Category: Sunday Letters

When I saw the tiny maple leaves, just emerged from the tip of a branch, I thought about watching one of those time lapse movies. You know, the ones where you see a whole day sweep by from sunrise to dusk in a mere minute or two.

I imagined a little maple seed, the kind that twirls to the ground on helicopter wings, settling into the soil, sprouting, enduring a winter, coming back taller and stronger each spring until one day, it stood before me, a proud little sapling, unfolding its bright new leaves. Soon it will produce helicopter seeds of its own, and the story will go on and on.

The thought reminded me of an exercise I learned once where you traveled back through the history of something to appreciate all that contributed to its presence in your life. If you were eating an apple, for instance, you could trace it back to the store where you bought it and think about all the people who were involved in operating the store. Someone ordered it; someone sold it to the store; someone unpacked it from its crate and set it out for display.

Before that, it traveled on a truck that came from a distributor who bought it from an orchard. The truck had a driver, who worked for a company that bought produce and delivered it to stores. And the truck traveled over roads that were imagined and engineered and built and maintained.

The apple was one of many dozens that came from a tree that thrived in an orchard, soaking in a summer’s sun and rain. And before that it was a blossom, tended by bees, growing on the tree that produced the seed from which it grew. When it ripened, someone picked it and placed it in the crate that was loaded onto the truck.

And now it was in your hand, and you would bite it and taste what how delicious it was and how crisp and juicy and sweet its flesh. And it would nurture you. You were the whole reason it came to be. You and the workers in the orchard, and the builders of crates and trucks and roads and grocery stores.

It’s a worthwhile exercise. It broadens your sense of the connectedness of things and leads you to appreciate the wonder of life’s endless unfolding. And in the end, it leads you to the big questions: How did it all come to be? Where did it come from? Why am I, a tiny life form on a small speck of planet in the midst of a giant and dazzling universe, capable of wondering why? And how am I so lucky to be holding this apple right in my very own hand?

Wishing you a week of sweet wonders, my friends.

Warmly,
Susan

_{Image by günther from Pixabay}

One of my friends posted a news clip on Facebook the other day that told the story of a shopkeeper who put up a billboard over her store facing the highway. In big, white block letters against a dark blue background, it simply said “You Are Enough.”

Now let me ask you something. When you read what it said on the sign, didn’t you feel a little relieved somehow? “You Are Enough.” It’s such a powerful reminder. It’s comforting and reassuring. And all of us can use some of that these days, given the perils and uncertainties of life. It’s easy to feel overwhelmed by all the challenges facing us, by the daily demands, and by all the expectations, both our own and those we think that others hold up for us. It’s easy to worry that we won’t measure up.

Then here we are, cruising down life’s highway, and somebody’s put up a sign to remind us that we are enough.

I like how easy the message is to take, too. It’s not trying to flatter you into thinking that you’re some superstar or something. It’s not saying you’re the best. It’s just reminding you that you are all you need to be right now. You’re okay. The next moment that comes along might need you to be something different, and you’ll be enough for that moment too. Because that’s how versatile you are, you wonderful ordinary human being.

Once I heard somebody on the radio say, “Good enough’s the new gold standard.” The perfectionist side of me found the statement annoying. To me it smacked of “settling for,” of not doing your best, of compromising your standards. I generally lean more toward the “good enough is never good enough” side of the scale.

In real life, though, you rarely get to perfection. Few things or situations exist that couldn’t be tweaked for the better. And we have only so many resources available at any given time. So I finally came to realize that it’s wise to do the best you can from where you are with what you’ve got and then to brush your hands together in satisfaction and say, “good enough.” Sometimes I even laugh at my “good enough” stuff. It’s far from perfection, but it meets the requirements of the moment perfectly well. Just like me, “good enough” can be clumsy, or unfinished, or in need of a coat of paint. But it’s serves the needs and desires of the moment just fine, regardless.

The sign the shopkeeper put up over her store wasn’t fancy. But it got the job done. It said all it had to say. It was enough.

