A PERFECT BALANCE

I've decided that the desert is a misunderstood landscape. During the day it is barren and dry and hot. People avoid it. I know I associate it with scorpions, snakes, bad Westerns, and thirst. Yet, each time I visit New Mexico I am reminded that there is a reward at the end of a day in the blazing desert heat ... a breathtaking sunset.

The sun glistens and sparkles at it hits the many different minerals that make up the desert soil and the reflections create amazing and vivid colors. The mountains, plateaus, buttes, and other craggy landforms make stark profiles against the blazing colors of the early sunset. As the sun recedes, the colors fade to soft, beautiful pastels. God keeps our world in perfect balance.

LIFE DECONSTRUCTED

I have decided that disassembling a person's life is one of the most emotionally taxing things I've had to do. This week I am in New Mexico helping my sister move my mother out of her home and into my sister's home. My mother's condo is filled with a myriad of items collected and loved over a lifetime of 94 years.

We have to do considerable downsizing in order to make this move. The two of us are sitting side by side, pulling items out one at a time and passing judgement - Goodwill - Garbage - Keep - knowing that each item we discard is something that she has loved enough to hold on to.

So, how do we decide? I don't know. Is the tattered teddy bear a treasure or is it trash? Is it something that she loved and was comforted by as a child or is it something she picked up on QVC a few years ago that was made to look old?

As the Goodwill and Garbage piles grow, so does my sense of sadness. This is a metaphor for life. As we age, we do downsize our lives. My mom has moved from a 4000 square foot house to a 1000 square foot condo, and now to a 120 square foot room.

I realize that I have downsized too. When I was twenty, I had grand visions of how I would change the world. Today, I pray to make a difference in one child's life. I have downsized my dreams. So I'm sitting here wondering if this is a mistake... if I should continue to dream big, or if I'm setting myself up for failure by trying to achieve 20 year old dreams with a 60 year old body.

I've cried this week. I'm not sure if I'm crying over my mom's stuff, or if I'm crying for myself as I face my own personal downsizing. I suspect it is a bit of both. What I am comforted by is the fact that as the volume of my mother's "stuff" is reduced, the love she has from those of us around her is not. There is no downsizing there, and so she is still a very lucky 94 year old.

Generation to Generation

In my father's footsteps:

My father loved to cook. I remember him standing in the kitchen over a hot stove with a cold beer in hand. He spent many an evening pouring over his collection of cookbooks and Gourmet or Bon Appetit magazines looking for new recipes to try. And try them he would. Today I am living in my parents home and each time I walk out into the kitchen I can see him standing there chopping or stirring or sauteing. I miss him.

My father invited my son to join him in the kitchen. They stood side by side while performing culinary tricks and today that passion for cooking has been passed along to a new generation of chefs. I find great pleasure in watching him stand in his kitchen looking so much like my dad. Not only does he like to cook, but he's very good at it!

One of the things I like to do occasionally is pull out one of my father's recipes and recreate it. We all sit around enjoying the food and our memories. Here is one of his favorites. I made it recently, and it is just delicious.

Shrimp with Tequila Dipping Sauce

Shrimp:
Lay 1-2 pounds of medium to large shrimp out on a roasting pan. Coat with olive oil, sprinkle with salt and pepper. Roast in the oven at 350 until shrimp have just turned pink. Watch them carefully. If you overcook them, they get tough. Cool them and arrange them on a platter. You may peel them for your guests or leave them in the shell. If you peel them, leave them in the shell until just before you serve them so they won’t dry out.

Dipping sauce:
1 large whole egg
1 large egg yolk
1 teaspoon Dijon mustard
1 Tablespoon white wine vinegar
½ teaspoon salt
1 cup vegetable oil (canola is good)
1 7 oz. jar of pimentos, drained
¼ cup tequila
¼ cup bottled chili sauce
1 dash of Worcestershire sauce
1 dash of bitters
1 dash of hot sauce

In a food processor with the steel blade, blend egg, egg yolk, mustard, vinegar, and salt. With motor running, add oil in a slow stream. Add pimentos, tequila, chili sauce, Worcestershire sauce, bitters, and hot sauce. Blend until well combined.
Put the sauce in a bowl and top with a pretty sprig of parsley and a few lemon wedges.

