Reflections

 Reflected sunset 

My desire is that Christ and His teachings are reflected 

in my countenance and actions

Joy - Exuberance

The Christmas cactus doesn't bloom very often. 

But when it does, it does so gloriously. 

I feel happy just looking at it. 

 

Power & Love - Not Fear

 When we go through times of uncertainty, it's important to remember we are children of Heavenly Parents. When we come to earth, we "trail clouds of glory*" and with gifts that help us deal with the challenges of earth life. 

For God hath not given us the spirit of fear; but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind.  ( 2 Timothy 1: 7)

*Wordsworth

 

 

Light of the Word - O Come, Immanuel

This music, these words, and the video touched me in many ways. 

Christ is the light of the world. He is real. 

We celebrate His birth, life, atonement, death, and resurrection. 

The video shows acts of healing and comfort. I notice touch and proximity. In this pandemic time, many of us ache for physical closeness and personal contact. Touch is healing and comforting. 

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A Cappella vocal group Eclipse 6 highlights the world’s longing for miracles with the plea, “O come, Immanuel.” To those who wait, hunger, pray, and wander, they sing, “Behold your King.” The video portrays how the miracles of healing performed by Jesus Christ during His ministry can be experienced today by those waiting for the coming of Immanuel. To the hearts that long for a little bit of hope, the group declares, “The Light of the World is here.” (youtube website)

Christmas Message

 

 The true spirit of Christmas comes because of the Christ.

The true spirit of Christmas is in the angel’s announcement. “For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, which is Christ the Lord” (Luke 2:11).

 

The true spirit of Christmas is in the call of Jesus to “love one another, as I have loved you” (John 15:12).

 

And the true spirit of Christmas is in the Father’s introduction. “Behold my Beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased, in whom I have glorified my name — hear ye him” (3 Nephi 11:7).

 

We invite all to seek and share the true spirit of Christmas this season by hearing Him — Jesus Christ, the Prince of Peace and Light of the World.            

 

Russell M. Nelson, Dallin H. Oaks, Henry B. Eyring

First Presidency, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints

Kirkland's Ready for Christmas

 Click on a picture to see larger images  

This small tree is somewhat hidden

It has bulbs and lights. Small wooden hearts mark the path

The Cow and Coyote

Pandemic Outside Dining in Kirkland

 When the governor shut down inside dining, again, 

Kirkland's restaurants came up with solutions. 

Quite a few of the restaurants on Park Lane offer heat and/or sheltered spaces

Different kinds of heaters - this is one style.

Some use overhead heaters, some put heaters on the table

below - at Kirkland Urban

below - The Slip on Kirkland Avenue

above & below - Marina Park

 

Swing

 Do you recall that awesome feeling when you realized that things were clicking along - people were working together, everyone was trying their best and things were just ... good? This doesn't happen very open because life is complex and messy and we're all doing the best we can on this earthly journey. People and things don't get in sync as often as we'd like them to.

Sharon Eubank spoke of this and referenced the rowing team from the University of Washington and their trip to 1936 Olympics in Germany. 

Eubank said, "In 1936, an obscure rowing team from the University of Washington traveled to Germany to participate in the Olympic Games. It was the depths of the Great Depression. These were working-class boys whose small mining and lumber towns donated bits of money so they could travel to Berlin. Every aspect of the competition seemed stacked against them, but something happened in the race. In the rowing world, they call it “swing.” Listen to this description based on the book The Boys in the Boat:

 

"There is a thing that sometimes happens that is hard to achieve and hard to define. It’s called “swing.” It happens only when all are rowing in such perfect unison that not a single action is out of sync.

 

Rowers must rein in their fierce independence and at the same time hold true to their individual capabilities. Races are not won by clones. Good crews are good blends—someone to lead the charge, someone to hold something in reserve, someone to fight the fight, someone to make peace. No rower is more valuable than another, all are assets to the boat, but if they are to row well together, each must adjust to the needs and capabilities of the others—the shorter-armed person reaching a little farther, the longer-armed person pulling in just a bit.

 

Differences can be turned to advantage instead of disadvantage. Only then will it feel as if the boat is moving on its own. Only then does pain entirely give way to exultation. Good “swing” feels like poetry." (Daniel James Brown)

 

Against towering obstacles, this team found perfect swing and won. The Olympic gold was exhilarating, but the unity each rower experienced that day was a holy moment that stayed with them all their lives.

