Dear Reader:

While searching through some Madeleine L’ Engle books this week I quickly browsed through one of her lesser familiar books-A Circle of Quiet. As I opened it…I saw a book marker and highlighted passage I fell in love with – in my first reading.

I remembered I had taken it with me one summer when the kids and I went to the mountains. I think I was sitting on Blowing Rock and looking out at the wide expanse of 360 degrees of beauty surrounding me when I remembered the passage still marked in the book.

It read: ” To be half a century plus is wonderfully exciting, because I haven’t lost any of my past, and I am free to stand on the rock of all that the past has taught me as I look to the future. ”

Exactly what I felt as I sat on that rock-serenity like I had never felt before. It was as if the past and present were opening up just long enough to give me a peek of the blessings ahead.

Today I find a tiny piece of that experience as I work in my side garden in the late afternoons as the sun filters throughout the garden hidden on three sides by trees and varying sizes of shrubbery hiding the secret garden from view!

Last Thanksgiving I got to experience the same ” gentle/ quiet effect” heading up the mountains.

These days I no longer want to chance blowing off Blowing Rock or sliding down Sliding Rock or especially jumping off Jumping Rock… but I can still remember how far I have come, how much the past has taught me… as I turn towards the future!

So until tomorrow… Father remind us that Your Circles of Quietness and Gratitude surround us… if we just stop long enough to count our blessings.

” Today is my favorite day” Winnie the Pooh