How is it that wee ones still know the sounds trains make though they may never have been to a train station much less taken a ride? A headline in the mostly ads weekly throw away for the neighborhood opened not a story but a series of snapshots of trains in my life. In Bellaire, the suburb/city of Houston, trains may not blow whistles during the night and disturb the sleep of residents. Trains of my first two decades were the second most available transportation after cars and four lines cut through Hammond to cover all points on the compass. One of my earliest memories is to turn over in the night, barely note that “lonesome whistle blowing,” and drift back to sleep thinking all was right in the world.

Like turning a page in a photo album, train memories are a little jumble. Maybe the station itself is a good place to start. A sturdy brick oblong building long enough to have a ticket office, an area for sitting, restrooms, and at one end an eatery that may have been the Whataburger of the time. Our house was at the foot of Charles Street which dead ended into the depot several blocks up. We could walk down on a Friday night for the rare treat of a bought hamburger. There were three tables with ice cream parlor chairs and everyone else sat at the counter.

Most trains rides were to New Orleans for shopping trips. Twice a year, Mother and I would catch the City of New Orleans at 9:00 a.m. coming south after its overnight run from Chicago. She always wore a hat and white gloves. Usually some other mother/daughter were available for visiting on the way over the lake and through the swamp. We shopped our way from Union Station down Canal Street, had lunch at Morrison’s Cafeteria, and were back to catch the 5:00 heading north to Chicago.

Riding trains taught me how to travel independently. My birth dad had a church in Marietta, Arkansas, and in Springdale, Arkansas. By the time I was ten, I was sent on my two week summer visit alone. I don’t remember having a name tag or being assigned to any helper. A porter helped put my suitcase overhead. Mother provided me with two new comic books, a library book,and a lunch with two sandwiches in case someone turned up who was hungry. When the call was made for Memphis or Siloam Springs, I gathered my belongings and disembarked. Someone I knew was always standing right there to hug and welcome me.

I tried to give our sons the thrill of the ride. I put a five and four year old on a local at the same depot I knew. My daddy left ahead of time to be in Ponchatoula to pick them up. They were already the generation of airplanes and the train in Hermann Park may have been as exciting for them. For me, it was their rite of passage. These reminiscences have been longer than most, and some of you know I have left out David stories with railroad passes and a bell business. Maybe the only good comment about Mussolini is, “He made the trains run on time.” My train lesson is you need to have a ticket and be ready to go when the train comes along.

Whenever the cloud lifted above the tent, the Israelites set out. At the Lord’s command, they set out.

Numbers 9:18,23

The metaphor is “Life is a journey”. Unless you make it a simile, “Life is like a journey.” If you haven’t clicked delete already, the like provides you with reasons while the flat metaphor allows you to make up your own. A journey can move quickly and smoothly down I 10 to the right exit for a destination or a rest stop. Secondary roads can provide the scenic route or take you out of traffic jams. Dirt roads are adventures or total confusion, and you’d better have a vehicle equal to the requirements for either. Once we were vacationing at Rainbow Trout Lodge with verbal directions, took an unmarked left instead of unmarked right, and the way ended when only trees were ahead of us. Thank goodness for reverse and try again.

All of us have road blocks. A big one now is quarantine and pandemic. A child throws up just as family is ready for church. The cat eats the turkey sitting on the counter. (Another true story). Life happenings of a new baby or a death. Next step is check the gas gauge, pass out emergency rations (always leave home prepared), and then see what turning around requires.

My life this week is not a full stop, yet definitely a haven’t been here before place. For the first time since I was 17 and had a 4/5 choir in a small Baptist church, I have only a 2 minute sermon to prepare for a 1st and 2nd grade church service, a task I can do as I fall asleep on Saturday night. One at a time I have passed points that were highlighted on my map of life. Three retirements finally put on end to planning classroom presentations, activities, and tests. I made it to tutoring which put me face to face with a child and able to chart growth until masks and certification erased that option. I still had a 1st grade SS class to create and direct. Like one of those detours, a schedule necessity closed that road. This week, I am adjusting. I’ll make two minutes be as good as I can, eat cookies, and see if another town close by offers any other attractions. Who knows, I may become a Master Gardener.

Forget about what is happening. Don’t keep going over old history. Be alert, be present. I’m about to do something brand new!

