"Let, First Service or Do Over!"If Wimbledon is about the whiteness of my lines {floor cleaning exercises}...

I love the Craze of Tennis in New York! I love the culture that has become the US Open over the years. What used to be the elitist closed culture of Forest Hills developed into the winsome inclusiveness of the Flushing Meadow. We, elitists didn't like it at first, that is for sure. How can these "uncultured athletes" ever become civilized Tennis players? Will they ever learn to shut up and watch the game? Now that I am so far away from the New York rabble rousing life, I see why that had to be the evolution of the sport. In America it is everyone's game. We are always leveling the playing field for inclusiveness, in New York.

While it certainly is anyone's game, when we go out onto the court, it is only the best man that will come home with the trophy and in New York that includes a concentration that will allow for the participation of the crowd in the match. Shut up, already! the New York mantra but too much quiet means that someone is not keeping the customer happy. So my kitchen floor is clean from enjoying the New York tennis culture that are my roots and I am learning lessons about what America is contributing to my favorite sport. Everyone plays. The players are showing out and we are all in there with and for them. It is the dance and mystery of the bumblebee whose wings look too small to allow him to fly. Everybody brings a little bit to the hive and when we leave the match everybody's fed with a little honey and no one knows where it came from. We really "should be dancing!"

Every movie is dumb, if Mr. Morton isn't the subject of the sentence!

Cary Grant had me mesmerized as he portrayed Mr. Morton as best he could. Limited by scripts and stories the personalities that were portrayed in an earlier and simpler time are wondrous to behold. They held their morals and primitive passions in two different hands and didn't juggle them, as we do today.

I am certainly not trying to portray a character in my home, like Cary Grant or Clifton Webb, or William Powell. I am a real mother with no script to be bound with. Movies can guide us some, but a dear relationship with a real person can flesh out more than any movie. Catch my vision, Jayne, my Mr. Morton said to me. I see him. Life is the only passion to guide you through the mazes of life. Question: is this person guiding toward or away from my life's vision and passion? Let it go.

I was surprised that a cadaver was in the early scene of the movie, I watched this weekend. The only Doctor that I ever see is my dearest one and first, Lang! His memory will ever lead to life and life-giving thoughts. So even if there is a cadaver is in the first scene, it means, Jayne, may this be as close to death as you ever come. Let all killing go to the germs. I heard that in his every interaction with me. I felt that in his cold stethoscope, freshly taken from the freezer to hear my heart and lungs. His love and care was like a confirmation into life-seeking. I do pray for a real person that you will meet who will give you a sense of purpose and challenge. If we are the body, Lang is the pointer finger. Any true truth, I hang in his closet, for the purpose of opening to put the puzzle together. Did Lang not say it? It is a maybe. If He said No, it goes in the garbage. He was just that clear.

Come Saturday Morning...

It's raining and my crew is out in Chowan, learning how to launch our Evvie boat.

So, early Saturday Morning, I am going away with my friends.

This morning's friend is Auntie. I remember Auntie's devoted washing of the dishes. It seemed like a prayer. She separated the dishes, which was something I never could find myself doing in my home growing up. Dishes seemed like the worst fate in our house, growing up. 12 people all day and the pile seemed endless by the time I got home from school.

Whenever I went to Auntie's house her devotion to the dishes seemed to say, I will meet you here, when I am gone. I will be a part of God's healing process of the dish scars on your soul. She is part of my healing and the Holy Spirit, himself reminds me of her devotion to clean those dishes as a prayer. I pray, while doing mine and I separate them when I get a chance to. I don't make them a complaint and a gripe against my children, as much as I can. I pray for their mouths and bodies to enjoy my labor in good health and learning.

This morning it was 4 am. I started boiling the water. I put all of the silverwear that was dirty in the pie plate. I poured the boiling water twice over them, before I began. It is 10:30 now and all of them are not completed, but the freezer is clean and the carpet is vacuumed and I am on to other Saturday morning remembrances and prayers for the future. Thank God, He makes all things beautiful. In His Time!

