Granpaw's View: Thursday Morning Musings

LAUNCHING PAD

Wandering and wondering, I mutter to myself about the glory and gore of life that fill my vision and haunt the dreams at night, that carry me on the crest of waves...surging and cresting to crash in the trough that lies between...only to rise again and reveal sky that promises life and beauty beyond dreams and visions...sky that curtains the mystery of universe and its creator.

The mind and soul adrift, quest for meaning in the unknown, and from faint whispers that echo in chambers of the heart...until divine intervention gives a gentle nudge, or perhaps a kick in the butt to send one free-falling from flights of fantasy. Over-powering fright paralyzes extremities, then all is tranquilized as one sees the view below from which escape had been sought. Who would have thought such beauty lay beneath the skies?

“I’m coming!” My heart pounds with the thrill of viewing the contour of land and sea from high above, until knowledge of sudden meeting jabs desperation into action. Limbs flail and search for a rip cord until fingers find the ring and pull with hope that finds its meaning in sudden, gentle descent. Again there is time to view and choose one’s landing...a place where earth is cushioned with carpet of green, and dotted with flowers whose variegated colors reflect emotions rarely expressed.

Morning has arrived and consciousness awakened to the discovery of another day...a day shaped by dreams and visions of the night...a discovery that not all that is worth pursuing lies beyond the clouds. Beauty and love live within my house and beyond its walls. Discovery is yet to be found and shared. Visions are yet to be told of hope that soars above the skies and bounces earthward to those in darkness of despair. Joy is yet to be born and celebrated. And so in these wanderings I find myself a puppy of wondermutt.

Thursday, February 25, 2010

Thursday Morning Musings

Mondays and Tuesdays I volunteer at the hospital where I worked before retirement. This week a friend stopped by to ask me for help in locating a hymn which had been playing and replaying in his head all night, and now this morning as well. He sang a little bit of the song, and sometime after he left I found the hymn in the book he was looking for. The thing is that two days later, the hymn is still chasing around in my head. And it brightens every corner it rounds, lightens every place it rests, and lingers long after it resumes it quest for expression.

Thank you, John, for asking my help. Because you not only gave me a sense of value, but you left a memory and a light source that has healing in it. You are a valued friend.

None of us realize how effectively warmth and lightness can reflect from our expression and words, or be just as easily absorbed and swallowed up as we are in ourselves. One of the books that I have been reading lately is by Robert Fulghum. He always seems to leave me thoughtfully light-hearted, and aware of the great potential for good that is in everyone of us.

Break time...............

One of my favorite birds is the seagull. Raucously social, yet every bird is looking out for him/herself. I didn't say that everything is admirable about seagulls, but there is a beauty in their flight, in their solitary posture as they view the world beneath them. Who could help wishing they had the same absolute confidence, that everything is going to be all right, as the gull who rides up the crest of a wave that appears about to engulf it and then disappears in the depths of the following trough? Have you ever watched a seagull marching along the shoreline, picking up just about every object that isn't sand to examine it for what only God knows?

Seagulls are into life and everything about life. Nothing escapes their attention. They either eat an object, pick it up and discard it, or fight over it until something else is spotted. But, I don't see them going to war. And what to me sounds like mournful cries, or cursing, could be beyond belief in its creativity, beauty, harmony, and meaning to those have the gift of understanding. For me, a seagull expresses the wild freedom of life that harmonizes with the environment that gives it life.