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.