To help you, this is a Spanish noun cognate for our English term routine. The well of relationship can be dug to be as deep as you have time and interest for a variety of words. Cognate itself comes from the Latin cognates which means blood relative. I chose rutina as a basis for the way Spanish is part of my routine of survival in a hot, dry summer of 2023.

Routine can be a fence that protects when life presses in or it can be the path we can follow when unsure or confused. For understanding how Spanish came to be that for me, start with the choice of an opinionated teenager in the early 1950’s. Remember, a group of 18 of us moved lockstep through high school mostly in the same classes. We were all exposed to Spanish I and II. I liked neither the language nor the teacher. For some reason the structure never made sense to me, so the grades messed up what was an easy more than acceptable average across the board. The low point for me was translating rio as I laugh instead of a flowing body of water. Onward to college. I tried three weeks of French til I realized I was too visual to manage a language that didn’t match sound and sight, and I was glad English was mostly an acceptable choice!

Time marches on. In Houston, I taught in Spanish neighborhoods and picked up vocabulary if not grammar. I married into the geography of El Paso and my husband, while not proficient in structure, loved the cadence of sentences and the culture they represented. Then for fifteen years I traveled at least once a year to Lima, Peru, to make sandwiches for a mission trip. My first competent sentence was “Dónde está el baño?” in the airport at midnight. In January , 2013, I started Duolingo. I now read fairly well, understand the structure of tenses, and still have difficulty with inserting que, de, a, al, del in proper places. Yet 10 years and much maturity since age 18, it is a pleasant requirement of each day to sit and do a lesson, a rutina that defines time and challenges my brain, and nourishes my soul. Es bueno!

Hechos 2:6 Y al ocurrir este estruendo, la multitud se juntó; y estaban desconcertados porque cada uno los oía hablar en su propia lengua.

Acts 2:6 When they heard this sound, a crowd came together in bewilderment because each one heard their own language being spoken.

Sometimes I just have to see if what crossed my mind can be laid out. I hope that before the end, this connects with any out there who read, even if it is just the verse at the end. If not, click close and know Charis is saying, “This one is for me!” My birthday is June 17 and as the world turns it meshes at times with the other June occasion, Father’s Day. I’ve lived long enough and had contact with various family mixes from blood lines to school families to know ties in relationships don’t always match. While fathers are necessary to being, I have friends who almost shudder at the term. Yet fathering has an underlying meaning regardless of personal experience just as shepherding denotes care even for those who have never patted a wooly four-footed creature.

I was shaped and raised by two daddies. (A co-teacher from Michigan asked, “What is it with you southern girls and your Daddy?) To be a daddy’s girl is a safe and loving place to be. A birth dad gave me to a family that wanted a child and both cared for me enough to make an almost dual relationship work. My adopted daddy was the lode star of my life. One, he loved all children and delighted them by making them a part of whatever he was doing, so a life skill just seemed like the natural thing to do. I can take apart my sewing machine and put it back together because I was seated at a table and taught to do it. Part of any skill I have in speaking is because he put me in front of groups to explain or tell. I learned the lasting advantage of teaching by seeing him welcome gangly college boys who came to visit Mr. Joe and tell where their life was at that time. He looked at report cards and came to concerts and affirmed by saying, “Now that was just fine.”

Go back to the title. Even as I cherished this day and who it represented to me, a different person may be the support of another life. Single moms do amazing things. An elderly next door neighbor may provide listening ears and teach coping skills. Aunts and uncles can be mentors simple because they don’t have to feel guilty if their advice isn’t followed. A teacher opens the door to following new adventures that didn’t seem possible. So maybe these words led you to look back to last Sunday to remember, or reconnect, or mostly be thankful for that person, whatever you called them, who helped shape you to be what you are today. And underneath were the everlasting arms.

 “Yet, Lord, you are our father; we are the clay and you our potter: we are all the work of your hand.”

