When my mom passed away last year, someone at the wake told me that the grieving was the easy part, that dealing with the legal and financial headaches was the hard part. Though I feared they spoke the truth, I didn't really believe them. After all, I loved my mother very much. She was my best friend and in every practical sense, the only family I had. I have since learned that they were right.

December was a blur of grief, of holidays I didn't want to celebrate. January was consumed with interminable hours-long phone calls, documents to be located, papers to be filled out and mailed. February is proving to be the month of waiting for promised letters, promised checks, promised phone calls.

I am not by nature a patient person, but I'm learning that when folder after folder in the rack on my table is labeled "Awaiting ... [this, that, and the other thing]", there is nothing you can do to hurry the universe along no matter how much you want to get through this and move on.

This summer I lost three kitties. Tipsy and Colleen were run over on different days near the 4th of July. I buried the kitten sisters next to each other between the lilac and the cardinal shrub. Pinocchio died of leukemia and feline AIDS. I buried him behind the garage in his favorite sunny place. Then my mom passed away. And just when I thought I had no tears left to cry, my 13-year-old kitty, sweet Sally May, died in the kitchen one night in January.

At the end of life for all creatures, we must release them to God, not that they weren't always His and in His hands, but that the time of our stewardship, our borrowing of them, has come to an end. And while we grieve here and bury their broken bodies, we know their little spirits are running free in the long grass of heaven.

It is the same also when we must let go of human friends and family members. "The Lord has given and the Lord has taken away. Even so, blessed be the name of the Lord." To paraphrase an affirmation from the Unity School of Christianity, "We release them to God's care and keeping, knowing they are being guided to their good."

Even though our hearts are breaking and our tears flow, we must remember that to God, death is just a coming home to Him, and that someday we will see our loved ones again.

THE LOVE OF GOD

Thinking once again about the common phrase, "the love of God." You hear it as a prayer and as a curse. "Oh, for the love of God!"

But what does it really mean? English is such a rich language.

Are we speaking of God's love for me? Or of my love for God? Or both?

Both, I would say.

Sparks of God's Glory

I am currently reading a biography about a man who was sucked into Stalin's gulag. The man and his fellow prisoners suffered terribly in a camp far above the Arctic Circle. It is a depressing story with the only glimmers of light being hopes for release that were agonizingly dragged out, only to be dashed in the end. The only release for nearly all of the prisoners came through death. The man was an atheist, as were all of the others he knew. Religion of any kind, or any hope for salvation, is missing in this darkness.

By contrast, Corrie ten Boom and her sister Betsie, who were also prisoners at the same time, but victims of a Nazi death camp, were devout Christians who managed to spread hope in that horrible place. Corrie said, "You may never know that Jesus is all you need, until Jesus is all you have."

And it came to me that we are all in the same situation as these prisoners.

We spread joy or pain in our own worlds to our family, friends, neighbors, and strangers by our behavior, by what we say and how we say it, by our actions--how we drive; the things we laugh at or cry over; what we do at school, at work, or in our neighborhood, for others or against them; the kindness, compassion, forgiveness, and generosity we show, especially to animals, children, and the elderly.

We spread God's love or our own lack of faith wherever we are when we share our fears and worries, our hurts and anger, or our trust in God and our belief in His love, light, and peace. If we believe this world is all there is or that God has a better place for us after death will--or should--make a difference in how we live, speak, and act.

"Again Jesus said, 'God's kingdom is like what happens when a farmer scatters seed in a field. The farmer sleeps at night and is up and around during the day. Yet the seeds keep sprouting and growing, and he doesn't understand how. It is the ground that makes the seeds sprout and grow into plants that produce grain. Then when the harvest season comes and the grain is ripe, the farmer cuts it with a sickle.' " Mark 4:26-29 (CEV)

We don't know what will happen or who will ultimately be influenced by us when we put God's truth into practice daily in our lives. "You may be the only Gospel others ever read." We are all sparks of God's perfect glory.

