My Library Room

I've always thought that having a library room in my house would be...I can't find an adequate word. Let's only say that when I think big-time I can see it clearly. Not too large but furnished with a couple of the kind of fat leather chairs you sink into with a sigh. The chairs must face a fireplace, of course. There I could lay aside my book, turn off the reading lamp and watch until flaming logs dwindle down to glowing cities of transparent embers.

The room would be dimly lit by lamps and tall narrow windows where red velvet curtains could be drawn open or shut depending on the weather.  A large library table set up for in-depth study would have a corner in my library room. I suppose there would have to be a computer there, though inconspicuous. A beamed ceiling, a rolling ladder to access the floor to ceiling bookshelves. A TV too for a few select programs and the soft music stations.

My library room's door would not be shut tight. There must be space for small feet to enter and carry little ones into Great Grandma's lap for story time. Friends must feel welcome to come and family too. A place for tea and cookies would be handy and on rare occasions a lap dinner. But in the quieter hours when I'm alone I must grant myself the indulgence of short naps. There could be a canary cage in the corner high enough so a cat or small dog could not disturb him. I see my library room as an all-day refuge where I could go to live, explore, study and wonder. So complete this little room might be that the rest of such a house can remain vague in my mind's eye.

But would you like to hear about my present-day real life library? Well, it's spread over the whole house, which incidentally is small enough to embrace only a corner of the kind of stately magnificent libraries you see in grandiose mansions. Books and bookshelves are everywhere. The library table, (yes, I have one,) cannot contain my current reading. Its contents are spilled all over, including the bed and the dining room table. They occasionally stray out to the patio as well, but never into the bathroom. No reading there. I must have something warm and cozy and attractive to look at when I glance up from printed pages.

The simple truth, I believe, is that we get what we want. I'm not sure I could want my dream library room any more than my cottage-condo. Besides, if the library room of my dreams is ever to materialize, it will have to wait for my ship to come in. I'm not expecting that very soon!

Walls?

In my present home, as in all the others, walls are not just a necessity for obvious reasons, but for hanging pictures. Or some of my clay sculpted faces. Or for mirrors. Or clocks. Or even one 3/4 size violin, (Katie's I'm keeping for when she gets a more permanent home.) I could write a piece about any one of my wall art treasures, where I got it, who was with me then, what stories go with it that are known only to me. I call my wall treasures my "Gallery of Good."

Much as I enjoy viewing model homes, watching the House & Gardens channel on TV, and paging through magazines that show me how beautifully simple wall art can be, I could never live without my egregiously crowded walls. No, if my walls look like artistic overload to most, to me they are simply a collection of sweet memories too precious to be buried in a store room. My only problem is to find time in my busy days to give each one the few minutes of focused appreciation it deserves.

In the 1990's I built my dream home. It was located on a hillside south of the village of Preston, Minnesota where I went to school in the '30's and 40's. The view of my small hometown nestled down by the Root River was charming. So, of course, I planned that long wall with a bank of windows. No room for pictures there. My aim was to have a one-room look and feel to this house. The only inside walls beside the outer ones, were those that enclosed a 12' x 12' bathroom. These were my gallery walls. I called the house "Rambler's Roost" because I figured I'd live there forever.

Somehow life hasn't followed through with a "last" home for me. I always find reasons to move on. It's as if there are no walls strong enough to enclose me that long, no matter how much I think they will. This Quail Creek paradise would satisfy me just fine, but it has no store room and so I'm needing to pare down. I'm doing all right, except for the walls. No walls of mine seem to tolerate large open spaces. They beg for eclectic and random display of all that is precious to me. They are fragments of a mostly happy life. It's strange to think that some in my collection will be like unwanted children and end up in thrift shops or even the dumpster. I do wish I could take them with me!

But where will walls factor into the hereafter? I'd think there must be some good use for them, even in Heaven. For shelter? For privacy? For a place to hang memories? These are some of the myriad questions that come up in one's late 80's. If I live as long as my friend Susie I have fourteen years and more to figure out all the answers.

How Would You Like Your Eggs?

Nancy is not a morning person. Still, she, a new bride, and my son had gotten in late visiting Grandma and Grandpa on the farm the night before and when she and Wally heard the rooster crow and smelled the bacon frying and the coffee brewing they knew it was time to get up.

