Oh, I still want to see Him!

Helen always comes with me to the children's concerts.

She is a delightful companion at these events where there are too many people and I get so very nervous in crowds. She points out the interesting things around, me that I would miss if she weren't with me. Last year she showed me how she dances to the African drums and I nearly fell off my chair with laughter, to imagine her dancing around me as she did. This year, she pointed out the flags on the ceiling, which I never would have noticed. She got right up on the stage with those children and danced to Santa Clause is coming to town. Last year she was comforting me, so she couldn't go up on the stage. This year she knows that I won't fall off the chair so easily, so she left me for a minute or two to enjoy the spotlight with the children. There were so many little people in the audience and she especially loves the chopsticks song. I don't know why she loves that song so much, she doesn't let me ask her too many questions, she just does. My son in the concert is my complete entertainment and I would miss all of the other enjoyments about me, had I not a friend who points these other things out.

Now We See as through a glass darkly---(The opening scene from the "Miracle Worker")

God's love expressed in this hymn spoke to my heart so well. Bless the Lord!

I Want Him to Know Me!

Sooner Than we could know!

The darkness of the storm was alarming. I wasn't ready for the emotions of the moment. I guess, I felt that fellowship with Helen was a right of this era of the church history. I hadn't learned Braille yet. I just enjoyed being able to see her perspective on the things around me. Then, the lightning struck. She was gone. In her place was a picture in the sky. It was a face with a half smile. Her face is on the glass at the bottom of heaven, looking for me, in my imagination. The smile was not a full smile. She said the smile in this time is going from frown to half smile. We can't ever know what great fellowship there is with those whose rest is won. But, just a taste, makes me hungry for Heaven. The oven rang and the lightning flashed and I knew that she was in empathy to my plight upon earth. I have sight, I have hearing and speech, which she had none, while she was on earth. It seemed that the lesson was that God weaves our expectations, even, into His paroucia. As though we are rowing to Christ's appearing and He is commanding the procession in the understanding of our wondrous expectation. It was very sudden, although completely expected. Do we expect Him? Do we pray and prepare? He could come, without our being ready, but His heart is for His church's preparation. For Her, He labors in intercession and advocacy and in direction of Heaven and Earth, which He is Lord of. The memories of my friend Helen, representing Grandma Monica at Ethan's concert and the other moments of intense fellowship were crescendoed in one lightning flash. Don't forget, Christ will come, just as quickly. Don't forget, you're not stupid, if you don't know Braille. And our faces kissed at the bottom of heaven. You keep your lips like this, not a full smile, until Christ appears. He is the payment for our salvation. She knew it and I knew it. So many questions unanswered. So many things we never said to eachother, but, friendship with Jesus uniting us.

Pared down the garden to a dull roar...

I was nurturing a mini rain forest instead of a garden. Where the okra and eggplant used to be, there were strawberries and watermelon plants put in. I got discouraged and left them to fallow. Yesterday, I got a bit of a wind toward the outside. I pulled out lots of grass and took inventory. There are still 5 strawberry plants out there and several watermelon growing sweetly. They may or may not get to be ripened, but I have seen them grow and am content with that. One is about 8 or 10 inches in circumference, I am so glad to see them, doing what they are doing. My grape plants went to seed and I planted those seeds to see if anything will come of those also. I plan to wrap up the weeds and continue my paring until the rain forest has become a garden again. :)

Mother McCorkel and Father MacMurray prescribed a head of Boston Lettuce smothered in balsamic for my dispepsia.

Just because I love Boston lettuce, I indulged. I will never pay more than 2 dollars for indulgence, but chocolate, I argued with them. They insisted and I capitulated. I am eating it now. As I walked, they lectured the fatherhood and motherhood theory of mind and thought and theory and reality. What pains in the neck that they lived through were far more enlivened by my dispepsia, than when I am feeling well. After my walk in the store with them, I went home to eat my salad and hope for results from their encouragements and feeding. If that doesn't work, I have a vegetable broth started for dinner. Lentils and rice and a hearty broth for the sick soul.

I saw a hummingbird!

Of Course, he was over at Obie's house.  I don't know what it is about that baby that makes the birds so excited. 
It looked like the hummingbird was following a queenbee, into the best rose.
The queenbee was flitting from flower to flower and the hummingbird waited for a hot second for the queenbee to finish with her third or fourth pollenation and then swiftly took a drink and hovered a bit and then flitted away.  
Time seems sped up for the hummingbird, in comparison to the bees.  I have seen hummingbirds before, but never so swiftly.
Life is a quick observation like that.   What a quick and fleeting thrill it was to see.   I couldn't go get anyone to watch it with me.  It symbolized what is going on in the house, I imagine.  The swift thrill of watching babyhood become toddlerhood, is as swift as that hummingbird and only the mommy and daddy are enjoying the thrill of the beauty.  Everybody else just enjoys the flowers when they bloom.

The Joys of Difficult Vicisitudes

Yesterday I saw a big bunch of fluffy clouds that looked like a shaggy dog pointing in one direction.  It was so pretty and it made me think about the purpose of being someone set in the "south" of emotion, finance, spirit, etc.

I saw that God sets some goalies in the "south" to point "north".  If you live in the "north".  The tendency is to move "south".  But, if you live in the south, your job is to point "north".   I got some encouragement from this, amidst the difficulties of being pounded by providences.