Isaiah 43: 18-19 The Message

I write and enjoy it. Sometimes you respond which says I connected and that pleases me. Last week I was jerked up short which gave me pause. ” I thought you were going to tell about the painted rocks.” Rocks can have different takes and obviously I missed what that person was expecting. A geologist can collect and know the various minerals they represent. An ad man made over a million dollars in the 70’s selling Pet Rocks: no food, no care, just uniquely yours. Some of us may find an unusual color or shape and put it on display just for our pleasure. I’ve been drawn into rocks being a vehicle for words and pictures.

Contacts start in a small way. A sale bin in Walgreens had rocks with messages. One with BELIEVE was worth $.50 and found a home by my front door. Then a rock painted with the open jaws of shark appeared on the table of the Little Free Library. Children noticed and played with it, yet no one took it off. One day, I saw a woman going through the books. She was from Mission, brought a husband for MDA treatments, collected books for her granddaughter and was leaving rocks she painted as payment. All had a river motif.

Something caught on. I didn’t see it happen: however, new rocks were added. Some had rainbows or singing birds. Most interesting was one with a cracked edge. It was decorated like an M & M cookie with a bite taken out of it. One day I saw a family of three boys and a mother. They had brought their own colors and were stopping for an art moment. Two weeks ago they left a carryall of supplies for others to create as and when they wished. Rocks had become a THING. For Christmas I was given a two piece green rock. When it was separated, one inner side had a brown pit. I was told the name was Angie the Avocado. Now it is a topic of conversation on a living room table.

Rocks and stones are from the foundation of the earth and are themselves foundations. They are the identifying structure of buildings and walls. Cairns are created as memorials or as trail markers. When the Israelites crossed the parted waters of the Jordan to enter the Promised Land, they were to bring twelve stones as a reminder to ask the question, “What do these stones mean?” My memory stones are a balanced group in the back yard that remind me of a journey from Rice Boulevard to Swift with its painted rocks created by children and a green avocado that evokes smiles.

Thus far the Lord has helped us.

1 Samuel 7:12

What was chosen to begin banishing chaos, to see what was, and to start the way to creation? A spoken word,”Let there be LIGHT!” Yet this was not chosen as an attribute for Advent. l felt its absence in my scientific musings. I’ve ever been fascinated by the tilt of the Earth on its axis and the elliptical orbit it follows around the sun. These two create definitive moments of light for each hemisphere. On December 21 of 2021 at 3:59 p.m., an event named the Winter Solstice occurs. At this defined time, the Northern Hemisphere is at its darkest moment. The sun rays are tangent to the earth in the Southern Hemisphere. Imperceptibly, small increments of light are added to each day leading us into a new season.

Light opens new possibilities. Seeds need light and the warmth it brings to split and start growth. Trees grow new leaves and provide shade. More children play on sidewalks. and I can walk away from my desire to avoid the grey skies by making the day one long nap.

Light has its own vocabulary: a glow, a flicker, a flash, a burst. John Rutter’s Candlelight Carol provides a special list for the birth of the Christ Child. “Candlelight, angel light, firelight, and star-glow Shine on his cradle till breaking of dawn.” Another carol defines the daily reminder of a reaction to light. “He is come in joy like the sun at morning. Filling all the world with radiance and with light. “

Advent Sundays in my church have names and banners that offer a focus. The overarching theme is this year is Light and Life to all He brings .That draws together four individual words, ties light to the life that begins in this season, and reminds us that this light is for all because the child became a man who declared, “I am the Light of the World.”

The city does not need the sun or the moon to shine on it, for the glory of God gives it light, and the Lamb is its lamp. Revelation 21:23

I taught with a friend who was very specific about what she grew in her yard. Plants that took over if she left town for a week and didn’t keep them under control, she named “thugs.” In one of my beds, the thug is rucellia. Arching red branches that attract hummingbirds have roots that creep and sprout as you watch. The truth of the matter is seeds and plants do what they are made to do. We are the ones who want to control where they do it. Thoreau reminds us our task is “ making the earth grow beans instead of grass.”

True stories of surprise growth. Two weeks ago on a late evening walk a neighbor was pulling two- leaf volunteers massed by his front sidewalk. We both shook our heads in ignorance and I went on, Another stroll this Saturday. The mystery was solved. When the pumpkin was carved, the admonition was not to mess the driveway, and the children dumped seeds in the grass. Water and sunlight did the rest. I don’t know if a Swift pumpkin patch was a possibility, but the thought was worth a vision and a giggle.

