of the day. Are these not enough?

The world we shape is the world we touch — with our words, our actions, our dreams.

If we should be so lucky as to touch the lives of many, so be it. But if our lot is no more than the setting of a table, or the tending of a garden, or showing in a child a path in a wood, our lives are no less worthy.

I crawl into my bed, feel the growing warmth of the covers, hear the quiet rhythms of my wife’s gentle breathing.

Outside, the wind blows softly, brushing a branch from the birch against the house.

To do justice. To love mercy. To walk humbly with our God.

To bring peace to the old. To have trust in our friends. To cherish the young.

Sometimes, it seems, we ask too much. Sometimes we forget that the small graces are enough.

…………………………………………………………………………………………………..

I needed to hear that yesterday…to be reassured that we don’t have to try to save the world every day…that we, ourselves, going about our daily lives is enough.

Now that I think about it…what I considered “pittling” was wrapping the gifts and it ended up being my favorite part of the day because I imagined each recipient’s face when he/she got my gift and how it would make them feel…cherished by me…I hope.

So until tomorrow…At the end of each day…let’s think back over it and ask ourselves if we gave a compliment to someone waiting in line at the bank to make him/her feel a little bit better, did we share a smile or joke with a shop keeper or clerk, did we hold the door for a harried mother with a screaming toddler, or thank a waitress for always knowing what we drink and bringing it with the menu? Small Graces of Gratitude for life in all its many forms.

“Today is my favorite day”  Winnie the Pooh

What beauty exists within walking distance of my home!

Dear Reader:

Ever since my spiritual and life-altering experience with the dolphin on the jetties (at Edisto Beach in 2008) I have received all kinds of dolphins from many of you readers…from jewelry to note cards to artworks (like the dolphin in my “computer” window Honey got me soon after my dolphin encounter) and her last dolphin gift…A Christmas statue last year.)

Yesterday I was categorizing books by the same author and came across Mark Nepo’s book of poems called: Reduced to Joy

Nepo’s poems (over seventy in the book) really make one stop and pause which is a very important thing in life…even more so during Advent. As I flipped through the book again after a long recess from it…the page I turned to was simply titled: “Way of the Dolphin.” Immediately my encounter with “my” dolphin at Edisto Beach (almost a decade ago) came flooding back from the attic of my memories.

Everything I have ever tried to tell people about that incident seems to pale in comparison to the experience itself. On a foggy morning, with only two other people on the beach…I plopped down, exhausted, on the jetties wondering what the future had in store for me…just weeks following my initial diagnosis of breast cancer.

Suddenly this magnificent creature of God jumped straight up over me and the jetties with that smile on its face… seemingly beaming down at me….flooding me with the knowledge that no matter what- everything was just as it should be…all was right with the universe and all was right with me. Then it disappeared.

If it had not been for that couple there as witnesses…even now I would have thought I dreamed the whole thing up.) Mark Nepo summarized it perfectly because he, too, has faced cancer and discovered the connection between this beautiful creature of the sea and his health outlook:

It was years ago that I learned that our job as spirits in bodies is to let our spirit rise from within to meet and inhabit the world, every chance we get. It was walking along the Battery in Charleston that this all came back to me, so very clearly, while sighting a dolphin. Mark Nepo

Way of the Dolphin

Standing in the harbor, these slick
wonders slip their fins in and out
of early sun. I close my eyes and re-
member being wheeled into surgery
all those years ago; believing my job
was to meet my surgeon at the sur-
face, so the rib he had to remove
would slip out, like a dolphin of
bone, as soon as he would cut me.

I’ve learned that everything that
matters goes the way of the dolphin:
drifting most of the time out of
view, breaking surface when
we least expect it.

And our job—in finding God, in
being God; in finding truth, in
being truth; in finding love, in
being love—is to meet the world
at the surface where Spirit slips
out through every cut.
— Mark Nepo

……………………………………………………………………………………………………
That is what the dolphin taught me on a foggy fall day ten years ago. We must meet the world at the surface where the Divine appears to bring us ‘tidings of great joy.’