"Hold fast to Dreams"

Everything we do seems such a drama, these days.  Let's go out to the courts and forget about nerves and school work and "Holy Basil Leaves".  Okay, I had 2 takers.  Enoch and Ezra and they each represented parts of the dreams of the past generations.   I saw Gramps and Grandma Monica, as though they had been married to eachother.  They seemed the antithesis of one another in life, but here they were big as the picture of my boys.  American Black Men, laid back, casual, no pressure:  a Competitor, to some degree, but not a pusher, at least in my life.  West Indian Woman: effective, tenacious, go getters.  How could they ever have gotten along?  I don't ever remember seeing them, even say hello to each other.   The dream of my father crushed underneath his ineptitudes and laziness.  The bike, he had long dreamed of, taken away because of his non-conformity.  She got her point across to her son, but she lost him, in the process, never to recover him.  I loved her enormously.  He never forgave her for taking his bike away.  I saw that today.  Children are children for a very short time and they may learn life lessons the hard way or the easy way.  The working woman must be very careful not to be too hard.  {What could she do?  She was much smaller than he was, she had to show her authority?}  He hated her for that one thing.  He left the bike out in the rain and it was gone to Good Will the next day.  He would learn the value of a dollar.  She would learn the value of a son.  Does love skip a generation?
The Tennis Dream
On the team at Jamaica High School, can a Black man have a tennis dream?  Not in the 1930's, discouragement looms where ability and limitations meet. I don't really want to play tennis, is the sour grapes of  a young man who was uninvited to the invitational, one too many times.  Now, his great grandson has no ambition in that direction.  Her Great grandson can't ride a bike.  Why?  Don't want to.  Can't, uninvited, unmotivated, unnerved...more negatives on the nerves than positives? 

My dad learned austerity to a fault.  My Grandpa learned to play hard and think fast.  A hit on the head would be an ever present reminder not to forget, if your brains stay in your head.  No.  Can I?  No.  Could I?  Who cares?  That is the parental violation of limits.  The goodness of God leads to repentance.  The austerity of parents leads to discouragements.  I saw that clearly on the courts today, no fiction.

Who's the Miracle Worker?

The first scene in the Miracle Worker, 1962 there was a reflection in a Christmas bulb and in my mind I hear the verse- "Now, we see through a glass darkly..." If there were anyone who saw through a glass darkly and whose life transformed the darkness and made sense out of a difficult providence it was Helen, to my mind. I see her, through my readings about her and the wondrous actresses who have depicted the writings about her life. I love her. I imagine that, if anyone would be assigned to instruct the Church to see God's providences on the earth and the workings of God in His love of His Church, it would be Helen. God, Like Annie Sullivan attempts and continues to attempt to civilize us from our self-will and blind indifference to our sin and shame and the Church, we, like Helen through spoons on the ground and fight against goodness and love, for our own way. We don't know. We can't see the Higher plan. We can't know what our sin is doing to God's heart. He is patient and kind and guiding us

The baby sparrows show so much more personality

They come to my back door for the seeds that I throw out there. They like to be treated like chickens, it seems. They prefer a fresh handful of seeds everyday, to a birdfeeder full for a week. The purple headed one, came out and braved tangling with Emma, for a taste of what they call fresh millet. {It's not really fresh from the store, it stays in a bag by the back door, so that I can throw them out the door to my adoring public. To them it is fresher than the ones sitting on the cement for the night} I was so tickled that she didn't even seem to notice our Border Collie lurking about. But if I get too close she would hop away and fly to a distant tree. She clearly thanked me and looked me right in the eye to do so. Sparrowlings are so personable. She was as tiny as a big man's thumb and had 4 or 5 friends that weren't as personable, but just as hungry for the delicacies that I throw to them. She seemed to have as many questions about the fare as there were seeds on the ground. But, as our grandpa always said, " You can't hollar and swallow at the same time." So, thank you was all she said. I didn't name her yet, because as soon as I get a name for them, they grow up and I can't tell them apart. She is distinct, though. The purple plumes on her head make her easy to pick out. I do wonder if she'll keep those. The bluejays were pollywollydoodling with eachother as usual. They do have such a one track mind. You can't even get a morning greeting from them, for the chasing that they do with eachother. Bluejay couples are so cute at that stage. The games of chase were in the background as the sparrows showed me each their hiding spots in the yard. They are all wondering which leaf of the new rhododendron they are going to claim for their own. When it rains the rhododendron is a great place to hide. They are nearly invisible at this age among the leaves. So very tiny and yet so very social. I can't tell how new they are out of the nest, but these are the tiniest sparrows, I have had come to my door.

Off to get some money to my baby...

I was in the car and preening. Forlorning to myself that I hadn't worn the right shirt or pants. A little sparrow as bold as day said, "Mommy this is a big, bad, show your booty show, if you don't hop in there and buy those worms and get that money to your baby, you won't make it. I heard that they are already at the book fair. I heard Ezra lamenting that you didn't make it, myself. Get going. Don't worry that your pants don't fit right, all is fair in worm getting for your fledglings." I took that as a rush. I stopped preening and got out of the car. She showed her tailfeathers to me this morning, I tell you. I love how the sparrows yell.

And I did make it, just as they were leaving the book fair. We bought the book and he let me go. I love that baby.