I Would Never Forward This, But, I Find It Delicious

Emerson writes that friendships are gifts and expressions of God; they form when the divine spirit in one individual finds the divine spirit in another, and "both deride and cancel the thick walls of individual character, relation, age, sex and circumstance." (Forward by William J. Bennett, The Book of Virtues)

I do not wish to treat friendship daintily, but with roughest courage. When they are real, they are not glass threads or frosting work, but the solidest thing we know. For now, after so many ages of experience, what do we know of nature, or of ourselves? not one step has man taken toward the solution of the problem of his destiny. In one condemnation of folly stand the whole universe of men. But the sweet sincerity of joy and peace, which I draw from this alliance with my brother's soul, is the nut itself whereof all nature and all thought is but the husk and shell. Happy is the house that shelters a friend! Happier, if he know the solemnity of that relation, and honor its law!... A friend is a person with whom I may be sincere. Before him, I may think aloud. I am arrived at last in the presence of a man so real and equal that I may drop even those undermost garments of dissolution, courtesy, and second thought, which men never put off, and may deal with him with the simplicity and wholeness with which one chemical atom meets another. Sincerity is the luxury allowed, like diadems and authority, only to the highest rank, that being permitted to speak truth as having none above it to court or conform unto. Every man alone is sincere. At the entrance of a second person hypocrisy begins. We parry and fend the approach of our fellow man by compliments, by gossip, by amusements, by affairs. We cover up our thought from him under a hundred folds. I knew a man who, under a certain religious frenzy, cast off this drapery, and, omitting all compliments and commonplace, spoke to the conscience of every person he encountered, and that with great insight and beauty. At first he was resisted, and all men agreed he was mad. By course, he attained to the advantage of bringing every man of his acquaintance into true relations with him. No man would think of speaking falsely with him, or of putting him off with any chat of markets or reading rooms. But every man was constrained by so much sincerity to the like plain dealing, and what love of nature, what poetry, what symbol of truth he had, he did certainly show him. But to most of us society show not its face and eye, but its side and its back. To Stand in true relations with men in a false age is worth a fit of insanity, is it not?...But a friend is a sane man who exercises not my ingenuity, but me. My friend gives me entrainment without requiring any stipulation on my part. A friend, therefore, is a sort of paradox in nature. I who alone am, I who see nothing in nature whose existence I can affirm with equal evidence to my own, behold, now the semblance of my being in all its height, variety, and curiosity reiterated in a foreign form; so that a friend may well be reckoned the masterpiece of nature.
Emerson 1841

After a Long Rain

Have you ever had a heart break so deep, just thinking about it made it bleed. There are no words for a heart break like this. And every time you thought, finally, I'm not thinking about it, I'm good- I can move on , your heart is once more beating. A single shard of thought enters your mind, and before you can catch yourself, your bleeding. For months you think perhaps,... your dying--one thought at a time, but you're still here, alive. There is an awful dread that prevails with this darkness.

There are some people in our lives that are so important that when they are taken from us it like not being able to breath. There are some people in our lives that are so much a part of who we are and what we think that when they are gone... we are lost. We are un- Named. We are un-done. Beautifully said by my friend, "[People] are too much a part of the pattern and texture of my life to try and pick out [individual] threads." The color and texture and pattern of who we are and the light that we see ourselves should be based on Jesus Christ, but sometimes it is so much closer to see ourselves through the eyes of our friends.

That poet/ quote (whatever) Who said, "Some people come into our lives and leave quickly, and other people come into our lives and leave footprints on our hearts and we are never quiet the same." I don't think he/ she understood what Emerson was talking about in his essay on friendship. Yes, we are lucky to have some people come and some people go. And yes, there are encounters with people that leave us for ever marked by them for good and for ill. But the more powerful are people who are genuine and no matter if it were but a day, or years they are ours. They are for keeps because they have had their souls woven souls together. And they are still one of the same heart. How glorious the friendship that weather storm, drought, distance, and death.

After a long rain there comes a moment when darkness still prevails in the sky except for that single beam of sunlight. Catching every particle of air between earth and heaven. The Light has come. To me this has always been hope, its what it feels like, its what it tastes like,.. and like Sense and Sensibility,..Let us chase after a bit of sunshine. with reckless abandon... let us catch it in our hearts the hope of sunshine after a long, long rain.

The Real Reason for Science Projects

There is a triumph about a well carried out science projects. A personal satisfaction that you can really not achieve any other way. You meticulously research a subject that would provide you a means of transporting army men from one side of you diorama to the other, and wow, you realize that all this research is exactly what your teacher was pestering you about for the Science Fair.
Tooth Picks pains takingly placed into gum drops in a structurally sound triangular pattern. and then... (do you hear music playing, it is, if I knew how to add that to my blog, of course it would be the theme from Star Wars) Suddenly, there is a competition between parent and offspring. The Bridge competition.
Whose bridge will hold the greatest amount of weight before meeting its failure point. There is fierce concentration. Dirty Looks, Side way glances. A bit of smack talk. And then... Science Project in the making, they video it. There is great disappointment on the child's face as he realizes that his bridge lost. Then, in a moment of mathematical genius, he calculated the capacity of the bridge (how much the bridge weighs to the amount the bridge can hold)-- Sure delight spreads over his whole body. There is a happy dance as mathematics proves the The Child actually roasted his Dad (5.5:1 over 4.73: 1) There was whooping, there was good times-- right there in a small calculation... I think we might have just proven why Science Fair Projects are of vital import to the maturation of our children.

Distractions

I think that sometimes my life is like living in a carnival. There are monkeys, and tigers doing tricks. A girl riding backwards on a horse in a ring of fire, people waving scarves here and there, clowns in scary makeup, Gypsies, and the man with the pooper- scooper. A constant bombardment of lights, and sounds, and movement, and smells, and bustling bodies.
I get distracted.
I lose sight of what I thought I was looking at in the first place, and then suddenly before I even realize it; I'm the little girl that is lost, and frightened and alone.
How can you possibly feel so alone when there are so many people around you, and yet, it is alone that you find your self. How can I possibly be the little girl, when I am the mother?
The carnival is full of people that are fighting for your attention. Look at me, Look at me, Look at me know,.. you can have fun if you only know how. (Dr. Seuss, The Cat in the Hat)
And then I'm the one screaming-- I can't look at you there is too much to do. Maybe that is me not knowing how to enough the carnival. I really do preferre a quiet book. The sight and sounds and smells of the carnival are mesmerizing, sometimes you just walk around not focused on anything and try to take in everything, but end up just staring at the people walking by without actually seeing the featured attractions at the carnival--
I lose sight of what I thought I was looking at in the first place.
I get distracted.