Accepting that you are enough, that what you’ve accomplished is enough, doesn’t mean you give up on wanting to be more, to do more, to do better. What it does do is let you is feel at home with yourself, confident that who you are, just as you are right this very moment, is okay. You are enough. In fact, if you look at the whole of you, you’d probably have to admit that you’re rather amazing all in all. But it’s okay not to admit it, or even to doubt that its true. Because you don’t have to know that you’re amazing. Right now, it’s perfectly enough to know that you are enough.

Claim that.

Wishing you a week strewn with good signs.

Warmly,
Susan

Saying goodbye to April is like watching the petals fall from the garden’s last tulip. It’s such a sad-sweet feeling. In case I haven’t told you, I am in love with springtime. It holds meaning for me on more levels than I could ever hope to tell.

This particular last day of April holds special meaning. For one thing, it begins the week when I will mark my 77^th birthday, which feels, I must say, like a significant landmark. Someday I’ll share with you some of the rewards you reap for getting this far. One of them is an awareness of the preciousness of life.

When spring began this year, I made a commitment to myself to savor every day of it. One day, as I was stepping out into a soft, dewy morning, I remembered the line, “See every day as if it is your first, or your last.” It struck me, and I thought to myself that this could be the last April I will ever see. (You never know.) And how I have reveled in her days!

Each one brought new life, new warmth, new color, the songs of returning birds, the start of the parade of flowers. It was as though the Great Yes itself was sending a visible supply of fresh hope into the world. Every single day. And how swiftly they have passed! Even the cold and rainy ones, despite my wish that each one held three times its allotted hours.

Perhaps it sounds silly that someone could grieve the passing of a month’s worth of days. But that’s how it feels, and I’ve known my share of grief. I heard a story once where a woman caught her husband deeply sobbing one day. When she asked what was wrong, the man told her that he just learned he’d lost one of his best friends. The woman told him she was sorry he was feeling such terrible sorrow. And he wiped his eyes and told her his tears weren’t tears of sorrow, but of happiness. “Happiness!” she said, surprised. He smiled at her and told her that only now did he realize how much he and his friend had loved each other, and what a joy their friendship had been.

My grieving over April’s going is like that. I’m so full of the joy that April gave me that I’m moved to tears.

I think that when we lose loved ones – or even cherished possessions or circumstances – after the initial shock and adjustments have passed, the grief that remains is deeply colored by memories and images of the things we appreciated and so enjoyed, as if we were storing them away for safe-keeping.

One of the most comforting things anyone said to me when, decades ago, I lost a son was, “You never get over the pain, but it finds a special place in your heart to dwell.” The pain, after all, is focused on ourselves, on our loss of the physical experience of someone or something in our lives. We hold onto it because it’s all we have left. But inside it, like a thousand-petaled blossom, are all the memories of that precious experience and of all the adventures and secrets and dreams it brought into our lives.

So I say farewell to April with a heart full of gratitude for her loveliness, and a tear in my eye at her passing.

And tomorrow morning, it will be May.

Wishing you days touched with tender beauty.

Warmly,
Susan

When I was surfing through miscellaneous videos this week I happened across one that said, given all the stress in our worlds these days, it’s important to give ourselves a little extra care. She recommended that we each do 3 things daily to care for ourselves, even if they’re only very small things.

That seemed like good advice, of course, but it brought to mind articles I’d see in magazines with titles like “10 Things to Do for Instant Happiness.” They’d list ten little things in an inane kind of way and you’d get a little smile from it and go on with your day. None of them ever said, “No, Seriously! Do these 10 things.” But maybe they should have.

Anyway, I thought it might be fun to see if I could come up with a list of mood-brighteners. I jotted down these:

* Spend a few quality minutes with your pet. Even if your pet is a plant or a rock.

* Go for a walk. Find a tree. Look at its bark, its shape, its leaves, its movement. Put your hand on its trunk and see what you feel.

* Watch a bird fly. Imagine what it feels like to fly like that, to see what a bird would see.

* Put on some great music and let it move you.

* Stand in front of a mirror and tell yourself out loud three things you really like about yourself.

* Get a brief glimpse into the world of elephants from National Geographic on YouTube.

I was right. It was fun to see what ideas flew into my mind. (And finding the elephant video was pretty cool, too.)