So until tomorrow…God is always there for us, sometimes out of view, but always open to surprising us with His  sudden appearance when least expected. This is the season for sudden appearances from angels on high.

“Today is my favorite day”  Winnie the Pooh

Last night I did some Christmas storytelling for my friend Carol Poole for their  annual Aldersgate United Methodist Women Christmas Banquet. The food, as always was delicous…I think you must have to pass some cook school exam to be accepted as a member. It was the best meal I have had in awhile. So good!

They had a quotation in their program by C.S. Lewis that I liked a lot and wanted to share with you. “The Son of God became a Man to enable men to become Sons of God.”

Luke & Carol…It was so wonderful to spend time together again! Thanks for the invitation and Thank God for providing my car back in time to fulfill this important commitment.

Dear Reader:

Yesterday was the happiest of days…I got my car back!!!

I never thought I would be so happy to see the “Green Vue” again….I just went over and hugged it! I, literally, was filled with JOY!

(*After all, it is my Christmas present this year…and a surprise gift at that. (Not one  I wanted… but, still, I am just so grateful to have “wheels” again and not “bumming” rides from friends, neighbors, and family. Two and a half weeks is a long time! Between the Thanksgiving holidays and the shop being closed; then the search for the elusive problem…a lot of time passed.)

I made up for it yesterday. I started running all the errands that I had  put off for lack of mobility. I thanked my car and said a prayer at every stop sign and stop light yesterday…just so thrilled to have a secure vehicle to drive.

My first stop was Home Depot to get some poinsettias. For me Christmas is one large beautiful poinsettia…just like this one…which I am taking out to the barrel as soon as the sun starts going down. Mum out…poinsettia in!

While at Home Depot I spotted this double-bloom poinsettia. I have never seen anything like it…I thought the blooms were fake they were so full!!

There are other reasons I had poinsettias on my mind and why I made them my first priority after driving my car off the car shop/ parking lot…Anne Peterson just finished a watercolor of a pretty picturesque poinsettia. The painting was on a postcard invitation to her house for our annual church Christmas luncheon-gathering.

Then I discovered Anne submitted this same painting (that our public library -George Seago Library- is conducting until January 1) for an art contest. So all of you who live in the Summerville area, please add one more item on your check-off list…Let’s show our support for Anne! Go vote! Each person can only vote one time. There is also a sign-in/comment book located by the ballot box where you can leave a warm message for  her.

*As you enter the library take the first left and there is a room off the library where all the contestants/artists’ works are located. Take time to view them all…we have such wonderful artistic talent in our town!

It is the first painting on the back wall. The name of the painting is: “Flower of the Holy Night” after Tomie Dipaola’s  children’s book about the Legend of the Poinsettia. 

*I told Anne that this story was one of the first stories I told when I first began telling the Christmas Eve story over two and a half decades ago. It is a beautiful story of a little girl who has nothing to give the Christ-Child so she picks up a handful of weeds and wraps a string around them like a bouquet.

She is sad that she can only give weeds but she remembers the wise words Pedro  told her: “Even the most humble gift, if given in love, will be acceptable in His eyes.” Suddenly the weeds burst into a glorious red color…more beautiful than anyone had ever seen. It became the “miracle” the townspeople remembered for years after that special Christmas Eve. They gave it the name ” Flower of the Holy Night.”

I would be remiss, as a history teacher, if I didn’t link our marvelous state with this popular state Christmas plant…and is it ever a good connection!

     The Legend and History of the Poinsettia

(Phoenix Flower Shops)

The plant we know today as the poinsettia has a long and interesting history. Native to Central America, the plant flourished in an area of Southern Mexico known as Taxco del Alarcon. The Aztecs used the plant decorative purposes but also put the plant to practical use. They extracted a purplish dye for use in textiles and cosmetics from the plant’s bracts. The milky white sap, today called latex, was made into a preparation to treat fevers.

The poinsettia may have remained a regional plant for many years had it not been for the efforts of Joel Roberts Poinsett (1779-1851). The son of a French physician, Poinsett was appointed as the first United States Ambassador to Mexico (1825-1829) by President Madison. He attended medical school himself, but his real love in the scientific field was botany. (Mr. Poinsett later founded the institution which we know today as the Smithsonian Institution).

