Thanksgiving Day

Nothing is unique about my name – but its mine – and I am ubiquitously unique. I am my mother’s daughter, my father’s 1st born, Buela and Lovey to 5 pair of loving eyes and sugar lips, a wife who proudly tacks her husband’s name on the end of her own, who believes that all things are possible through Christ, who lives in her, who cries at the birth of a baby, at a wedding, over a song, or the death of a soldier.

I am thankful not only for my husband who eats my burnt pies, but for the world in which I live – the world of 2nd chances. There is power in 2nd chances. They have a voice by which your ‘callings’ rise forth like Lazarus from the dead.

A statistic on the chart of unemployed Americans, I choose not to loose hope. While America still lives and breathes, I will teach my children, solve the mysteries of life with my grandchildren, hold hands with my man on the porch swing, swim off the shores of Medina Lake, cut a rug in Texas dancehalls, buy Crisco Shortening and turn to the heart of my home to bake pies and write about all of it.

Inspired? A little. As I step and fetch around my kitchen, my rolling pin and heart are ablaze with a message. We are all given a 2nd chance but we don’t always recognize it or reach for it. When it comes, you must rally your spirit, awaken your soul where your dreams pitch, plunge, and wait for you to live them out.

If Texas women kill their own snakes, they ought to be able to open a pie factory in their own home, producing 50 pies in a few days time, from a one-butt kitchen.

So reach America! The folks on the Mayflower did. They heard the call, the still-small-voice of God that whispers perpetually to His children with the message of His love – they took that 2nd chance to live a free life in a new land and dauntlessly set sail across the vast Atlantic for Plymouth, Massachusetts.

The Back Roads

Heading down a super slab highway would be going nowhere much too fast. I don’t want to do that today. The roads I choose need to be what folks around here call back roads. Meandrous swaths of roadway carrying travelers like arteries to another place, moving slow and easy, afford time to get a view of the part of the world that gets missed otherwise, letting nature lend aid to contemplation.

Back roads are connected by telephone poles or fence posts, not by the stripes down the middle. The ones that are bumpy and hilly, twisty-tourney, paved with a sheep’s coat or spattered with gravel, wildflowers, fountain-like clumps of grass, spiked cactus and rocks. Some are straight and flat for eternity. These can shimmer in the smelting heat of the Texas sun like false promises of water in a desert and require using caution before moving forward. Texas has them all.

Rolling through her towns, the roads are dotted with her multitudes making a statement of ownership on the chunk they call home – as if to fulfill a need to be connected like a babe to her mother’s bosom.

On the back roads, there are gates strategically hung between miles of fence posts. A sojourner like me is easily entertained by these multiple displays along the way. Some gates adorn an entrance to a fella’s property like a shroud, embellished with all manner of fanciful detail, as if protecting a sacred place and telling all who pass by about the kind of Texan he is. Others are mere openings in a fence. I see them as closures to a passage so I remain watchful for the most appealing gate as I poke along, searching for the one with no exit. I imagine going through it when I die to explore the other side, like a child looks for treasures. But there is no time for exploring now on this part of the journey. So I keep driving.

Drive on not caring. Caring was run over by a freight train quite a few miles back on the super slab. On the back roads, I don’t have to be concerned with mile markers because they don’t have any. Besides, if I paid attention to them, hurt might rear its head and there is no room in my suitcase for pain. It is already plump full with burdens that found me at mile markers I have spent valuable years trying to forget. So I keep driving.

Maybe I should consider walking instead so that I could become more intimate with the road and the places it takes me. So I would notice the gnarly cracks on the surface that look like the spidery veins in my legs, each one bursting open from pressure sources on the surface. Bearing down with the burden of the traveler, they give way. The fractures are unsightly, but they hint that many secrets lay below. One must travel slow and deliberate, paying attention, in order to discover each nook and cranny with its unique message. So it is in life. Moving too fast is the same as not moving at all. Either way, something learned by experience would be missed, like not hearing a sacred reading during a church service the spirit could not be quickened.

So I drive on, and find that using the car would be a better idea than walking in case the urge to go home over takes me suddenly. Then I could get there much faster. And I prefer the shelter of the car which is seemingly a spec more secure from things I might find harmful or scary, like the Texas summer heat and humidity, a deluge of rain, the dark, or barking memories.

Passing a community center I see a sign posted in front telling of a meeting there that gives coping skills to those with hearing loss. I wonder if the same skills apply to those who don’t listen.

Maybe driving a back road could be considered a coping skill.

Celebrating Us

The shadow grows long
And I know it is time for
The meeting of earth and sky once more

Where song finds music, the poet words,
And the artist a canvas

For me it is a place I go
To meet my lover
We unite in this vision above us under the same sky
Whether together or miles span between us

We claim the right of passage
To the heart of hearts,
Called by its true name, which is love

Hearing that call,
Feelings and emotions echo from the pen
Like a spiritual tradition that exclaims truth to the deep heart

In the marrow is felt the pull of the soul
To this other human being until two become one
Body and mind spill over with intense aliveness

Whispers of great empty places hush
As trust and courage embrace
Love itself is the soul’s air

And I want to breathe this love for eternity