Just now, the light of this Friday is rising.  The trees, bare of leaves, are dark in silhouette, with swaths of warm and delicious tones, dove grey and French vanilla, behind them.  It’s peaceful…though the air is too warm, 57 degrees Fahrenheit at seven o’clock in the morning.  I keep thinking that the cold has settled in, and then another string of warm days appears.  The weather is odd, not typical; climate change.  The recent tornados in our country, such devastation, I can’t imagine being in the shoes of these people.  Do they have shoes to wear now?  Did their favorite, most comfortable pair get flung somewhere along with their bath towels and spice jars and photo albums?  Can they find their car keys? 

My dear friend in Nova Scotia sends me photos of their snow and the wood shed her husband built years ago, stacked with neatly split wood for winter fires; a Christmas wreath hangs on the outside wall.  It is quaint, charming.  I want that scene for myself, though am very happy, at least, that she has it.  She shares such delights with me.  She’s like that.

While a woman is looking for her lost prescription bottle in the tornado rubble, and her friend’s teenage son helps her, I am blending dried herbs for a Winter Tea blend.  It’s a stark contrast in activity.  My friend and I remind each other to breathe, to put one step in front of the other, to help who we can in the ways that we can.

Merriment and concern sit side by side on a bench in my heart.  I wonder what else will settle itself on the bench today, this bench worn smooth from fifty years of experience and emotion, characters in a play waiting for a turn on stage, shifting along the length of the bench, some settling in longer than others.  To which can I offer my hand today?

Let me not forget the pain of others.  Let me not forget the blessings of my own.  I’m not sure how to read a scale like this, the pain and blessings.  The markings are unclear.  My friend will text me to remind me to breathe, to put one step in front of the other, to help those I can in the ways that I can.  I will send a donation.  I will sit by the Christmas tree before the busyness of the day.  Merriment and concern will rest together.  Just now, so it is.

So it is.

You cannot find peace by avoiding life.
~ Virginia Woolf ~

sending a little love your way, m