Isaiah 64:7

This is birthday week and like a first grader waiting for a cupcake treat at school, I can’t ignore the excitement of the approach of another June 17. Thanks for 87 coming up. It might not be as impressive as the total reached by the last living survivor of D – Day or of Kissinger who both hit 100 + this past week; however, for me 87 is better than a lesser digit.

I am winding down, yet a complete stop is not in the future yet. Once I hiked the Colorado trail encouraging four girls who had not prepared for an 8th grade trip and kept wanting to turn back. This March I made a tour to Barcelona with a walker for a backup and checked off each daily demand. I never have to worry again if a bundt cake will come out of the pan in one piece. As a replacement, I still cooked a tasty pumpkin pie with a homemade crust to welcome a son who visited from Colorado. Yes, an undependable back has taken bending and tending a yard out of the easy option activities. A few years past, I changed my front lawn to native plants, so I can enjoy a return of bluebonnets, cone flowers, and golden daisies mostly because they take care of themselves.

While a gathering of decades are memories to be held close, some things are blessings to be cherished now. I like calm coffee while I sort what needs to be tackled first or be given a number for a daily list. I have friends across a broad spectrum. A few who like to do what I do drive well enough to let us both venture beyond just Swift and the church. I can visit with less than 6 year old neighbors who sit on the bench to peruse the Little Free Library. My special support is a multiple number of the Smith clan having various ages and last names. I will be celebrated and fed on Friday by those who are my adult children. To top the privileges of age, naps are permitted at any time and maybe a few words of wisdom are left to light the path of the group of come after me followers.

 Now that I am old and my hair is gray, don’t leave me, God. I must tell the next generation about your power and greatness.

Psalm 71:18-19

With a derogatory tone, those words can denote a waste of time. A second glance may open a door to something new and delicious, Rabbits can appear quietly in their hunched position with only twitching whiskers to identify their presence. One by the gate at the ranch in Boerne melted into the gatepost. I held Sarah’s three year old hand and kept a finger to my lips as we quietly tiptoed closer and hunkered down to look into the calm immoveable eyes. A cry of ,”Hi, bunny!” broke the spell and only a disappearing white tail was visible.

I thought of that moment as I chased the solid repetition of a Greek Key design in a sticker book I had been given for Christmas. I was releasing a line from the book to attach and mark the completion of a morning paragraph. The pattern is a simple repeat of horizontal and vertical lines that identify various Greek objects from vases to arches to the mythical labyrinth that held a Minotaur captive. The motif stands for eternal motion and infinity, yet it is simple enough that a fifth grade girl could decorate the top of her paper without ever lifting her pen.

One more rabbit appeared twitching at the corner of my eye. The key design also represents the twisting of the Meander River that appears in Homer’s Illiad. I have a geography minor and some plane trips show elevation and the substance of the soil by the back and forth turns of moving water over a landscape. I even had 8th graders build a tilted sandbox that created their own river with a watering can at the source before it slowed to a delta at the bottom of the box. So rabbits appear and leave from memories, to new knowledge, to visual examples of concrete truths. Chasing with a purpose leads to something new.

My life flows on in endless song,
above earth’s lamentation.
I catch the sweet, though far-off hymn
that hails a new creation.

This is the sentence that starts the second paragraph on scientific information about magnets. Quote “Creating a magnet involves aligning magnetic domains in a piece of metal.” Besides being useful, collecting pins when a box spills on the floor, magnets are also entertaining. Correctly aligned they connect. Reversed they push apart. They carry messages to the world along with cute slogans, phone numbers of essential repair men, and the ability to anchor pictures on refrigerator doors. Or they did until some wise guy decided metal wasn’t needed in the doors and it was back to Scotch Tape. However, bumper stickers are still alive and well: “Honk if You’re Just Trying to Do Your Best!”

The tricky part of magnets is the underlying element of magic. Items exist that have a sneaky trick of attraction without having any metal involved. In your house somewhere is an example. There is the washing machine or dryer that can pull a sock into a back corner. Everyone has a space in a closet where the last year’s favorite shirt has slipped off the hanger and disappeared out of sight to the back of the wall for a whole season. Don’t take lightly the drawer that should hold only night clothes, yet has a stockpile of ski pants under a pair of blue bottoms.

