A Paper Beach and Penny Candy

A morning mist casts its translucent sheet and it hovers lazily, teasing the rising of a jubilant, summer sun.  The fireball laughs and blazes through the haze.  Its luminance shines through and hurts my eyes to gaze toward it.   Hills and trees and meadows are baptized in light and droplets as they awaken from their slumber, and a song is cast across my world.  The green field-grass lies like a blanket drenched in the awakening of this dawn.  Inside, next to my elbow rests a stack of books for the upcoming school year, and my world suddenly becomes too cramped or crowded.  Dug Down Deep, Growing Up Christian, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Whatever Happened to Penny Candy? sit upon the desk. (By the way, yes, whatever did happen to it!? I still remember going to my grandparent's small country store as a child and sliding the glass door open on the candy case, carefully holding the small brown paper sack, and counting the coins in my hand a second or third time to be sure I had enough money to buy fireballs, tootsie rolls, sugar daddies on sticks, or single-wrapped bubble gum or pixie sticks filled with pure colored sugar.  And then there were the wax sticks filled with pink, blue or green liquid sugar.  Oh, sweet heaven!)  To a kid.  But I'm no longer that kid.  I am a woman.  With stacks of books.  I am many things - but of late, crafting a learning experience for our children has become my wine and bread - oh, this life!  My mind is laden with schedules, menus, how to keep the house clean another year while we do school and live in it continually.  Yes, ours is a busy house and this is our work.  My head does the metaphoric spin until I am intoxicated by the motion.  Drunk and delirious.  On the side of the refrigerator, a magnetic pad of paper did hang.  It's down to one last scrap, the bottom half torn off for who remembers what purpose - a note for something most likely.  What remains of the paper beach shows the tops of palm trees ensconcing a blue background and across the top it reads, "Life's a Beach."  At least half a beach, if I look at it now.  It's a bit skimpy.  But I keep it still, for, Oh, even in the midst of this life where the hills are drenched in misty balm and books pile around me like a barn stacked with square bales, I'm always dreaming.  Yes, the stacks of books and laundry are ever-present, and I realize how small a woman I am to sit here in its midst and to dream; oh, how frail I am to make any of it happen - let alone to happen well.  Especially when the work load itself casts a veil translucent, hard to see through, and makes me feel alone.  But, a friend is sent and draws up near to my own ladened faith, and, so, with literal presence and sometimes words she reminds me what is most real: "Never alone," she says.  The words hug me, hover over me and baptize me.  The scrap of paper beach has an endearment scribbled on it (a bit hastily one day), and it reminds me, too: "It is okay to be frail because God clothes us with His power.  It is okay to need Love, because He loves us."

(Amen)

Holy to be frail, holy to be clothed, holy to be loved.

Holy is our God.   



(I want to give credit where it is due. I think the endearment came from a talk given by one of the good folks over at The Circe Institute. If you are an educator, you will be most glad for having clicked the link to the right of this column and visited their website.)