Like every new bride, Nancy wanted to make a good impression with her new husband’s family so, since she’d not gotten to the table in time to say how she liked her eggs, she couldn’t complain when she was served those golden gems sunny side up. Now what was she to do? Runny yolks nearly made her regurgitate but there they were, looking up at her, daring her to possibly hurt Grandma standing there beside her, smiling down with a platter of buttered toast. She managed to consume them but it was not easy!

Now I’m asking you to make a mental leap and imagine Mother, God, standing beside you and asking, “How would you like your life?” If you’re too late to have heard the question because you’ve run out recklessly to make wrong choices or rolled over in bed for another snooze,  must you then take whatever comes along? What if you had slept in during your youth and wasted those early days dreaming, must you now take whatever comes along and deal with it politely or risk offending God when you can’t stomach the “eggs” the way She serves them?

I have yet to meet the person who has made no mistakes in life, going willfully ahead and off track or sticking to the road dutifully but begrudgingly. Either way life has not always turned out to be to our liking. Often in one’s youth, sometimes even later in life, we make wrong choices only to suffer the consequences. Breaking rules is a fact of life. Human life, that is. We want to live life to the fullest even if it means getting hurt now and then.

Why is it we hear of people with great talents and the discipline to improve them sometimes breaking away in other directions to taste the exhilarations of temporal dangerous choices? There seems a terrible attraction of the devil (or some force like it) to find a chink in our armor, a way to side-track our potentials for success. The good meal set before us gets old so we try out other spicier fare.

When I taught an older class of high-school boys in Sunday school one of the cockier of them challenged me. He said, “Aw, who wants to go to heaven? That sounds dull to me. Rules and regulations are no fun!”

I wasn’t prepared for such straightforward talk. Usually they’d sit dutifully in class and answer what they thought I wanted to hear, checking their watches to see how much longer before they got out. I’d seen that the Biblical characters and their lessons for life hadn’t taken hold in the imaginations of the new generation before me.  They hadn’t lived long enough to grasp the connection of Moses, Jesus, the disciples, to their own lives. Teaching had been a challenge for me and I wondered if I, myself, needed an answer to this. 

Then I was hit with an idea. It was as if God was saying to all of us, “How would you like your life, harmonious or chaotic?” There’s an argument to be made for chaos. The use of darkness and shadows relieves the glorious colors of light. The struggles of life make it at least interesting, if painful. This is, after all, the story of being human. Who wants to sit and play a harp all day?

But the space program had begun then. Our astronauts had set foot on the moon and left their footprints there. They’d seen our beautiful blue earth smiling back at them from the vastness of space. No doubt they were happy to get home safely, even though it had taken a lot of people a lot of discipline and sacrifice. I said to my young challenger, “Do you think it would have been more fun for the astronauts or the engineers to have not followed the rules and failed in their endeavor?” My answer at least gave him pause.

Looking back on my own life I see how I could have more diligently applied my talents and been a greater contribution to society. I’ve been too content to stick around in the lower grades where life is easy. I’ve ventured out on wrong paths just enough to see the consequences and turn back. The one thing that grabs my interest most is learning more about what is real and what is not. I believe in a better world, a heaven on earth, that is even now cooking.

On U-Tube the other day I saw a 12 year old girl who played the piano so professionally and joyfully it held the audience in breathless wonder. Obviously, she'd faced the challenges of obeying the rules, overcoming mistakes, and the joy on her face as she felt the same music of its composer was enough to make me cry. I love to play the piano but I never got past my recital piece when I was 14. Perhaps it was not my calling. One has to have a deep passion for whatever he or she pursues. I think I’m getting near to mine although not completely defined. Maybe I still have time to get out of the playground and back to work as if it were play.

On my computer screen I see Earth sailing in space. I’m on that gorgeous orb! I’m moving thousands of miles per hour, I’m  alive! I’m glad to be free, to be of help to some and I’m grateful that I can believe in those things invisible to the naked eye, like eternal life, joy, excitement, adventure, and excellence in all things good.

How would I like my life to be? I’ll take it any way, hard-boiled, scrambled or even sunny side up! I'll look for the good and give the bad reasons to shrink. I have a dear friend who is in her 101th year and she's doing just that. So can I!