CLIMBING OVER THE BIG HILL AND SMALL "STUFF"
I was asked recently how I combat the frustrations of aging.

First of all I depend on Jesus! Secondly, I depend on my friends, and I have the best friends anyone could have in the whole world. Was it an accident that I found them just before my world began crumbling? I don't think so. God sends us help when we most need it.

Also, you have to be patient with yourself and flexible and recognize that you're not as strong or as quick as you used to be and make adjustments or be willing to give stuff up or do it more slowly. I can't walk as far, so I park closer to stores. I used to be able to hoe out the garage in one day. I used to be able to mow the whole yard in one day. Can't do it anymore! And there's no point killing myself over it. I get stuff done. It just takes longer. And if I can't get to stuff, I remember "Don't sweat the small stuff. And it's all small stuff." In the scheme of life, you have to set priorities.

It drives me craziest that I can't remember stuff. So I've learned that I can't multitask like I used to, and I have to make notes and lists. Those notepads that charities send are wonderful for jotting little things down.

And I rejoice in the things I can do and the beauties in Nature around me as the seasons change. I laugh with the kitties and ignore their mischief for the joy they bring us. And I've gone back to the things that always gave me pleasure, but which I don't have time for anymore. So I can't spend an hour doing needlework or sit and read 125 pages a day and whip through books, but I can find 10 minutes or so. And if it means getting up at 4 a.m. to do laundry or clean out my inbox so I'll have time to watch a baseball game or play with the kittens or write a chapter or a scene, then I do it. And I get to see gorgeous sunrises as a result.

I think getting older means learning what's important and what's not and playing through pain if you don't want to sit on the bench in the dugout. There'll be plenty of time for that maybe too if we're lucky.

WILLOW TREE
Well, the neighbors' enormous one hundred foot willow tree finally came down. In our yard. Naturally. The whole darn thing. Broke right off at ground level. I tried to get a tree service to take it, or parts of it, down years ago, but they wouldn't, even though it was hanging over our shed. Willows are nasty to cut and very dangerous for tree cutters. Previous neighbors planted it years ago, but the trunk had grown in our direction, making it a "line tree." I was willing to pay half to get it down since we were the ones in danger, even though I felt it was their tree and not a line tree at all, but the new neighbors always wanted to keep the tree. And I admit that taking the branches down which overhung our yard would have taken ALL the branches off. So it stood. Leaning.

Well, folks, in the Divine miracle department the whole tree--all of it--fell neatly along between our fence and right along the side of the shed. It fills the entire space of about 25 feet in width between the fence and the shed and from the back of the yard to the front of the 70-foot long shed. Neatly. I still can't believe it. Twigs grazed the side of the shed and chipped the edge of one shingle that protruded. Didn't scratch the shed or break any windows. And left a VERY narrow path right along the side of the shed that I can walk along ducking under leafy twigs and stepping on and over broken bits of tree.

If that thing had come down on the shed, it would have crushed it completely.

It missed both of my little Bradford pears except to trim off the side branch of the one pear that had two tops and I've been trying to figure out how I was going to prune off that second top, since I don't do ladders very well. Sheered it right off at the pear's trunk. I think the lilacs along the side of the shed may be toast, but they can be replaced. And if I ever get someone to clean up the mess, I may be surprised at what survived. Lilacs are tough.

At the moment, I'm considering just fighting the poison ivy (the willow was full of it) and ignoring it. Poison ivy spray is cheaper than hiring someone to clean it up.

The tree was loaded with poison ivy that I've been fighting for years with spray since it overhung our yard and dropped berries continually which made a carpet of poison ivy in our yard. A couple of years ago I crossed our fence and cut the vine with clippers since the neighbors wouldn't do anything. One of the vines was four inches in diameter, and another was six! I had to saw them, and I was afraid they'd heal so I sawed chunks out of the vines to prevent that. But they sprout continuously, so if I don't fight it, the whole side yard will be poison ivy.