For me the master magnet of junk attracting is/was the garage. A visiting son owed me a day to help demagnetize. We moved from Rice Blvd in 2017 and what didn’t have a place in the house was sucked into the garage bit by bit until there was barely room for the car on the far side and getting to the box that controlled the sprinkler involved climbing over two washtubs and a lawn chair. First to trash was the pile of freeze coverings had been reutilized until all shape was gone. Why was there a stack of three green wooden Adirondack chairs? Half-empty paint cans I understood, except the contents were probably thick beyond use. A blessed son- in-law moved some tools to his garage and the lawn man piled chairs in his truck. I did the necessary web search and found the city does a June 29 curbside pickup of what is left. Now I do have a clear place to stand while deciding what is next and that space serves as a quiet reminder that I also need to shake the rooms of my body at times to move with more ease and a clearer vision.

A huge cloud of witnesses is all around us. So let us throw out everything that stands in our way….and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us.

Hebrews 12:1

My attention was captured by a South Louisiana joke. “How long have they been married?” “I’m not sure. They are on their 2nd bottle of Tabasco.” I do have a friend who says he uses at least one a month. Most people wear it down a drop at a time. For a good part of our lives, adding to or replacing seems normal from light bulbs to new shoes. I realized that eight decades polishes the thought that “this,” whatever “this” is, may be the last I have to look for, choose, or pay for.

I moved into almost the last with a purchase of a set of cookware the fifth year of marriage. Two iron skillets, an iron Dutch oven, two light weight sauce pots, cookie sheets from Green Stamps and a 8″X12″ for one layer cakes served my purposes. However, I longed for beauty, so I bought a set of green Club Aluminum cookware. Since I never had a flat surface electric stove, those were sufficient until about five years ago. I burned rice in the bottom of one beyond redemption and another had gas flames lick around the corner to ruin a handle. I bought two non-stick offerings from Kroger and think they will lead me on, even if I live to Biden’s demanding I get a new electric stove.

This is my last house, and I don’t have to redecorate space or replace furniture – well, maybe a mattress – so sofas and a dining room table are not on my look for list. Also, the stack of towels and sheets may lack the crispness of new, yet they are still usable and the good side of presentable. Which brings me to a car and a crossed finger it will last washing machine. The second may require a necessary decision. The first will arrive at a moment of not its wearing out but my outliving the Tiguan as my means of transportation. Here I am. I’ve lived through the need to replace or renew with impunity. I’ve had enough to share with others, to offer hospitality, to welcome a stranger. What is left is irreplaceable because it is what matters the most to me. I had to come to this moment a year at a time. The final statement is, “It was all good.” Whatever your decade, rest in these verses.

Therefore I tell you do not worry about your life…….your heavenly Father knows that you need them

Matthew 6:25….32b (sorta)

I didn’t know how else to say it, though various words kept floating up to call emotions to the surface of all my happenings. The commercial name was Mother’s Day, and that was one part, yet not all. I hope for you there was some group from two to a multiple of that number that affirmed, “This is where I belong.”

My first descriptive is Car Pool. Yes, you read it correctly. To get to our first family gathering, middle son and I had to make a day trip to Austin. Nothing brings forth closeness like nowhere to go except to be in the car. At times, squabbles, yes, but also questions are asked that need time for an answer. Discussions are not cut short because another place is calling. Maybe most importantly, sites can be noted at the same time and lead to comments like, “That reminds me of …..”

The Austin gathering started at a courthouse with a nuclear family coming together for an adoption. The group unfolded across generations and various related terms from great-great aunt (my designation) to cousins and in-laws. Three screens of Zoom reached out into scattered ties that bound all together. The first half required Kleenex to be passed down a row and either hands squeezed or arms around a shoulder to draw the next person a little closer. After the judge said with a smile, “This child shall be known as a Graves!” approval erupted. Whoops and clapping in the court was made stronger by technically transmitted sounds of joy.

