I have written 575 blogs in the last 10 years and today I feel caught in the same drought and lack of moisture that is across the whole world. I grew up in a wet world from destructive hurricanes to showers daily after lunch and sweet tea to wet your whistle after a time of working in the yard. This year I had five zinnia plants, yet to bloom, that even came up after being scattered for summer fill in a dry yard. El Nino may be an explanation and yet I don’t understand why dark clouds don’t blow in at the end of a day. I am rereading Out of Africa and Dinesen begins a paragraph poignantly: “But one year the long rains failed. It was as if the Universe was turning away from you. Everything became drier and harder and it was as if all force and gracefulness had withdrawn from the world. It feels like a negation of all weather as if it has been deferred sine die,” (Latin, no planned time to reassume. )

I run a sprinkler early in the morning three days a week as a reminder of moisture within my budget to supply. Plants still shrivel by noon from the day’s heat and dirt cannot be scraped up to crumble into dust. Farmers plow under crops, lakes shrink, and only small ships can navigate the Panama Canal. My front door has expanded in the heat to the point it is difficult to line up the bolt and the bolt hole.

Then there is a body of mine that needs water. Thankful I am that faucets and refrigerator are available. I have not bought a next to me always special water bottle. A daughter gave me a glass size Yeti which sits by my bed at night. She says it makes me “trendy” and I say it keeps some cold liquid close at hand. I don’t ask for a Noah size flood. I just try to keep remembering that God who made the rain can send it again, and I will be grateful when he does!

For I will pour water on the thirsty land,
    and streams on the dry ground; Isaiah 44:3

That can’t be avoided if you know just enough to have a say so. My dad was a back yard carpenter and ran his fingers over interesting woodwork to judge sanding. My musician friend quietly comments, “The sopranos missed that last run,” Another friend reads a newspaper article and with a shake of his head and pursed lips mouths, “Wish I could see that spread sheet.” Two different friends know me well enough that I have a pair of socks and a tee shirt that proclaim, “I am silently correcting your grammar.” I’ve become less verbal and adjusted to some changes, but cut me the slack that I spent a good many years drawing a paycheck for that very skill.

In spite of some acceptable options, I have come down strong on one choice. Seven coordinating conjunction can correctly join two parts of a sentence. In maybe the 5th grade, students learn FAN BOYS. All can be correct at some time. AND just ties part one and part two together. FOR explains and SO lays out reasons. NOR is the negative twin of OR and either call for an option. I take my stand between the last two. BUT strongly leaves the impression that everything just stated is wrong. Give me YET every time. In spite of, possibilities exist. A ray of light, a little hope.

I believe in YET so strongly that I find myself mentally autocorrecting an almost BUT. I didn’t measure sugar correctly, YET the cake was all eaten. Biblically, the out there internet can offer fifty verses of a problem, question, or disaster followed by “Yet, the Lord” -a solution is at hand! I am giving you Habakkuk 3: 17 – 18 of how YET can be the choice that leads to survival. Not only survival, verse 19 says the gift of prancing on the mountain top. “ The Sovereign Lord is my strength; he makes my feet like the feet of a deer, he enables me to tread on the heights.”
  

Though the fig tree does not bud
    and there are no grapes on the vines,
though the olive crop fails
    and the fields produce no food,
though there are no sheep in the pen
    and no cattle in the stalls,
¹⁸ yet I will rejoice in the Lord,
    I will be joyful in God my Savior.

¹

Most everyone had a liberal arts education this year thanks to the move The Odyssey. After all the responses and evaluations, my favorite is “No Odyssey, no Homecoming” Also in the vernacular is the story and term A Trojan Horse. At least twice a year, a three or four panel comic strip reminds us of Sisyphus and his up hill rock. Shorter and more pithy are Aesop’s fables.Those goals we can’t reach are probably sour grapes anyway. The myth which lead me to today was that of the mother who tried to protect her son, missed success by a small grip around an ankle and lead to defining the story as the death of a hero and a identifiable part of our bodies and an overarching fault that can destroy us: Achilles’ Heel.

