A Flying Leap

When our daughter, Brynn, was a toddler, she had a penchant for searching out the highest point in the house. She would then set about scaling said object's heights. Once at the summit, she would fling her arms wide and leap. She did this without ever looking down, and without any hesitation. Although these leaps would sometimes result in minor injuries, she would return, undeterred to her practice of scaling and soaring.

I often wondered what possessed her to do this. She lacked the communication skills to explain her actions - and she would probably have declined to comment anyway. It could have been the novel perspective of a new vantage point that impelled her. Or the brief thrill of being airborne. But I like to believe that they were leaps born of pure joy. That the joie de vivre (of which she had plenty) within her small body became too great to contain and she had to find a way to appropriately express her delight.

Hers was a simple joy. She delighted in life's small pleasures. She did not need expensive toys or extravagant experiences to set her merriment in motion. She simply allowed the simple pleasures of daily life to well up into gladsomeness.

I sometimes reflect back on her brief flights of fancy and wish for the same cheer and courage to well up within me. Oh, for the simple heart of a child.

Leap, my young one. Continue to leap - across mountaintops and through valleys. Search for the high places, and scale their heights. And find within you, always, in the still, small place, your stream of life and source of joy.

On a lighter note...

I just got my own cell phone. Oh, we've had one for several years. The shared phone - the one to be used in emergencies. When the few people who had our cell phone number used it, they didn't know if they would get me or my husband.

I rarely had the phone with me, even when I intended to take it. Usually it just sat on the kitchen counter. Or sometimes in my purse in the trunk of the car. No electronic leash for me!!

I just recently learned to text and retrieve messages. Now don't get me wrong. I'm pretty tech savvy - even VERY tech savvy for one of my vintage. I can find my way around my computer and cyberspace with relative ease. If I want to do something technologically, I can almost always figure out how to do it. And I love the worlds that open up to me via technology. But I like to be the instigator - I want to do what I want to do when I want to do it. And don't tell me that I can just let my phone take messages for me. I don't know how to access my messages - because I don't want to.

My favorite part about my new phone is the pretty turquoise accent stripe that runs around it,and the way it slides (instead of flips) open. And I kind of like my ring tone. It's not quite as good as the birds singing that I used to have. But that one used to confuse me a little. Since I didn't often have my phone with me, I would think that there were birds in Costco (or wherever I happened to be) when my phone rang.

I really wanted "Hey there, Georgy Girl" as my ring tone - wouldn't that be just so appropriate!?! But I couldn't find a way to make that happen. Not for lack of trying, mind you. I engaged in hours (literally) of tutorials and program downloads (X3) for customizing ring tones. I didn't want one of those "free" programs, so I downloaded programs to convert my iTunes music to WAV format, then to MP3 format, and then from MP3 to a digitized format that my cell phone could understand. (I told you I could find my way around technology when I wanted to.) But even after I successfully initiated Blue Tooth communication between my phone and computer, the music files winging through cyberspace did not want to dance. Apparently they have trouble recognizing one another since I am using the latest version of iTunes, with newly configured files.

So, the quest for the Georgy Girl ring tone was all for naught. I gave up and settled for a Veggie Tales tune. Now, when I am in Costco and hear my phone, I will probably assume it is some toddler rocking out.

Sounds of silence

Truth rises from the silence of being to the quiet tremendous presence of the Word. Then, sinking again into silence, the truth of words bears us down into the silence of God.
~Thomas Merton

I love quiet. I CRAVE quiet. I need the special sounds of quiet. Simon and Garfunkel had it goin' on when they coined the phrase "Sounds of Silence." My silent sounds are different than theirs - but that is true for each of us. Your silence sounds different than mine.

Quiet isn't absence of sound. Quiet is absence of noise. Distracting, energy-draining, humanly-manufactured noise. Quiet is an evenness between your inner sound level and the sound level around you. A place where you can listen and actually hear.

It helps to go away, to find solitude in a location where the outer noise level is naturally low. But we can find silence, our quiet place, in many situations. It has more to do with who we are, our sense of being, than with where we are.

For many, silence is a scary place. They don't know what they might hear. Merton says that truth rises out of silence. Truth can be scary - but it is ultimately the only place of healing and regeneration.

Take some time to listen to your silence.

Why Redux

My academic training and previous career was editorial journalism. I loved the directness of the writing style, the clean format of the 5W’s and an H. Yesterday I addressed two of the W’s of my blog – the “where” and the “when.” But that darn “why” is begging for more attention.

There remain a lot of possibilities for why I started to blog. Maybe I needed to do this so that I could have a place to post some pictures of me that are better than those hideous School District pictures that the search engines always find. Or maybe it has something to do with practicing what I preach. The front of my classroom sports a huge banner (homemade by me) that says “Tell me a story….” My students hear many times over that they all have stories, unique and important stories that only they can tell. Maybe this can be my story place.

Maybe it’s just a place to hear myself think, to untangle my thoughts through my fingertips. Self-serving as that may be.

I am so grateful when other writers find the words my heart was looking for. Perhaps that is my hope – to be able to manipulate words in a way that will feed a hungry soul.

And maybe … just maybe, it will be a place to remind myself that out of every kind of stillness – deep and dark, or bright and joyful - can come dancing.

I hope you’ll dance with me.

Why Here, Why Now?

So why did I decide to do this thing? Why add my name to the infinite (it seems) number of bloggers out there cluttering up cyberspace?

I’m really not sure myself. I think it has something to do with facebook. After strong initial resistance, I found that I quite enjoyed writing little comments here and there on a giant cosmic whiteboard. Comments that I found people actually read. And sometimes even responded to. Not just people, mind you. My people. People added by me … or approved by me. My fiber-optic friends.

Sometimes I found myself wanting to say more. But my much more facebook-savvy daughter said, “NO, mom. Do NOT overwrite. You will look really stupid.” Horrors! Looking really stupid on facebook is a faux pas I do not wish to commit.

So it seemed that if I wanted to extend my musings, I would have to choose another forum. And here I am.