South Louisiana puts new acquaintances in place with the question, “Now who are your people?” We checked on that circle over the next two days. On the way home, we stopped to visit a nephew’s wife, their daughter and husband and two young boys of an age that I gift in return for crayon scribbled thank you notes. They were just coming out of naps enough to want their mother’s lap, but I could read the latest book and they turned pages. Saturday night we ate with an expansion of local cousins at supper in their new house. Togetherness calls forth various memories of growing up. Versions from different participants led to arguable slants of which was correct . A solution was reached only by a loud affirmation of one’s opinion shouted over raucous laughter. Chocolate Caramel Cake helped us wind down with harmonious feelings.

So Sunday came as a titled day. My term mother released me from having to cook. Our family in town ate at our daughter’s house along with a son-in-law _ after all it was his house, too- and his brother – not sure of his specific designation for the relative of an in-law. We shared grace for the meal and love for the gathering. The approved designation for a supportive group in 2023 is Tribe. Much better is Family, that inclusive word given for all mentioned and to those beyond.

But to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God,
John 1:12

The way to get there from here is not always predictable. In 1988 (there was such a year), I was called to give a start of the year talk for a former school where I had taught. Driving up, a song came on the radio: John Anderson I’m Just An Old Chunk of Coal, But I’m Gonna Be a Diamond Some Day. It was catchy – you look it up- and fit as a good lead in. I used it, moved on, and forgot all about it. 2023 has been a year with vicissitudes: health, aging, and unsolved life problems. Doug had given me a book of stickers for Christmas, and I had been pulling out ones of crystals to put in my journal. They led to a memory of the song, and the affirming thought that what I am now is not the final word.

Knowledge of crystals was smattering and very unfocused, so this paragraph is a drawing together of sparce research. Crystals are an orderly geometric pattern formed from dissolved minerals by pressure or liquids or steam. Salt crystals are like a cube while snowflakes are six sided. Repeat after me: “No two snowflakes are alike.” That speaks to me. I have an individuality even if I have a geometric unity with you.

Next step. Gems are specialized crystals, usually taking longer to form, are a rarity, and can be cut to give a shine. They can move from a simple beginning to something of worth, Quartz is not a gem, yet can progress to a deep purple color and are harvested as amethyst. In fact, crystal comes from the Greek word, krystollos meaning from ice, that cube that never melts.

All of this, scattered as it sounds, gave me a resting place. I do not have to be torn apart by what I think are laborious problems. Those actions could actually be formation changers. This offering may have started with me, yet I can bet whoever you are has had a time when shape changing forces seem too much. Sometimes we just need reminding that we are not sent into the wilderness alone. We may not all end up diamonds. To be the best I can be may call me to work toward an emerald. That would be worth enough for me.

Rather, it should be that your inner self, the unfading beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which is of great worth in God’s sight.

1 Peter 3:4

I hope that got your attention even if just to shake your head in dismay. When our oldest was in second grade, he came home to announce they were learning to write “cursing” In the years that have passed I have heard that word applied very freely by those who came through the process. At some point educators have thrown up hands in despair and thrown out the cursive for only teaching a manuscript alphabet. These comments, keyboarded in a readable manner, are a little disjointed. Pick what applies to you.

Hand eye coordination and small motor skills are still not my strength. I remember being frustrated but not stressed. The first hurdle to cross was holding the pencil, a challenge for all. (Think of toddlers with a folk.) Some want to do a whole hand fist grab and push and pull with upper arm strength. Then the sequence moves through thumb and first, second, or third fingers. Once a decision is made about holding, that is the choice forever. Look at adults. My means through college was to push the pencil against the third finger, creating a bump that has just now lessened.