  

"My Nice Warm Bed"

It was called The Gratitude Game in the youngest grade Sunday School class. I asked the children to think for a few minutes of what they were most grateful for. Then we went around the table one by one. The answers were fairly predictable. “My new dolly,” “the scooter I got for my birthday,” “our trip to Disneyland.” Then one little boy, still pondering his answer, finally lifted his head and, with deep sincerity replied in words drawn out slowly for emphasis, “I’m just grateful for my nice, warm bed!”

How often I’ve thought of this when I needed rest and comfort. What could be more satisfying than my own “nice warm bed?” 

Yesterday I helped my twenty-three year old granddaughter get an air mattress with a soft top to put in a room of her own. Katie works in a flower shop, has become a floral designer too, but times have been tough for her and up to now she has not had her very own room since she left home. “All I want, Grandma, is something I can afford. Just four white walls and the space inside to call my very own.” She added, “of course I’d need a bed.” With a lot of prayer and footwork, in the space of a few days her room came. It is in a well-kept condominium complex near her work and the church she’s currently attending. Not far from the library and a bus stop too. And, for frosting on the cake, it has a balcony overlooking a small grassy park with a few trees and some swings!

I’ve often thought about that chapter of independent living in a young woman’s life which was skipped over in my own life. After two years of college, when I was barely nineteen, I got married. Mr. Right came along sooner than usual, but at the right time for me. He was six years older, had begun a career as fighter pilot in the Marine Corps, and was ready to give up the bachelor officers’ quarters for family life. Having had a few years keeping house and cooking for my dad and younger brothers, becoming a young bride was probably the job I was most qualified for after two years of college.

From then on we had a pillar-to-post life, rearing three children as we moved every two years or less. I figured out the other day that I’ve lived in exactly thirty-two places in my lifetime and in each one there was a “nice warm bed.” Home, from the very start, was the core of my spiritual and physical well-being. Usually, it was my job to find one as Wally G., my husband, got checked into a new base and tour of duty. Often, especially during wartime, housing near Marine bases was scarce and base housing limited to Quonset huts until we found a place in the community. 

The first tour of duty after our wedding was an air base outside of El Centro, CA. We stayed in a small hotel at first. When Sunday came around we went to a branch church of the denomination we’d both been brought up in. It was small and homey and friendly. In the pocket on the hymnal rack I found a pamphlet with the words on it: “Pilgrim on earth, thy home is heaven. Stranger, thou art the guest of God.” Although the house-finding had seemed impossible before, (some friends even looked at a reconverted chicken coop,) I knew right then that God had a home for us. That very day a couple going away for the summer answered an ad we'd put in the paper and a delightful little cottage, fully furnished down to pot holders and piano, was ours at a rent we could afford. $65.00 a month! Each time we moved thereafter, with prayer and the true spirit of home in our hearts, a perfect place met our needs.

So, the other day when Katie needed to find a place of her own, and I was available to help her, our first step was to attend the local church. It was a sweet experience. The members were warm and friendly, but none knew of a spare room to offer her. After a couple of days' research on the Internet, Katie found an ad for the room I mentioned above.

We have high hopes that she is on her way to living out that chapter of a young woman’s life that I missed, independent singleness before finding Mr. Right, and going on to a long family saga that she can look back on, as I do, with rich memories in her grandmotherly days.

To begin with it will take faith, (her middle name is Faith,) prayer and her new “nice, warm bed!”

Light Beams Going Home

There comes a time in everyone’s life when the necessity of figuring out the meaning of it all ranks foremost. Granted, there are moments of this all along our ways, but sometime, somehow, we all need to open our eyes and see more clearly the grand scheme, the real purpose and the divine ends of life.

In this need I find the Bible to be my best help. Especially the parables of Christ Jesus. My favorite is the one of the prodigal son. I’m always getting new meanings from the story. The word prodigal means wasteful, reckless, and finally repentant. To look around our world it is easy to see that we all are, more or less, that prodigal son. We’ve been given life. So freely have we spent it in our own ways we’ve often lost sight of its core value and consequently lost sight of our own worth and identity. We don’t know who we are or where we came from or where we're going.

At extreme moments when we feel destitute we may come to ourselves and remember our identity, our source, our Parent-God, and our home, heaven. “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” That first Beatitude is a wake-up call. Then we leave the husks of a wasted life and set ourselves on the long road home.