But then I remembered what I wanted to focus on was the idea of doing three things each day to show yourself that you care about you. Seriously. In fact, I think consciously choosing to do just three things for yourself each day could be a game-changer.

I already do lots of things in a day because I know I’ll enjoy them. Lots and lots. I dive right into most days on the lookout for treats and surprises. It’s healthy to expect joy in life. But what if I decided to do something inspirational, or pleasurable, or beneficial with conscious attention to the fact that I was doing it for myself simply as a way of caring for me, of appreciating myself? What if I asked myself what I could do for me and then followed through on whatever idea came to mind? What if I took just a moment each day, one in the morning, one at noon, one at night, to do something that brought me comfort, or satisfaction, or contentment, or peace?

What if I made that a habit? What if I committed to doing it every day, no matter what?

I kind of like those “what if’s.” They intrigue me. I think I’m going to give it a whirl. How about you? Seriously.

Wishing you a fine week.

Warmly,
Susan

^{Image by Neil Morrell from Pixabay}

I ran across a description of the human mind as being made up of two parts, the Thinker and the Prover. I had never heard it put that way, and I liked the simplicity and accuracy of the idea.

Earlier in the week, I had been thinking about the phrase, “What you think about expands.” Now I had a simple explanation for how that happens.

Here’s how it works. You get caught in a loop where your Prover goes out to bring your Thinker evidence. And the evidence stimulates you to think that your thought is even truer than it was before. Then, because you’re looking at it with such renewed interest, the Prover brings you even more proof. And your thoughts – with their attendant emotions – intensify. And the Prover brings you more proof.

I sometimes call this a mental movie loop. It’s some story you keep playing over and over in your mind. Maybe if you focus on it enough, you imagine, what happened will somehow change. But at least in our current world, thoughts don’t change events that happened in the past, no matter how passionately we think them

Well then, you tell yourself, maybe if I keep letting the movie play, I’ll see why I’m feeling what I’m feeling and how absolutely justified I am.

Movie loops might spin around forever if some distraction didn’t intervene. Luckily, distractions abound. You can always take a reality break, check out what’s happening, take a breath, take a stretch, look around. (Personally, I like to ask myself three questions: “Who am I? Where am I? What was I doing?” They get me oriented in the here and now instantly.)

Sometimes we get so hooked into some emotionally charged movie-loop that we leap right back into it after it’s interrupted. The Thinker thinks the story line. The Prover brings evidence as proof.

But here’s an interesting thing about the Prover. Its only purpose is to bring you evidence for what your Thinker is thinking. And that means if you change your mind completely and start wondering if this other viewpoint might be true, the Prover will bring you evidence to support that thought. The Thinker is in charge. And here’s the key: You are in charge of the Thinker! You can choose what to think about.

We do that all the time, of course, decide where to put our attention.

When I was a little kid and I went to the movies, a whole string of short features would play before the main one started, and then more would play before the second one started. I always liked those short features. They let my attention move from place to place and my emotions to change with each little story.

These days, I think of looking out my window as a kind of “short feature.” It puts me in the present and lets me shift my thoughts and check in on what’s going on around me. I just look outside my window and tell myself what I see. And it’s different every time, and refreshing. It’s like a little vacation from whatever mental movie had my attention. And then I get to choose whether to resume what thoughts I was thinking or to entertain new ones.

And that reminds me of this wise line: “You can’t stop thoughts from coming to your door, but you don’t have to entertain them.” Remember about the Thinker and the Prover and decide what kinds of thoughts you would genuinely prefer to entertain. Because one way or another, the Prover will bring you proof.

Wishing you fine thoughts and refreshing “short features.”

Warmly,
Susan

^{Image by mohamed_hassan on Pixabay}

Let me tell you how this letter came to be.

I was settled at my keyboard with the day’s chores behind me, relaxed and gazing at the orange and rose and turquoise sunset outside my window. My mind was leisurely scrolling through random topics when it paused on a shred of lyrics from the Moody Blues’ album, “Threshold of a Dream.” I hadn’t heard the Moody Blues in years!