I Keep Tripping Over GRATITUDE

Let me share a few examples…

First, there was the stand up comedian I spotted while flipping through the channels one evening. It is a nightly ritual. I pay a lot of money to have about a gazillion channels and then complain every night that I can’t find anything on TV to watch. Well, I paused my channel surfing routine when I spotted this comedian. He was one of those chubby, overweight Southern boys who can usually get a laugh out of me. Here’s the part of his monologue that I caught. It went something like this...

My buddy Bubba was told by his doctor that he had only six months to live. In shock, he asked if there was anything that could be done. He was still a young man and had many things left to do in life. The doctor thought about his question for a bit, and then finally gave him a solution. The doctor told him to go out and find the ugliest, most cantankerous woman in Liberty County and marry her. He told Bubba to be sure that he found a woman who would nag him constantly, and complain about everything he said or did. Next, he had to go out and buy the most beat-up old pickup truck he could find, preferably one that would spend most of its time broken down in the yard. Then he needed to buy a run down old trailer and a dog that wouldn’t come to him even if he hung a pork chop around his neck. Well, my friend Bubba was real skeptical; he said, "Doc, are you sure that this will help me to live longer?" "Not at all," replied the doctor, "but it sure will make six months seem a lot longer!"

I was laughing, but it dawned on me that our human nature just loves to complain. In fact, I’d just been enjoying my nightly ritual of complaining about the choices on TV. A few days later I was surfing the internet looking for something I needed to buy for my cousin’s wedding. As I clicked here and there, somehow I landed on an advertisement for Gratitude Rocks. Yes, you heard me, rocks. People are making money selling rocks. But, it was the idea that struck me. Put a gratitude rock in your pocket, each time you touch it you are reminded to take a moment to thank God for your blessings.

I was cleaning my home office and came across a book of poetry by e.e.cummings. In it he wrote, “I thank You God for this most amazing day; for the leaping greenly spirit of trees and a blue true dream of sky; and for everything which is natural which is infinite which is yes.”Finally, my Oprah magazine arrived in the mailbox. There was a little blurb about how Oprah keeps a gratitude journal. Well, I knew this was true because she had inspired me to do the same thing. I have been journaling my gratitude for a few years now. Do you remember being little and having your mother lean down and whisper, “What do you say”? You knew you were expected to say, “Thank you”. My gratitude journal is my way of reminding myself to say “Thank you” for the blessings in my life. I was feeling pretty smug; yup, I had gratitude covered with my journal. In fact, I picked up my journal to read some of my entries so that I could pat myself on the back for what a really fine and grateful person I am. I flipped through the pages and began to read some of what I have written. Well, I wish I could report to you that what I found reinforced my belief that I had gratitude all taken care of, but unfortunately I can’t.

I’m so old that when I was in elementary school we could actually pray. I remember the “Johnny Appleseed” prayer we used to recite daily before we ate our lunch: Oh the Lord is good to me, and so I thank the Lord,for giving me the things I need,the sun and the rain and the apple seed.The Lord is good to me. Did you have a prayer like that? Sort of the “God is great, God is good, and we thank him for our food.” plain brown wrapper kind of prayer that you recited without ever really thinking about it? Well, when I looked at my marvelous gratitude journal, that is pretty much what I saw. I saw, “I am thankful for my home, my family, my friends, and my health.” And I just sort of recycled those themes over and over again in one form or another over the years.

So, okay, this had all gotten my attention, but I was still questioning: Is this gratitude thing just some New Age, touchy-feely thing, or am I really supposed to remember to say “Thank you”? I believe that a purposeful act of gratitude will enrich our lives, make us more connected to each other and to God.

Now, the question becomes, “How do I take this and apply it to my day to day life?” Dr. Wayne Dyer is quoted as saying, “With everything that has happened to you, you can either feel sorry for yourself, or treat what has happened as a gift. Everything is either an opportunity to grow or an obstacle to keep you from growing. You get to choose.”

Wow! That is an aha! moment for me. I have the power to choose. If I let my human nature control my thoughts, I may choose to be grumpy rather than grateful. Yes, it is our nature. People like to complain and they like to listen to others complain. I can’t remember seeing people at work sitting in the break room talking about all the things they are grateful for, I usually hear them complaining and griping. It is up to me to cultivate an attitude of gratitude. I hear people just like me saying things like:

"Why me?""My husband doesn’t listen!"

