It Isn't Easy Being Green

 

 One of my favorite scriptures is John 13: 34-35

 “A new commandment I give unto you. That ye love one another; as I have loved you, that ye also love one another.

By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye have love one to another.”

This scripture always reminds me of my youngest son. When he was about five years old he came storming into my room crying, “I hate my brother!” I put my arms around him and said, “No, you love your brother. You just hate the things he’s doing to you.”

A short while later I heard the beginning of a lifelong change in attitude that my young son made. From their room I could hear him yelling angrily, “I love you but I hate what you’re doing to me!”

Throughout his life he tried to love people; to be kind; to befriend the friendless and serve those around him. His teachers commented many times on his loving service towards his fellow students and their teachers. When he left on his mission this scripture was the theme for his farewell.

One day he found a tiny jewel box key and asked his grandmother what it was the key to.

She told him it was the key to her heart and told him he could keep it. Anytime he wanted a hug, he would go to his grandmother and say “Tic a lock” and collect his hug. He even shared it with Joey, a little neighbor boy who had just lost his mother. Joey would come over to play and “tic a lock” a hug from her. As my son was leaving for the mission home I gave him a huge hotel room key I had found to remind him to have a big heart and love the people he served in Montana.

I knew a woman, when I was much younger, who would lie in bed every morning until she thought of a way she could show her love to someone that day. She started every day with a commitment to be a disciple of Christ.

For our book club ,one month while I lived in New Mexico  we chose

The Five Love Languages: The Secret to Love that Lasts by Gary D. Chapman

The author says that there are five ways people accept love and if we can tell which way they prefer we can show our love more successfully .

Dr. Chapman guides couples in identifying, understanding, and speaking their spouse’s primary love language—quality time, words of affirmation, gifts, acts of service, or physical touch. I think mine is having my feet rubbed.

What is your primary love language?

What ways do you show your love to those around you?

I wish the people of the world would wake up every morning and think “How can I show my love to someone today” Imagine how our world would change.

Have a beautiful summer.

Just don’t call me Sweetie!

Too Early

It’s getting hot

It must be summer-

Though the calendar says it’s not.

The skies are blue,

And grey, and raining.

The flowers are blooming

In my pots.

The birds start singing

Much too early.

The cat says she too

Wants to play.

Stretching, yawning,

Lets get going
It’s a lovely summer day.

Pratt's Story

Snug as a bug in a rug huh! I’m not feeling so snug right now! My people went out and got a bird! A Bird!! What do they go and want a bird for? Nasty smelly things. “Oh he’s so cute! We can name him Timothy!”

Come here Timothy—Have some corn!” “Come over here Timothy, I made a cute little nest for you!” Just look at both of them trying to win his favor. It’s disgusting! They never did that for me. Little do they know the terror they’re in for. Ducks grow up.

Maybe!, Maybe I can talk the cat into doing a fowl deed.

My name is Pratt and this is my home. My family has lived here for generations. We used to hold concerts on warm summer evenings, the breeze blowing over the prairie brought the scent of ripening barley grown for market. A horse whinnying in the next block sang along. Neighborhood dogs took up the melody—and Grayson the hound yodeled the base notes. It’s amazing how noisy a quiet neighborhood can be.

But that was then and now is now and I’m stuck with a duck named Tim.

I liked having the old folks around. Beanie was quiet and hardly noticed me. Gramps just smiled and enjoyed the concert. Mousy used to come out of hiding to watch TV with him. Her favorite was  “The Mickey Mouse Club.” I preferred Pinocchio. But we were definitely three cartoon-loving guys. I miss them. They’re gone now and I have to be careful where I show up. The new folks, the kids ,watch the food channel. Humm! Timothy Flambé has a nice sound.  Maybe I can hold off for a while. If I live that long, I thought. Timothy has been stalking me. This is nothing new. Maya use to do that but now she’s decided to stalk Tim. I’m grateful. Maya was too quiet and almost got me a few times. Lucky for me I know a few hiding places. My cousins and I found them between the hearth bricks before their untimely end. I told them the flames were too high but Shadrack and Meshach were afraid of the cat.

I crawled from under the black and blue quilt where I had been hiding. It’s my favorite place on the couch. It blends so nicely with my natural coloring.  I’m warm, and safely hidden unless someone decides to sit on me. I’ve been nearly squished several times by all the animals’ wandering around this old house. But usually, they rush around blindly and noisily without caring in the least that I was sleeping. They seem only to care about themselves.

