greaterthansparrows

Well, I thought I would put up a link to something I found last week for the lesson I taught , but since we have proved that I am not competent yet, I will throw out one of the pieces I wrote for the News Tribune last year. The rule was a personal piece of 600-700 words.  I figured I had a unique experience to describe, and it would be a cinch.  The computer program keeps a tally, and I found that my word total was 720 words, over the allotment.  Oops. Tweak, recast, can't skip that point, still over!  With trepidation, trial and error, I managed to create a finished column which came in at ...699 words.  Squeaked through!  So, hop on in with me today, and we'll take off.  (You'll understand in a moment.) Hop in the car and see the country! We can go anywhere there’s a road! That could have been the family motto:  have station wagon, will travel.  By the time I left home for college, I had been in every state except Alaska, Hawaii, Verm...

I don't know how to make the link work as such, I promise that it is worth the hassle to copy and paste and go read.  Words are much easier for me to play with than the tech stuff. Marian  New thought:  (I am slow to get smart) copy and paste for myself the portion about Mom.  Here it is, this is Alison's voice: I had a friend, growing up, who felt she was not supposed to come home with dirt on her clothes. A young lady was not to do that. Which is how I learned early on to treasure my mother’s take on us after a good day down at the creek or in the woods in the back yard: she would give us an appraising look with a grin on her face and pronounce, “You must have had *fun* getting THAT dirty!” She had this big bicycle horn she would raise high and honk to call us home from all over the neighborhood; all the other parents and children knew that sound and if we didn’t hear it would go, Hey, you, your mom’s calling you. We would hold back and go one at a ti...

My youngest brother was born when I was ten.  As he grew up, sitting, crawling, walking, talking, playing, laughing, he went through all the stages of discovery and interaction that we all do.  As I was growing older at an entirely different stage, entering adolescence, I was becoming more aware of stages, issues, futures, uncertainties.  I was starting to measure myself or my life against my observations of others.  My mother would say of each stage, oh this is the most fun age!  As I was around twelve I finally asked her, Mom, you always say that.  Which age is really the most fun?  Is there a favorite? She stopped and looked at me as if she had never thought about it before.  Finally she said, well, I guess the most fun stage is the one you're enjoying right now.   You should just enjoy whatever it is you have now and enjoy the next stage when it comes. Imagine the gift of a mother who had true delight in watching her children learn...

These are the things we've found with having a baby in the house: Anything with cords is an irresistable temptation. Anything that makes noise is fun--if it makes noise and brings Grandpa running, even better. You can put a dropcloth under the high chair, but he will still manage to throw food into the rug. It doesn't matter which arm you go for first with the wet rag, he will rub the other into his hair faster than you can  get to it.  (Especially if it's tomato sauce.) A graham cracker will distract from almost everything. Having Grandpa say, "Go play with your blocks (preschool legos)" will get you pretty much nowhere, but if Grammy goes and rattles the bucket he will leave whatever he is doing and go. Peek-a-boo and patta-cake still entertain. That spot where you put things up last week so he couldn't get at them?  He can reach it now. If it was semi-organized before, it's chaos now. If it's on paper and it's important, he's grab...

Way back in Seattle in 1976-78 someone sent us the Seventh-Day Adventist magazine.  We did not, to our knowledge, know any Seventh-Day Adventists, but we received this monthly magazine for maybe three years, and often found the articles thoughtful and worthwhile. Once, there was a quotation which struck me so forcibly that it remains a touchstone.  Ellen White, who had a profound vision a few months after the death of Joseph Smith, and who became the gathering point of this church, understood how personal our personal God is.  She said, "The relationship between God and each soul should be as distinct and as full as if that soul were the only one to share his watchcare, the only one for whom he gave His beloved Son." Let that sink in.(And I love the word 'watchcare.')  If all of our Father's children could be saved, could make it back to him on their own, except one, he would have sent his Son, and our Savior would still have offered up all that he did--for th...

Sometimes all it takes is a little nudge. Our local newspaper, the Tacoma News Tribune, started in 2000 to solicit a group of reader columnists, whose pieces would run on Mondays by rotation.  Two years ago, after a lot of mental back-and-forth, I decided that I wanted to try to be one of them, and submitted two sample columns.  I was not selected, but the editor in charge of the selection committee, with whom I was personally acquainted, was very encouraging.  With more advance time (read: I decided sooner) last year, I tried again.  I wrote one piece to be light-hearted and one to be thoughtful.  Again, I was not selected; the numbers of submissions grew larger every year.  The same editor let me know that I had made all but the last cut, and I appreciated knowing that. This year, I saw the annual notice, "Wanted: reader columnists" and felt no pull to compete.  Part of that may have been that we had become the emergency temporary guardians of ou...