In an August, 2000 sentence in a daily journal, “….(name withheld), had surgery today on her Achilles’ Heel after being in pain for a year.” I am totally non-athletic except for singing Head, Shoulders, Knees, and Toes with preschoolers, so never had a problem with this area. Specifically, the pain comes from an over stretched tendon and there are medical groups that specialize in tendonitus with treatments from surgery to specific occupational therapy. Injury is caused by over stressed calf muscles, improper footwear, or maybe flat arches.

Back to the myth. It’s a convoluted story of gods, humans, and an oracle. In hopes of keeping her child from dying in battle, Thetis dips her baby son in the River Styx holding him by one ankle. That unprotected spot is where the arrow strikes and kills. We all think, and at some point may even know, what our strengths are. Yet, we need to pay attention to those places that we have ignored, not exercised, or have changed because of some circumstances, always a weak point waiting for the unexpected to happen. The myths have endured because they have value. So do Bible verses.

¹² Therefore, strengthen your feeble arms and weak knees. ¹³ “Make level paths for your feet,”^[a] so that the lame may not be disabled, but rather healed. Hebrews 12

All types of background go into the what make the type of cook and presenter you are. We mostly ate at the kitchen table close to the stove. It was also the organizing place for canning peaches or plucking chickens or grating cheese for pimento cheese sandwiches for funerals. On Sundays or if company, we ate at the dining room table complete with a white linen table cloth, good china and silver and flowers of the season as a bouquet. Since my dad often had ag scholarship boys caught at the college over a weekend or holiday, the meals suited men’s taste:real meat, potatoes or rice, an acceptable vegetable (no broccoli), hot rolls, and a fresh from the oven pie.

So I learned to cook like my mother. Breakfast was fresh brewed coffee, toast, eggs, and bacon – one needed the grease for seasoning vegetables. Lunch was the big meal of the day, cooked early while the kitchen was cool. Daddy came home for lunch and took a nap. Supper was leftovers or “scraps.” That serves me in good stead now when I am the only partaker and have to shop on line once a week.

A one time I collected cookbooks, Remember this was before looking up a recipe for some exotic offering. When I moved, a widow and an aging woman, I weeded out, keeping my favorites for emotional reasons. My Better Homes and Garden cook book given as a wedding gift, A dessert book bought in Alabama at a family wedding and a Baton Rouge Junior League offering given me years ago by a student because I brought cookies for the class at recess. Food is more than a social gathering. It is mentioned from Elijah and ravens to the woman who kills a calf to prepare a meal for Saul, to Martha’s feeding 12 men who appear for supper, to Jesus choosing a meal for the last contact with his disciple, And to us, the commandment to see hunger and provide food.

For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, ‘Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brothers,^[a] you did it to me.’

Matthew 25: 35,37,40

If this works, and after this week, I’m not sure, but it is either an attempt to apologize to faithful readers or a where did this come from when something appears at a strange time in your mail box, maybe early, maybe late.

Back story, I am back in the world today after four days in never land. I’ve had an ailment, ER time (profitable but a whole afternoon), a day in a daughter’s upstairs bedroom. I had written a blog and messed up sending, and I finally home to see if I can at least resurrect a scrambled egg. Supposedly the meant for the week will appear tomorrow.

I guess this is the best Bible Verse. You give me your time and I enjoy giving back.

Give, and it will be given to you. A good measure, pressed down, shaken together and running over, will be poured into your lap.

Luke 6:30

Well, there are clouds at times and some places have rainy morning. Granted a few hours difference for sunrise and sunset during the year, though, the cycle of our universe has the visible count on appearance of light, lots of it, and that time is called day. However, as the earth turns, darkness awaits. How dark is no sun depends on a little starlight and what St. Francis called Sister Moon, the lesser light that rules the night. At one time the appearance of a full moon was the calendar mark for a specific period of time and the names given provided a hint for what might happen in that time or a designation for a certain celebration. If you live in my time zone and happened to get up and go outside at the time this blog appeared, you would have viewed the full moon for July, arched in the heavens or caught in the limbs of a tree as it sank toward the western horizon. Its special name is Buck Moon, noting it is the time of the year male cervids grow their antlers before shedding in the fall.

