http://www.addthis.com/bookmark.php

http://www.addthis.com/bookmark.php

Shared via AddThis

summer is over

Summer is over. Our house is almost back to normal after houseguests a week ago. We are resuming the school year schedule. Our nieces and nephews have started back to school at all levels: elementary, jr. high, high school, and college. For me, it feels like New Years Day and that I'm saying goodbye to another year. Maybe I'm only saying goodbye to family time. This summer we kicked it off with our trip to Scotland to visit Robbie. That was the last part of May. Then we came home and were truly Home. Robbie was home to provide ballast, energy and brute strength. He and John and Pete put in a new lamp post out front, cleaned out our garage and built a workbench, with no power tools, dug out a portion of our front lawn and installed a new drip system, augmented the soil and planted a new garden, and a flagstone path, installed a new attic fan. We got rid of a lot of stuff in our garage by either giving it to the Goodwill, posting and selling it on Craigslist, or just placing it on our curb with a FREE sign. Oh, what a feeling! We visited a friend's farm up north for a tomato festival. Oh, and just before that, Tommy landed in the hospital for four days with a collapsed lung. We made our annual trip to Sea Ranch in early August. John perfected his pizza making, Billy was up a couple of times from San Diego, and Pete had mini vacations including a trip to Speed Week on the Bonneville Flats. We got to visit with some old friends, whom we don't see during the school year. Now, we're "back in the saddle". The boys have school, work, and activities, I'm tutoring every day, Pete's still mushing along at AT&T and I need to savor the summer that we had. It's a new year.

august 21st, friday

"Ruth said, “Do not ask me to abandon or forsake you! For wherever you go, I will go, wherever you lodge I will lodge, your people shall be my people, and your God my God.”
Thus it was that Naomi returned with the Moabite daughter-in-law, Ruth,who accompanied her back from the plateau of Moab. They arrived in Bethlehem at the beginning of the barley harvest." Wow.

“Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?”He said to him,“You shall love the Lord, your God, with all your heart,with all your soul, and with all your mind.This is the greatest and the first commandment. The second is like it:You shall love your neighbor as yourself. The whole law and the prophets depend on these two commandments.” (gospel of Matthew)
Could it be more clear? I remember hearing this for the first time when I was in high school I think. Well, it sounds simple, enough.

on the up side

Pictured: Glaswegians soaking up the rays in May.


I've decided that there is a dearth of good news about aging. People readily share their woes about getting older. The good news is:


as we get older, we can step off the treadmill and really see the beauty all around us and APPRECIATE it.


we can listen with a more compassionate ear, because we've possibly been there too.


we can cherish those who are older, because we are going to be them soon.


we are transported to heaven by new life and by the young.


we are invited to accept that we are just who we are.


we know better what we are good at and not good at.


we recognize that we are so much more than our bodies.


what else?


I'll be adding to this list as things occur to me or come into my view.

August 14, 2009

Today is the day of Eunice Kennedy Shriver's funeral mass. The Mass of the Resurrection. Good and faithful servant welcomed home. My mind is drawn to the intellectually disabled daughter of Joe and Rose Kennedy, Rosemary. I remember reading years and years ago that this daughter had been institutionalized as a girl and remember how shocking that was to me. What! Their sister had been sent away because in those days family's couldn't cope. There were no support services in the community, etc. Recently, I read that a lobotomy had been tried to improve Rosemary's abilities. It was not successsful. Rosemary's sister Eunice experienced all of this within her family and grew up and then when she could make a difference in the lives of children with disabilities, she did. She established the Special Olympics. I marvel at this... her personal pain transformed into hope offered to others. Thank God for Eunice and for all the people who make life better for others.

chirp,chirp,chirp

Robbie says "wow!, have you noticed how many girls hang out in front of Peet's? Jamba juice? El Ballazo?" He'd had to walk through the birds chirping (he slipped and said they were birds) to make his lunch purchase as I got my delicious frozen yogurt at the new Yogurt Shack in downtown Lafayette. He scampered down the corridor toward me looking for all his life as one seeking an escape. i don't know if it was the volume that got to him or just the spectacle of so many young women or what. I offered, yep, that's what women seek: connection and usually of the talking variety. Not all women are like that, but a lot are. Which is what I love about women! They like to give voice to what they know, experience, see. That need can result in a lovely web of shared information, support, feedback and sometimes challenge. It is in that shared information that women glean what it is they can offer to others to support, nurture and caretake. (Again, not all women are like this.) In younger women, maybe the talking serves another purpose: it helps the growing girl find her voice? Ah, if that were nurtured and supported... good stuff happens! but it isn't easy.. I'm remembering being a growing girl and observing the dynamic within girl groups... not always easy, sometimes icky, but when good, awesome loveliness abounded. I pray that our growing girls find mostly loveliness in their girl worlds.

John the Baptist

The name of the prophet heralding the coming of the messiah reminds me of Wales. My sister in law lives there and she has a friend who goes by John Rockclimber and John Shop. People in town go by names like that. They are distinguished by their vocation or avocation. John the Baptist is the subject of today's gospel and sadly, Matthew's verses tell of his cruel cruel death. What did John do to deserve this end? but insist that Herod shouldn't sleep with his brother's wife. John was what I'd call an activist. He was on the front lines, baptizing and pointing to the One he believed was the messiah. .. There is a tapestry of John that I came upon in St. John the Baptist's Catholic Church in Napa last fall. Click on the picture and enlarge it and see John's hands. Gaze on his face and then his hands. What do they say to you? This image struck me powerfully! Until I'd seen this artist's vision of the man, I'd been kind of afraid of John the Baptist. His ascetic lifestyle, living in the desert, eating locusts and honey, preaching the coming of the kingdom weirded me out...... but where would we be without him? This tapestry reflects what I believe John would want us to remember about him... He was very very clear about what was true and how important it was to preach it.