Arbor Lights

Enthusiasm in ancient Greece meant “Filled with God.” 

I love that.

We heard something from our President the other day that we haven’t heard for a long time. That was optimism. 

Those concepts, enthusiasm, and optimism have been sadly lacking in our beautiful world for a time. 

With the coming of spring, though, comes hope and new life, and I see the joy of living springing forth from sticks that looked dead during the winter.

It’s incredible, isn’t it, how after being dormant during a cold spell, they can spring to life?

“We can take a lesson from plants. Hope is coming. 

The Magnolia tree is laden with flowers. The evergreen Clematis on the arbor has more buds and flowers than leaves. How do they do it? Life wants to live, and so do we. And we want to live beyond survival level. We want to live abundantly. 

I do not want to diminish the suffering people have endured or the worry plaguing them; I want to look ahead to a brighter day.  

I think we’re like passengers on a just landed jet plane who breathe a sigh of relief when they safely reach  their destination. I bet even people who feel quite comfortable flying are a bit relieved to have wheels on the ground.

It’s time, though, don’t you think, for us to be “Filled with God” and to remember that child within us who longed for a secret adventure.

Remember when we were kids and we laughed for no reason? 

Those who are filled with that enthusiasm–filled with God–do not harm people, animals, nor soil their bed, which is mother earth.  

I visited the farm store the other day and stopped to look at baby chicks. I’ve been wondering if I wanted to begin again with chicklets. I have two hens that are laying sporadically. They came to live with us as adults, so I don’t know their age, and elderly hens stop laying eventually. 

I asked if they would be getting Americanas, now called Easter egg chickens because they lay beautiful seafoam green or blue eggs. Chickadee, my Margaretta drinking, french-fries eating chicken was an Americana.

Friday, said the farm store lady said. The chicks would be coming in on Friday—that’s tomorrow. The chicks will be three days old. I wonder if I can be as lucky as I was last time when I got three little pullets. Roosters annoy the neighbors and don’t give any eggs. They might provide us with more chickens, though.

I’m debating. We’ll see tomorrow. 

Babies give us the belief that the Universe will continue.

Related

Words, Words All over the Place

Whoops, I dropped some into my coffee.

 

Have you ever had someone ask you a question, and you tried to answer, but about two sentences in, their attention wandered off, and you were left feeling that you were the stupidest person on the planet?

You think, well, I’m not emoting enough. I should be more dramatic. I don’t have the right words. I’m boring.

No! The person is self-centered.

Last night my daughter told me of such an experience she had with an elderly lady. I reassured her that while it might be excusable with an old person, it’s not justifiable with someone will all their facilities. My daughter is a precise person and not overly talkative.

I’ve had such an experience, and that was after I had listened to them tell the same story about five times.

Although I fear for my words on paper sometimes, for I want my writing to be fun or exciting, or informative, and know they can fall short. Still, I keep keeping on.

You keep on keeping on, too—whatever your calling is.

Keep doing it, for you’ll get better with the doing of it. That’s what practice does for a person.

But don’t keep doing the same old stuff.

If a pianist kept practicing the same piece with the same errors repeatedly, he would perfect it with mistakes. I suspect soon, he would think it sounded good with the mistakes.

I recently read about conversation. Few people correctly judge when a conversation should end. You know sometimes you are rolling, and you are sorry you had to end the visit. You are often wondering how to end a phone call or, say, at a dinner party. You like them. You’ve just run dry.

It’s a tricky business being a human being.

Funny too.

Sometimes you want to ask a person about a particular belief system, and they open up and bombard you with more information than you wanted to know. Or want to beat you up with their belief system.

It makes us leery about asking. Still, you want to know what they think and why they think the way they do.

I remember reading about ancient Egypt. According to one source, they were quite allowing when a new person wandered into the village. They would ask, “Who’s your god?”

They felt there was room for many and genuinely accepted another person’s point of view. They didn’t have to embrace it as their own, but it was interesting to them what the other person thought.

Imagine.

 

For a chuckle check out the pics on my Pinterest site, the board is, “The Art of Animal Stacking."

https://www.pinterest.com/jewelld747/the-art-of-animal-stacking/