A Gift that Meets Our Need Is The Very Best

  “Oh. It’s only clothes. “I had an idea when I was younger that all Christmas presents should be something you don’t need. I think others helped me in forming this idea.
Gradually my idea of the perfect present has changed.
Others helped me change my ideal.
It occurred to me last week that Jesus was the perfect [...]

Chutney is Life?

    Watching all the turmoil around me, sometimes my attitude seems to be a bit fluffy. Maybe some of that is on purpose.  I try to maintain a certain amount of denial so that the seriousness of it all doesn’t weigh on me too heavily. I try to  let God carry the heavy load  in [...]

Summer Calls and Kids Help It

  Summer is at midpoint and I notice myself and people around me alternating between a panic and plodding moes. We like a collective ant colony movealong the path of seasonal tasks and pleasure. Produce and blossoms come in waves and I pick and pack away. The waves and the summer sun beckon and I [...]

Guilty till Proven Innocent Beyond the Shadow of a Doubt

  In the life of a young couple I know the traditional idea of American law has been turned on it’s head. Not innocent until proven guilty beyond a shadow of doubt but the reverse has been the treatment they have received.
  It is horrifying to sit in court and hear the evaluation of them [...]

Mothering in Retrospect

It’s interesting being the mother of older children. My roll has changed from one who made things ok, made things happen, knew (supposedly) all the answers, and gave up my nights, my comfort ( wet sandy snuggles at the beach for instance and bouquets of flowers I was allergic to), my preferences, my beauty( [...]

The Rain Falls on Me and You

  Every once in a while it seems life is like a clock and I suddenly get a glimpse of the inside and the way all the parts connect to each other. I was thinking about whys and hows yesterday as I made my way through the day handing my letter to the gal who’d poured out [...]

Pain and Poetry on a Drizzly Day

“I have a little shadow that goes in and out with me and what can be the use of him is more than I can see”,Robert Louis Stevenson
  The day began with awareness of the feeling of broken glass embedded in between my shoulder blades. I managed to throw my back out this past week [...]

One Hand for Sorrow Another for Joy

 
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 It’s still spring!! I marvel at that because of our late snowstorms which made me wonder if I was in “The Long Winter”. I’ve often read Laura Ingalls Wilder’s “Long Winter” but had no burning desire to experience it. I have to admit the first late flurry of snow after I came home from a [...]

Ask Mom

“Did you listen this time? You are so annoying…”
  “It must be so scary to be pregnant with triplets.” (Heard by Mom as question. Please tell me about birth and pregnancy.)
  Well it can be. I wondered every time if I was pregnant with twins. I watched four friends carry and give birth to twins [...]

anticipation

Apple pie,an old farmer his obese wife , cluttered counters,birds imagined and their imaginary trills, spring with snow still on the ground and undoubtedly the ground is frozen under foot, apple crisp with oatmeal in it, oatmeal with apples in it, and Gladys Alyward triumphantly trudging into the city with 100 orphans tattered,bandaged feet but [...]