Poinsett maintained his own hothouses on his Greenville, South Carolina plantations, and while visiting the Taxco area in 1828, he became enchanted by the brilliant red blooms he saw there. He immediately sent some of the plants back to South Carolina, where he began propagating the plants and sending them to friends and botanical gardens. They quickly spread from friend to friend to friend. 

Congress honors Joel Poinsett by declaring December 12th as National Poinsettia Day which commemorates the date of his death in 1851. The day is meant to honor Poinsett and encourage people to enjoy the beauty of the popular holiday plant.

*(Statue in Greenville, SC)

So until tomorrow…no gift is too humble for the Christ-Child if our heart arrives first.

“Today is my favorite day”  Winnie the Pooh

*It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas…

Dear Reader:

Isn’t it strange how some words or thoughts just jump out at you and suddenly you see something in those words you hadn’t seen before?

This is what happened to me when I read Mary Oliver’s poem- “My Work is Loving the World.” (I will point out the two phrases that leaped into my mind and memory.)

My Work is Loving the World

Mary Oliver

My work is loving the world.
Here the sunflowers, there the hummingbird –
equal seekers of sweetness.
Here the quickening yeast; there the blue plums.
Here the clam deep in the speckled sand.

Are my boots old? Is my coat torn?
Am I no longer young and still not half-perfect? Let me
keep my mind on what matters,
which is my work,

which is mostly standing still and learning to be astonished.
The phoebe, the delphinium.
The sheep in the pasture, and the pasture.
Which is mostly rejoicing, since all ingredients are here,

Which is gratitude, to be given a mind and a heart
and these body-clothes,
a mouth with which to give shouts of joy
to the moth and the wren, to the sleepy dug-up clam,
telling them all, over and over, how it is
that we live forever.

…………………………………………………………………………………..

Just lately we have talked about the importance of stopping to look around us at the beauty God has provided. I think that is why I am so drawn to Vickie, Maggie, and my daily walks. It gives me the opportunity to ‘ooh and aah’ over the beauty of something new in nature each day.

The verse “My work is loving the world” struck me with all the power those words contain. So instead of asking a child or adolescent “What do you want to do when you grow up?”…all we should have to respond is “I want my work to be loving the world.”

If everyone’s work connected them to improving and making the world a better place for those who followed…what a wonderful world we would have!

When I took Tigger for a walk Friday I stopped to take these two photos… while experiencing a feeling of  wholeness and harmony that connected me to the universe. An astonishing feeling of acceptance and unity by everything that makes up life.

…“My work…which is mainly standing still and learning to be astonished.”

In a beautiful children’s story Anne Peterson discovered several years ago and told me about…a proud camel brags too much on his ability to take everything everyone brings on his back to the Christ-Child. In spite of his bad health…the old camel thinks miraculously he is going to make it to the stable only to stumble and fall down when a child puts one final piece of straw on his back…to help make the Baby Jesus’s bed.

Yes, it is (literally) the proverbial “Straw that broke the camel’s back.” 

But instead of the others (gathered in the manger) mocking him for his clumsiness…the animals and people, also, fall to their knees in astonishment and awe at the Christ Child sleeping in the manger.

So until tomorrow…Don’t we all need to stop this Christmas season and take a moment to reflect on the significance of the birth of the Christ Child in each of our lives? “To stand still and learn to be astonished?” 

“Today is my favorite day”  Winnie the Pooh

I am always in awe when Christmas magically changes my home to a room filled with twinkling lights and memories of Christmases  past.

Walsh sent some pictures of the family taken recently…the family dynamics are changing soon and these might be the last shots of a family with just two little boys…Eloise can arrive any time she wishes in the next few weeks…she is just about done.

Dear Reader:

My son-in-law John came and picked me up after lunch Thursday to take me back to his house to help Mandy with the children (getting them off to school Friday) and helping out Saturday. He is at a conference in Nashville this weekend.

