Dave says, “Inevitable, Mom!” He’s right, of course.
It was time. When Sarah returned from her last couple of trips to Camp, I realized that she missed all her doggie camper buddies. All the coming and going. Extra people to love her. And swim time!
I couldn’t quite figure out how we would manage a pool right now.
Then, I heard a story. A five-year old Newfie just arrived in foster care. Badly neglected. Itchy. Tiny. And very, very hungry.
Among the countless things in the world I can’t fix (You go ahead and fill in the blanks!) here was one I could.
So, I got back from Hawaii. Bill got back from Seattle. Sarah got back from Camp. There are lots of things going on and it took us a few days to get the hang of all the togetherness again. Don’t forget the laundry and the grocery shopping and the garden. You get it.
Then, everything kind of fell apart for me on Wednesday. Wednesday morning to be exact. My to-do list started bouncing around in my head like super balls in a clothes dryer. Turns out that all those separate things are really all related and I couldn’t figure out which one came first or how to do several of them at once. All of this was helped along by the fact that I don’t yet know how to do some of the things on the list. Oh, and I accidentally discovered that the due date for submissions to the Anthology project happening somewhere on the fringes of my list was today! Not today. Wednesday. The writing was done. The logistics were a bit ambiguous. You know the speed you set your dryer on for heavy things like white towels? Super balls. Right there!
I was so excited when Mom said I could do the blog post this week. I’ve been having lots of fun. You probably heard that I’ve been to Camp. I love Camp! There are all kinds of dogs to play with and people who love me and help me learn new things. I’m working on retrieving. (Not birds or squirrels or anything. Just ropes and things like that.)
There’s also swimming. Swimming is my favorite thing. That’s why I look so happy in my picture! Part of why I like swimming is that I’m a Newfie. We were developed as a breed to help rescue sailors off the east coast of Canada, on an island called Newfoundland. (How cool is it to have a whole island named after you?) Mom says Newfies and swimming are just the way God planned it. She’s probably right.
A day of apple fasting is part of the tradition at the Qigong healing retreats I’ve attended for the last two years. I’m feeling grateful for those experiences today.
The purpose of apple fasting is two-fold. One is to give one’s body a rest. One apple, three times a day. Lots of water. Maybe a spot of tea. The second is more about noticing. What is it like to feel what you feel? To set aside anxiety, which is always about the past or the future, and be in the moment? With the scent of an apple. The crunch. The clean, not quite sweet taste. To eat, for just one day, what is offered?
Today is, at least according to the Hallmark folks, Grandparents’ Day. Now, if you checked around a bit, you’d discover that I didn’t get the Hallmark genes in my family but I really needed to share this with you!
Until a couple of days ago, I didn’t know about this book. Then a friend told me she’d heard something about it on NPR. I went hunting! What follows is the text of a childrens’ picture book that’s a little hard to come up with immediately, but Amazon is glad to help.
For me, this is the story to remember on the days when it’s hard to believe that we really can help make the world a better place for our kids and all those who will come after us. And I now have 2,223 more people standing in my very helpful visualized circle of people who support me in my journey.
I’m sure they’d be glad to join your circle, too! (Even if you’re not a grandmother but just like hanging with hopeful folks!) If you’d like to join this circle, simply add your name and email address to the little pop-up thing or to the comments below and we’ll send you an email when there’s a new post! (There are exciting things ahead!)
My Dream for Paradise
by Sharon Mehdi from the U.S.A.
The Great Silent Grandmother Gathering
A busboy who worked in a café whose window faced the public park noticed that two grandmotherly looking women had been standing in the park all day without moving at all and without talking. They were dressed up in their Sunday best and were just staring at the town hall.He asked the other patrons in the café what they thought the women were up to. They speculated on a variety of things. Then, a five-year old year who was in the café spoke up and said “One of them is my grandmother and I know what they are doing. They are standing there to save the world.”
All of the men in the café hooted and howled and laughed.
On his way home the busboy decided to ask the women what they were doing and sure enough their answer was “We are saving the world.”
Over dinner that evening the busboy told his parents and he and his father hooted and howled, but his mother was totally silent. After dinner, the mother called her best friends to tell them.
The next morning the busboy looked out the café window and the two women were back, along with his mother, her friends, and the women who had been in the café the day before. All were standing in silence staring at the town hall.
Again, the men hooted and howled and said things like “You can’t save the world by standing in the park. That is what we have armies for,” and “everyone knows you have to have banners and slogans to save the world–you can’t do it by just standing in the park.”
The next day the women were joined by the women who were in the café the day before and a number of their friends. This brought the local newspaper reporter to the scene. He wrote a derisive article about the women. The day after it appeared, hundreds of women showed up to stand in the park in silence.
The mayor then told the police chief to make the women leave because they were making the town appear to be foolish.
When the police chief told them they would have to disperse because they didn’t have a permit, one of them responded that “we are just individuals standing in our public park and we are not giving speeches or having a demonstration so why would we need a permit.”
The police chief thought about this and agreed with them and left the park.
At this point 2,223 women including the mayor’s wife, the police chief’s wife, and one five-year old girl were standing in the park to save the world. The news quickly spread and soon women were standing all over the country. Even women standing in every country throughout the globe:
Lately I’ve noticed that I’ve been filtering much of what’s going on in and around me through the lens of the events of 9/11. I imagine many of you have been, too.
Back in those days, I served as editor of a magazine called Monday Morning. It was a publication of the Presbyterian Church (USA). During that time, I lived in a very special time zone known as “magazine time.” Sitting down to write involved quite a bit of trying to figure out what would be going on in the world about a month later when a particular issue actually made it to the readers. Christmas and Easter were easy. General Assembly. Back-to-School. You get the idea. The hard part was dealing with the things we couldn’t anticipate.
I love back to school time! I have ever since I started first grade without benefit of kindergarten. I was way ready. I was going to learn to read! In fact, the oral tradition in my family holds that I returned home after that first day of first grade and swore I was never going back. I’d been there 6 whole hours and no one had taught me to read yet!