I liked learning the letters because my blessed second grade teacher had stories to go with each one. A capital I was an airplane starting on the right, taking off, almost making a nose dive, and curving up before straightening out. A lower case m was a rabbit taking three jumps and two with an n, My biggest problem was I spelled more quickly than I could write. I remember misspelling papa three weeks in a row because I had already said the a before I finished the p so ended up with ppa without being able to figure out why. Through college I was a lean to the left writer to the point of being asked if I were left handed.

Since I was a cursive child and didn’t teach lower school to refine my printing posters, the time came when students would question what I wrote on the board. “”Consider it a life skill,” was my answer. Yes, books are in manuscript. The biggest requirement of writing maybe is legibility. I would allow speed and ease of correcting as an excuse for keyboarding.

However, that all important justification RESEARCH is now finding that the multisensory motion of hand to brain provides more hooks in learning. One sees the letter being formed, creating a strong visual image with what is appearing on the page. Bit by bit, writing becomes an art form, creating a beauty that identifies those strokes as mine. I knew the letter came from my mother and not an unidentified architect. Perfect “cursing” is not required, yet try recreating you on the page. Vary size and shape of letters, add doodles and art. Sometimes the paper is the visit that can’t happen. Remember most messages except a business letter can be signed with Love.

I have much to write to you, but I do not want to use paper and ink. Instead I hope to visit you and talk with you face to face, so that our joy may be complete.

2 John 1:8

Improvement, progress, obsolescence. Maybe some violence in annihilation and a little choice if the cause is disuse or elimination. The end result is the same. Whatever isn’t there or in active use any more. The change I’ve noticed has occurred one at a time for various reasons and now it needs to be noted, so you of a certain age can tell your progeny what we used to have. Tours can still take you to see drawings on cave walls to commemorate the buffalo hunts while Indian smoke signals disappeared about as soon as they were issued. The invention of paper stopped stone carving and enabled us to know information from Dead Sea Scrolls. We’ve moved into an electronic age of a paperless society – unless you print out for yourself. No more twice a day to your door mail service . I looked around and mail boxes I depended on to keep me from parking and going in a post office or to claim an earlier time for pickup are dwindling and in, some cases, gone to never return.

Just so you know, post boxes appeared in the 1850’s as small boxes attached to a lamppost. Mail at that time was just left on a doorstep, so this counted as an improvement. By 1890, the larger boxes were beginning to appear on various street corners. I had a memory surge when I saw one of these in front of an historical house in Portland, Maine. It was larger and more bulky and an army green color. I even had my picture taken as a childhood moment. In 1930, location was determined by the up and coming automobile. Placement supposedly made drop offs from a car possible, though you did at times need to cut the engine to lean over to roll down the car window. By 1971 our current ubiquitous blue boxes were in place with a pull down door instead of an open slot. A rite of passage in our family was for the able child to have the privilege of rolling down the window and carefully inserting the letter. A bad day had a look of dismay and the confession, “I dropped it. It was an accident.”

I haven’t done exhaustive research but of the seven boxes I used with regularity, five have disappeared. The first to go was with the movement of our Village Post office to a new location a mile away. Even though the box was on a concrete base, heavy rains came over the bottom half. I assume the weld didn’t hold and there were too many soggy notes. The box was wrapped in shrink wrap and eventually hauled off. Two others were moved to a closer location to the main doors of their post office. I heard that the problem that led to their vanishing was that the children of the night contaminated contents with everything from water to less mentionable choices. Two others boxes were across a parking lot where one could not really drive up to use. I am watching my remaining two with bated breath.

I had thought of taking a poll about your routine of communicating. Do you use snail mail at all? Do you have a box attached to your house or a series with locks and keys for an apartment? How often do you check and, next, how often do you respond? Are e-mails and texts as personal as you get? Have you lost the excitement a child has of a letter with your name on the front? Til the cataclysmic change comes, something will arrive from me following the Victorian saying of intense purpose: to share a story, to ask a favor, to affirm an action, to declare love, “I take pen in hand.” You are worth $.63 to me and even more.

See what large letters I use as I write to you with my own hand!

Galatians 6:11