Since December 1 was Friday “Buddy the Elf” was supposed to arrive and Mandy was ready. Eva Cate and Jakie were so excited looking for him Friday morning and there he was in the kitchen. He had left a message too. *He returned yesterday  (after reporting to the North Pole to Santa) and appeared in Eva Cate’s chair to read Christmas stories to the toys. Buddy is a sweet elf but very sneaky!

I am not going to get into the bad mojo I have been experiencing much in this blog…but I haven’t had my car since the Friday before Thanksgiving. I took it in after the Thanksgiving holidays (shop was closed until then) last Monday thinking it would be ready that afternoon…and Wednesday I was told it looked like it needed a new computer and then it would have to be programmed so the earliest I could get the car would be probably at the end of next week. (And you don’t even want to estimate the cost and labor…Bah Humbug!)

I spent a couple of sleepless nights thinking about commitments and how to get to all the places I needed to go, whether it was time to let my old car go… either way my Christmas budget (and regular one) was shot to smithereens. These thoughts kept me up and feeling down and restless.

It helped going to Mandy’s to play with the grandchildren…it kept my mind off my worries. I was feeling like the Grinch was playing some terrible Christmas game with me…letting ovens, commodes, and cars break down all at the same time.

But watching the children squeal over Buddy the Elf each morning renewed my Christmas spirit and I thought about all the blessings I have just been given…especially in my on-going fight against breast cancer. Problems that deal with money must always take a back seat to issues that deal with life. I am alive and happy and nobody is going to steal my joy…especially now at Christmas!

When Jo sent me this story from Lisa Beamer (widow of Todd Beamer…hero of the mutiny on the United Airlines 93 kidnapping on (9/11/01.) It re-enforced my thoughts on the priceless wonder and beauty of life…that comes free of charge every single day.

Jo Dufford, thank you so much for sending me this story…I vaguely remember it when Lisa first told it but I really needed to hear it again. Perfect time…angel!

(Story taken from a Good Morning America interview with Lisa Beamer in 2002.)

Lisa Beamer is the wife of Todd Beamer who said ‘Let’s Roll!’ and
helped take down the plane that was heading for Washington D. C. during the September 11, 2001 Terrorist Attacks.

Lisa said it’s the little things that she misses most about Todd, such as hearing
the garage door open as he came home, and her children running to meet
him. She’s now the Mom of a beautiful little girl, Mary.

Lisa recalled this story: ‘I had a very special teacher in high school
many years ago whose husband died suddenly of a heart attack. About a week
after his death, she shared some of her insight with a classroom of
students. As the late afternoon sunlight came streaming in through the
classroom windows and the class was nearly over, she moved a few things
aside on the edge of her desk and sat down there. With a gentle look of
reflection on her face, she paused and said, ‘Class is over, I would like
to share with all of you, a thought that is unrelated to class, but which
I feel is very important.

Each of us is put here on earth to learn, share, love, appreciate and give
of ourselves. None of us knows when this fantastic experience will end. It
can be taken away at any moment. Perhaps this is the powers way of telling
us that we must make the most out of every single day. Her eyes, beginning
to water, she went on, ‘So I would like you all to make me a promise. From
now on, on your way to school, or on your way home, find something
beautiful to notice. It doesn’t have to be something you see, it could be
a scent, perhaps of freshly baked bread wafting out of someone’s house, or
it could be the sound of the breeze slightly rustling the leaves in the
trees, or the way the morning light catches one autumn leaf as it falls
gently to the ground. Please look for these things, and cherish them. For,
although it may sound trite to some, these things are the “stuff” of life.
The little things we are put here on earth to enjoy. The things we often
take for granted.

The class was completely quiet. We all picked up our
books and filed out of the room silently. That afternoon, I noticed more things on my way home from school than I had that whole semester.

Every once in a while, I think of that teacher and remember what an
impression she made on all of us, and I try to appreciate all of those
things that sometimes we all overlook.

Take notice of something special you see on your lunch hour today. Go barefoot. Or walk on the beach at sunset. Stop off on the way home tonight to get a double dip ice cream cone. For as we get older, it is not the things we did that we often regret, but the things we didn’t do.

