2019.08.07 For The Beauty Of The Earth

My birthday is today. So is my husband’s We are Leos in love. What I want for my birthday is that we all notice Beauty. It stuns and it saves. We see it in all living things, even when it’s obscured or dimmed by pain. Creative people know this. God is creative and creating all the time—with our help—making and illuminating Beauty. There is nowhere God is not. 

I see it as it looked one afternoon
In August,-by a fresh soft breeze o'erblown.
The swiftness of the tide, the light thereon,
A far-off sail, white as a crescent moon.
The shining waters with pale currents strewn,
The quiet fishing-smacks, the Eastern cove,
The semi-circle of its dark, green grove.
The luminous grasses, and the merry sun
In the grave sky; the sparkle far and wide,
Laughter of unseen children, cheerful chirp
Of crickets, and low lisp of rippling tide,
Light summer clouds fantastical as sleep
Changing unnoted while I gazed thereon.
All these fair sounds and sights I made my own.
    “Long Island Sound” by Emma Lazarus  born in New York City (1849).

I never noticed the beauty of Long Island Sound. It was too familiar a sight to me as I grew up on its banks and splashed in its waters. I think I would die of grief if it were not there to behold—ever again.

Emma Lazarus, a Jewish poet who was concerned for the plight of her people, the plight of the poor, and the plight of refugees and immigrants, knew about the spiritual power of Beauty. She is most remembered for her famous lines published in a poem, commissioned for The Statue of Liberty, gracing New York Harbor since 1886: “The New Colossus”: “Give me your tired, your poor, / Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.”

So did English hymnodist and poet Folliot Sandford Pierpont (1835-1917) who wrote the words to this hymn in 1864 when he was only 29.

For the beauty of the earth, for the beauty of the skies,
for the love which from our birth over and around us lies. 

Lord of all to thee we raise this our hymn of grateful praise.

Our current 1982 Hymnal changed the refrain to read: “Christ our God to thee we praise . . .” I guess they wanted to showcase Christ. But the above refrain is the one I grew up singing in the children’s choir at the Presbyterian Church in New York City, and “Lord of all” best expresses God as Creator of all for all. I believe we must seek beyond— way beyond—our religious preferences for the Beauty of the Earth.

When American astronauts and Russian cosmonauts left this Earth and headed for the moon on their spaceships, they looked back. Here is what they saw.

And this is what they all returned to tell us: this Earth is worth saving, and it has no nationality.

Only from a distance—time or space, physical or emotional— can we get perspective enough to realize what is worth expending every ounce of life, individual and collective, to save—with the help of the cosmic Artist who created it and gave it to us.  BEAUTY.

2013.08.07 Birth Days

It’s our birthdayS—seriously. My beloved and I were born on the same day. I'm 75 and he’s 72, a mere child.  Imagine two Leos in one not very large townhouse, retired with no 9-5 place to get a little space!  There’s a whole lot of roaring going on.  Boom boom!

Rather than feel old I feel lucky that his brain is 3 years younger than mine. He can remember what I forget in an instant. It's a balance. I can often hear things more accutely than he can, such as the whirring of a mosquito in my ear at night which causes me to slap my ear so hard it hurts—while he sleeps on.  

It's good to be happy and quirky and full of gratitude.

Our day started with arising lazily to stretch into the sun and breath in cool clean unconditioned air—followed by discovering a small infestation of mosquitoes between the screen and the closed window in the bathroom. Thus began the challenge to eliminate or free the biting pests, the only one of Godde’s critters I allow myself to whap! —without guilt.  Releasing them didn’t work so............. RIP skeets.  

There followed the challenge of discovering how the skeets got in and patching the aging screens- culprits, several of which by now are more patch than original screen. Makes me think of our bodies and whether and what we may have to have replaced one day— knee,  hip, pray God not a face!?  How grateful we both are to have all our parts. 

We began our day with a task and some pride at the accomplishment of mosquito-proofing our bedroom. Then and only then did we embrace for birthday hugs and laughter and head downstairs to see that each of us had broken our rules and gotten the other cards. LOL cards.