It always made me nervous even to walk past that tree in a wind. We've had a lot of its limbs come down, but the big ones always landed neatly in a line along the fence even though they weren't pointing that way while they were up in the tree, and I always considered that to be a miracle, but I never ever expected the tree to fall like it did, diagonally at that precise angle. What the tree service refused to do--especially when I whined about my Bradford pears, which they said they wouldn't be able to protect--God did very neatly! Thank you, Lord!

And hey, I don't have to mow that section of yard anymore!

POINTING A FINGER AT GOD
When I was a kid and someone would say something mean like, "You're so stupid" or "You look like a witch," the other person would usually respond with "So are you" or "Takes one to know one" or something similar. But once when we moved and I started a new school, the kids there responded differently. They would say, "I know you are, but what am I?" Frequently, the response made no sense at all, and never having heard it before, I was confused.

Finally, one of my new friends said it had to do with finger-pointing, even if no one actually was pointing a finger at anyone else, but it was just assumed. Duh. Okay. I still didn't get it until she added that when you point a finger at someone, you have your fist clenched and three fingers pointing back at yourself.

Okay, dodo here finally got it. Sort of.

The other day here was just such a perfect day. The weather was fantastic, and if summer could be this way always, I thought, it would give heaven a run for its money. The clouds were magnificent and drew my attention upwards. For some reason, I thought of the baseball players who raise their hands and point heavenward to give God the glory after they make a great play, and I did the same. Instead of just thanking God for the lovely, lovely day, I pointed skyward and said, "You are wonderful, Lord!"

And then I looked at my hand and saw the three fingers pointing back at myself. The Bible says we are fearfully and wonderfully made. I am wonderful. My body is a wonder. My mind is a wonder. That I love God is a wonder. That He loves me is a greater one.

You are wonderful, too! We are all wonderful creatures. We are all wonderful individuals. Don't ever sell yourself short. "God doesn't make junk."

You are wonderful. I know you are.

CHOICES

We always have the choice to serve God where we are, or to run and serve Him elsewhere--or not.

If we allow ourselves to be guided by God's love, we may choose to stand and fight. But sometimes circumstances overwhelm us, and like any great general we have to learn when to sound retreat. To sacrifice is not always to lose.

Sometimes we must sacrifice one thing in order to obtain something better. The good general surveys the ground and looks for a better place to defend or attack from, and so a retreat may actually be an advance in disguise.

Allowing batters to walk in baseball counts in the statistics against a pitcher, but an effective baseball manager sometimes orders his pitcher to deliberately walk one batter so that he will be facing a weaker hitter, and any decent pitcher will often ignore his "strikes to balls ratio" statistic and deliberately throw a ball rather than a strike, hoping to get the batter to "chase after it" and strike himself out.

If we choose to stand firm on our ground and "fight the good fight," perhaps even to our death, whether that death is a result of our fighting or simply the natural end of our physical life, we must believe that we are where God wants us to be, doing what God wants us to do. Only then can we draw on His strength.

To give up one's life may not involve the sacrifice of our physical bodies, as in a war or other violent confrontation. It may be simply giving up our own dreams and hopes and yielding to the needs of someone else. That someone may be an elderly parent, or a child, a husband, or a wife suffering sickness or disabilities. Or it may be someone else entirely, someone who was even formerly a stranger, but who is now our friend or beloved. People give up their lives to care for animals, as well, or for the greater good of a number of people they will never even meet, but who they hope will benefit from their research or their labor.

If we choose to run away entirely from a situation, we may discover that we have taken our problems with us or encounter a completely new set of problems previously undreamed of. And yet, we may still choose to serve God in our new life.

Sometimes we may find that we cannot physically run from a place, whether that is a hospital bed or a jail cell, but we can still choose to serve God or not in our place. The mind and the spirit are free even if the body is not.

The same is true if we retreat or move on to something we hope will be better. The choice is always ours. We are always free to choose to serve God. Or not.