As a grandmother who enjoys her home, family and a modest but comfortable income, I sometimes think, This is enough, dear Father. But then I look around and see that such a sense of supply and contentment is certainly not universal. How can I linger in such a world comfortably? So, I give where I can to others but I think, It is so little, and they need so much! Suddenly then I too feel poor. I must see and prove a better world, a wiser one, a world filled with goodness, the creation God saw in the beginning when He pronounced everything as “very good.”

I believe life evolves in cycles of divine light. First, the one Light which is God, then the light God allows to shine forth on the “darkness upon the face of the deep.” That light is us, each one a single ray, and then the reflected light cycling back to show the grand Creator what He has made. That last part is where we’re all coming to ourselves and starting to go home. 

Then what? A Sabbath day of rest in our heavenly Home before we shine forth again to reveal more of universal good? I can imagine that. But the "darkness upon the face of the deep," as mentioned in Genesis One, needs to be dispelled and it takes the “letting” of God’s light, His children, to go forth and do its work of illuminating and interpreting what is real everywhere. Light, divine light, is needed to dispel mere human conjectures and illusions. With the Light of God shining in us we cycle through the universe, dispelling darkness, ignorance, fear, and carry back the reflection of God’s creation to its source, divine Love. Thus we prove that darkness is only on the face of things, a mistaken first impression meant to be penetrated. 

I’d like to think that each of us is learning, growing, reflecting the light that is our very being and our divine Source. That’s what we’re here for. Self-satisfaction is never enough. The relinquishment of a self apart from God is what we’re destined to know as permanent satisfaction. I see, in my own case, that I cannot find true rest here in a personal state of well-being if it does not include all God's creatures. True happiness must be universal. 

I don’t know each morning what the day will offer me and others but I can know there is a divine Plan tailor-made for each of us. We are given today, this day, to discover some part of it, prove it, and enjoy the road going Home. Life is one grand adventure. Let’s all discover and enjoy it. Let's complete this cycle and go on to the next, and the next, and the next. Let's shine! 

Walkin' Around Heaven in Shoes?

Old songs, as my readers know, often spark ideas for my new blogs. This morning it was that one that says, "I got shoes. You got shoes. All God's children got shoes. When I get to Heaven gonna put on my shoes and gonna walk all over God's Heaven...everybody's goin' there, Heaven."

So, as the little ditty ran through my head I wondered, Why should I need shoes in Heaven? Wouldn't Heaven's streets be paved with gold, smooth, safe, clean, beautiful? Silly, but often my questions won't leave me until I reason them out. This pesky little question kept hanging on and I decided to make it a blog. Writing is my way of learning some things I can't find readily in books. When I write I listen and when I hear, I type. Click, click, click. Words come out, ideas spring forth like popcorn ink on a page, arranging themselves until I can read them and they make sense.

When I was a child my family lived in a house connected to a country gas station in the southeastern tip  of Minnesota at the intersection of the two main highways 52 and 16. Unlike most children, we rarely got to go outside barefoot and never at home. We couldn't feel the grass between our toes or relish the sensation of sloshing in the mud. Why? Because our home was somewhat of a public place. People who stopped for gas and oil would often fish a bottle of pop out of the ice box, take it out into the yard and, when finished, throw it at a tree or rock. It's really hard to believe that littering was so common it was not considered terribly wrong until Smokey Bear came along. We children would get the job of gathering up the broken bottles, bottle caps, candy wrappers, cigarette stubs etc. It was not a job for bare feet.

So, I asked again, If in Heaven everything would be clean, pristine, pure, no litter, no trash, then why would God's children need shoes? The answer came suddenly: Earth is in Heaven. It's, say, like one of the lower grades in school. Until we learn how to deal with the hazards life presents Heaven teaches us how to avoid them until we can see through them, how to keep our feet shod.

But, no, my pesky little question still kept bothering me. How could I have any corner of Heaven less than heavenly? Surely there is no place in Heaven for broken bottles, broken vows, broken hearts, or broken anything. Why would we need shoes there? Well, I reasoned, What if perfect Heaven is here but our eyes and minds are not yet developed enough to see it, appreciate it, enjoy it? I know that there is a school of mathematics far more advanced than I have gone in the study. But it is working, even so. It cannot be denied or violated. It works whether I know how it works or not, but to enjoy the harmony of this Heaven I'm in more fully I'll need those "shoes" to protect me.  I could stumble, get cut, be infected. Ignorance is like going barefoot in a junk yard.

