Dear Reader:

If I were to go in search for the meaning of life…I think I would start it in my neighbor Vickie’s back yard garden…it is a tropical paradise and even in this heat (hot) wave it stays refreshingly cool…a great place to meditate on the fullness of life.  (Vickie flew out yesterday to visit a friend for a week and I am taking care of Fuzz, the cat, until Christie, her granddaughter, gets in Sunday evening.)

Fuzz is an outdoor cat basically and quite independent…I just have to keep food and water out for her and she does the rest. So I will enjoy checking on the garden and just sitting in it in the cool of the evening to make sure Fuzz is fine.

When it comes to searching for the meaning of life…haven’t we all heard many varieties of the same theme through parables, allegories, moral stories,  fables and legends about a pilgrim of faith searching for the wise man, or shaman, or mystical monk in the Himalayas, the greatest sage in the world…to reveal the secret of the meaning of life to us?

I don’t know when it happens…though we have to have lived long enough to have experienced pretty much everything  life can throw at us…but it does happen. The epiphany hits us right between the eyes, crystal clear… there is no one ‘meaning of life’ … there is no ‘one size fits all’ answer.

The meaning of life is a life with meaning.

Since we are all created completely unique from any other individual..our meaning of life can be completely different, also, from any other. It starts when we take the focus off ourselves and designate it to others… the people we meet in our daily lives.

Before falling asleep…when we take a few moments to reflect on the day we just lived…don’t we soon realize that the days that seem more fulfilling for us are the days when we were able to stop the runaway grocery cart and retrieve it for someone, or bumping into an old friend who just needed a smile and a sympathetic hug. The amount of fulfillment we feel is in direct correlation to the more spontaneous opportunities we take advantage of when assisting someone have a better day.

It helps sometimes to look at life upside down…and realize just how dependent we are on God…It is the same feeling the astronauts experienced upon seeing (for the first time) the fragility of home earth in space.

Job: 26:7   “God stretches the northern sky over empty space and hangs the earth on nothing.”

C. K. Chesterton realized the same thing (when he wrote in his biography of  St. Francis of Assisi) …that St. Francis understood the importance of experiencing the world upside down.

“Seeing the world upside down means seeing its utter dependence on God, and with that sense of dependence comes a greater love for this world because of the adventure of its own existence.”

Have you ever wondered why little children love being held upside down while laughing at the world seen so differently….and how one of the first things they learn to do is to bend over and finally complete a somersault. Children love the sensation of living in a world turned upside down.

Since Eloise is the baby with two big brothers…she gets to see the world turned upside down a lot…with much trust in her two big bro’s.

*Eloise actually completed her first somersault last Wednesday but it surprised all of us so much we didn’t get a shot of it….but just her practicing for the big moment was cute enough.

So until tomorrow…Take time to try new perspectives on old situations and see the difference in daily outcomes and new meanings on life.

“Today is my favorite day”  Winnie the Pooh

Another of Vickie’s beautiful plants….

*I know two people who know the meaning of life-doing for others…Luke and Chelsey stopped by last evening…and brought me a homemade chicken salad sandwich with all the trimmings….It was absolutely delicious and enough for another sandwich today.

How I do adore that special young couple…a God Wink, for sure, when we connected!