Next is a story from a long ago pastor who grew up as a farm boy. One warm spring day he had the task of planting corn down a field of long rows that ended by a creek. The rule is three kernels at a time: one for the birds, one to sprout, and one to weed out later if not needed. The day got hotter. He reached the end of a row with just a handful left, dumped them all in the last hill, and dove into the water. “Yes, dad, I finished it all.” That sentence worked until mid-June when his dad called him to the dumped spot where multiple small emerging shocks covered that particular space. Moral: Your sins will find you out.

When I started this, I really didn’t know where it was going. I was just trying to write this early because Wednesday, the 20, middle son and I are leaving town. This is a trip that requires my world will stay in orbit for four days without tending. I’ve thought about Bloom where you are planted, just do my best wherever I am. Then there is Whatever you sow, you shall reap. Whatever I leave undone when I go will be here when I get back. Look at your day and put something in to grow. I’ve paid a bill, had lunch with a friend, packed a suitcase, and set an alarm for early rising because this is where I landed.

Sow your seed in the morning, and at evening let your hands not be idle, for you do to know which will succeed.

Ecclesiates 11:6

A saying is that everyone thinks they have a book in them, This may be mine. I have several weeks worth of looking at change. Like turning a kaleidoscope, varied twists cause change and different patterns appear in result. Today, think of seasons. Factoid: I am a geography minor. One of my favorite times is to stand in front of sixth graders and with a ruler and a globe explain earth tilt and daylight and seasons. If even one face lights up with understanding, I feel justified for including it in the curriculum. A side result of this is I have never wanted to live at the equator. Even if just a small dose comes, I want to experience the change.

This year that forerunner of fall came on the date of the Autumnal Equinox, a wonderful phrase! Though ice had not made it to the valleys, snow had already come to the mountains of Colorado, even while Houston still had 80 degrees at daybreak with humidity above that number. When I opened the door into pre-dawn, I knew things were different Coolness caressed my cheek and I didn’t break into a sweat just getting the paper. Past experience decreed this wouldn’t be permanent, yet I imaged sweaters in a bin wiggling in anticipation of coming out once more.

More subtile changes. A cheer for the welcome knowledge that hurricane season is over – probably. Flowering plants need deadheading unless the seedpods are left to drop into the ground and begin that cycle for the time we long for a season of warmth instead of cool. Politicians in charge puff up with importance when they declare a day of time change, though truly the sun’s circle just goes on as usual. What we call it doesn’t make a bit of difference.

For this season, activities change. Children have begun school, albeit different this year. Forget the personification given to sweaters. With anticipation, humans who own blankets and jackets start checking where they were put away at the end of the previous season in order to ready them for another useful moment. Meals become more substantial to provide fuel for more demanding days. Hopefully, this season of unsettledness will also change. Stay tuned for another take. I feel a migration coming on!

He (God) changes times and season; he deposes kings and raises up others. He gives wisdom to the wise and knowledge to the discerning.

Daniel 2:21

Give nerve endings credit. Those small receptors in our hands connect us to the world in a way we could easily ignore. Touch creates realness from smoothing a sheet to squishing mud pies. We naturally reach out to other humans. Think today how important touching creatures is to us and them.

I’m glad I was raised in a family where hands to animals was important. Early on I learned to smooth the feathers of a chicken held under daddy’s arm and be rewarded with a gentle cluck. Cleaning fish taught me about the difference between fish with scales and the smoothness of a catfish. Pigs had little stiff hairs while hands on cows could almost glide over their bodies. Taking my children to the petting zoo taught me about prickliness of baby elephants without ever having to leave Texas. Sheep wool really is oily. I know because Sarah’s visit to the Live Stock show always involved sticking her finger into their coats to measure how thick it was. When I did the same, my fingers had the on site feel of a squirt of lanolin.

Through my adult life, I’ve added other touches. My least favorite was sitting in a row with 5th graders while the lecturer walked down with a snake wrapped around his arm for all to give a two finger touch. “Are you going to do it, Mrs. Smith?’ ” Yes, of course.” I learned they really aren’t slimy, and I don’t care to do it again. On a whale watching trip, a mother came up next to our small boat and nudged up her baby to rub his barnacled skin against the rough side. When I scratched his back, it had a rubbery feel like I would imagine a wet suit to have. Just last week, I added to my list the rubbing the back of an opossum who was part of raptor center display.