……………………………………………………………………………………………………

As I walked Tigger Friday afternoon around Mandy’s neighborhood we both spotted this beautiful white egret in the nearby pond. While doing some editing these amazing colors burst forth….from where I don’t know…making the photo abstract but dazzling. Life has so many surprises if we just take time to see them…and let reality become a fantasy land.

Yesterday my mechanic called and said he kept trying to make sure there couldn’t be something else wrong in stead of  a brand new computer for my car and he found it…not sure exactly what it was…still relatively expensive but certainly not in the same category as a new computer. God is good! Tomorrow morning I get to pick my car up finally…my Christmas (birthday, Easter, etc.) present to myself. So happy to have a car again!

When John picked me up Thursday afternoon…he entered Fall decorations at my house (still with lots of pumpkins) but by the time I reached his home…Christmas had arrived! It was a quick seasonal transition!

 Tommy brought me home yesterday (thank you so much) and even stopped and helped me pick out a Christmas tree so I could use the rest of the weekend to start packing up  pumpkins and pulling out Christmas! I spent last night working on the transition. Will show you some finished photos tomorrow…but here is the tree before the ornaments.

Tommy got the tree in, set up the stand, put lights on it; all in about half an hour. This tree was just meant to be. Will show you the final results tomorrow…but here is the tree before the trimming. Sleek and soon to be shining with ornaments twinkling off the lights.

 So until tomorrow…Please keep reminding me Lord to keep my eye on the beauty of the world you gave us to enjoy every single day …with no payment plan needed! Never let me forget each moment of life is the best present of all!

“Today is my favorite day”  Winnie the Pooh

Congratulations Clemson! So proud of my Tigers!

Dear Reader:

Today brevity will win out…because as I was flipping through some Madeleine L’Engle’s books…out popped the most important message I have heard in awhile. I needed to ponder this one verse  in my heart too.

After Annunciation

By Madeleine L’Engle

This is the irrational season
When love blooms bright and wild.
Had Mary been filled with reason
There’d been no room for the child.

……………………………………………………………………………………………………..

As I re-read these words over and over I realized just how true they rang. Reason did and continues to have no room in the inn. We can’t logically explain a virgin birth unless we can completely turn our faith over to God. Just as difficult is explaining God in man as One. Faith and Trust are the two vital components to the root of Christianity while rationing and reasoning must stand behind each.

Christmas is an “irrational season” where “love does bloom bright and wild” like our lovable, crazy “Big Red.” It was Mary who taught us that her story had nothing to do with reason but everything to do with faith. It was her faith that made room for the child in the manger.

What I love is the fact that with rationalization and reasoning taking ‘second stage’ imagination and creativity were (and continue to be) free to reign triumphantly on the most holy of nights. Or as Madeleine L’Engle sums it up:

“Was there a moment, known only to God, when all the stars held their breath, when the galaxies paused in their dance for a fraction of a second, and the Word, who had called it all into being, went with all his love into the womb of a young girl, and the universe started to breathe again, and the ancient harmonies resumed their song, and the angels clapped their hands for you?” –Madeleine L’Engle

So until tomorrow: “Amen.”

“Today is my favorite day”  Winnie the Pooh

Vickie is getting in the Spirit! Her back yard is beginning to look a lot like Christmas!

*Okay Clemson Fans…Take a deep breath today and here we go again tonight! Let’s hear it for our beloved Tigers!!! We love you and kisses abound! Go Get’em Tigers!

Dear Reader:

Haven’t we all experienced the various kinds of waiting that take place in our lives…ranging from the annoying kind…like waiting on your car to get fixed with no communication forthcoming to the more serious…waiting for the pain to go away from an accident, or surgery or some other form of health issue?

There is also the expectant type of waiting….to hear if someone is pregnant, or results from a medical test, or a reply back from a job interview or college application. There are more kinds of waiting we all experience in life than we can really count. Most of us remember the anxious type of waiting.

