Sunday Morning Collage from Judy

                                                    Journey of Letters reprise

From This Heart Back

For both of us, this time in our lives is filled with sadness:  Parkinson’s seeming to ruin lives, a friend's dementia and assisted living issues, a young neighbor across the street facing an unknown serious and debilitating illness…it goes on and on.

I don’t know how we can feel happy about all this.  The key word for me is feel.  I’m not feeling much, except sadness.  I can’t say I’m depressed.  Life is awful.

You said the word “joy.”  What is it?  Is it an emotion?  Or is it a state of being that those of us who belong to our Creator God are in, whatever we feel?

Questions that need pondering.

It is so true that we are not in control of anything…well, perhaps things like turning the washer on and buying groceries, but nothing much bigger.  I’m sure that is an overstatement!  

Hack all these words to pieces, please.

Anne Lamott’s twenty-first century psalm is at the center of the human dilemma, the tension we live in.  I’m so glad you read that yesterday.

Your turn in this “from the heart” conversation.

Julie

From the Heart

Julie and I were talking this morning.  I was saying that joy seems elusive.  I've lost my passions for quilting, painting and even writing.  All of our friends are getting older just as we are, some sick, some dying, most longing for relief from the mental torture and the problems of the world.  All things out of our control, and I've always been fond of control.  Then this afternoon I read a prayer written by #Anne Lamott ( don't know what that hash tag means, but it seemed the appropriate place), a prayer I would have written if my passion for writing hadn't waned.

Hi, God.

I am just a mess.

It is all hopeless.

What else is new?

I would be sick of me, if I were You, but
         miraculously You are not.

I know I have no control over other people's
          lives, and I hate this.  Yet I believe that if I
          accept this and surrender, You will meet me
          wherever I am.

Wow.  Can this be true?  If so, how is this
           afternoon---say, two-ish?

Thank you in advance for Your company and
          blessings.

You have never once let me down.

Amen.

Ten reasons to read A JOURNEY OF LETTERS this summer

1.  You didn't read it last summer, and if you're a woman, you might enjoy our common experiences of growing up and growing old.  We are two authors, not one.  

2.  It will make you laugh and make you cry.

3.  It has a surprise ending!  

4.  The cover is beautiful and you'll be proud to be seen with it on your blanket at the beach or rocking in your chair at your mountain retreat.  (I'd prefer the chair at the beach.  Hard to get up from down there on the blanket.  :-)

5.  You can order it from Amazon in paperback, hardback or as an e-book or directly from tatepublishing.com/bookstore

6.  You don't have to know us (both 71 years old) to identify with the ordinary experiences of our ordinary lives.

7.  Our website is www.ajourneyofletters.tateauthor.com.  You might get to know us and find a recipe or two.

8.  We're hip enough to be on Facebook.  We never figured out how to tweet so anyone would read it on Twitter.  (We're not famous yet.)

9.  If you like to record your days in a diary or journal (do you know the difference?) you'll like this book.

10.  We've blogged for two years.  Why has it not yet gone viral?  (Is that a disease?)  letterscribblers.blogspot.com

  You don't want us to go to our graves thinking we're all alone in the big wide world of writers, do you?

Words

Madeline L'Engle is one of my author heroes.  Here she is, perhaps at her best.

I, who live by words, am

     wordless when

I try my words in prayer.  All

     language turns

To silence.  Prayer will take my words

     and then

Reveal their emptiness.  The stifled voice

     learns

To hold its peace, to listen with the

     heart

To silence that is joy, is adoration.

The self is shattered, all words torn

     apart

In this strange patterned time of

     contemplation

That, in time, breaks time, breaks

     words, breaks me,

And then, in silence, leaves me

     healed and mended.

I have returned to language, for I see

Through words, even when all

     words are ended,

I, who live by words, am

     wordless when

I turn me to the Word to pray.

     Amen.

Redbuds here?

We head to North Carolina next week to enjoy the splendid springtime where exotic plants and trees overwhelm us with their beauty.  Redbuds, dogwood, azaleas, to name a few.  We live, here in Colorado, amid constant threats and the reality of untimely frosts, near drought climate, and snow that laughs at our attempts to make beauty.

