A Reflection on the Book of Job after hearing a reading on Sunday, February 8, 2009

Dear, dear Job,

Much has changed since you first proclaimed your sadness. I will not challenge your faith as your old friends did, but will hold your hand in the darkness while life goes on around us (children laugh, plants grow, and lovers find each other.)

Together we will learn that God does not give us reasons, God gives us presence. The alpha and omega of all presence, Jesus, the son of God, became flesh a thousand years after we walked the earth, and his death and resurrection completed the meaning of your suffering. Twice a thousand years later, God’s Spirit walks through me and with me (and you also) and in and through the community of all, living and dead.

Today, while we sit in your mourning, dear, dear Job, the community cares for us. The lovers love us, the harvest feeds us and the children learn compassion.

You may not believe me now, but what I say is true. I have lived your story.

Shalom,

Naomi

We're putting down roots in Florida...

By reading of other pioneers…
Maria, the first in the Florida Trilogy by Eugenia Price this novel brings us into the life of Mary Fenwick (aka Maria) as she evolves from soldier’s wife to respected citizen in Spanish St. Augustine in the late 18th Century.
Charlotte’s Story, the journal of Charlotte Arpin Niedhauk who lived on a small but not isolated Key 35 miles southeast of Miami during the Great Depression.
Yesteryear I Lived in Paradise, the memoir of Myrtle Scharrer Betz . Published in 1985 on Ms. Betz’s 90th birthday, this memoir contains the history of the West Coast of Florida as experienced by one born on an isolated island (Caladesi Island, two miles west of Dunedin, Florida) when the whole of Southwest Florida was still pioneer country.

I found the cactus in Arizona, the sentiments in prayers said with/for friends over the past year.

A Meditation

A Walk on the Beach in Winter

Grey blue coral
Vast rich solitary

Once I found these
Colors in the desert

Between death
And resurrection

The sea's eternal rhythm
Is silent in this moment

In this empty place
Nothing and everything

If it was all I knew
I would know peace.

Beth February 2008

The Black Band

Ode to the Elastic on My Table

She stands on the hills of Killarney,
Sends one wave of good-bye to her life
Then turns: the land calls for a tilling
(As the sailor called for his wife.)

She weeps with the truth of the parting -
Once grown they never return.
And her cry, the hope of all mothers,
Is heard in the heart of her bairn.

“Don’t work to remember your childhood
For glimmers will come as the rain
Nourishes all that you’re planting
In the place where you’ve staked a claim.

A claim that began in home’s kitchen.
And as you packed for one of your own,

You freed your hair for laughter
With the toss of a small black band
That will always serve to remind me
Of the good that comes from the land.”



Beth November 2007

REVIEW: Stephen King "On Writing"

ROOTS: REVIEW: Stephen King on Writing.

Horror is too horrible in real life so I’ve avoided reading Stephen King novels except for “The Girl who Loved Tom Gordon.” (It’s summer 199?, Tom Gordon is a closer for the Boston Red Sox, our protagonist is a girl who knows Baseball, lost in the woods for weeks in with only a transistor radio.) He DOES write a good story, so when a friend who is published recommended his “On Writing” I picked it up. His conversational style gave me a sense that I was being mentored by an older brother:

1. “What you know makes you unique. Be Brave.”
2. Take time in the world to listen and observe.
3. BUT write alone, everyday.
4. Write for an ideal reader, but don’t let him/her see the first draft.
5. Don’t let ANYONE see your first draft.
6. Put your first draft away - “Look back when you’re immersed in something else - like your life.”
7. Second Draft: Delete anything that doesn’t contribute to your meaning… and delete your favorite description of something irrelevant.
8. Share your work with people you trust. Trust their responses.

ROUTES:
Stephen King doesn’t write for the money. “Not now, never did.” He writes because “In the end, (writing is) about enriching the lives of those who will read your work, and enriching your own life as well.” That’s why I write too – and I know that others lives will be enriched if I publish. However, Mr. King’s last bit of advice has left me confused. He said, “ “Read a lot, write a lot, read what you write.” What I read is tomes of every genre. I write short poems and essays. Do I read a novel or head to the bookstore to stock-up on poetry and magazines? Maybe I’ll just head to my “writing place” and do a few hundred words on my dilemma.

Why We May Be Skipping Thanksgiving

The appearance of Christmas decorations everywhere on Nov. 1 caused me to think that the nation may be skipping Thanksgiving this year. Here are my top 10 reasons why this might be true:

10. No one has manufactured a lawn pilgrim so people put up their inflated snow globes to hide the dead grass created by their air pumpkins.

9. Drought in much of the country prevented leaves from turning color, thus creating a shortage of fall wreaths.

8. With the plethora of jack-o'-lantern carving contests throughout October, there are too few pumpkins left for Thanksgiving pies.

7. Most deer and turkeys are protected in wildlife sanctuaries, so there is little meat to roast.

6. Now that adults also celebrate Halloween, there are no extra calories left in people's November food allowance.

5. There is no music to download for Thanksgiving. Snow figures prominently in its one song, "Over the river and through the woods . . . ," but thanks to global warming, the song is no longer applicable.

4. Halloween's roots are pre-Christian, and Christmas began some 2,000 years ago. Thanksgiving is just too new a holiday to generate much excitement.

3. The early start of the 2008 presidential race has distorted time. Christmas must begin now if it is to be celebrated in full before the New Hampshire primary.

2. Giving thanks has gone the way of giving one's bus seat to the elderly and infirm. (Most people don't ride buses, you say? Exactly.)

1. President Bush warned on Oct. 17 that "the possibility that Iran has nuclear weapons puts us on the brink of World War III. I believe people started to pray like crazy for "Peace on Earth" then and retailers have just picked up on the vibes.