Dear Reader:

When things get tough and life appears to go wrong, don’t we have a tendency to think something is the matter with us… we must be doing something wrong? Another example of why we shouldn’t jump so fast to conclusions…

In the title picture my first hibiscus bloomed from a plant by my front driveway. The poor hibiscus has been attacked by all kinds of natural enemies who have eaten holes in the leaves and discolored the others. Two trips to Ace Hardware with three different kinds of plant pesticides have proven ineffective.

YET… in spite of this on-going hardship the plant is covered in potential buds… the first popping out yesterday-as big as a moonflower and just plain arrestingly beautiful! It is doing something right in spite… of the hardships and challenges around it. It still believes in itself and bringing beauty to the world.

Think about it. If we don’t care about what is happening to our country, or feel sadness for those families caught in terrible life-altering unimaginable tragedies … and do nothing because it hadn’t affected us or anybody we know yet… if we just go about our daily lives ignoring everything around us… hey… life can be easy.

We can just turn over these ” other people problems” to others… and believe that a bunch of ” someone’s” will eventually figure it all out. Yet if history hasn’t taught us anything else… it is that clinging to ” That’s not my problem” only buys time before life, as we know it, unravels.

Should we look to superheroes… maybe but only if they look like … perhaps this…our understaffed poll worker volunteers!

We the people have got to reach down and pull up the fundamental virtues we were taught as children… putting others first so ” We” stand ” united” in a country built on opportunities for all. Lady Liberty doesn’t say she welcomes the rich and powerful but the poor and downtrodden too.

Will this be hard? Oh yeah… but we will know in our hearts we are right and one day our precious children will know it too!

So until tomorrow… In a recent Ted Talk… I loved this thought. Don’t we owe all of our children a world in which their contemplative lives are valued and supported? Don’t we owe it to ourselves?

Today is my favorite day. Winnie the Pooh

Before I set the date and time for this post to publish ( June 8 – 6 am… hopefully) I think we must end with the wit of our homespun sage… Jo Dufford.

After reading about my early morning ” emergency ” meeting with my friend Anne-Jo said she would have gladly come over, but unlike Anne… she would have had to search for a bakery open at 6;30 and then when she arrived she would not have been able to solve the technology problem.

Jo concludes ” I am like the lady whose husband heard her shouting, ” James Lewis! Get away from that wheelbarrow! You know you know nothing about machinery! ”