Luckier Lucky Penny?

"See a penny, pick it up, and all the day you'll have good luck." I grew up with that little saying, and I still get a little zing of delight when I find a penny. I always stoop to pick it up, my mind repeating the superstitious poem, a smile lighting my face.

Today I found a penny on my afternoon walk. It was lying next to two used condoms. Since I was walking along a creek in a park, it was rather an odd location for all three items, but I guess love--or more likely lust--trumps all common sense. There's poison oak around there. Just sayin'...

Anyway, I wonder if the presence of the condoms increases the luck of the penny. After all, someone obviously got doubly lucky there...I picked up the penny of course. I guess I'll have to wait and see.

Lent Photo a Day: Evil

I remember my parents and grandparents complaining that they hated to listen to the news--the endless litany of crime and disaster made them feel that the world was getting worse every day. I always thought they were being ridiculous. Of course the world wasn't getting worse--we were just forced into awareness of the evil that had always been happening outside of our own small hometowns.

I'm starting to understand what they meant. Maybe it's just that I've reached the same age that they were when they were depressed by the news, but lately I've started to feel like the world is getting worse and worse. Election years are always filled with ugliness, but this time there's so much hatred and name-calling and attacks, not just between candidates, but directed at whole classes and groups of people. Hatred is the heart of evil, and I feel that while there may not be more hatred in people's hearts than in the past, it's become more acceptable to spew it openly, especially on social media. Haters gonna hate, as folks like to say, but they used to have to hide it better. Now haters feel they can spew it in our faces and we have no right to object.

This headline about the growth of hate groups in the United States didn't surprise me, but it saddened me. Evil is growing bolder, and that's not a positive trend. We need to fight it with the only weapon that works against evil: love.

Lent Photo a Day: Tell

I've been calling my mother more often since she fell and broke her hip and elbow. I try to touch base every day now. Often there's not much of interest to discuss--just the minutiae of our days. But the contact is what matters. It's a chance to tell her how much she's valued and loved, a message every one of us needs to hear and needs to give.

Lent Photo A Day #7: Law

Law provides a framework for humans to co-exist. Unchecked self-interest would lead to chaos and destruction. I wish humans were by nature generous and self-sacrificing, able to cooperate without any need for rules, but even though a rare few are by nature good and loving toward all, the rest of us need a reason to act decently. We need rules, structure, and a means of enforcement. We need someone to set boundaries, just like children need their parents to set boundaries.

So we have law. Civil law. Criminal law. International law. But there are laws beyond those of governmental bodies. Biblical law. The law of Moses. The Gospel. The ultimate boundaries established by the loving and firm Father of us all.

Photo A Day for Lent #6: Wise

Whenever I have questions, I turn to books or other research materials. That's how I'm wired. I learn from others' experiences. Why reinvent the wheel when someone else has, inevitably, faced the same issue that I am? Research is my friend. Of course, I am always careful with the my sources. You don't ask for financial advice from the bankrupt, or parenting advice from the childless. It takes a bit of wisdom--or at least commonsense--to find wisdom.

Wisdom is a work in progress, however. No subject is ever completely closed. Even spiritual wisdom isn't a fixed thing. No single person will ever truly understand the divine, but it's a goal worth pursuing.

Lent Photo-a-Day #5: Rich

What's the first thing that pops into your head when someone says the word "rich"? Probably money. Boatloads of money. Plus all the expensive things that money can buy, like luxury cars, lavish homes, and exotic travel. Donald Trump rich. Kardashian rich.

But that's not the type of wealth that brings happiness, as Jesus points out in Mark 10: 17-31. Loving money more than the important things in life isn't healthy.

My husband and I went out to dinner last night, and we were saying that while we don't have all the money we'd like to have (does anyone?), we have riches of another sort: two wonderful children who love each other and us as well. And that brings more joy to our lives than a fat bank account.

Lent Photo A Day: Child

I know the kind of image I want to post for "child"--just a shot of a pudgy little toddler hand or tiny baby feet. But given that my children are all grown and I don't know anyone with little children well enough...Of course I could always stalk little kids at the supermarket or the playground with my camera, but that isn't exactly wise in this day and age. I'd end up living at the county lockup, labelled a pedophile. So for my photo, I decided to go with symbolic rather than real.

I'd just run across these little hand-embroidered booties the other day while sorting through mementos. My grandmother was an artist with embroidery floss, and apparently made them for me when I was born. Nothing says "child" to me like tiny shoes or delicate booties--the thought of a human foot being so small it could fit in such an object seems to strike some primitive, maternal nerve in me.

I combined the booties with a sign of spring's arrival: a creamy narcissus bloom. It all resonates together in my mind: Spring. Blossom. Rebirth. Child. Hope. Lent.

