Dear Reader:

Rutledge received a fish as a gift from one of his little friends at the birthday party. Even at Rutledge’s age…there are lots of life lessons that can be learned from this little fella or gal.

Mark Nepo, philosopher and poet, talks about the wide diversity of teachers available to all of us throughout our entire life experiences. In fact, some of the most important lessons can be learned from some of the smallest creatures in God’s Creation.

(I always openly admitted that I learned more from my students each year than they ever learned from me. The student curriculum consisted of questions, answers, and observations that I never would have considered…and each year brought new diversity of different perspectives on life lessons for this ole’ history teacher.)

Nepo uses the life style of a fish to teach us how to live our own lives. Here is a short excerpt from this unique observation:

“We all learn (in school early) that fish are air-breathing creatures yet they live in water. We learn that they have this amazing thing called a gill. It’s kind of obvious, we learn it so early… but it is quite miraculous! 

A fish moves through the water and the water moves through the gill. The gill extracts the oxygen (because we know water is hydrogen and oxygen) and discharges the hydrogen. It lets it stream behind it.  They have to have the water go through their gills in order to breathe…to live.

The fish are  amazing teachers. They are examples of the endless search that has no destination. They are not moving through the water because they are going somewhere. They don’t have any agendas or appointments—not that we know of! But they need to keep engaging in their element or they will die.

So the metaphor, the teaching metaphor here, is that for us, the heart is our gill. We, too, need to move through the water of experience every day,  inwardly,  or we will die. We need to somehow, through first-hand experience, learn how to extract what is essential and discharge the rest. Because when we don’t discharge the rest, when we cling and hold onto what is not essential, it starts to clog up the gill of the heart and we can no longer breathe.

Nepo thinks that the chief way to extract what is essential is having the quiet courage to meet whatever comes our way with an open heart…to make our dreams come alive each and every day and not cling to the dreams of what we’d like life to be and act like…thus living in the past or future. Life is happening around us every single moment. We can only breathe stronger and better when we keep moving to the light, to the goals God has provided for us. 

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My personal metaphor on life consists of changing lanes. If I go to pass another car in the left-hand lane and then return to the right lane…I find myself, nursing a crick in the neck, from checking the rear-view mirrors over and over again before making the decision to pull out or pull back in. I then do these strange contortions trying to turn and look around me. If I had more trust in my mirrors life would go a lot smoother and easier. But change (especially habits) is always hard for us, isn’t it, as well as trust?

When I came across this funny little anecdote on change…I just had to share it. Enjoy!

“What You See Ain’t What You Get”

A middle aged woman had a heart attack and was taken to the hospital. While on the operating table she had a near death experience. Seeing God she asked “Is my time up?” God answered, “No, you have another 40 years, 2 months and 8 days to live.”

Upon recovery, the woman decided to stay in the hospital and have a facelift, liposuction, and a tummy tuck. She even had someone come in and change her hair color. Since she had so much more time to live, she thought she might as well make the most of it.

After her last operation, she was released from the hospital. While crossing the street on her way home, she was hit by a car and died immediately.
Arriving in front of God, she demanded, “I thought you said I had another 40 years, why didn’t you pull me from out of the path of the car?”
God replied, “I didn’t recognize you.”

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So until tomorrow…Let’s be open to change because God made the world that way…a constantly changing Creation…but we mustn’t change inside (or out) so much that God no longer recognizes us.

“Today is my favorite day”  Winnie the Pooh

All the new blooms were so happy yesterday when the first substantial amount of rainfall (on this side of town) came to fruition. Hallelujah! I am grinning from ear to ear….happiness is rain on thirsty flowers and a break from watering! (Even Mr. Turtle peeked out from under the leaves to enjoy the rain too!)

Thank you Gin-g for a great catch-up lunch at Toast. Perfect way to spend a rainy day!☔️😁