After my walk and his massage we went to walk around Walden Pond. It is a delightful walk and the pond is quite large. Thoreau was no hermit but he did rough it for some time. He wanted to see what he could learn by confronting the bare un-manicured woodlands and all the creatures therein.

In his 1854 book Walden: Or, Life in the Woods  he wrote:  “I learned this, at least, by my experiment: that if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours.”  (Assume he includes she!)

   Thoreau was a short and attractive but not husky man. He didn't look like this in the woods.

Walden is beautiful and now filled with people swimming and enjoying this natural resource for only$5 to park!  I learned that  there is no such thing as nature somehow separate from humanity, often assumed to be better. We are all one as Creator-God intended. 

Now we will indulge in a great dinner at a Boston restaurant and risk undoing the soothing effects of the massage and the healthy walk in an historic sight.  Fair balance, no?

It's odd to be 75. Somehow that seems like a really old number. Don't know why really.

I’ll go with Mark Twain's wisdom on this: Age is mind over matter. If you don’t mind it doesn’t matter.  I don’t mind.

2012.08.08 BirthDays

It was my 74th birthday yesterday. It was also my husband’s but he’s only 71, mere child. My first birth day was in 1938, my second birth day was in 1973 when Godde woke me up to, well okay if I must say it, myself. Amazing grace!

John Newton wrote “Amazing Grace” in 1748 at age 23 in the wake of a spiritual conversion. It came to him on a storm-tossed sea when he prayed to God that the ship wouldn’t sink. It didn’t and Newton dedicated his life thereafter to God instead of to the slave trade business he was in.

(What Newton didn’t know was that God was more interested in saving the African slaves in the hold, who were also praying!)

Back in 1973 I wasn’t converted, just returned.  I’d sunk deeply into the listening presence of one I called God as a very young child under a table chatting and feeling heard and accompanied. As I grew up and began my efforts to fit myself into my lovingly dysfunctional family and a world of roles and rules I lost touch with the under-the-table God. You could say I went Stepford-robotic—functional but self-less. Where could I fit as an ambitious woman with ideas unsuitable for a woman and mother? Depressed I suppose, I baked chocolate chip cookies—too many but a delicious distraction for me and a delight to my children. I didn’t pray but God “spoke” de profundis anyway, asking, “Why are you doing this?” 

Though scared witless, I recognized the dear old accompanist I’d 30 years ago fallen into love with. So I followed God’s provocative question and, like Newton, became a priest. The rest of my life still is the answer to God’s question.

And this hymn, as Newton wrote it,  is its theme song. 

                                                                 *******

Amazing grace! (how sweet the sound) 
That saved a wretch like me!

I once was lost, but now am found,
Was blind, but now I see.



'Twas grace that taught my heart to fear,
 And grace those fears relieved;

How precious did that grace appear,
 The hour I first believed!



Through many dangers, toils and snares,
 I have already come;

'Tis grace has brought me safe thus far,
 And grace will lead me home.



The Lord has promised good to me,
 His word my hope secures;

He will my shield and portion be,
 As long as life endures.



Yes, when this flesh and heart shall fail
 And mortal life shall cease;

I shall possess, within the veil,
 A life of joy and peace.



The earth shall soon dissolve like snow,
The sun forbear to shine;

But God, who called me here below,
 Will be forever mine.

2011.08.07 Our Birthdays

It’s startling in some ways to think that a man I fell into love with, almost without will like you fall into sin, was born on the same day I was. It gives pause.

At least it wasn’t the same year, too. I’m 73 and he is 70.

I don’t know if stars aligned as some say or even planets. Or maybe the gods, whoever these heavenly ciphers are, arranged this bashert, this marriage made in heaven, meant to be.

I don’t believe any of those clichés but I don’t disbelieve them either.

All I believe is that we have stayed dwelling in love through stress and strains and spats. So far in the angst of aging our biggest fear is that one of us will die and leave the other alone—ahead of time.

Secretly each of us hopes she or he won’t be the one left behind. How hopelessly harmlessly human.

Happy Birthday to us!