We are still here :)

I know, throughout history there have been many folks who've figured out just when it's all going to end "as we know it". Jesus will return, and those left standing on the soil will have a hard time of it until it all goes up in fire, smoke, and an earthquake bigger than the wildest one ever before.

So, bless little Rev. Harold Camping's heart -- I know he's yearned for this since way before his last failed prediction -- but the birds are still singing and the sun is still shining and the worms are still tunneling in my unshaken yard today.

We've been told that it's not up to us to know, not on our job description.

So, as you go to sleep tonight, thank God all around that Love still surrounds us in this familiar garden. And if we're lucky -- no, still blessed -- we'll have a new chance tomorrow at taking another step closer to the garden of color and light and music and joy. We've a little more work to do right here to create a family of justice and peace that includes all people, as well as the earth and sky.

No better time to start than right now.

Self-imposed motherhood

Some days I've got to ask, "why?" Those of you who are parents know what I mean. And those of you who were ever kids of parents, if you've got any ability at self-reflection, you know what I'm talking about. Seriously.

It's not for the wadded up sock-balls I see on the side table as a neighbor sits to visit, and it's certainly not for the warped wood where my kid's friend chose to set her wet swim towel on the top of the piano, or the little slick band-aid wrappers left lying by the hardened toast on the kitchen counter next to the jelly smear. Nor is it for the sass-back that revs up shortly after 4:15 every weekday afternoon, when child is through with holding it together at school all day. I am certain that I could live without the mysterious sticky patches on the kitchen floor, or the milk cup left to fester by the heating ducts in the family room.

Then, why? Some days I'm not so good at seeing past the ornery, messy stuff to something else. But every now and then, a bit of light shines through to my dimmed senses.

Those revelations that flash in an instant; the joy when they're little as they excavate something simple or new with their eyes -- how the gears turn in their brains. It's a deepening of curiosity and a widening of wonder, that if you're not guarded against it, can trickle over. It's the laughs, the odd tweaks that strike at sometimes inopportune moments. It's the satisfaction in seeing this independent, unique small person grow into someone bigger who comes to see outside herself. When the self-absorption begins to fade and she begins to dig wells of her own filled with empathy, expertise, or passion. It's color and dynamics and music of one sort or another, thrown into a familiar noisy mess that is this family. On the best days, it's a bonding that somehow happens with all of these independent units going their own ways, but rooted in something deeper.

It's perhaps for the satisfaction of tender fears squelched. Or horizons stretched. A side-by-side that begins to happen and can, on those good days, bring another fleeting vision that the world is as bright and limitless as I once believed it to be.