I could remember some of the opening lines, but one phrase eluded me. So I zipped over to You Tube and listened to the track. I found what I was searching for, and as a bonus I got to hear one of my all-time favorite lines: “Face piles of trials with smiles. It riles them to believe that you perceive the web they weave. And keep on thinking free.” Good advice.

I slipped into a dream of my own while the song was playing. (I’ll tell you about it another day.) And when I came back to the music from my dream, I discovered several songs had played without my consciously hearing them. The one that was playing now was “The Minstrel’s Song.”

I listened, and the lyrics put into words exactly what I wanted to say to you today. I knew what it was; I felt it so clearly, but it just wasn’t taking shape in my mind. For one thing, it’s Easter. And my mind was contemplating all the interpretations of its meaning and symbolism, all the memories it evoked. And for another thing, it’s spring, and I’m enraptured by its wondrous unfolding. The mix of emotions I was feeling was wide and deep. And all at once, there was this happy song, capturing it so nicely.

I smiled as I listened. I pictured the minstrel wearing the harlequin costume of a joker, an April fool if you will, prancing down a mountain path, heedless of anything but the feeling of delight that filled him. But that’s just a disguise. You can imagine him any way that suits you. What’s important is his song.

Here’s how the first verse describes him: “Words, a simple song a minstrel sings, a way of life in his eyes. Hear the morning call of waking birds when they are singing, bringing love. Love. Everywhere love is all around.”

I thought about the joy I feel in the morning when I take seed out to the birds and they come to my song and we chirp at each other for a bit, and about how grateful I am to begin each day in their company, and how it feels like such a sweet breath of love.

Then the lyrics say that all the nations hear the minstrel’s song as he walks by in their lives. It touches us all. It sings to all of our hearts. And all we have to do is listen. “Listen to the one who sings of love. Follow our friend, our wandering friend. Listen to the one who sings of love. Everywhere, love is around . . . around . . . around.”

That was it exactly, just what I wanted to say. Listen for the love around you, because truly, it’s everywhere. It’s dancing through your heart this very minute.

And that’s the story of how this letter came to be.

Wishing you a week filled with the Minstrel’s song. 

Warmly,
Susan

^{Image by Hans from Pixabay}

One of my favorite things about owning shelves and stacks of books is that every now and then I’m inspired to shuffle them around. I find the most marvelous things that way. Take today for instance. I stumbled across Kenneth Patchen’s Hallelujah Anyway: A Book of Picture-Poems. My copy is a paperback, a bit tattered and worn. It’s been traveling with me since I bought it new in 1966, the year it was published. It was the title that got me. Hallelujah Anyway. Even way back then, that somehow said it all.

The drawings in it are childlike and the poems are painted across them freehand. But there’s nothing childlike about Patchen’s poems. If life hadn’t kicked him around some, he couldn’t have written this one – one of my favorites: “The world’s not enough really for the kind of rent we have to pay to live in us.” That’s it, the whole thing scrawled across the page.

It tastes bitter at first bite. But sometimes when its words happen into my mind I hear them as an expression of dark humor. Sometimes you have to laugh or you’ll cry. It can get that painful and absurd here. And laughter, however contemptuous, is still the best medicine. Dark humor’s better than none.

I believe in laughter. It’s like the crack that lets in the light. In fact, when I see one of life’s storms approaching from the horizon, I often send out an immediate petition for “strength and a sense of humor.”

But there’s more to Patchen’s poem than its attitude. It’s a blatant statement of the basic truth that the world is not enough to compensate for the suffering we endure here, living inside these human-suits with all these other humans and the insane situations that they manage to create. We deserve a lot more than the world offers.

Happily, more is here. Not out there in the world. But here, inside us. It’s the part of us that wants that Something-Greater-than-the-World. Something that would let us feel whole, and content, and at peace. Something that would let us love ourselves, warts and all, and give us eyes that would see everyone else as deserving of love as well. And its inside every one of us.

It’s not always an easy part of ourselves to find. We have to learn to listen, to recognize its nudge. Life, with all its complications, gets awfully distracting. But the wanting is always there. And it calls to us and says “keep looking.”

