|
"What a grand thing to be loved; what a grander thing still
to love. The heart becomes heroic through passion. It is no longer composed of anything but what is pure; it no longer rests
upon anything but what is elevated and great."-
Victor Hugo, from Les Miserables
Real life exists outside time and space; therefore,
death can change the manifestation of life in this world, but it cannot destroy life itself.
Try to live with the part of your soul which understands eternity, which is not afraid of death. And that part of your soul is love. Leo Tolstoy,
A Calendar of Wisdom
Chalet LAbri, July 2, 2003.acg
Comes now the lazy, hazy days of summer. In fact, the distant Blue Ridge
on my eastern horizon is barely visible today, obscured by the haze of humidity and smog.
Perhaps the rains from Hurricane Bill will blow this far north and clear the atmosphere while the corn quickly ripens
in our valley. Alas, I have not the luxury to be lazy because household and garden chores absorb my time and energy; I complain
not but simply send up a Deo Gratis. No
vegetables grow in my trapezoid garden only flowers, both annuals and perennials. Keeping
up my contribution to Flower Drive, zinnias, margaritas, marigolds, coreopsis, lavender, and an assortment of sunflowers now
splash my hillside. As the calendar turns again, I ask myself is it possible that this year is already half over? Steadily now each day will be a few minutes shorter. The pendulum
of my clock continues its sobering tick-tock and I remind myself that the Good Book bids me consider the ant.
At mid-month I shall join the graduates of my high school class for the 48th
anniversary of our matriculation into the real world. Surely, I tell myself,
I must be the one of the more than fifty who most merits the monitor of nomad, having traveled and worked in some 86 countries
at last count.. I hardly doubt that my lifes journey has been unique among them. I laugh when I recall that the first word to describe me in the first review of my
first book was eccentric. I enjoy the label because somewhere along the way I
discovered that the Creator made us all originals, just as surely as He made no two snowflakes or grains of sand on the beach
precisely the same. I also discovered, like my lifes most honored mentor, E.
Stanley Jones, that I am a masterpiece under constructionnot perfect, but on my way to becoming so! That makes me somebody and throws back my shoulders, he wrote. I
have inherited the Kingdom of God. What a glorious inheritance!
|
