Little Things

“Let us believe that God is in all our simple deeds and learn to find Him there." --A.W. Tozer

The decor I enjoy most in the Ellerbe manse kitchen, next to my children's artwork, are the antique magazine grocery ads that my parents acquired from a dealer in Wichita Falls, Texas, many years ago.  There's one Coca-Cola ad that stands out, calling Coke, "The Pause that Refreshes." This weekly blogging is just that for me, a refreshing pause in the week's busy-ness.  This past week, I joined a few friends in Ann Voskamp's Joy Dare--we find three things each day in June for which we are grateful.  Voskamp's book One Thousand Gifts was what inspired this blog in the first place.  I've been sharing June's list on Facebook as a way to testify to the things around me and the wonderful Creator responsible for my joy.  After all, it is in the little things that we often find the most joy. Like when we mentioned gardening and where we would put our compost to which Ben chimed in:  "I've always wanted a compost!"  or back in autumn, when Knox and I made homemade applesauce and he exclaimed, "This belongs on the dessert aisle!"  Or when the bus driver first nicknamed D, "Cassanova," and he disembarked with a smile like he was the next Paul Newman.

Today's Joy Dare is to find three "empty" gifts:

1.  Our living room is empty as I had to clean up a big toileting accident yesterday which resulted in my renting a carpet cleaner and getting the carpet and a few chairs clean.  Nothing like a good mess to get things really clean.

2.  Having to do #1 caused Mama to have her own version of a blow-out.  There's nothing like a big cry to make you feel the good kind of empty.

3.  Our upstairs hallway and alcove is now empty.  After D's fall last week, I dismantled the trampoline and threw it out and then moved some furniture around.  I love finding extra space.

 
All of the emotion that was released yesterday created some space for writing poetry.  The following was prompted by a wordle  from last week's Sunday's Whirl:


Hospital Visitor

I watch the uneven, wavering gait as the man leans
on her shoulder propelling them down the hall like a steel ball in the Twilight
Zone machine that Van Carmichael gave Dad when
we were younger.

The pair bounce off walls, door jambs, stray lunch trays, but no seizure-
inducing flashing lights; the only cha-ching is from the monitors, reminding
the nurse to replenish the fluid,
check the pulse.

The all-too-familiar terrain's universal:  forced joviality, countless untouched jello,
the unmistakable scent of sanitation on steroids to cover, mask, make ineffective
sturdy bacteria, chasing the immunocompromised
in this field of dreaming;

dreams pave the way for recovery, the launch of straighter
lines, fresher smells, colors blinding, and time marked off by to-do lists:
self-imposed strictures to outline one's days.
Forget nurses' checklists, vital

signs diligently measured, tests meticulously conducted, and finally
pronouncements filed declaring your condition:  Healed or Unwell


Here's another poetic attempt using a word list from a friend with fantastic talent:
unity, immense distance, link, virtue, mortality, memento mori, chance, unsystematic, indefinability, aspects, mysteriousness, limit and foresee, dominate, insuperable, psychological barriers

Philandering Philosophy

looks for the universal in thought and
experience because Kant says that's the way

our minds work, but she (that philosophe) 
casts her lot with psychological terms

the alternative denial says (NAND)

one's a barrier to the other, can't be both mind and

experience.  She eschews unity in favor of immense 
chasms, distances never linked,

and human sympathy (a virtue) has limits that mortality 

foresees.  Her search is unsystematic, alas, 

though outlined ad infinitum.

Mysteriousness lingers round

aspects of tenuous unions--just don't believe

the exposé; it disguises as muddle-headed non-

sense the truth:  memento mori.

If you say I do, remember

by chance death comes

insuperable, but the dice

will not dominate--design foils

again.