Patchen’s poem tells us not to waste time looking for it in the world. The best we’ll find there, and then only if we’re lucky, are teachers and random clues. But life’s genuine rewards – recognition of beauty, and goodness, and truth – come from the core of life within us. And when we find them, they bring such light that all we can do, despite the world’s pain, is shout out loud, “Hallelujah Anyway.”

Wishing you plenty to shout about.

Warmly,
Susan

^{Image by Terri Sharp from Pixabay}

Sometimes, when I’m just bobbling down the stream, living my ordinary life, I’ll wonder to myself, “What shall I write in this week’s Sunday Letter?” This week, I kept hearing the faint whisper of the word “encouragement.”

Well, heck yes! Of course I want to encourage. Who couldn’t use a bucket or two of that nowadays? I mean, look around. It’s a wreck out there. And sometimes the wreck even spills into our very own lives.

But where to start? Maybe, I thought, I could get some ideas from my quotes file. When I opened it to “Encouragement,” the very first one I read, a line from a Karen Moning novel, made me laugh: “It’s just that in the Deep South, women learn at a young age that when the world is falling apart around you, it’s time to take down the drapes and make a new dress.”

What wonderful advice! Think about what it’s really saying. If you’re going to face a world that’s falling apart, you need to shore up your self-confidence, by remembering who you are, and wrapping yourself in that knowledge.

That brought me to a second quote from my file: “She remembered who she was, and that changed everything.”

And just who are you? One of those most complex of creatures – a human, being here, wherever here is, doing the best you can with what you got. That’s one of the things that identifies us as human, I think. We keep trying to do the best we can with whatever resources we can discover.

Sometimes those resources can seem mighty slim. Sometimes they seem no match for the wreck outside the door. We all get discouraged and bruised along the way. We make mistakes, take wrong turns. We underrate ourselves and our resilience and ingenuity. But that’s exactly when we need to pull down the drapes and whip up a smarter costume. Try on a smile. Shine your shoes. Straighten your shoulders. So far, after all, you have managed to get from one moment to the next, all the way to this one, right? You have momentum on your side, not to mention buckets of tools and talents, and, of course, the life force itself.

Long story, but I found myself telling a friend the childhood tale about the little red engine that had to climb a big, steep hill, pulling a big, heavy train behind him. He was undaunted, this brave little engine, and he kept saying to himself with every turn of his wheels, “I think I can, I think I can,” until he made it all the way to the top.

I think you can, too.

I’ll leave you with one final quote from my file by singer-songwriter Ed Sheeran. It’s a good one to remember. “Everything will be okay in the end. If it’s not okay, then it’s not the end.”

Just keep going. And enjoy the journey.

Warmly,
Susan

^{Image by MasterTux from Pixabay}

I really do live in a tree house. It’s built into the side of a wooded hill. I sit at a small table in front of a west-facing, second story window and watch the scene change as the hours and days flow by. My closest neighbors wear feathers or fur and come in all sizes and their visits are gifts.

But then, isn’t everything?

(Was that a “Huh!” I heard? A snort of sorts? Listen. Just because something doesn’t suit your fancy or meet your expectations or go the way you wanted it to go doesn’t mean it’s not exactly what you needed. Everything has its upside. Sometimes it just takes some distance to see it. It’s that “can’t see the forest for the trees” thing.)

I learn a lot from the trees, whether I can see the forest from within it or not. It’s kind of like this experience we’re having of being human. It’s impossible to see the whole forest from here. The best you can do is get a glimpse of it now and then from atop some peak you’ve climbed. But you know it’s there, the forest. And you know it expands farther than you can imagine and is still but a fragment of what may well be an endless whole.

Anyway, what I started to share with you is how much I have been enjoying the gifts March is bringing. It’s a month of such changing moods. One hour is dreary and dark, the next is bright with sun. There’s stillness and high winds, snow and unaccustomed warmth. And beneath the constant changes is the great progression of the seasons. You can feel the push of springtime as it struggles to be born.

I’ve been watching grasses and the leaves of flowers poke up through the soil. They push aside earth and stones, the blanket of last year’s leaves, the twigs and cones fallen from the spruces. One fragile leaf can do that, one little blade of grass. The life force is a powerful thing.