"NOT A REAL BEAR"

Everytime I drive into town I pass the life-size statue of a bear standing in front of a seasonal fast-food place, and it reminds me of what one of my friends told me.

She was going through a dark patch in her life and had driven into town, her heart and mind burdened with sadness. Flipping the radio dial she came across the Christian station, Sound of Life, which was proclaiming God's love through its music. Although my friend is a believer, she had been feeling abandoned by God, and so abruptly she said, "God, if you exist and you really love me, I want to see some proof of it. I want to see a rainbow."

Now this was wintertime, and there was no chance at all she was going to get a rainbow. But after she done her shopping when she got back in her car, she spotted a picture of a rainbow. It was, according to her, a fairly sorry example of a rainbow, lacking half its colors and what it did have were upside down in the wrong order, but it was a rainbow. Sort of.

"Not good enough," she told God. And maybe too easy. "Let's try again. This time I want to see a bear, and not just a picture of one either."

And then, of course, she drove past the bear on the corner. Well, it wasn't a picture! But neither was it a real bear. And she said, feeling like a petulant five-year-old, she told God so. "That's not a real bear!"

Pulling up at the traffic light, she saw emblazoned across the back window of the pickup truck in front of her the words, "NOT A REAL BEAR."

THE BLIZZARD OF FEBRUARY 2010

A few of my friends have asked how we made out in the blizzard. Well, we did it with a lot of prayers and God's help! He takes care of widows and the fatherless! He really does.

I really appreciate their concern. Hey, I was happy today that I finally could go out our front gate! Another small victory. Now they are predicting floods from the snowmelt--sorry, one disaster at a time, please.

Our neighbors next door and across the road and for four miles on down that road on both sides had no power from Thursday night at 9 p.m. onward. People complain about no lights or TV, but here the main problems are no water (wells require electric water pumps) and no heat (most furnaces need electric power to run thermostats and blowers, etc. Even a neighbor with a pellet stove was out of luck as were others with wood stoves that have thermostats). We have a wood stove, but I had very little wood split and most of our wood is out in the garage, which by that time I couldn't even get to in the deep snow.

Anyway, our power blinked then, but praise God, it came back on and held. I prayed a lot, believe me. We and the few people between us and the corner were the only little island of electricity, I gathered, as the people I talked to on the other three sides of the intersection went out the same time. Some people had generators, but the filling stations were running out of gasoline, and a lot of people had nothing. Plus, the roads here were not the greatest, and many were simply closed. The counties began declaring states of emergency to get people off the roads unless they really had to be there.

Some bosses feel that all their employees are "essential." I had one who told us when the county sheriff ordered everyone off the roads except "essential personnel" that if you didn't consider your job essential, he didn't need you. Eek! But here many, if not most, businesses closed, as of course did the schools. They were closed, I think, every day that week except Monday--nothing like having two major snowstorms in one week. Reminded me of Oneonta where my first winter we had three blizzards in one week, and even the natives assured me that was unusual!

My major concern was lack of fuel oil. We had been due for a delivery on Wednesday, and they didn't make it. Thursday I called just in time to catch the dispatch gal as she was on her way out the door. They had called all the drivers in because the roads were so terrible. She said to call again Friday morning. When I did, I got the main office up in Syracuse. The man there said to call a little later. But their local office was still closed, and I ended up talking to another man in Syracuse. By that time I was starting to panic. They had nearly let us run out the time before. The gauge said quarter of a tank, but that amounted to 14 gallons and we were close to pulling up sludge into the furnace. Last year when that happened, it cost us $500 in furnace repairs. All of the people I talked to were very nice, but couldn't do much to help us at that point.

So, to keep from running out completely, I turned the furnace down to 60 degrees and put on the electric heater for my mom. She's 97 and freezes at 72 degrees. I'm sure our electric company will love us for all the power we were using. Nearly everyone around us was dark! Well, someone has to keep the power company in business.

