Memorial Day Blessing

Donna, the minister of our teeny, tiny church, will be out of town for the next two weeks, and I will be conducting the services. I have a Memorial Day theme planned for tomorrow. Donna said that in the decade that she has been minister she has never focused on Memorial Day. Somehow it seems important to me this year. I’m not sure exactly why. Perhaps, it is because my Uncle Lefty, who served in both WWII and the Korean War, passed away in December. Perhaps it is because I have been watching so much NCIS on television this past year that I somehow feel more connected with the men and women who have fought for this country. Perhaps it is from feeling proud to be an American after the first African American president was sworn in this year.

I usually end the services with a blessing. I wrote this one for Sunday:

May you revel in the first weekend of summer,
Feeling the joy of being alive.
May you also experience a quiet moment of gratitude,
Honoring the men and women who gave their lives
For this country.
May you feel a gentle connection with loved ones
Who have passed before you,
Always remembering that Love never dies.

Learning

I find this quote from The Steerswoman by Rosemary Kirstein thought provoking:

The books and charts are just the means to hold on to what you learn, in a way that makes it easier for others to learn from you. They’re a way to add up learning, to accumulate it past your own lifetime….Facts, ideas fit together. It’s the fitting, the paths that connect them, that matters. The pieces can change, but the fitting lies beneath it all. The world is made of such fittings.

Persistence

I like this quote from the The Heartmath Solution:

Don’t fall into the trap of feeling as if things will never get better or telling yourself, “I’ve tried, but it’s just not working.” That period between making an effort to change and actually registering the results is when most people stumble, lapsing back into old behaviors.

Mother's Day 2009

This blog is moving in a different direction than I had originally intended, but I will be open to change myself. This will be my Aunt Ellen's first Mother's Day since Gary passed away. Here is a poem I wrote for the 30 Day Poetry Challenge.

“Mother’s Day 2009”

Last year two.
This year one.
One phone call
One bouquet
One card
One “I love you”
Not two
Last year two
Two sons.

Oh, his back hurt in summer.
It had for years.
She should have never let him
Why hadn’t she stopped him?
Let him move her boxes
When she moved into assisted living.

In fall he had the surgery.
A mother always worries.
Rods, pins, braces
He looked so uncomfortable.

The beginning of winter
He said the word
The word that changed
Her worry to terror:
Cancer.

She prayed and prayed
Called everyone she knew
To pray.
They promised
To pray.

In late winter he went
Into the hospital
For the treatment that might
Change everything.
But not in the way
She had prayed for.

Now one.
Not two.
One bouquet

New Poet Laureate

My 30 day poetry challenge ended yesterday. As an unexpected present, I just read that Carol Ann Duffy has been chosen as the first poet laureate in the UK. Sometimes change is good.

According to the AP article:
She (Duffy) said poetry "is a place we can go to for comfort, celebration, when we're in love, when we're bereaved and sometimes for events that happen to us as a nation."