going and going and...

It all just keeps going, and going, and... well, you get the point.
I used to measure the year strictly according to the calendar. As the end of the year approached, and seemed to go faster because of all the holidays and festivities associated with them, I could not help looking back over what the year had held for me. I don't wait for the calendar's cue anymore.
These last couple of years the "end" invaded my thoughts much earlier than the calendar's indication, it now begins with school bus traffic signalling the end of Summer, and the first hints of the arrival of Fall. This has prompted a need to go visit the Fall, since here in Florida it comes and goes mostly unnoticed. It was important to me that I witness this briefly offered display with my own eyes, with my own soul. I knew I should not allow myself to miss it. The opportunity would not present again for considerably more than 300 days.
Utilizing my usual method of planning, I made the decision the day before I left to head to Asheville for a tour of the Biltmore Estate. It seemed like a great dual purpose plan. I would finally, after years of telling myself I should, see this grand architectural phenom, at the same time that Autumn would be dressed in her most spectacular Fall frock. And with that plan, I was off.
Driving alone, aiming my car north at seventy miles an hour for more than eleven hours, provides ample time for thought, contemplation, and reflection. The complete change of scenery is inspiring.
I thought about the people in the vehicles I shared the highway with. Where were they going? Did they, like me, divert from the routine of daily schedules because they too saw the importance of time out, time to look, time to be? Did they, like me, consider that we were headed down this highway as fast as the law would allow, in a hurry to a reach a single destination, and in so doing think it better to slow down because of the little treasures we were surely missing along the way? Isn't it just like life? Always busy, always over scheduled, always running late for the next something. Speeding along in a hurry to get there, without much consideration that when we do get there, it's almost over.
When I arrived in Asheville it was a beautiful, crisp, blue sky Smokey Mountain day. The temperature was a sunshiny sixty two degrees. I looked, I walked, I hiked, I wearied my camera, and my feet, and found a place to call home for the night so I could have some sort of Autumn enjoying repeat the next day.
That next day was invested driving along the Parkway. Together with the sun, clear sky and cool breeze, I was treated to Fall's finest pageantry. I absorbed it all into the deepest depths of my soul. It was my soul food. I could feel my soul swelling with fatness, and I liked it! But the sun kept getting lower in the sky and I was reminded of the long drive still ahead of me. It was time already, to go.
I stopped for the night, since I had left late in the day and didn't really want to drive after dark, you know, deer and all. I thought about just bucking up and driving the eleven hours all the way home, it would save the expense of another night in a hotel and get me into my own bed. I decided against it. My Mom told me I shouldn't drive after dark in case of car trouble, I wanted to be able to tell her I obeyed. At more than half a century old, I still wish for her to be happy with me. I also knew that as much as I love home, once I pulled off of the expressway, the much too quick trip would officially be over. Well, there was unpacking yet, but that part of the trip is better left out.
I was not ready for it to be over.
But again, isn't it just like life,
with all that is passed by as we go as fast as we can along life's highway,
and after all that hurrying to get...where?
All of life's plans and dreams and schemes and anticipations,
come,
and then go,
and then its over.
It just keeps going, and going, and... well, the point is,
When God shows you beautiful,
and He constantly does,
look,
and thank Him.

P.J.

Pure

At fifty something, it is not easy to have an untainted view. There are of course, some very positive results that come with having lived enough life to accumulate the knowledge and wisdom that comes only from experience.
Much has been learned, and from that, certain emotionally expensive things will not be repeated. Certain other things will be repeated as often as possible, like chocolate and trips to Disney!
It has been a beautiful pleasure in the last several weeks to have some nice long visits with my grand kids. Without any effort on their part and with no intention of doing so, they teach.
Their communication is simple, basic, their best attempt based on their very limited experience with life, to relay what their heart feels to what my mind comprehends. Like a sort of missing puzzle piece language of verbal prattles and squeals, along with facial expressions.
When my own kids were just babes and tots they taught me to be fluent in what I liked to call "gobblygook". That language disappeared as the more common universal language took over, but has recently reappeared as the second batch of wee ones to the family are fast becoming linguists.
The youngest of the three, not even yet a half a year old, has a smile that not only lights her whole face from ear to ear and hair to chin, but her whole little self wriggles in delight. Unhindered, untainted, pure, heartfelt to her fingers and toes delight! In fact the glee she experiences is too much to be contained in her little self and actually shoots through her fingers and toes to everyone who witnesses the phenom, and the proof of my words is clearly written on the faces of those witnesses whose own ear to ear upturned lip expressions fall under the spell of her influence.
The same sort of delight is evidenced as it continues to have similar affects with the two year old who throws his head back with a belly laugh at what has just tickled him, the simple hilarity of a greeting card with a monkey sound! Over and over he opens that card to repeat the process that was at first so immensely enjoyable, and it proves to be just the same each time. Again, all the onlookers are sucked in to the vortex of pure glee and delight.
At five years old things are beginning to change, life is pressing it's way into the once innocent thoughts that are slowly, as experiences are gained, seeping in and stealing away what can only be held onto for just a short time. Still, when her eyes spot me in the room she runs and hops up into my arms speaking my name as if it were honey dripping from her genuinely delighted to see me lips! And that honey makes Grandma, the only name she knows me by, sound like a choir of angels to my ears!
It is in those moments, those brief, too seldom moments, that experience knowledge and wisdom don't count for anything and hold no value compared to the delightful innocence of the children.
At the age of fifty something, I get to know the true secrets of living life full. Because of them, I witness and experience ever so briefly, the wholly satisfying essence of purity.