May I Suggest (Susan Werner)

Today I found out a woman from church died during an operation - J's passing is still very much on my mind. I read this poem and thought of my friend T, who lost *two* sons to bizarre accidents, one a car crash and the other a lightning strike - we worked together and every time we heard an ambulance siren, she would begin to tremble. I can't even imagine - our children are supposed to bury us, and not the other way around. It's easy to get lost in the abyss... which is why we should embrace Gandhi's philosophy - otherwise, it would be too painful to put one foot in front of the other each day. As Todd Snider sings, "I've learned nothing but that there is another sunrise coming all but one of the times it sets" - words to live by (pun semi-intended... <3 )

SONG: May I Suggest by Susan Werner

BOOK: Be Here Now by Ram Dass

POEM: Picnic, Lightning by Billy Collins

It is possible to be struck by a

meteor or a single-engine plane while

reading in a chair at home. Pedestrians

are flattened by safes falling from

rooftops mostly within the panels of

the comics, but still, we know it is

possible, as well as the flash of

summer lightning, the thermos toppling

over, spilling out on the grass.

And we know the message can be

delivered from within. The heart, no

valentine, decides to quit after

lunch, the power shut off like a

switch, or a tiny dark ship is

unmoored into the flow of the body's

rivers, the brain a monastery,

defenseless on the shore. This is

what I think about when I shovel

compost into a wheelbarrow, and when

I fill the long flower boxes, then

press into rows the limp roots of red

impatiens -- the instant hand of Death

always ready to burst forth from the

sleeve of his voluminous cloak. Then

the soil is full of marvels, bits of

leaf like flakes off a fresco,

red-brown pine needles, a beetle quick

to burrow back under the loam. Then

the wheelbarrow is a wilder blue, the

clouds a brighter white, and all I

hear is the rasp of the steel edge

against a round stone, the small

plants singing with lifted faces, and

the click of the sundial as one hour

sweeps into the next.

QUOTE: "Live as if you were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever." ~ Gandhi

One Summer Dream (Electric Light Orchestra)

From today's Writer's Almanac: "Today is the summer solstice and the first day of summer in the northern hemisphere. For those of us in the north, today will be the longest day of the year and tonight will be the shortest night. The entire earth is about 3 million miles farther from the sun at this time of the year. The difference in the temperature is due to the fact that our planet is tilted on its axis, and at this time of year, the northern hemisphere is tilted toward the sun, receiving more direct radiation for longer periods of time each day. It is that slight tilt, only 23 1/2 degrees, that makes the difference between winter and summer. The rise in temperature allows most of the plants we eat to germinate. Wheat and many other plants require an average temperature of at least 40º F to grow. Corn needs a temperature of 50º F, and rice needs a temperature of 68º F. "

Let there be light indeed - what an amazing metaphor, eh?

SONG: One Summer Dream by Electric Light Orchestra

BOOK: Prodigal Summer by Barbara Kingsolver

POEM: Light, at Thirty-Two by Michael Blumenthal

It is the first thing God speaks of
when we meet Him, in the good book
of Genesis. And now, I think
I see it all in terms of light:

How, the other day at dusk
on Ossabaw Island, the marsh grass
was the color of the most beautiful hair
I had ever seen, or how—years ago
in the early-dawn light of Montrose Park—
I saw the most ravishing woman
in the world, only to find, hours later
over drinks in a dark bar, that it
wasn't she who was ravishing,
but the light: how it filtered
through the leaves of the magnolia
onto her cheeks, how it turned
her cotton dress to silk, her walk
to a tour-jeté.

And I understood, finally,
what my friend John meant,
twenty years ago, when he said: Love
is keeping the lights on. And I understood
why Matisse and Bonnard and Gauguin
and Cézanne all followed the light:
Because they knew all lovers are equal
in the dark, that light defines beauty
the way longing defines desire, that
everything depends on how light falls
on a seashell, a mouth ... a broken bottle.

And now, I'd like to learn
to follow light wherever it leads me,
never again to say to a woman, YOU
are beautiful, but rather to whisper:
Darling, the way light fell on your hair
This morning when we woke—God,
It was beautiful. Because, if the light is right,
Then the day and the body and the faint pleasures
Waiting at the window ... they too are right.
All things lovely there. As the first poet wrote,
in his first book of poems: Let there be light.

QUOTE: "Summer is the time when one sheds one's tensions with one's clothes, and the right kind of day is jeweled balm for the battered spirit. A few of those days and you can become drunk with the belief that all's right with the world." ~ Ada Louise Huxtable