Dear Reader:

I love having my two mosiac window sills hanging in my (once) lonely hallway. They can no longer pick up the sun’s lights but just the sheer beauty of their designs and my memory of placing each piece of glass carefully beside the next, makes me proud of one of the rare crafty things I have done. Mandy gave me one already done by her…and then I did the other.

No matter how hard I tried to get all the shapes to fit…my sill definitely had more spaces between the glass pieces. At first this bothered me…but now I see the beauty in the spaces and realize that it only adds to the overall beauty of the design.

In Amit Awakin one writer took this thought and expanded it to defend the human “broken-ness” in each of us. Here are a couple of excerpts from her article. (“Beauty of the Mosiac” Rosalina Chai)

Mosaic is at once intricate yet majestic. And it is precisely its broken-ness that lends mosaic its perception of fragile beauty – the space between the tiles or glass is as much an intricate part of its language of beauty as the mosaic piece itself. And isn’t this true too of our humanity?

Whilst there are numerous titles out there extolling the necessity, power and beauty of our essential brokenness, more often that not, our daily interactions with our fellow human beings appears to be motivated by unconscious “should-ism” that demands perfection of one another. What is it about brokenness that we find so offensive?

What would happen if we accepted and embraced the idea that being broken is an essential part of humanity’s be-ing? What would happen if we ceased to label brokenness as bad?  I can imagine  with certainty … more acceptance that leads to more peace.

Finally, it is the coming together of many mosaic pieces that provides the meaning of its language of beautiful expression. We were not meant to be alone in our brokenness. We were meant to come together, so that another form of beauty may be birthed through the collective.

Chai finishes her message with the following legend:

At the beginning and end of time, Truth was a beautiful glowing orb. One day, the orb was shattered into shards that outnumbered the stars in the universe by one to infinity. These shards became souls. Thus it is that each soul represented one part of Truth. But Life intervened, and many souls believed that they were Truth, and so Hatred was bred. But some souls held onto the memory, and attempted to remind the souls who had forgotten.

I do not know the end of the story as it is yet to be written. But I do know that when all the souls are reunited, the space between the shards would be where the light shines through. And that Truth’s beauty would then take another form.

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While I was reading the legend for the first time one part of a sentence reminded me of what Jo Dufford sent yesterday in response to the “40 Notes for 40 Days” concept and Ruthie’s plea for one hundred pennies or one dollar sent by each American to help balance the budget.

I have the Circle program at church this month. I based my idea for the program on Debbie Macomber’s book, ONE PERFECT WORD. The word, ONE, kept popping up, and so I decided that was my perfect word for this year. As I read your message today, I thought, “ONE letter for each day of Lent, what a difference that could make for so many people, or if each one of nearly 3261/2 million people sent ONE dollar (ONE hundred pennies), we could begin to pay down the debt.”

Colby reminded me this morning to say, “Rabbit” (you have definitely touched her in so many ways), and she suggested that I use March 1st. as in the importance of ONE new day and how to make it count. Thanks again for all of your messages.

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Anne and I had “One” heck of a fun day yesterday! We went to Paige’s Thieves Market on Ben Sawyer Blvd to both look for headboards for guest bedrooms….we lucked out with that purchase but the day was so beautiful….that we just drove right over the bridge and ate at our favorite “haunt” Poe’s Tavern. We sat outside and just basked in the sun. Then we stopped by Southern Season and just went “nuts” over the variety of wonderful items of every genre inside.

When Anne dropped me off at home there was the most beautiful bouquet of flowers sitting on the white bench on the porch. What a way to start March!!! I love you Harriett Edwards…you couldn’t have made such a special day, even more special, than with beautiful fresh flowers!

March 1 in photos….While waiting on Anne I was sitting on my steps and noticed a “dappled” azalea bloom that had grown under an entirely different bush and was smiling at me so proudly like ‘Look I just took my first steps.’ This ONE lone bloom made me chuckle! All it took was one!

I bumped into one of the nicest florist clerks at Southern Season named Pam….all the flowers there were still in buckets of water and she gave me a great flower identification lesson….I could have stayed there all day and listened to her.