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Trying to achieve "swing" and those "holy moments" in our own lives is a challenge because, as Eubank says, "Unity doesn't magically happen; it takes work. It's messy, sometimes uncomfortable., and happens gradually." 

 

image pixabay

Books

“When I read a book I seem to read it with my eyes only, but now and then I come across a passage perhaps only a phrase, which has a meaning for me, and it becomes part of me.” W. Somerset Maugham 

Some books keep my interest because I'm fascinated by the subject. Or I read a book  because I need or want the information, so I plow through each page. In other books, I enjoy the way the author writes. Sometimes I find myself captivated by the story. 

Every once in a while I come across a passage or phrase that causes me to stop and take in its beauty or meaning or connection with feelings I've experienced.

I am thankful for books. I am thankful my parents emphasized reading. They talked about books. They read books. They filled our home with books. 

I want to leave that same legacy for my family. 

Time and Tapestry

 Time feels different during this Covid-19 year. One week and then month runs into another. With restrictions on in-person interactions, days are similar. I've filled much of my time at home with family history. The names, dates, and events take me back in time. Our ancestors and their stories are part of me. 

In her essay "The Threads of Time" author Kate Morton articulated thoughts that have floated through my mind and heart during this unique year. 

These imprints from another time, events that had happened to the people I knew now, but long before I knew them, fascinated me. They trailed invisible threads that tied me to the past and a grandfather I would never meet, but who lived vividly within scenes inside my head. Now I am a grown-up, my mind filled with decades of memories, … enough time has passed that when I tell these stories I smell the red volcanic soil and feel the vicious subtropical sun on my face and hear the echo of whip birds in the towering canopy, and I feel a swirling homesickness that will not settle. Homesickness, not for a place, but for a time that can never be revisited, except in memory. …

 

And so, time passes and gathers and concertinas and repeats. It loops back upon itself so that people from long ago appear in the dreams of people now; they lurk dormant in one set of genes after another only to stage a reappearance down the line. We are all time travellers, carrying with us from the past the experiences that shaped us. …

 

It seems to me that there is an old spinning wheel inside each of us, an industrious woman at its helm who takes the raw wool of experience and spins it blindly into strands of thread. At least, that’s what I imagine. Some of the threads are smooth, while others remain knotty no matter how many times they’re worked over; some gleam, some don’t. My childhood on Tamborine Mountain, my family and their stories, the houses where I’ve lived: these are my threads, and they knit together to make up the tapestry of my life…”

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"Tapestry of my life" brings to mind something Orson Scott Card wrote in "Red Prophet." Alvin is speaking with Becca, a weaver. Becca's daughter has decided to move away from her mother. 

“And you let your own daughter go?”

“Just like one of my ancestors sat at her old loom and let her daughter go, across the ocean to this land, her with a new loom and her watchful father beside her, yes, I let her go.” … 

“Alvin tried to imagine Becca’s mother, and her grandmother, and the women before that, all in a line, he tried to imagine how many there’d be, all of them working their spinning wheels, winding out threads from the spindle, yarn all raw and white, which would just go somewhere, go on and disappear somewhere until it broke. Or maybe when it broke they held the whole thing, a whole human life, in their hands, and then tossed it upward until it was caught by a passing wind, and then dropped down and got snagged up in somebody’s loom. A life afloat on the wind, then caught and woven into the cloth of humanity; born at some arbitrary time, then struggling to find its way into the fabric, weaving into the strength of it.

            “And as he imagined this, he also imagined that he understood something about that fabric. About the way it grew stronger the more tightly woven in each thread became. The ones that skipped about over the top of the cloth, dipping into the weft only now and then, they added little to the strength, though much to the color, of the cloth. While some whose color hardly showed at all, they were deeply wound among the threads, holding all together. There was goodness in those hidden binding threads. Forever from then on, Alvin would see some quiet man or woman, little noticed and hardly thought of by others, who nevertheless went a-weaving through the life of village, town, or city, binding up, holding on, and Alvin would silently salute such folk, and do them homage in his heart, because he knew how their lives kept the cloth strong, the weave tight.”

I think of the tapestry of my life - represented here by the picture of Joe in front of the beautiful tapestry of the curtains in our North Street, Worthington, Ohio home.

images - Joe Spring 1979

Harry Edmonds Floyd's watch