Still, I wondered one day, what prompts them to do that? What prompts any of us to persist, to push against the darkness and confusion that blocks us from being what we want to be? “The light,” my mind answered; “the warmth.” And then a quieter voice spoke. “Hope,” it said.

Hope. I let myself taste the word. It’s like a wish or a dream, but more. It’s a flash of certainty that what you most long for is possible and real. It’s like that glimpse from the top of the peak where you see the forest stretching into an infinite sky.

Is there darkness before you? Are heavy boulders in your way? Are sharp winds whipping your face? Are you pelted with cold rain and a muddy stretch of road? Keep going, the leaves of birthing flowers say. Push onward, say the little blades of grass. Ahead there is warmth, and love, and light. Keep on.

From my tree house, I wish you a week drenched with hope. Keep on.

Warmly,
Susan

I wish you could see the smile on my face as I write these words to you. I’m sliding invisible gifts your way between each and every letter. You could be starting to feel them right about now.

I want to say a few more things about my experience with what I call “the chem bomb situation.” Just a few. Then we’ll move on. Okay?

For starters, let me say I’ve had some sizable shocks in my life, but this one topped them all. I’ve seen the story morph in the media over time. Now, in most places I’ve seen, it’s something like “the train derailment that spilled some toxins in Ohio.” And the train derailment was bad, erupting in a fire so fierce that over 50 regional fire companies responded. But what was worse, and that goes unmentioned now, is that a series of events led to dumping tank cars of toxic materials into a pit and setting it on fire. An enormous cloud of a million pounds of toxins, trapped by a thick layer of clouds, spread over miles, followed by rain.

I’m about five miles down wind from “ground zero.” I watched the black toxic cloud coming at me from my kitchen window. It hung over my house and land a long while, turning it darker outside in late afternoon than any midnight I have ever seen. Over the next several days, my body kept surprising me with new symptoms, and according to local reports many others were experiencing the same.

It was quick a shock to discover what had happened. All I knew for sure was that I was in a significantly altered world. I gathered all the information I could find to help me figure out how I wanted to respond. After a while, I realized that I had no control over the circumstances I found myself in. I couldn’t “fix things” or make what had happened un-happen.

“So,” I finally said to myself, “what are my responsibilities here?” And myself reminded me that my primary intention is to be a joy warrior. I saw that in order to do that effectively, I must first attend to my own health and stability. So that is where I focused. I honed my diet and allowed my body to sleep as much as it needed. I did my research, made my observations, kept my notes and logs. I consciously turned my thoughts toward things that brought me inspiration and joy, I ventured out with my camera. I made photographs and poems. I listened to good music and read good books. And now, at long last, I believe I am gaining the upper hand with my symptoms. I am strong enough to expand my focus to other things.

That’s the last I intend to say about the whole chemical bomb business. I just wanted to sum up what really happened here. But the world is awash in disasters. May God have mercy on us all. Besides, I have better fish to fry. For one thing, I want to tell you a story.

It was cold and windy and spitting bits of rain when I came out of the store, pushing my grocery cart through the parking lot’s puddles. As I neared my car, I saw that a man was huddling against the car next to mine, his hoodie pulled up against the weather, having a smoke before he got in his car.

He glanced at me briefly then side-stepped his way to the back of his car so I could open the door on mine and stow my groceries. He remained with his back to me the whole time, probably to shield me from his cigarette’s smoke.

I finished putting my groceries in my car, and as I guided my empty cart between our cars to take it to the collection rack, I said, “How ya doin’ today?” The man spun around and looked me right in the face, his blue eyes crinkled into a smile above a grizzly, white beard, “Why, thank you!” he said, his voice filled with surprise, as if I’d just handed him a thousand bucks. “Thank you!” I returned his smile and wished him a fine afternoon.

That’s the whole story. I thought you might like it.

Thank you for bearing with me as I adjusted to my region’s catastrophe. May you forever be free of such things. They’re no fun at all. And life these days seems to dish out plenty of challenges for each of us without them, doesn’t it? So may we kind. And may we see life’s goodness and beauty as we journey together on the trail. I’m so glad to have you along.

Warmly,
Susan

^{Image by scottgardner from Pixabay}