Even if your touches have not been venturous, most people have tactile contact with cats, dogs, and horses. We had one cat who chose to stay out at night. The first person up let her in. She would come to my bed, get on my chest, rub with her paws and tell me about her night while I stroked the top of her head. The two adult children who have dogs find delight in the animals’ response to both roughhousing and head on a knee just to be close and touching. Watching a horse come near a human and lay a cheek near the human’s shoulder calls for a response to closeness. The all increases for a closeness with a like creature. A strain of the pandemic has been the creation of a no touch climate. I’ve patted my children on the shoulder and can’t remember kissing unmasked. Preemie twins joined our neighborhood. The parents went to visit, not only to hold, but to pull back shirts to allow the feel of skin on skin. I felt tears only when a my age couple ahead at church were holding hands, and I wanted David to be able to be hand in hand with me. We are still waiting for that unrestrained moment of reaching out and drawing in. Matthew 9 expresses the deep longing for touch. When it actually happens, healing occurs.

But when the crowd was put outside, He went in and took her by the hand, and the girl arose.

Matthew 9:25

By various and sundry means, we all gather some smidge of knowledge that is important to us. We may lose the structured sequential building of study that comes with a scope and sequence, yet each squirrel or rabbit that crosses our path adds to a fact bank or even an attraction that changes our whole life. We’d like to admire or credit Goggle with instant gratification; however the sources are as varied as the topics chased.

The space may not have qualified as a hall. It was a small square of four walls with a door from one bedroom, another to the bath, number three led to the sleeping porch, and the last went into the dining rooms. One wall had enough space for a four tiered bookshelf and the extra refrigerator new enough not to freeze up. The book shelf held the A – Z volumes of an old set of The World Book. No matter that it was maybe a 1930’s set. From it I learned about people and places and how to etch tin trays with acid. I didn’t even have to know what I was looking for. Something attractive subject was waiting on the next page. A companion to this set was a gathering of tattered National Geographic magazines. The groundwork for my love of Greek and Roman history came from colored pictures of Pompey and drawings of the Minoan Labyrinth of Crete and how to trail a cord to find a way out.

Libraries used to be more of a vastness of possibilities. I could ride my bike across town to the local one in Hammond. The probability existed of my choosing a subject, standing in front of a card catalog, and running my fingers through sequence of letters to uncover a topic I didn’t know existed. Then I could wander between shelves checking numbers until there was book waiting for me. I didn’t have to know exactly what I needed in order to find it. Instead of starting with a desired website, I could wander stacks in a back corner, pull out a catch my eye cover, peruse a bit, and slip it back in place.

None of the previous two discount the enlightments that phones and internet can add. Son and I left the Baptist church after a previously mentioned trip to Lafayette. Across the street on an oak filled lot about the size to hold two suburban houses was a cemetery. Under a towering oak was a family sepulcher replete with standing angel and a woman holding a banner saying Mother and Father. In the back corner, we found a marker that opened up an instant phone search to reveal that this was a Jewish cemetery given in the 1800’s for the 63 Jews in Lafayette. I like knowing that this peaceful, well-tended place still exists in a French Catholic town.

Think through your own tidbits of the week. Sometimes down the hole leads to warrens. A friend and I have spent a month chasing fraught which may be more favored in England while rife gives the same feeling of abundance for us across the Atlantic. Reading a description under a picture in a museum opens a genre that needs to be explored. I’m visiting a raptor center this weekend. Eagles and owls I know. Kites for now are a children’s entertainment. Each tidbit enriches me and gives me some thing to share. Excuse me, there goes a rabbit.

He who gets wisdom loves his own soul, He who keeps understanding will find good.

Proverbs 19:8

Forty-two years were the longest I had settled in one location. Children went from pre-schoolers to off to college to marriage with Rice Blvd. as a starting place. The time had come for a move. I still needed my circle space that I knew and loved. Instructions to the realtor: Near my church and my grocery store. I don’t want to cross Holcombe Blvd. to the south or Alabama to the north and the new place has to be one story. The Doll House on Swift fit all the criteria. I added a school in which to volunteer to the triangle. GPS helps me leave the beaten path, yet I always stay in the city limits.