“ My wife never shuts up!”

"I deserve more respect!"

"They can’t do that to me!"

"My boss doesn’t appreciate all the work that I do!"

I guess I’m telling myself that I need to stop, step back. Life is a divine appointment and there is a plan for me, and that plan is unfolding each and every day. And so, I have made a new entry into my gratitude journal. I made a list of all the things that upset, frustrate, or sadden me. Then I have begun thinking about ways to turn them into an opportunity for thanksgiving and gratitude. For example, I hate that I am overweight. However, I realized that I should be grateful that over my 38 years in education my weight has provided many children a soft place to land in times of trauma. I really, really hate to pay bills. I put it off as long as I can before they are past due. This month, I gathered the bills in my lap and took a moment to reflect on how lucky I am to have a life style that creates bills. You know, I didn’t mind paying the bills nearly as much.

The Human Spirit

Within each of us, greatness resides.

If you are one of the 25 million or so who have viewed the YouTube video of Susan Boyle's amazing performance on the show Britain's Got Talent, you know that she is living proof. When this unassuming, frumpy, and quirky middle aged woman from a village in Scotland walked out onto the stage, she walked into the hearts of viewers all over the world. The judges and the audience believed that they were in for a terrible joke of a performance. Yet, when she opened her mouth and sang, we all got goosebumps. Her choice of song was so perfect - I Have a Dream - from Les Miserables.

So, today my question is, how do we recognize and tap into the talent, gifts, promises that have been given us? Oprah (she doesn't even need a last name, does she?) and I have a lot in common; we are close in age, we're both female, both intelligent, love to read, enjoy talking, like to figure out what makes people tick. Yet, look at how different we are! Hmmm...

I believe that God did not plan for me to live my life as an ordinary, plain, generic version of myself. I also believe that within me resides something greater, but I'm not even sure where to begin looking. I was in high school and college in the sixties. The Vietnam War was at its peak and the world was in upheaval. Many of my hippie friends dropped out to "find themselves". Well, one thing I do know is that whereever you go, there you are. I don't need to be on an acid trip or in a commune to be me. And yet, I was telling a friend the other day that "just being me" is a huge challenge, because I am constantly struggling to define who "me" is!

Like blue eyes, red hair, fair skin, each of us has been gifted with special abilities and talents. There are folks out there making a fortune writing books, self-help tapes, and more for folks like me. People are spending countless hours trying to develop their spirituality...that essence of who we are that connects us to God and the universe.

Is there a "one size fits all" formula for this? No. I think one thing that makes the difference is an unwaivering belief in self. Greatness doesn't just happen - it is cultivated. People who have successfully tapped into their gifts will tell you that they never doubted themselves. They totally believed that they would win, achieve, succeed, invent, become. Recently I watched a biography of Oprah. One scene stands out in my mind. She often talks about her grandmother. She recalled how her grandmother was attempting to show her how to wash clothes. My "aha" moment came when Oprah said she wasn't paying any attention because somehow, deep within herself, even at the age of four, she knew she would not need to know that.

So there's the rub. It begins with belief. I have spent a lifetime doubting myself. I doubt my intelligence, my worthiness, my appearance, my skill. I have been a chameleon - being and doing what others expect of me. My challenge now is not to develop my talent, but to believe that it is already there.

Bibliography: What's on my Kindle?

Vampires have woven their way through the cover of darkness and landed right smack in the middle of my Kindle screen! But that's not all...everywhere I look I see vampire fever. As I think about it I realize this is definitely not something new. Bela Lugosi was frightening movie goers long before Twilight hit the book stores and the big screen. Think about it...movies include Interview with the Vampire (seen here), Vampire in Paris, Vampire Weekend. We invited Buffy the Vampire Slayer into our homes weekly. Today folks everywhere are tuning into a show called True Blood. The streets and malls are spattered with teenagers sporting a dark, Goth appearance. We dress our children in vampire costumes and parade them around our neighborhoods on Halloween. Why, I even found a vampire attired Teddy Bear for sale! So what is it? What has caused our fascination with vampires? Why are we so consumed with curiosity about these mythical creatures? What part of the human psyche do they tweak? This is going to require more thinking. In the meantime, my Kindle beckons.