Thinking on these things . . .

It’s winter in Chicago, which doesn’t have the same connotations as, let’s say, winter in Yellowstone - a pristine snowy whiteness covering everything…no, it’s winter in Chicago which doesn't mean that things aren't covered, they are; the cars, the roads , the sidewalks and the signs, but they're not covered in snow, they're covered in a layer of salt. Every car is the same grayish color as the car next to it with slight undertones of the color the car actually is, peeping through the salt. For whatever reason, there is never windshield wiper fluid in the cars that I drive. I get this thin film of kicked up salt and gunk that dries on there and when the sun shines it’s even harder to see where you are going. So, there are those times, that I finally stop at a gas station and clean off my windshield and I am always amazed at how bad it was once it’s clean. Before it was bothersome but it wasn’t that bad, until I get it back to the way it’s supposed to be and then I reali...

I read a statistic that said the average person spends 16 months of their life in the bathroom. I want to know how long one spends in the kitchen! It must be measured in decades! I am always in the kitchen, either stocking it, or preparing a meal, than cleaning up from that meal, than cooking again, cleaning, stocking, cooking. . . Why is it that the sink always has dishes in it? Always! I go to bed at night and everything (sometimes) is bright and shiny and little gremlins come in and by the time everyone is off to school in the morning the kitchen looks like a war zone of breakfast bowls and juice boxes, trash pulled out of the lunch bags that was left from yesterday (are there no garbage cans at school?) and knives with smears of butter and jelly and peanut butter. It’s incredible how much food stuff goes on in the first hour of a school day. It’s intense. For as much time I spend in preparing food for others, I spend little of that eating. While I will chop and grate and mix and sa...

I do not like mirrors. I hate mirrors. Okay, not the mirror per sea, but what I see in the mirror. Does anyone ever look into a mirror and say “Wow!” well, anyone beside the Fonz? Worse than what I see when I purposely look into a mirror is the revelation I get when I’m suddenly looking at a reflection that I didn’t seek out. The sudden illumination you get walking past store windows that reveal those jeans don’t look as great on you as you thought and that hairstyle really isn’t working. I had a mirror thrust in front of my heart today in the form of a winter storm warning. The news came that a church a hundred miles to the north had cancelled its services because of the blizzard that was heading my direction. Maybe our church would be cancelled too – wouldn’t that be great?! Hello – what was that I just saw? In the body of a faithful Christian and church attendee, Sunday school teacher and choir member was a heart that was hopeful that the snow would shut down the services and she’...

9:05 a.m: “I’d like to make an appointment.” “Let me take your number, and we’ll call you back.” By the end of the day, no phone call came to schedule the appointment, and I could only imagine how long it would be until the actual meeting. A lesson to be learned well and early is this: If you want to have an appointment by September, you’d better call and schedule it in July. My education came with my first call to the OB-Gyn. “I’d like to schedule a prenatal exam. I just found out I’m pregnant!” “Is there any particular day that you’d like to see the doctor?” “As soon as possible. I’m available at any time.” (Of course, I was available any time of any day; nothing would stand between me and the health of my baby.) “Okay, let’s see . . . the earliest available appointment would be at 2 p.m., three weeks from Thursday.” Three weeks from Thursday! How could they put me off for that long? I was pregnant. This was my first baby! Terrible things could happen in three weeks—didn’t they under...

If you are blind, you need a Seeing Eye dog. If you are breathing, you need a Seeing Eye friend: a friend who sees clearly where you are blind and one whom you trust enough to follow their lead. I have many such friends, hopefully one for every blind spot I have and ones who not only make up for my deficiencies but who can see clearly what I can’t. I’m in the forest; all I’m seeing are the trees. I have one such friend, so if any of these words ever resonate with you, she is the reason they have been published for your eyes. She’s my favorite “poofreader” and one of many with whom I’ve shared my writings. I've chosen each person who has ever seen what I've written, selecting only those who know me and would be an understanding and safe place to share my thoughts: my friend had another idea. One day she presented me with a book that was a compilation of the writings I’d been sending her. Today she emailed me with the announcement that she’d set up a blog for my words because, as...

I was at a Thursday night rehearsal for some music we’d be doing in church in a couple weeks. This particular piece was beyond my usual frame of reference, a recitative from the Elijah. Now, I’ve been singing my whole life it seems. I remember it driving my parents nuts from the backseat on long car trips. But this genre was going to be a stretch for me, both musically and vocally. So I practiced. I got the CD and sang along with it for a week. I even loaded it on “repeat” in my MP3 player and worked around the house with the music next to me as I folded laundry. I listened and sang with it so often that one day as I was doing the dishes I found I had most of it memorized, so I felt ready. But … when the rehearsal began, and I was to sing all by myself with an organ instead of the recorded orchestra, I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t find the entrances or the pitches or the rhythm. And worst of all, it seemed the more I tried to focus and count, the more lost I became; so, not only was I em...

I was thinking this glorious morning with the bright blue sky how we are like the tall oak trees I’m watching in my backyard- with branches lifted towards heaven and roots that have reached down deep into the soil of God’s marvelous love: we are strong and established and are constantly nourished from deep inside ourselves. Now the winds of the Spirit and opportunity loosen and blow from us pieces of ourselves that scatter to cover many places, beyond the reach of where we are planted. We send out our words and prayers and actions into the world, to make contact with others, to cover pain with love, hurt with compassion, offenses with forgiveness, to bring kindness into the routine, color and brightness into lives and our influence is blown far beyond our own little space in the world. Hundreds of leaves are being blown off the trees yet they are still filled with thousands more, so much of ourselves there is to give. . .

My Bible got coconut creamed today. Just like anyone actively involved on a Sunday morning, I had been carrying a bag full of stuff: Bible, Sunday school lesson, speakers for the MP3 player, two flavored coffee creamers, assorted pens and pencils. So somewhere along the way the coconut creamer met the pages of my Bible and my Bible got creamed! Augh! Oh, that feeling, that sinking, shoulder slumping, disappointed feeling: where you just look and sigh. And then the action to fix it, grabbing the paper towels and mopping up the sticky creaminess, separating all the pages and drying them off and as you're cleaning it up, at the same time realizing the extent of the damage. Now this is not a big deal. -- To the rest of the world. But it was my BIBLE. MY Bible. The one I use all the time. It's not that there aren't a half-dozen other Bibles around the house, it's that it's my Bible, the one with all the notes in it, the one with all the verses underlined that have jumped...