Dear Reader:

I have been looking for some type of new decor for the centerpiece on the mantle for few months…It has been several years since I changed anything… the same metallic circle of butterflies has hung on the stucco wall… I was just ready for something different. A new year…a new design.

Then it happened…while at Tuesday Morning yesterday I started looking through the home decor and found it. At first all I could find was mirrors of all shapes and sizes. I did not want a mirror as the centerpiece.

I was about to give up when I noticed a board protruding behind one mirror….when I slightly pushed the mirror to one side…there it was…a wooden plaque with a big, dark, brown key on it. It is a wonder I didn’t break a mirror digging through the pile trying to get the “key” out.

I stared at it all last night…just perfect for the mantle…in size and symbolism.

Is it just me or do some of you become entranced with keys…especially the old “Victorian” style like on the plaque? I immediately think of words and scenes like… mystery, old creaky mansions, or a mysterious key slowly turning  a knob. Old keys send my imagination soaring…

As I stared at the mantle (with the key) Friday night I immediately pictured one scene from the most marvelous book on imagination and visualization…The Mysteries of Harris Burdick. Rene Harris got me hooked on this book years ago… and I later used it for a creativity course I taught at CSU.

Without spoiling the strangest introduction to any book you will ever read…this book consists of marvelous artwork by Chris Van Allsburg in the form of 14 black and white drawings… with only the scene and caption to spark your imagination into creating a story that will never match another.

One particular picture shows a dark and shadowy basement with steps leading down to the ground where suddenly a viewer sees a tiny (miniature) little door cast in light (falling through the one window by the steps.)

The title of this picture is “Uninvited Guests” and the clues come in the form of two short sentences and nothing else:

His heart was pounding. He was sure he had heard the doorknob turn. 

I have used this book with elementary, middle, high school, and college students. And these black and white drawings unleash even the most reluctant learner’s imagination.

For one of my college students…he experienced a God’s Wink with my assignment. Each student was given one mysterious picture and told to create a story around it.

The young man said that when I gave him his picture…he could hardly believe his eyes…it was the same picture his fifth grade teacher assigned him many years before.

Now…as part of his presentation…he went on to tell the class that this was the year his parents divorced and he had quit playing sports, doing homework, and skipping school in his rebellion over the traumatic, uncontrollable upheaval in his life.

Then one day his teacher gave him this picture and (despite his defiant behavior) he was drawn into his idea of the story lurking behind the slowly opening door.

He ended his presentation saying ” In the picture it is too dark to see if a key is turning in the doorknob or not…but I don’t think it is a coincidence that I got this same picture ten years later. It is a reminder of how God has given me the “keys” to enter each next stage of my life… by the directions behind each “door.”

“This picture was the “key” for capturing and returning the imagination and innocence of childhood back to me. I became interested in learning again….and well,  here I am.”

…………………………

Don’t we use the word “key” for many different meanings? There is the “key” to unlock any and every thing from doors to imagination. Then there are the “key” facts in life that we are taught we must learn along our individual life journey.

“Key” can be a noun, verb, adverb, or adjective. A preposition can be added and the list of “key” words and expressions continue on and on. ( “keyed up,” “keyed in,”  or keyed on“)

Every year someone finds a way to insert “key” into something new….like a computer “keyboard“….or “key card.”  (Sadly the way things are going…we will never need a key again to start or lock our car…in fact soon cars will drive themselves…they won’t really need us either.)

In music we must stay on “key” or use the “keys” on a piano to help us do so…in painting one must paint in a given “key” to achieve a certain color.

The word “key” opens up all kinds of possibilities… no matter how it is used.

In the Grimm Brother’s last fairy tale, “The Golden Key,” a poor boy, while collecting wood for his father, builds a fire to keep himself warm, and while doing so comes across a golden key in the snow. He soon finds the locked chest nearby.

The key hole is so small, that at first he can’t find it…but at last the key starts to turn and slowly the lid begins to to open. The boy’s imagination is going wild…could there be treasures in the box beyond his wildest imagination…will this day be a “turning point” in his life?

The three paragraph story ends right there…purposefully the Grimm Brothers never reveal the contents. On one Grimm brothers’ site…this observation is added.

The box represents the treasure that many of us seek. It could be a lottery ticket, a new house, or just being liked. To achieve our goal, we have to anticipate the tasks and then go through them one by one. In the story this is the sequence followed:→ find a key→ find a chest→ seek a keyhole→ open the chest. All the time we are weighed down by other conditions surrounding us, such as the cold and fatigue in this story.

The Grimm Brothers wanted to leave the lid slightly ajar (in the story) because we should always stay open to the possibilities of change in our lives…no matter which form it takes…from imagination to more fairy tales to our journey back home.

When I stare at my big brown key over the mantle…I see God’s “key” guiding me back home…showing me the direction I should go…while providing excitement and anticipation for what the “key” will open for me next …for what is around the next bend in the road.

Madeleine L’Engle summed up our separate journeys of searching for  the “key” directions back home in this beautiful quote:

“We are all strangers in a strange land, longing for home, but not quite knowing what or where home is. We glimpse it sometimes in our dreams, or as we turn a corner, and suddenly there is a strange, sweet familiarity that vanishes almost as soon as it comes.”

So until tomorrow…Help us Father find the “key” that leads us to You…the greatest “Treasure” of all. Remind us that it is only by “turning” to you that we can “turn” the key of life.

“Today is my favorite day”  Winnie the Pooh

* Saturday I went with Mollie and Rutledge to the Southern Baby Show at the Omar Shrine Temple. Good gracious…how things have changed since I had a baby or even when Eva Cate was a baby….unbelievable.

We went to Zoes to eat at Town Center and it was delicious…it felt so good in the sun… we decided to eat outside… Even though Rutledge looks a little resigned here to spending Saturday with the girls at a baby show….He actually ended up having lots of fun!

One booth had a life sized baby which siblings could try holding…Rutledge loved the baby and was very sad when we had to leave the baby behind….(wasn’t the baby supposed to come home?)

To cheer Rutledge up….we let him play with a pillow mommy bought to help feed the new baby.

Some of you have been saying that Mollie hardly looks pregnant and/or you would like to see a picture of her to see how she is carrying the baby…(would help with your guess)…so here is Miss Mollie in profile. From the front she really doesn’t look pregnant…baby is all out front…but from the side you can tell Mollie is going to be a mother again soon…and we couldn’t be happier!

* And speaking of pregnancies….GOOD NEWS…our “Darling from Dubai” Ambika is five months pregnant! I told her in a few months we would have a contest for her and her husband, too..so excited!

Love ya Rudy!