But then there’s the good kind of waiting. Quinn Caldwell calls it the “delicious shivery kind.”  These kinds of waiting scenarios fall under categories like waiting for your daddy to get home from a long trip with  surprise gifts in hand. There’s the smell of a delicious pie or other treat cooking in the oven. There’s the feeling of surprise and wonder when one feels her firstborn baby kick for the first time.

Advent…those weeks leading up to Christmas are about both kinds of waiting.

When we get down at the state of affairs around the world and have seen one too many horrific scenes of man’s destructive power over his fellow man we are choosing to see God’s absence. We just want God to show up and make everything perfect again.

Caldwell says, on the other hand, advent is about ” choosing to see God’s almost presence. It’s about looking around at the state of the world, at the struggling schoolteachers and rich philanthropists doing the right things, at babies being born, and the love being made and the ancient stars shining bright as hope in the cold night sky. It’s about looking around at all of this, reading the signs, and knowing that everything, one day, in an instance, will change.”  

“Advent is about standing mired in mud calling out “How much longer Lord?” But just as surely it’s about standing in the shining, shivering with delight and singing, “Come, Lord, come.” (All I Really Want…Readings for a Modern Christmas-Quinn Caldwell)

So until tomorrow…Let us spend our time looking for signs of God’s presence in our lives and not choosing to be blinded by some men’s interpretation of His absence.

“Today is my favorite day”  Winnie the Poo

A few weeks ago Cindy Ashley saw this charming little “rabbit” in a neighboring yard when visiting her granddaughter. She took the picture and sent me…besides being just plain cute…the colors work…red and green!

So on this first day of December, say “rabbit” and have a wonderful feel of Christmas in the air this month.

Some of you might remember that I surprise the little group of neighbors right around me each year with a December 1 surcie…usually a poinsettia but this year it changed. I found these adorable deer at such a fantastic sale price….(For once I was at the exact right place at the right time)…. a Christmas Neighbor Gift this year…or as I put on the card…“You’ve Been  Jingled.” “Have a “Deer” December!”

Dear Reader:

So much of the beauty around us is shared in short intervals of natural brevity. When I saw these Japanese Maples Tuesday afternoon while walking I knew ( like my grandchildren’s Japanese Maples) that the clock was ticking and tomorrow the leaves could well have fallen to the ground.

The clock was ticking. I remember one of my high school English teachers warning us that if we ever decided to write a short story we needed to know that the reader would decide whether to continue reading after the first line and the length of it. The clock was ticking.

Someone asked Woodrow Wilson how long he would prepare for a 10-minute speech. He replied “Two weeks.”

“How long for an hour speech?” “One week.”

“How long for a two-hour speech?” “I am ready now.”

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We all know there is merit in condensing long speeches and even longer writings and it is probably one of the reasons we are all drawn to quotes…they quickly sum up a feeling without elaboration. Here are some discussing the merits of a few, carefully chosen words over lengthy diatribes.

If I had more time, I would have written a shorter letter. Blaise Pascal

I have already made this paper too long, for which I must crave pardon, not having now time to make it shorter. Benjamin Franklin

Not that the story need be long, but it will take a long while to make it short. (Henry David Thoreau…offering advice to a friend on writing)

Twitter followers  pride themselves on coming up with more and more coded letters to use in place of letter-forming-complete words.

We all fall back on Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address as the ultimate example of how less is more when it comes to saying the right thing at the right moment, with the exact right words for the greatest impact on the audience’s memory.

FDR summed it up quite simply when he advised:

“Be sincere; be brief; be seated.”

Second only to the Gettysburg Address, FDR’s famous speech following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor almost wasn’t…at least without some tweaking.

Roosevelt’s original draft called it “a date which will live in world history” … But with one masterful tweak…it was the forceful brevity of that speech at such a crucial moment in U.S. history that is still remembered today…and a substitute of one word “infamy” for two words…world history. What a difference!

I just learned recently that many bloggers are going to (what is called) “blogettes.” Short little blogs…based on the idea that readers like quick, short thoughts and then they want to be on their way.

Like many of my generation I feel torn between short memorable words and/or thoughts just incompletely expressed. In our fast-paced world of communication…where shortened news, computer blurbs over sentences, coded acronyms over complete words prevail…an important question remains unanswered for me…where/when does verbal dissection end?