Old Friends?

Joy to the Earth, The Savior Reigns, let men, their songs employ... While fields and floods, rocks, hills and plains repeat...

"Peat" and repeat, said Grandma Ruth, in her humorless candor {that was her theme to the old people to watch what they said in front of the children. After that statement, we would usually be banished from the room, so they could talk more openly}. I see that we use our songs, employ our songs for building up or for tearing down. This is very important to note, with the further proliferation of them through media.

How do we weave our songs into good activity for the world around us, is the Savior reigning over us. We "peat" as it were and they repeat. The cycle is alot faster than when I was a child.

What will they have done with our songs when we are 70 as Paul Simon bid me to think in my youth? Or when I am 64 will my songs still be relevent and meaningful to the youth, says the Beatles? We've inherited their train of thinking, somewhat.

There is nowhere you could be in NY and not have been touched by the trends of the 60's and 70's. Those currents were a driving force of motion and emotion. Where will we go with what is left to us? Will we employ our songs for the Savior's Reign and see the earth follow suit?

Thoughts from Tapestry Album! Thank you Carol King for putting some "Joy Inside My Tears"

You make me feel like a natural woman?

"Her desire will be for her husband and he will rule over her?

" The road into motherhood is easy and hard. You see this wonderful specimen with whom your mind and emotions start to plan for a long-term life in unity. We grow into a covenant agreement to belong to eachother and there are children after a while. What's next? "Will you still love me tomorrow?" That is his domination point, isn't it? I have invested life and pain and my body will never return to it's former self and I still must wonder, does he still love me? Will he still love me? Isn't that often the question? Although He, too, is vulnerable, not so much as a woman.

Carol King invested in the passing along of her experiences and lessons learned to us in the Tapestry Album. Somehow, I feel like that should be a class for women, in life to take Tapestry and write their insights from it, before marriage and children and intentions for their lives as a result of having listened to it.

Christ does make a difference and the agreement to live under His authority is a real preservative of heart and mind, for the most part. But we are all humans and fallible and stumble and fall all over one another. Braun, in How Green was the most vulnerable female character, that I think that I have read about in literature. She is invisible in the movie, because her story could not be told in those days. In the book, she is tragic! She,{those kinds of stories} I think, is the reason that the woman's movement was born. The vulnerability of women in a Christian society must be seen and anticipated and defended. She gave life and body to the effort of wifing and mothering. She lost mind and life and perhaps her soul to the effort. That is the ultimate tragedy and that is the goal of Carol King's Tapestry, to prevent.

Does Jesus care, when you are crying over spilled milk? Life that has passed and opportunities untaken? Does Jesus care when family starts to minimize your role and influence, when you had been their closest confidant at one time? Does Jesus care when you are seeing the vulnerability of your condition and aging? I know He cares. I know Jesus cares about those things. He paid it all to save us from these things and we must know that he is truly touched with the feelings of even these infirmities. They are not beyond His gaze.

He wants us to be proactive about life and health. He wants us to be proactive about covenant keeping and self care. He wants us to count the cost of wherever we are in the battle, physical and spiritual. Ultimately, He wants to teach us to care for ourselves and our families.

no more germs! the significance of wimbledon to me

To everything there is a season,isn’t there? Tis the season for vanquishing germs! They are everywhere! IS YOUR SERVICE LINE WIMBLEDON READY? In lew of spring cleaning, Wimbledon cleaning is a worthy goal for me, I think. Your carpets, the grass and your bathrooms the lines. Are they ready I say? The Queen is coming with her white gloves and are they ready for her. I say they aren’t. No excuses at all are tolerated. Your part of the spiritual warfare is that against streptococci and Pneumococci. They are yours to tolerate or eliminate. What will you/

Learning to do your "Pray Do's"

Sometimes, I wake up so late that I can't really spend the time with the Lord, that I would like to. I think there was a Dutch "Godmother" somewhere who showed me that when you can't get really the time with the Lord that you would like that is when you have to do your "Pray Dos". That is not at all to replace real prayer and it is real prayer. But, it is prayer while doing the necessities that you must. I did use it much more when all of the children were little. I had little prayer lists for the laundry and for the dishes. I must've bumped my head a hundred times looking at my prayer list when I should've been looking what I was doing in the kitchen. Those are some of the pitfalls of "pray doing" but it sure beats "Not pray-doing"! eh?