Lent Photo A Day: Pain

Homeless people shelter in brush along the creeks in our suburb. During the day, I occasionally see one or two of these men in a park I often walk through, sitting on secluded benches . I know many of them have addiction issues, either to drugs or alcohol. I find the evidence--empty bottles, cans and homemade bongs-- scattered along the creek. Like most people, I feel frustrated and helpless. I know these people are in pain, but society's efforts to help them are often rejected, and there seem no easy solutions to the problem.

When I happened upon this scene today, I was reminded again that people at the margins of society are struggling with pain. Obviously someone had pulled this abandoned chair to the water's edge, to rest in peace, to drink, to try to numb the pain. In this Lenten season, I hope I react with more compassion towards all, recognizing that we all carry burdens of pain. The only differences between us are the weight of the burdens and the limits of our strength.

Lent Photo A Day #2: Sorrow

Sorrow is a weighted word, heavy with the notes of loss and grief. So when I thought about depicting sorrow, I thought first of the roadside shrines to the dead: those tragic clusters of flowers, crosses and photos in road ditches in the Midwest, or next to dusty walls in the southwest, or on telephone or light poles in city areas. Each marks the spot where a family lost a loved one in a traffic accident, and they fairly scream profound sorrow.

Cemeteries are also places of sorrow and loss, some raw and new like the roadside displays, but others dignified and loving, sorrow muted by the passage of time. In this photo, the dying rose next to the headstone speaks to a fading but still present sorrow.

Lent Photo-a-Day: Ash

Ashes. The gray dust of destruction, defeat and despair. Objects that seem so solid and so stable turn into fragile husks that are swept away in the wind.

But ashes also signal new beginnings. What used to exist becomes nourishment for what is yet to become. The ashes of a forest destroyed by wildfire serve as fertilizer for the new growth that bursts out of the soil. Our bodies return to ash or to dust, and become part of the soil that will provide food for new human lives. Dust to dust. Ashes to ashes. We return to the earth that gave birth to us.

Today, ashes serve as a reminder of the brevity of life and the inevitability of death. Yet they also serve to remind us that ashes are but one stage on the path to rebirth. Let the fire of faith serve to remake and refine us. 

Giving up World Book...

I'm trying to purge clutter in my home this year, and that means it is time to let go of some of the absurd number of books on our shelves. I didn't want to do the usual: scan the shelves for something I had hated reading, toss that lone book in the donation pile, and then let myself get distracted by some wonderful discovery on the same shelf. I wanted real results--feet of empty shelf, not fractions of an inch.

So I did what I'd been thinking about doing for a couple of years now. I packed up the entire set of World Book Encyclopedias--it took three boxes--for donation.

I have to admit to feeling a lot of guilt. Encyclopedias were sacred when I was a child. They were the top item on any school report bibliography. They were the place I turned to when I saw something on television or ran across a name in a book that I wanted to know more about. Were there really bears in India living side by side with tigers like in The Jungle Book? Look it up! Did the English queen in Braveheart really hate her husband like she did in the movie? Look it up! Need to know the life cycle of the frog? The name of the 8th president? The year South Dakota became a state? The World Book always knew, and was always happy to give me the answer.

But I'm not writing school reports anymore. I needed to be honest with myself. The world has changed. Now I turn to Google to ask those questions and satisfy my curiosity. I couldn't remember the last time I'd actually pulled out a volume of the encyclopedia to research something. My children are now grown and launched in their own lives, smart phones charged and ready to find every answer they need. The World Book, once the center of my universe of questions, was now just a tiny speck of light in the vast information galaxy of the 21st century. A very dusty speck of light.

So I dutifully asked myself the brutal decluttering questions that would decide the fate of the world--I mean World Book...
1. Have I used it in the past year? No.
2. Do I have access to other items that would satisfy the needs this item addresses? Yes.
3. Am I likely to need it in the near future? No.

I had to be honest. As honest as the World Book had been to me when I sought answers. I needed to let all 25 volumes (3 years of Year Books in addition to the 22 actual encyclopedia volumes) go.

So the next time a donation truck comes to my street, those three heavy cartons will be out on the curb. I wonder what the charity will do with them? Will they even accept such a donation? I have cheery visions of disadvantaged children in their over-crowded apartment poring delightedly over the fascinating Reptile article and illustrations, or carefully copying dates from a bio on President Garfield for a school report. But realistically, most poor families have no desire for twenty year old books, nor the space to hold them. They'll just save up for an I-pad or a laptop for their children. I even admit that's the more practical thing to do. I want to believe my World Books will find a home where they will enrich lives, but they may be headed for a dumpster, unwanted dinosaurs in the Information Age. Such guilt. Such anxiety. But not enough of either to drag those books back to the bookshelves.

Farewell, 1995 edition of the World Book! You served us well! I wish you the best!