I remember the first day the kids brought that ugly bird home. He stood there on the carpet, his beady black eyes glaring down at me, a nasty smirk on his crooked little bill. I could hear him thinking, “Just wait. I rule this roost now, and you are going to go. Heh Heh Heh! I coward in fear and shame.

But I was there to watch his downfall. They tossed him in a tub of water. SQUAK!” he screamed. I could hear the fear in his voice. They were trying to drown him. I perched on my seat ready and waiting. Then he found out he could float. Dang. Foiled again. Now he just looks cute.

This morning I had a new idea. I knew how to take care of Timothy for good. I will drive him insane. I whispered in the boys ear while he was sleeping. “You should call him Henry. Henry is a kingly name for a prince of a duck. He can sit on your shoulder and rule the castle from on high.”

Tonight I will send little messages to the girl. “Timothy, so cute! So sweet! Timothy belongs to you. He’s a girl’s best friend.” 

 I will create discord and confusion. Imagine the duck. Wandering around, Timothy! Henry! Who am I? We can watch him on Dr. Phil, a sad confused duck who doesn’t know where he belongs, who or what he is, the perfect paranoid.

The sun is going down and the stars beginning to twinkle in the dusk. A wild feeling of compulsion is coming over me threatening, overwhelming. I can’t help it I must go  to the rain dampened porch and play.  I raise my leg to the instrument and sing. In the distance I can hear the neighborhood come to life. Just like old times, the music fills the neighborhood. I am lost in the joy and the memories. I don’t notice the stealthy opening of the screen, the quiet clumping of webbed feet.  The horror of the ugly flat bill stretched in his wicked smile descending over my head……..

Can You See The Stars

Can you see the stars?
Will the twinkle of their message
penetrate the night?
For the wonder of their pattern
and the glory of their light
As you go about you business
Living  life from day to day.
As you  choose your daily  action
Letting time get in the way.
As your choices close the doorways
Of the things you could have done
And you see a window opening
When you thought that you had none?
As you look up towards the heavens
And feel the light shine down
I ask you one more question
Can you see the stars?

Climbing our Mountains

I told my daughter that I was feeling Nimbuscollecti. That’s an odd phrasing for what I was feeling. Where did these words come from? I looked them up in my online dictionary. Nimbus –dark clouds,Collecti, the plural of the masculine colluctus, gathering. All right that was how I was feeling. The dark clouds are gathering. Outside the sky is leaden with black clouds, full of moisture, soon to turn to a flooding of the atmosphere. Inside I too feel the gathering of heavy dark clouds. Something is coming,happening. Will I be able to handle it? I don’t know. I’ll know more Tuesday.

In his conference talk Mountains to Climb this April Henry B. Eyring said,

“If we have faith in Jesus Christ, the hardest as well as the easiest times in life can be a blessing.

I heard President Spencer W.Kimball, in a session of conference; ask that God would give him mountains to climb. He said: “There are great challenges ahead of us, giant opportunities to be met. I welcome that exciting prospect and feel to say to the Lord, humbly,‘Give me this mountain,’ give me these challenges.”

I remember many long years ago when my two oldest children were babies, a woman I knew said she wished she had more trials. Everyone gasped. She continued, saying, During her trials came her greatest humility, the closest she felt to God. It’s true. As I faced my mountains, the deaths of my husband, and then my younger son, there was no one to rely on but my Father in Heaven.

Many people say when they face their trials in life,

“When I have tried all my life to be good, why has this happened to me?”

You know how the Lord answered that question for the Prophet Joseph Smith in his prison cell:

“And if thou shouldst be cast into the pit, or into the hands of murderers, and the sentence of death passed upon thee; if thou be cast into the deep; if the billowing surge conspire against thee; if fierce winds become thine enemy; if the heavens gather blackness, and all the elements combine to hedge up the way; and above all, if the very jaws of hell shall gape open the mouth wide after thee, know thou, my son, that all these things shall give thee experience, and shall be for thy good.”

“The Son of Man hath descended below them all. Art thou greater than he?

“Therefore, hold on thy way, and the priesthood shall remain with thee; for their bounds are set, they cannot pass.Thy days are known, and thy years shall not be numbered less; therefore, fear not what man can do, for God shall be with you forever and ever.”

President Eyring continues, “You and I have faith that the way to rise through and above trials is to believe that there is a “balm in Gilead” and that the Lord has promised,“I will not … forsake thee.” That is what President Thomas S. Monson has taught us to help us and those we serve in what seem lonely and overwhelming trials..”

