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What do you need?

Kate Bowler has this wonderful little book, No Cure for Being Human.  In it she has this little page of Cliches we hear and truths we need.   " Things People Say: Carpe diem!  A More Complicated Truth: I mean yes, unless you need a nap." I just love the honesty with which she tells her story. The story of what it means to be human.  Our world is so busy telling us what we need. You need to get fit, you need to sleep more, you need to eat this, drink that. You need to have this supplement, this hairstyle, this dress. It is inundating and overwhelming. I think one of the gifts that comes with age is the ability to focus on what's truly a need. I was finding myself caught up in the self-help messages telling me I need to wake up at 4:30am to start my days. Well, that is not happening. I get up early enough. I don't need to get up earlier. I can do my fitness routine at 4:30 pm and that is just fine. And by fitness routine, I usually mean lying down on a cushy mat, ...
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Grief

I read an article from Maria Shriver's Sunday Paper  the other day about our young adults - the 20-somethings in our world and how they are not doing so well. It's called a crisis of connection.  Here's another article  about parents worried about their children I found while searching for that. All this mental health crisis is creating its own sense of loss and adversity. So we look for causes and try to diagnose what exactly is happening here. Of course, I think the first thing I reach for is blaming the pandemic. I admit there are so many other factors, including screen time and social media, but in my mind the biggest culprit seems to be the pandemic. For obvious reasons, it was a horrific time in our world. Deaths, sickness, masking, staying home, locking down, wiping everything, not trusting anything, the list goes on and on. And there was nothing we could do.  But I think there is something we can do now, in fact, something we must do in order to heal. We can ...
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Hope

 It's been cloudy here a lot lately. Weird temperature fluctuations have me wondering each morning what to wear. There's been lots of rain and not one snowflake all winter. It's quite depressing. But there is a glimmer of hope. The warmer weather today means my walk won't be encumbered by a heavy hat and mittens that I don't know whether to keep on or take off. Hope works that way.  But lately, I feel like I am clinging on to hope, sometimes it's more like clawing onto it, my fingernails clutching any glimmer of hope. Watching the news, worried about everything, seeing the clouds of smoke over Ohio that some think will just go away, I grasp for whatever lifeline is thrown my way. When I feel this way, I'm reminded that I need to let up a little because what I'm really holding onto is the fear. Part of hope is seeking it, part of hope is praying , and part of it is acting . I can do each of these things and each step gets me closer to realizing what I ho...
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Seeds

 Last night I ran to Target to get lettuce for Taco Tuesday. It wouldn't be the same if we didn't have tacos and I didn't want to disappoint Charlie. Charlie doesn't even live here right now, but for some reason, it is important to continue these traditions and be able to tell him that we had Tacos on Tuesday.  Anyway, in Target there was a whole display of seed packets, brightly colored, shiny packets, with pictures of everything from Okra to peas to sunflowers to Sweet Williams. I stood there a moment holding my lettuce. The packets were nicely organized and so appealing. The sun in the pictures made the flowers glisten just so. It's hard to believe these little envelopes could contain so much goodness inside.  I know we've heard this analogy before - water that which you want to grow , and plant seeds of kindness, but for some reason last night it struck me differently. Sometimes it's messy. My garden right now is a mess. We removed the old tomato plants...
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