No more love letters wrapped with ribbon in one’s treasure box in the attic? No more reading of the classics of literature or famous biographies because of the “wordiness” and length of the book? No more study and understanding of our country’s most famous documents on freedom because they are written in cursive and students today aren’t taught cursive?

Aristotle believed in “moderation in all things” ….and some days I feel like “moderation” has become a recluse hiding out somewhere far away from the main stream of America.

So until tomorrow…I think today’s blog falls under the category  of “You Know  You’re Getting Old When...” 🙂

“Today is my favorite day”  Winnie the Pooh

More beauty to enjoy now and hopefully tomorrow too…another day, another walk.

Dear Reader:

The idea for the blog today started with an innocent enough question from Rutledge when he came over last Wednesday. I put him on a scavenger hunt to find the “secret” key hanging in front of the potting shed to give him something to do while we finished preparations for the Pre-Thanksgiving dinner.

I gave him a couple of clues including one that said “Look far back in the garden near the garage Rutledge.” 

“What garden Boo Boo?” asked Rutledge in a puzzled voice.

I must have given him a strange look and I pointed to the whole back yard….”That garden!”

He paused, shook his head, and said, “I don’t see any carrots or lettuce Boo Boo?” 

It finally hit me where the problem lay.

“Rutledge, there are different kinds of gardens…Boo Boo has a flower garden. Other people might have a vegetable garden but they are still all called gardens.”

I then asked him if he thought a garden looked like Mr. McGregor’s garden in Peter Rabbit and he nodded. Mystery solved.

Don’t we wish all our communication problems were that simple?

It did get me thinking along a different line of communication, however, once “Peter Rabbit” entered the discussion.

One of my favorite John Travolta movies is Phenomenon. He plays the part of a friendly, simple mechanic in a small town who experiences a strange light in the sky (following his birthday party in a local bar) that causes him to collapse for a few seconds in the middle of the deserted street.

In the days and weeks that follow, George finds his IQ and consciousness expanding dramatically, and develops telekinetic abilities. Despite his attempts to explain what has happened to him, with just a very few exceptions, most of the local townspeople begin to treat the “new” George as a freak.

In a beautiful metaphor for what is happening to George the movie shows another problem he is trying to solve. He has a garden raising lettuce and carrots but a rabbit keeps getting into the garden somehow, someway (even after driving three foot stakes deep down in the ground.)

One night he stays up to watch for the culprit and even opens the gate to lure it in….but to his surprise the rabbit doesn’t run in…it runs out. He had unknowingly “penned” the rabbit inside the garden while building the additional stakes.

Mark Nepo picked up on this metaphor of life too and in his own wisdom shared his perception of this “phenomenon.”

The Rabbit And The Garden

–by Mark Nepo

In the movie Phenomenon, John Travolta’s character has done everything he can think of to keep this pesky rabbit out of his garden. He’s even put in fencing that goes three feet underground, and still everything he plants is nibbled through.

 Suddenly, one night he wakes and realizes he’s been going about this all wrong. In the moonlight, he quietly goes to his garden and opens the gate, then sits on his porch and waits. To his surprise, as he begins to fall asleep, the rabbit scurries out the gate.

While he’d been trying to keep it out, the rabbit was trapped in his garden, and he was inadvertently keeping it in. 
How often do we barricade and fence up our lives against hurt and loss, thinking we’re keeping the painful things out, when they’re already trapped inside eating at our roots, and what we really need to do is open the gate and let them out?

— Mark Nepo

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So until tomorrow…Help us Father turn inward to recognize where the root of our problems lay and then open the gate turning them over to You…finally freed from the prison of problems we built around ourselves.

“Today is my favorite day”  Winnie the Pooh

The nice thing about my daily walks with Vickie and Maggie is that there are no problems outside while strolling…just new discoveries of nature at its best. The combination of the huge magnolia tree and the red Japanese Maple tree blooming beneath it…looked like a Christmas card…just needed a red bow wrapped around it.