When hard trials come, the faith to endure them well will be there, built as you may now notice but may have not at the time that you acted on the pure love of Christ, serving and forgiving others as the Savior would have done. You built a foundation of faith from loving as the Savior loved and serving for Him. Your faith in Him led to acts of charity that will bring you hope.

It is never too late to strengthen the foundation of faith. There is always time. With faith in the Savior, you can repent and plead for forgiveness.There is someone you can forgive. There is someone you can thank. There is someone you can serve and lift. You can do it wherever you are and however alone and deserted you may feel.

If we have faith in Jesus Christ, the hardest as well as the easiest times in life can be a blessing. In all conditions, we can choose the right with the guidance of the-spirit. We have the Gospel of Jesus Christ to shape and guide our lives if we choose it. And with prophets revealing to us our place in the plan of salvation, we can live with perfect hope and a feeling of peace. We never need to feel that we are alone or unloved in the Lord’s service because we never are. We can feel the love of God.The Savior has promised angels on our left and our right to bear us up. And He always keeps His word.”

As I was singing the closing Hymn last Sunday one particular verse hit me. I didn’t just sing it, I believed it and finished it in tears. Reverently and Meekly Now

At the throne I intercede; for thee ever  do I plead.

I have loved thee as thy friend, with a love that cannot end.

Be obedient, I implore, Prayerful watchful, ever more,

And be constant unto me, that thy Savior I may be.

Joseph L. Townsend

May you have the Savior's love and help climbing your mountains.

The Rescue

THE RESCUE

My mother had many little tidbits of thought that she would tell us over the years.

You could call them homilies or homespun wisdom. She said things like;

“Bloom where you are planted”

“Fool’s names and fool’s faces always appear in public places””

“You’re closer to God in a garden than any place else on earth”

And of course my favorite—Don’t cut corners on the grass, it hurts the sidewalks feelings.”

But the one that has had the most impact on my day-to-day life is “ Always leave the world better than you found it.”

Thus began my quest to rescue strange, or unwanted things to make them over, to improve them, at least to my point of view.

I remember my mother taking her sister’s dresses that they had outgrown and making them over into ones for me, just like her mother did before her . I was a very stylish if old-fashioned college student.

I use to take my daughter shopping on Saturdays for new clothes, at garage sales. The house was filled with scarred tables and bookcases taken from the curbside, quickly before the garbage man came.  The bookstore was at Amazon.com used books, Friend’s of the Library Book sales or the local Goodwill store.

            So that’s why I was wandering through our local thrift store that Saturday. I was looking for a paperback book  to add to my collection for summer reading.

"The quilt blocks sat in the bin at the Goodwill store."

I noticed them because I like quilts. I noticed them because they were unfinished.  I noticed them because they were in terrible color combinations. Who, after all would make a quilt of bubble gum pink and pineapple yellow, or cranberry and forest green. The rule of thumb,” my mother used to say,  “is not to use two intensely bright colors in the same amounts. Purple and orange are OK if you use ninety per cent purple and ten per cent orange. Even fifty per cent white or beige can tone down those two colors.

I picked up twelve of the colorful blocks, discarding the brown/cranberry and one that was badly misshapen, picked up the Jansen Decision and went home wondering what have I done, what have I done? Am I just crazy? Well, maybe I can give it away. Who would turn down a free quilt, just because it’s ugly? Patching together scraps of batting and finding a piece of teal backing left over from another quilt, I snipped and pinned, matched and re-matched, sewed and unpicked randomly. Who can I give this ugly screaming quilt to I kept asking myself.

But I, intrepid “Susie Homemaker”, master of afghans crocheted from  two hundred lengths of yarn dropped off at my back door by a neighbor cleaning out her garage; Queen of sixty ways  to use  leftovers for dinner;

And Poet Princess, using somebody else’s words for her poetry; was going to make these blocks blossom.

Now, what shall I do with my quilt?

As I look in the mirror I see a fat, lumpy, wrinkled woman looking back at me. The bags under my eyes could hold the week’s groceries. Who could ever love that woman? My husband walked up behind me, pulled me into his arms and said, “I love you so much!

I, like the Easter Egg Quilt have been rescued.

May Morning

      

      May- Warm sunny spring days

       Spring- Heat yawning through early evening

      Heat-Zig zags sharply across the night sky

       Morning-Cool rays wake flowers peaking through the shadows

      Birds-Sing quietly in the respite before

      The storm