"My great-aunt Alice, Miss Rumphius, is very old now. Her hair is very white. Every year there are more and more lupines. Now they call her the Lupine Lady. Sometimes my friends stand with me outside her gate, curious to see the old, old lady who planted the fields of lupines. When she invites us in, they come slowly. They think she is the oldest woman in the world. Often she tells us stories of faraway places.
"When I grow up," I tell her, "I too will go to faraway places and come home to live by the sea."
"That is all very well, little Alice," says my aunt, "but there is a third thing you must do."
"What is that?" I ask.
"You must do something to make the world more beautiful."
"All right," I say.
But I do no know yet what that will be.

Thursday, December 2, 2010

Giving thanks...

Today is thanksgiving. The one day a year that we are given liscence to take stock. A chance to check our ‘storerooms’ if you will. One day set aside specifically for thoughtful reflection. (It’s almost as if someone thought we don’t do that enough?!) A chance to look around our lives' to listen, smell, smile, and re-focus. Its like the value we are constantly trying to acquire is actually lying right at our feet. Like the work is meaningless without a lens or magnifying glass in which we can begin to understand the goodness all around us. So often I find myself saying, “so what?” or “what does this all mean?” Or my recent favorite, “why am I doing this?” I guess it’s simply because I have lost sight. Lost sight of the lives lost this year, the triumphs, the losses, the additions, the wins, the celebrations, and most importantly the people that make life truly beautiful. It is this detailed fabric that is blurred, torn, or even discarded along my way. Life is not black and white, made up of longitudinal movement from one appointment to the next. It is a beautiful fabric woven with threads of sorrow, threads of joy, threads of goodbyes, threads of welcome, threads of success, threads of disappointment. Somehow life is easier to swallow when I see life as a work in progress- a piece of fabric woven together.