But once in a blue moon we get a taste, or perhaps more accurately, a glimpse of verdant pastures green.  I give you two pictures (and this is new photo software so I have no idea how these are going to look).  The first photo is of a flowering tree, ever present, tough and faithful; the other is a fair-weather friend that I have seen only twice (and the second time was just this week) in our almost 50 years of living in this close-to-mountain community.  This last friend is so delicate, even ethereal, that he (she) photographs less than perfectly, or else I didn't camp out long enough to get a good picture.  Here goes, anyway. Julie

Playtime in the Pacific

Dolphins have more fun than almost anybody.  They can play in the water all day with their friends.  They can swim like lightning.  And they look sleek and smooth and beautiful.

We came upon a huge pod of these dancing, diving creatures off Dana Point in southern California early in March.  Our boat circled among them for perhaps 45 minutes.  They treated us like their best buddies.  They loved swimming inches from the sides of the boat.  We could have watched them all day.

 Oh wait!  That's not a dolphin!  What could it be?

Treasure Hunting

I've been thinking about the wonderful times I had as a little girl in Sunday School.  I loved it!  We had Bible verse memorization contests like spelling bees, books with spaces to fill in with verses, and it was such fun filling in the blanks.  Our only translation was the King James Version back then and sometimes I found it hard to understand, but the meaning was there and I got it.  We had a weekly verse to memorize and the teachers sometimes rewarded us with a sticker or pencil or bookmark if we'd done our lessons.  I still remember a chartreuse pen with red printing I once received...it was something I treasured for years.  I still remember the verse:  For me to live is Christ; to die is gain.  I pondered that a lot.  Dying is not a concept a child usually thinks about.  But because I had hidden that verse in my heart, it's still there. 

With the world in the state it is, would it not be prudent to continue teaching our children and grandchildren to memorize verses that they may someday need to recall?  Perhaps our churches will be gone or our Bibles burned.  If we have those words hidden in our hearts, no one can destroy them unless they destroy our body, too.  In the '90's, I made a list of verses from A to Z on notecards.  I review them often, tucking them away for today, perhaps for tomorrow or troubles down the road.   A...All things are possible with God, Mark 10:27, B...Because He is at my right hand, I will not be shaken, Psalm 16:8, C....

Maybe you, too, would like to seek these treasures.  Happy Hunting!      Judy

For Death's Sake

Christmas isn’t supposed to be a time for being preoccupied with death.  It is, for a Christian, time to celebrate the beginning of real life, for Christ’s coming means the beginning of the new order, God’s Kingdom set in motion, his kingdom of love and light.

But for me this Christmas time was a journey for death’s sake.  In mid-December I boarded a plane bound for Spokane, the nearest point to the farm where I grew up, and, if the truth were told, the place where home abounds.  Those hills will always fill me with peace and joy, and if I close my eyes, I am there. 

Death had come to my 92-year-old uncle, my favorite uncle.  As a child he babysat me, laughed with me,  and I basked in his presence.  Later, though we met scarcely once a year, there was no distance between us.  Face to face, even a few words made the day whole.  The last time I saw him, it was at another funeral service, and we sat at a table with our arms around each other’s shoulders.  I have the picture to prove it.

We cousins and children met to say good by to Uncle Archie.  We said good by in hugs, tears, eyes glued to the pictures of him in his combine.  We said good by in saying, “Remember when?” and "Please tell me again how you held his hand and he squeezed it and then took his last breath."  We said good by when we shared lunch at the church and playing switching chairs so we could sit by everyone.  We said good by as we wound our way from the church to the cemetery that overlooked the Snake River.  We stood by Uncle Archie in his box and listened to his boys (men over 60 now) saying he never became angry with them.  We heard his nephew declare, “He was my second father.” 

By this time we were less than a dozen cousins, sons, and spouses.  We stood in the weak sunshine and wet grass that chilled our toes, loath to leave.  We stretched the day when we, as a group, decided we must visit our grandpa and grandma, Archie’s parents.  We knew they were somewhere near the trees at the top of the hill, so all of us spread out and walked over the area, hunting from stone to stone.  My brother was the one who found them.  We stood around their graves and said a few words of remembrance, the closing of a circle of the day.

To spend a day with dear men and women of the same DNA and experiences, and most of all, of the same hearts towards the Savior-to-come: so important it was unspeakable.  Hearts were full, love spoke from eye to eye, ties strengthened beyond breaking.