It was a dark night and I was waiting for my husband to come out of work...

2 in the morning is not usually the time that you see people on the street.  I was surprised to see a street-cleaner outside at that time of night.   He was out there, though.  There was never telling how long my husband would be finished the last touches on his project.  I might as well strike up a conversation.

So, I got out of the car and walked over to the church to see what was happening, at that time of the night.

Surprise was not the word at the view, when I got over there.  It was Clarence Day Sr. on his hands and knees.  He turned to me and I could see the steps that led all the way into heaven were behind him.  You are working very hard on those stairs, I admired.  This is how the Lord wants them kept, he responded, not even stopping for a second to look at me.

Those were the steps to heaven?   Why would he be cleaning them?  Where were the rest of the people in heaven?  lots of questions remained from that moment of enjoyment with a soul whose "rest was won!"

Happy Easter!

Yesterday, three key things and themes came together!

Helen's trumpet blast was enormous and complete at the edge of the horizon, followed by a nearly cloudless sky, which it of course a "no nonsense" day. All of the blooms of the tree were in full bloom, outside our window. Three great butterflies came very close to me, one touched me on the way inside with the children. We saw a lizard outside the window on the bannister of the ramp and he blew out his red throat. I had certainly never seen that before. and Natty took her shoelace out of her shoe, completely. That takes some dexterity for such a little one. Loosing velcro is not an exercise, but loosing the shoelace from the shoe takes some doing.

These are not my children, but I have grown very accustomed to their growing faces. I have seen them from infancy into toddlerhood. Somehow it is as though, I looked up at a night sky and saw the bunny ears of a cloud and it became the cloth bunny in the picture of Helen and her mother above. It seems I stuck my hand into the bunny ears and here I am, wrestling with a bunch of delightful cherubs who are learning and growing in my daily care. I know its' fleeting virtue, for my manifold experience and still I invest this tiny part of my heart that is left, in the hopes that the dividends will reinvest themselves in me, this country and the earth, the good earth.