Another Labor Day
The holidays of 2023 have ticked by quickly and here we are at Labor Day. I am grateful for escaping vertigo for the days have sped by.
When I survey all I hoped to accomplish as 2023 . . . well, . . . I haven’t quite finished the list I never made.
A Summer-ending Garden
I dispatched the remains of the sunflowers, and am enjoying the remains of some colorful favorites.
I do love Autumn’s colors
Two mums now telegraph their vibrant hues, contrasting with the hardy marigolds.
Soon, the black-eyed Susans will depart— the impatiens will catch a cold.
The geraniums have flourished, even though I wasn’t so quick always to dead-head and pluck their dead leaves.
Whether Conditions Prevail
Variants of COVID are blooming how-some ever — whether we can escape this round is unknown. It remains more transmissible and still troublesome — kind of a metaphor for national politics.
Ted Kopel, hosting The CBS Sunday Morning for September 3, 2023, was quite persuasive. Several segments reported while nation may not yet be on life-support, we are perilously close to losing what we too often take for granted.
Next, David Brooks in the most recent Atlantic, described How America Got Mean. He also made plain how . . . ornery . . . too many of us are content to be.
In both descriptions, the hope is we could change — if each of us could be willing to be willing to be willing to change.
How Americans Once did Change
Then, because Labor Day means sleeping in, I stayed up and watched Since You Went Away on TCM. (love old black and white movies, especially about change!)
In the midst of WWII, when we weren’t sure how the war would end, the film showed how those on the home front coped, and how many were willing to change.
A few characters were not willing to change —was it just Sentimental propaganda?
Not from the vantage point of almost 80 years! I am rereading The Hiding Place by Corrie TenBoom — a reminder of what the church can be in mean times– especially in mean times.
Praying, therefore, the church and her wisdom — which was like a character with lines from Scripture in that movie — will have wisdom and courage in these uncertain times. (History Repeats Lessons We Won’t Learn. )
Which means I gotta ask myself, how am I tending to my garden?
How are you doing dear reader?
Celebrating Another Labor Day,
I hope.
And I hope —we both stay safe in the resurgence of a pesky, pernicious virus. And I am praying that we Boomers — esp. if you are one —can stay useful, willing to change and creative in these uncertain times.
Novelist Chuck Palahniuk claimed,
“We all die. The goal isn’t to live forever, the goal is to create something that will.” (Reflection on Mortality and Transcendent Joy~Jim Denison)
So — Just for today, arriving at Labor Day, I ‘ll take one day at a time, and do the next thing . . . that would be paint, and listen to books, trying to be willing.
a plan for every day — especially just for today.