Friday night at 5 p.m., the fuel oil people sent us an angel with 10 gallons to tide us overnight, so I put the furnace up to 65 to warm the house a bit. It came on once, but at 5:45, our power also went out.

I called the power company to report the outage and was told it would be March 2 before we'd get power restored. No way could my mom stay in a cold house that long. I was told to leave. And go where? First off, I couldn't have gotten her to the car. Second, I couldn't have gotten the car loose. And third, where would we go? I looked out and saw a couple of neighbors and I asked them if the blinker light at the corner was out or was it just our house. They said the blinker was out, too.

So, I went back and called the power company again and sat through about 30 minutes of "on hold" music and ads. Finally I got to their emergency staff and told the woman about the blinker being off. It's a very dangerous intersection on a nice sunny day in July with a hill that cuts off visibility so you can't see the crossroad until you're right on it, a fence on one side and a store on the other that prevent drivers from seeing who's coming. Add a slippery road that hadn't been plowed yet, and it doesn't take long before someone tries to run into someone else. Within a short time a State Trooper came flying into town with lights flashing. I assume he was checking to see the conditions. By 7:15 we got our power back on. Praise God!

The TV said 27,000 customers from our power company alone were out, and over 1 MILLION people without power in the Northeast. Of course each "customer" is a house or apartment building.

Anyway, once we had power back on, then we just had to worry about running out of oil all night. I kept it really low, and we finally got a real delivery of fuel oil this morning, but the power flickered off and on after that, so I tried to keep all dishes washed up, toilets flushed, temperature up high (so it would take longer for the house to get cold) etc.

Water is always our biggest concern because of the water pump on the well. Then the oil delivery man told me "the road is on fire down a ways." Huh? He said a line was down and the macadam is smoking. Not good for driving a fuel oil truck through! His power at his house has been out for 3 days, and his wife was boiling snow to make coffee. Another neighbor still had no power on Monday and was catching meltwater coming off his roof.

Each day I was able to do more. The first day I couldn't even open the doors. The front porch had a foot of snow on it, blocking the doors. And of course I'd left the snow shovel out there. Not smart. Couldn't get the back door open either. The snow had drifted in all directions. I did manage to fill some of the bird feeders, but walking was almost impossible. It took me an hour to get to three feeders, and I couldn't have done it if I hadn't been able to cross from the last one to the driveway and come in the front--no way would I have been able to go back to the back door the way I came. I kept thinking how easy to walk or even run across the yard normally! By Monday I was able to reach all but one birdfeeder. That was under the cedar tree which lost its top. My mom planted the cedar in 1920 (It was their two-foot tall tabletop Christmas tree). I couldn't get to the garage and forget about the shed--it might as well have been on Mars.

We've got branches and twigs down all over the yard. It'll be a big cleanup this spring. I haven't even tried at this point. A lot of them are still frozen down in the snow, which is quite deep in places out back.

The post office was closed two days and we had no garbage pickup for two weeks. All the things we take for granted in "civilization" were shaken. I was able to email my friends though even when the power was out--my laptop ran on batteries and my DSL modem was fine, as was the telephone. But I helped a neighbor charge up her cell phone when we had power and she had none.

I cleared the driveway twice during the storm, but after the plows came by they left the end of our drive with snow piled shoulder high on me, and I had to have a neighbor help me dig through that!

The radio station said we got 12 to 15 inches in the first storm and 33 inches in the second one. TV said we got 50 inches. National news said Monroe (not far from here in Orange County) got 31 inches, but that Sullivan County got more. I took a yard stick out to measure and lost the stick! I just found it a couple of days ago.

In addition to spring yard cleanup I've GOT to split more wood. We've got the wood stove if the power goes off, but have very little split wood on hand. That's my fault. We used so much in 2008 when our furnace went out and I never replaced it. We could make a day on what I've got, maybe even two, but the split wood is on the porch where it got snowed on and got wet. The rest of the wood is in the garage I couldn't get to and the ax is in the shed. I was NOT PREPARED for a 3-4 day outage! But God takes care of widows and the fatherless!