A mixture of information surrounds this glow in the dark wonder. Romance is one word that comes to mind. Walking in moonlight, holding hands, stealing a kiss all sound perfect. Tilt 180 degrees and walking on the moon as an astronaut is more than a dream. Plant root vegetables during a waning moon and flowering and on the surface vegetables in a waxing moon and harvest at full moon time to have a little more light, hence the October name, Harvest Moon. Folk lore from my dad says if you can hang a hunter’s horn on a crescent moon, it’s not going to rain. The happening that seldom comes to pass occurs once in a blue moon.

Pitch black happens in life and diurnally. That term is remembered when we urge someone, “Be sure to get home before dark.” As in all of time that cycles though, light comes again. Maybe a full day of sunlight; maybe just enough light at night to walk without stumbling. And it was planned for us from the beginning.

God made two great lights—the greater light to govern the day and the lesser light to govern the night. He also made the stars. ¹⁷ God set them in the vault of the sky to give light on the earth, ¹⁸ to govern the day and the night, and to separate light from darkness. And God saw that it was good.

Genesis 1:16 – 18

Time enough for a mixture to happen: children grew up and moved into lives of their choice, I retired from three jobs and finally labeled the last one in capitals, some deaths left empty spaces, and Smith members replenished numbers of the annual enumeration. On June 24, 2000 this is the notation in a journal. “Our last sighting of Ferdinand. He left through the porch cat door and stalked the birds by the feeder for old times sake before strolling down the alley.” Our nuclear family didn’t have pets because the edict for DMS growing up was NO PETS. Somehow cats slipped under the admonition. They have their own definition of belonging. Over 17 years we were home base to three felines. Eidelweiss was a long-haired white cat who moved in a haze of floating hairs which she seemed able to shed at will. Her one gift of belonging was to sleep on the stomach of older son if he napped on the couch. She had already lived a tough street life and died young of feline leukemia. Her passing left the youngest child bereft. I got a free Siamese/alley from a litter and he was bedded down with an alarm clock to mimic his mother’s heart beat and was carried around looped over an 8 year old’s arm like a waiting to be hung up towel.

Cats mostly require that their routine be understood by you. Said Ferdinand wanted to stay in the house at night. First feet up put his food in a bowl on the porch. He then went on his way to hassle the birds and head down the alley for two houses to bask in the sun on a table in Mrs. Jackson’s back yard. She made no contribution to his upkeep, but would take him in her house if the weather changed before we all came home in the afternoon. Then the stories get tangled. Son 2 came home from college in New Orleans with Fred, similar in color to Ferdinand, yet definitely with well-honed wharf skills. The cats kept their distance if humans were watching. Fred, though, would sit on the floor staring at Ferdinand as he tried to sleep in a chair. We came home one Sunday after the catfight, but blood had been drawn and tufts of hair were on the floor. That seemed to clear the air for a tenuous peace.

As I typed, I realized that over a quarter of a century details grow dim. I would have needed the whole family together to sort what happened in what order. Yet, I kept remembering details of one or another human sitting with a warm furry body next to their leg while they read a book or watched a movie or ate a snack. The interaction of closeness and caring mattered to both of them. That in itself is a Bible verse.

Care about them as much as you care about yourselves. Philippians 2:4

Education is sometimes planned sequentially. ABC, words, a reader. Toes, fingers, multiplication tables. Directions, a saw, a board, and a boat in the back yard. Sometimes a tidbit drops in unused until the magical moment. A decade ago we moved to the doll’s house on Swift Blvd. and I decided to plant the front yard instead of mowing. A friend from the Nature Conservency offered some suggestions. One reject was an unpleasant name and an un-enticing plant called rattlesnake plant. I made a donation for his time and moved on. This past Saturday, Son 2 and I went to a garden lecture on weaving baskets which revealed a variety of stems that could be peeled, flattened, maybe soaked and woven into baskets in the cool of your kitchen. First on the presentation was a rattlesnake plant. Its useful stalk was a tall stem that stretched up to a seed pod rattling in the wind like a snake ready to strike. A passing offer became knowledge.

