Hi Friends.
Ugh why do things get more complicated with time? When I started using this platform, not that long ago, it was just a nice little newsletter thing. Now there are podcast components and video options, a hundred different ways to get peoples’ attention and to get them to pay for something.
Sheesh. How did we get to this place where everyone is a commodity and everyone must market themself in some snazzy way so as to rise above the noise and the din and the chaos?
I guess I should talk, right. Here I am. In this confusing and noisy world.
I have always said that one of my favorite things about church is that it’s one hour in the week when almost everyone in the room is not checking their cell phone. You can feel the difference. We step into that lovely sacred space and it really feels like time out of time. We talk to each other, wrestle with ideas, have a cup of coffee, pet the dogs, marvel at the kids. It’s so nice. No answers, just nice company.
Anyhoo.
I wanted to start the new year by thanking you, once again, for being here with me. Writing, for me, is like breathing. I can’t not do it without dying in some way. I’ve tried. That anyone out there cares at all has always been a little bit of a mystery to me and also makes me giggle. Thank you.
I just want to be clear that though I deeply, hugely appreciate those of you who pay for a subscription, this space, this writing will always be free of charge. I know that’s detrimental to my student loan account balance, but I have always felt that whatever gifts I have I got through no action on my part, beyond doing the work to improve upon them, and so they should be placed in the world for others’ benefit. I leave it there and trust that God is somewhere in the mix. So far it’s worked fine.
So please understand that you don’t have to pay anything to be here with me, but I am grateful from the top of my head to my foot bottoms and out to full wingspan when you can.
Beyond that I am watching, like you, as the world seems to get weirder every day, always, though, with a chance of afternoon sunshine. Hamlin being revived on the playing field, his charity for kids up to 8 million in donations a few days later. The weather, everywhere. Cancer and sickness coming at all of us from all sides. Why does it seem that tragedy is the thing that jumpstarts our hearts? The silver lining that comes in the form of loving care and prayers. I wish we would live this way all the time, but we don’t so I guess we need terrible things to happen so the best in us rises.
My youngest has started her last semester of high school. She turns 18 next week. I am not one of those parents who panic at the thought of an empty living space, I have loved watching my kids go out and figure out who they are in the world, assemble their tribe, get jobs, take care of other people. But somehow, I don’t know … this one … when they told me I was having a girl I was so worried. It’s so hard to be a girl in this world. She turned out to be massively self-assured, a warrior child, unafraid of much of anything. I’m just going to miss her, is all. I’m just really going to miss her when she goes.
Thank you my friends and please take good care of each other out there.
xomo
Afternoon Sunshine
Melissa,
It is the end of an era. You will never stop being a mother, but adulting is precisely what you have taught your chicks to do.
Flying off in their own direction will be exciting to observe & surprises are bound to make you blink.
Keep on sharing your light with the rest of the world. We need the illumination.
Love you,
Martha
I am writing also. Today I am at Saratoga Public Library to document the Ryall history of where they lived and what lands they owned starting in 1879. At least I have eight years under my belt now. We can to Saratoga Springs, NY in 1866, but land wasn't recorded till 1870. Oh what a life we live. Keep writing Melissa. It feeds our souls and at times, if the cosmos are lined up they push us to do our task. We are traveling in our imaginations.