But it's over now. Snow is melting. Little white snowdrops are blooming here and there, and I picked wild chives for our salad yesterday. I hear robins, and we had a flock of grackles at our feeders this morning.

PROTECTED
Psalm 36:7-9 (New Living Translation)

7. How precious is your unfailing love, O God!
All humanity finds shelter
in the shadow of your wings.
8. You feed them from the abundance of your own house,
letting them drink from your river of delights.
9. For you are the fountain of life,
the light by which we see.

Sometimes, if you have no one to run to, you can feel God's hands on your shoulders, His arms around you, His love enfolding you. He is always there, but if we are depending on others or distracted by our challenges, we won't recognize His touch.

The Light of God surrounds us.
The Love of God enfolds us.
The Power of God protects us.
The Presence of God watches over us.
Wherever we are, God is.
(--James Dillet Freeman, Unity's Prayer of Protection)

EAGLES AND SPARROWS
Eagles! Beautiful eagles. Royalty of the skies, kings of the mountain crags. Freedom incarnate.

Almost all of us desire to see eagles soar above the valley. Our spirits lift with them. At times we wish we too could fly with them.

If you can't see eagles, watch the seagulls flying above the grocery store parking lot and remember Jonathan Livingston Seagull. No seagulls where you live? Watch the sparrows flitting outside your window.

Do we want to be eagles among men and women? Too bad we can't all be eagles, flying high. But if we can't, we can be the best sparrows we can be and remember God watches over sparrows, too. Jesus asked, "Are not five sparrows sold for two farthings and not one of them shall fall on the ground or is forgotten before God, your Father? Fear not therefore, ye are of more value than many sparrows." (Matt. 10:29 & 31 and Lk. 12:6 & 7)

Actually, Jesus' comment on eagles was less than flattering. "For wheresoever the carcass is, there will the eagles be gathered together." (Matt. 24:28 and Lk. 17:37)

THE LOVE OF GOD
"The love of God is my source of comfort and strength."

That's what the affirmative prayer said. But I paused. English is such a powerful language. The depths and layers of meanings that lie within simple words and phrases create its very power.

"The love of God." Is that God's love for me? Or my love of God? Or both?

None of that matters to the essential Truth, nor to the Power that resides in the affirmation whichever way you want to take it. But there are whole worlds of difference between His love for me and my love for Him. And another world created in the combination and joining of the two.

Such thoughts are lost in the business and busyness of the day, but they come back to dwell in our minds and hearts in the darkest hours of the night. "The love of God." "God's love for me." For me! "My love for Him." Gratitude. Confusion. Love. My comfort. My strength. From Him. Always.

IN THE SILENCE

To proclaim faith and light and peace and joy to others, we must first have it in ourselves. Then God’s joy and wisdom and energy and love and compassion flow through us to others. And we become the Gospel that others read if they read none other. Will we become perfect at it? No, but we can strive. In time we each become a living flame of love.

{From A Journal of the Spirit, a Journey of the Soul, by D.C. Ice, Dec. 31, 2003.}

IN THE SILENCE

"Connect." I have been drifting away from You, God. I need to drift back or paddle back or just let You draw me back. That’s nice. I need to connect with You. I can reach You through Your Word, but sometimes Your Word gets in the way. And through prayers, but sometimes they get in the way. And through my mind, but sometimes my mind gets in the way. I just need You, need to connect with You. That’s all I need.

{From A Journal of the Spirit, a Journey of the Soul, by D.C. Ice, Nov. 26, 1987.}

IN THE SILENCE

This evening I came home from work and prayed. And the peace of God came down upon me. Not a fragile thing, but tough--"God will not be denied." But so much love and comfort, so much. I am not worthy--we never are. Just "Thank you, thank you. I feel the love."

{From A Journal of the Spirit, a Journey of the Soul, by D.C. Ice, Oct. 22, 1986}