Monthly Archives: October 2024

Once, Now, and Yet To Be…

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The Christmas cactus has been blooming for a couple of weeks. I took this picture before I really saw that many of the flowers had gone by. Hoping for a more pleasing picture, I removed them.

That’s when I noticed all the buds. They are so much smaller than the faded blooms, and they don’t catch the eye like the flowers in their prime. But there they are, the sure signs of beauty to come. How extraordinary a gift to see the promise of what is yet to be, the presence of what is, and the vestiges of what once was, sitting on my bookcase.

There’s something here, gently nudging me to a truth usually overlooked. Appreciate the gift of what was and the beautiful vitality of what is. And, when the signs of what is yet to be appear, take notice and be grateful. Cactus wisdom at its best. If I apply it to my life as a whole, I just might get a glimpse of God’s presence in just about everyone and everything. I just might stop to honor the holy that Once was, rejoice in the Now, and love the Yet To Be.

Lord, grant me eyes to see.

Gifted

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I’ve had them for over twenty years – a gift from my friend, Elizabeth. She sent the set because she thought they would go well with my dining room chairs – and even though she hadn’t seen the chairs in months, the napkins matched them perfectly in both color and pattern.

What you can’t see when they are folded are the frayed edges and the faint stains. They have graced my holidays and my every day table weekly. Every time I put them out, I think of my friend and how her work has brought beauty into my home.

New things have a beauty that cannot be matched by the time-worn and use-worn. But old things have a history that come with them, cords connecting to years long gone and people no longer living next door or living.

Blessed be such ties that bind our hearts together.

This is one in a Thanksgiving series. Click Good Gifts above for more…

Perfect Turn of Phrase

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Why the gods above me think so little of me…

Whether near to me or far…

I love Paris in the Springtime…

It’s a perfect collaboration – Cole Porter’s words and music, Ella Fitzgerald’s perfection in bringing them to life. Something comes into being that continues to be as amazing today as it was in 1956. Timeless and equally of its time. Words and delivery coming together in a way that heightens both. I’m more fully human because I’ve spent time with this music.

I feel the same thing every so often when someone standing at a lectern offers words of scripture, occasionally even singing them. Ancient words oft repeated, suddenly alive in a new way – and offering life to all who hear them.

Ella Fitzgerald Sings the Cole Porter Song Book, Verve, 1956

Unexpected

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It was a gift I didn’t request, didn’t really want, but received on Christmas, 1985. When I finally slipped the album out of the cover just after New Year’s and a day before meeting up with the person who gave it to me, I just wanted to be familiar enough with the songs to prove that I’d actually listened to it. But there was something about Brothers In Arms that kept me playing it over and over again. Walk of Life and Money for Nothing were instant favorites, but it’s the title song that haunts. I’d seen enough of pain, loss, and death to realize how little I knew of pain, loss, and death. Listening to Brothers In Arms, I understood the Vale of Tears, the Shadow of the Valley of Death in a whole new way – Biblical imagery wed to life. And that we cause the suffering and death ourselves far too often.

For this one song, it would be on my top ten list…but the rest of the album is amazing, too.

Dire Straits, Brothers In Arms, Vertigo Records, AIR Salem, Montserrat and Power Station (NYC),1985

There’s a thin line between Saturday night and Sunday morning…

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History Lesson, history lesson…

I first heard Fruitcakes the song driving from New Jersey to New Hampshire, somewhere on the Mass Pike. I stopped off at a strip mall music store in Plaistow, New Hampshire, and bought the newly released album on cassette so I could play it for the last hour of the drive to my parents’ house in Barrington. I’d always liked Jimmy Buffett, but not enough to pull the car over to buy his latest. But for a song that fills me with delight and makes me think, I will (Lyle Lovett’s Church from Joshua Judges Ruth was the second one that got me to pull over).

It’s a wonderful mix of covers and original songs, poking fun at and holes in the boring, question-ending, rigid answers to life, the universe, and everything – and just plain fun to sing along to. Jimmy Buffett was a master at poking fun rather than making fun – no malice or bitterness. Thirty years later, the whole album is still on my most frequently listened to list. To take life and all its complexity seriously, and to hold it lightly; to delight in what life brings, even the mistakes. To lighten the burdens of others, even for the length of a song, is a gift. And a life lesson…

Jimmy Buffett, Fruitcakes, Margaritaville Records, May 24, 1994

It Takes Two…and four more to complete the band

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It’s only 34 minutes long, put out in the beginning of 1963 by Impulse!Records. Every time I listen to it, I hear something new – or I understand something emerging that I hadn’t before. Not one note feels forced in this conversation, and there’s almost an inevitability to one note following another. How is it that the living give-and-take of jazz can feel almost predetermined? It’s a musical mystery.

It makes me wonder about all the many choices that brought me to this point in life – the where of it, the ones I call family and friends, and all the other particulars that would not have been the same had my life taken a different road on this life’s journey. If I hadn’t, then there wouldn’t be…What would the particulars of this life I call mine be? If you hadn’t, then there wouldn’t be…Fill in your own answers.

Had Duke Ellington and John Coltrane recorded a different take on all seven of these songs, I’m sure it would still be on this top ten list: the spirit would be the same even if the particulars within the frame of the songs weren’t. I’m inclined to think the same is true of life in general.

Still, I’m grateful that the years God has granted me have brought these particulars.

Duke Ellington and John Coltrane