Easter Sunday

Sugarduck vs. Ethan round 1

Some mornings I am Mrs. Day and some mornings I am Mr. Day. Today the discussion with Ethan was about the sugarduck and I was Mr. Day.

You know how we lost the coffeemaker. May I have a dollar? Was the question Mrs. Day was asking her husband and she used the fact that he had broken the special coffeemaker to ask for a little extra money to buy another one. At that moment he would argue her over a dollar and then a few weeks later, he would let her charge anything she wished, because she had nearly died. What a difference the familiarity of perspective causes. The hand that clenches those two pennies in it and will not spare it to the dearest wife, when faced with the brevity of life realizes the measurement rod.

Clarence Day Jr. carefully retained such dear remembrances to pass those measurement standards to us. He watched father Day, nearly lose his soul to covetousness. The children were so concerned for him it was truly made real in the catechism. Hasn’t father got a name in heaven? This was their concern as a family. It was more than folderol to them. They were all praying and interceding in their own way.

Then, after God had gotten it through their thick heads that heaven was even more important than mother’s well being{having nearly lost her}. Everybody realized that there is no amount of money to replace his soul. Church is not just a tradition. Catechism is not just a mental exercise it is a frame for correct decision making and priority. This is my covenant partner and she is asking me for a dollar, I should have much higher regard for her position than I do. Clarence Jr. couldn’t say this to Dad, but he said it to us.

I loved my sugar duck and now have replaced it with a sugarsheep which we were joking over, this morning. You know what happened to my dear sugarduck, which represented my dearly loved Long Island. Now it is gone and I have replaced it with a sugar sheep which reminds me of just a very small part of Long Island and only one dear shepherd. Until I get my sugarsheep found in some sale or other somewhere.

Thank you Louisa May Alcott for envisioning a "More Perfect Union".

Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott

I do think that Louisa May Alcott was trying to show the aptitude for forgiveness that is honed in a close knit sisterly expression. From the small things like lying and picking on oneanother to the big things like throwing away a cherished manuscript the courage to enlighten people with the riches of love that are expressed daily in such a setting was her goal and I think that she expressed it very well and I have seen the same in my sisterly experience for better and for worse.

These disciplines of soul that are a blessing to us are a treasure to be preserved. Originally the publishers rejected Louisa for having a preachy style and I couldn’t quite understand how her style would have been seen as preachy. I see this now, after having had some griefs under my belt and cleaving to the delights of the “Little Women” for comfort and help, I can truly see how God used her to preserve the reality that life is short, handle loves with care. Grief will surely come and do as much as you can not to be the source of it to the ones that you love. That cannot be too often said.

It is uncommonly a sisterly treat. Not that brothers can’t enjoy it. I have some of this with my brothers across many miles and even from here into eternity with one. But, Sisters for their catty nature press the bounds with oneanother on the right and on the left in such a way as can give a glimps of the sufferings of hell and the glories of heaven, sometimes in the same situation. We love and hate oneanother with some of the same passions.

The light in the living room that shined unusually last night from the mirror, took me back to “when the moon” days. We carried the reflection to form a spotlight for oneanother, what a delightful nighttime scene of sisterly romping and gregarity. We fought just as passionately, not as much against eachother physically, to harm too harshly, but against others on our behalf, truly we had a comradery and a love.

Loyalties were certainly forged between us. Some, have no sense of loyalty and that is a loss and that is what Louisa was trying to knead into the “American, imagination of a more perfect union”. Could we have a union where there is brotherly love that was akin to the Little Women and Men that Louisa held up the spotlight to for us?

A look at the Alcott house