It used to be hard to understand how other kids got to go barefoot all summer and we had to wear shoes and even sox every time we set foot out the door. I never got a sliver in my foot or had a cut from a broken bottle but I saw the doctor pull out a huge sliver from my little brother's foot. It was a graphic lesson. He healed, of course, but it was plain to see that shoes, obedience and wisdom could have prevented the pain of one little boy.

Heaven, as I see it, is not a dangerous place but ignorance, doubt and fear are because they have no place in Heaven. There is a totally good God in charge but His law only helps us. Its truth is a danger, never to us, only to error, no matter how we may seem to suffer if we've been going barefoot. Every day I can say to myself, I'm going out walking 'round Heaven today. But I'd better wear my good old shoes!

My Old Flames

The song starts, “My old flame, can’t even remember his name...” I can remember though. I remember because I always thought the flame would last. 

First there was Eddie Moorehead. He sat a few seats ahead of me in the second row of fifth grade. He may have turned around once or twice but all I remember is my feelings for Eddie were one-sided and that’s the way I wanted it. I was content to just sit and stare at him.

In junior high school David Lovejoy admired me openly but anyone that easy to get didn’t interest me much. I'd rather dream about Nelson Eddy, my movie idol. Still, I had a little fun stringing Little Lord Lovejoy along. A more serious candidate, his name was Al, gave me my first kiss. After that I didn’t like him.

In high school the assistant band director was a dark haired handsome fellow, three years older, named Harry Ericson. I was steady with Harry all four years. I used to spoon with him in his car at a favorite parking place with the car radio playing love songs, but we never got past the kind of kissing we’d seen in the movies. (You of younger generations may need to watch a few of the 40's movies to see what I mean.) I think, besides the eleven o’clock curfew Daddy imposed, there may have been some such threat as, “You go too far with my daughter and I’ll ...” Our last summer together Harry was drafted into the Army and I left home to live with my grandmother in Riverside, CA and attend the Community College.  

The older brother of a classmate in college saw my picture in the paper after I’d won a pin-up girl contest at a party for Battery C at Camp Haan. He had to meet me and he was a persistent fellow. His main pluses were good looks, a convertible car, a motorcycle, and that’s it. I won’t name his minuses but the main one was his pressure to go beyond movie kisses. I’d have none of it.  

Then along came Wally. Wally was Grandmother’s choice all along. She’d known him since he was a toddler living next door to her in Minneapolis. I should have known that his picture sitting on her mantle  meant something. Wally, when he finally took interest in me, was ready to get married and that was just fine with me. That “old flame” lasted forty years and is still alive even though he’s been gone twenty-seven years to this very day.

I’ve had one more old flame turned husband. I called him Robby because his geology students called him Dr. Robby and his first name of Forbes was used by his first wife. Robby and I had a good second marriage. His first had been over fifty years, a long love affair. Ours lasted nearly eight years and I can truthfully say we never quarreled and seldom disagreed. Ours was a sunset love.

I’ve heard of couples who got married in their nineties but that does not interest me now, even though I'm three years shy of ninety. What I’m wondering is this: Who of my old flames will be waiting for me on the other side? Will he still care about me or I about him? Of mine, I’d want most to find Wally, of course. He’s the father of my children and the love of my life. But I’m not sure I was all to him he’d have wanted. I was a good mother and wife, but probably never as witty or sophisticated or thrifty as he’d have liked. He liked my looks until he began seeing me age. First it was, “When you’re a few years older you’re going to be really beautiful.” Then it was, “Did you know you’re letting your head shake like Mom did?” He could not bear getting old himself, but having me get old too? I even had white hair and was called Grandma! Too much. He opted out at the age of sixty-six. 

I have been thinking a lot about love these days and I’ve come to the conclusion that love is so highly subjective it rarely satisfies 100%. To be honest, I don’t think Wally and I will have a second chance at this world’s kind of romance over there. Jesus said there is no marriage in heaven. Mary Baker Eddy has said that “There is moral freedom in Soul.” What that means to me is divine Love is what we’re all after. Once having tasted it we’ll never be satisfied with anything less and Love is too immense to lavish on only one other. I can’t elaborate on the subject, I only trust that divine Love will not be restrictive or base. It will surely be pure, inviolate, and something we find in this world closer to music than any other thing. Enough said.