All my revelations were a mixture of seeing, hearing the explanation, and passing around cups with examples. In the tour around a pebbled path, the expert introduced about seven different options from small stems split with your fingernail to large palmetto leaves that made arm baskets to ease other gatherings. She took time to clarify words I had read but had never spoken. Mordant was used casually with the display of some deep red wool. That term comes from the meaning “to bite” and identifies a property of some leaves to give color to other stems or even organic fibers. Then the word that’s been around since Egyptian times for the creation of Houstonians’ favorite summer fabric. Fields of flax are harvested, stems dried, and then retted to result in that elegant material – linen. A long lifetime and still something to be learned. What waits to reach out and bite you?

Wise men and women are always learning, always listening for fresh insights.

Proverbs 18:15

The title sounds like a business plan for a stock broker or a thriving company. On a more foundational level, these three words can work for a civilization or an individual. We have knowledge of the past through that study known as archeology, meaning the trash of one time leads to the treasure of a later date. Funeral practices of various eras provide clues to what was necessary to have for daily life. Pyramids opened to reveal what a pharaoh might need in the after life while entire Viking ships were sunk complete with the captain to assure a good journey. The Han Dynasty has that gathering of terra-cotta figures or mingqui (aka servants) so your every wish is my command forever. I have seen burial mounds of Native Americans at Cahokia, Illinois, while chaperoning an 8th grade field trip which gave a glimpse into life on the prairie where rivers intersect.

So, does knowing this offer me another option. Instead of the time and effort I am expending to sort drawers and clean out closets and make decision of Good Will or garbage, maybe I just need to cover the whole house in clear wrap and will it to the highest bidding research group. By the time the covering is pulled back, some revelations will be truth and some hypothetical guesses. Look, here is a broken sewing machine, an example of mechanics of that time that she literally wore out. This pile of rusty trowels, diggers, and a loper, remnants of the owner digging and tending a yard? A single older woman lived here, why would she need enough plates to feed a family reunion? And those sets of silverware have value. Amazingly, the iron Dutch oven hasn’t rusted through yet.

Really, come and go choices for things are the easy part or the least important decisions. Who cares about cheap department store jewelry, yet I want to hand over a special bracelet that reminds me of a mother/daughter trip to Santa Fe. One son took and framed pictures of roses that I admired in England. Another son took the time to fold for me 1,000 cranes as a symbolic blessing. Journals have sentences like the one about my mother’s palmetto fan: ” She took it to non-airconditioned church and if I were very good, I could use it.” All three paragraphs are not a comment on things, only the necessity of my taking the final task to completion in the best way possible. Dust myself off, take a deep breath, and choose this verse.

Whatever I have, wherever I am, I can make it through anything in the One who makes me who I am. 

Philippians 4:13 The Message

The phrase sounds like a bonding exercise at the beginning of a corporate retreat, yet beyond that whenever hand appears it calls forth a contact that is needed to cement a relationship or facilitate a task happening. Hand to hand combat denotes the most ferocious kind while “give me a hand” invites an onlooker into solving a situation. Approval can be an individual bringing hands together in appreciation of a performance while two small children can face each other for “Patty-Cake” before growing to teenagers and mastering a five minute production of hands together and back to back in a very steady rhythm. Who would not feel better with a dependable “right hand helper” to pick up the slack?

One of life’s most comforting thoughts is to have someone present to hold your hand. With a certain person that action ranks right up there with a kiss and a hug. To have a child you know well or even slightly reach up to hold your hand as you walk together is a blue ribbon moment. The ultimate of a loving affection is to affirm that he or she keeps your heart in his or her hand, not to squeeze tightly, just to keep safe.

Have you ever broken a finger or strained a wrist? Suddenly you have lost an important tool. A healthy usable hand is necessary for your life in progress from brushing teeth to stirring oatmeal, not to mention climbing a rope ladder a hand at a time. The word of skill recognition is, “Can do whatever he puts his hand to.” To make a criminal ineffective tie his hands behind his back. In a varied group, with a special other person, or by yourself, take advantage of what is “at hand” and put those appendages of yours to good use every day.

Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with all your might, 

Ecclesiastes 9:10