Then Doug and I took a road trip Saturday to Lafayette, Louisiana. We went to a memorial service for the husband of a couple that had been on the close friend list for 66 years. Be impressed. Road work app gave the suggestion that travel would be easier on old 90 rather than the interstate. That change opened up a whole vista of memories. We lived out that highway in Dayton, Texas, for five years. David called it Gracious Country Living – not sure that was the best descriptive. Almost to the Louisiana border we stopped at a light at Barber’s Hill where I once slammed on brakes, and Doug, age three and standing in the back seat, came over and cut his forehead. He has a scar, yet we haven’t thought of that day in ages. The place brought it to mind.

The drive wasn’t just names of towns. It also was the change in trees that grew along the highway. Some swamp to the right and pines lining the north side. I looked out of the front windshield and suddenly was in Baton Rouge. The sky was a brilliant blue with puffy white cumulus summer clouds. I could have been crossing the quadrangle at LSU in mid_summer. That square is defined by brick buildings with tiled roofs. My daddy walked that space a generation before me. I hummed a line of “Where stately oaks and broad magnolias shade inspiring walls….FOREVER L-S-U.

On to Lafayette. For years my friends’ home was a good stopping place on the Hammond to Houston run. I saw adult children whom I last remembered sitting around my dining room table as teens. We recalled our times together at the Colosseum in Rome, and someone kissing the Blarney Stone (not me). These places defined specifics in our journey together. I can’t give credit; however one of my copied gems is “The sense of place is where memories are summoned, so that a sound or a scent or the way the wind blows brings a remembrance of what has happened and why.” The phrase for that day was amazement in saying with clarity, “This is the place where….” The places of the past are only a prelude to those around the bend.

I go to prepare a place for you. John 14:2

I used to have to…. I used to be able to ……. I don’t have to anymore…… All three of these statements cover the passing of time in eons, in years, in aging. A person of importance at one time knelt by a fire and knapped flint to create arrowheads for hunting. Later members of the family could turn out an improved object in iron. By the Industrial Revolution, steel points needed a person only to run the machinery. Yet a nostalgic moment remains in some museums with artisans enthralling wide eyed children in “how we used to.”

Progress certainly makes some tasks easier. Mentally go through the steps of creating a wagon wheel. The right size wood slowly being shaped in size and form. An improvement of an iron band to confine the shape and give stability. Whole wagon trains were help up if a trip down an incline caused one to break. One of my 1st grade boys came to Sunday School in my face to tell me his dad’s car had a tire “break” on the way to church and what they had to do. When I first started driving, my dad, who believed in being prepared, spent an afternoon coaching me through the process of changing a tire. When I finally had a flat on the highway when I was in college, I pulled over and a truck driver stopped and helped me. I wouldn’t even know if I have a spare anymore, and certainly don’t plan on changing one.

Packages to mail are now sealed with tape. Even the brads on envelopes are covered to keep from catching in the machinery. Wrapping packages to mail was an art. Find the right size box. The next step was to keep the brown paper from rolling up on you before you stretched it around the box and used a minimum of tape to hold in place. Depending on the size of the package, several rolls of string, twine, or heavy cord were kept to finish the job. I learned estimation by cutting off cord the right length to wrap and tie without having too little or too much. A plus was you could hold the package by the string instead of having to stumble with arms wrapped around it. Now, you can buy the box, forget outer tape, and cost is already figured.

So many changes. I don’t have to shear the sheep, card the wool, and spin the yard even if knitting is an option for a new sweater. I’ve told before of the my skill in rolling coins for the bank. Now those loose round things are useful only for adding tax to $3.99. No one cares if I fill an ice tray to the right level to pop cubes out easily. However, each of us keeps a skill that defines us. Maybe it has been tweaked, yet is is ours to give. A friend decorates cakes for her grandchildren’s birthdays. A dad built a special home school desk last year instead of using IKA. I made a quilt and do bake bread. If change goes back instead of forward, someone may kneel once again by a fire, ready to build a new skill as a gift to the community.

May the favor of the Lord our God rest upon us; establish for us the work of our hands—yes, establish the work of our hands! … 

Psalm 90: 17