Letter to a Glorious Day

Dear Glorious Day,

I am thankful for you, and I just wanted to let you know.

Today as I finished mowing the front lawn, I took a minute to admire you and then had a conversation with myself:

I could enjoy the next hour of this most glorious day by mowing our very long backyard. OR I could spend the next hour of this most glorious day having a playdate with the sunshine.

So the decision was quite simple (though I do love the thoughtless, monotonous motions of mowing and the great sense of accomplishment that comes from looking at a freshly shorn lawn). So I dialed up the sunshine and told it not to go anywhere because I was cooking up a fun little afternoon of play.

Here's my recipe in case you want to share it with others:

A lot of bright in your clothing



If there's anything I've learned from my little friends like Lucy and Emma Anne, it's that playtimes are made for loud pinks and yellows and polka dots and stripes. So I put together my most little girl of outfits and headed out the door.

3 Hula Hoops



Hula hoops make the world go 'round. And they also make playdates extra fun. And you must always carry more than one so that you can have a blast trying to keep at least 3 hoops going around your waist & in case some strangers you meet become instant friends.

1 Playground



Because they are just plain perfect for fun



& learning the alphabet



& checking to see how much you've grown

Tons of space





for running or hooping or laughing so loudly that people turn to see who you're laughing with but you're not with anyone which makes you laugh harder because everyone else thinks you're crazy & really you don't care because you're wearing stripes and match the sunshine







An ice cream cone



because let's face it, what day can truly be called glorious without a bit o' ice cream?



I chose Trailer Trash and Butter Pecan from the east side's Pied Piper Creamery. Yummy.



Oh, Glorious Day! I adore you.

ciao.

Ciona

i thank You God for most this amazing
day:for the leaping greenly spirits of trees
and a blue true dream of sky; and for everything
which is natural which is infinite which is yes

-E.E. Cummings

If You're Happy and You Know It . . .

If you're happy and you know it, clap your hands.

A warm autumn sun overpowers the usual balmy breeze.
An excited smile. A quick wave. Then she turns and runs indoors.
They're here! They're here, I'm sure she says in Karen. I don't speak Karen.
But I know the language of excitement from waiting and anticipation, and it screams
They're here when my silver car parks in front of her apartment.

If you're happy and you know it, clap your hands.

The others arrive in the First United Methodist Church bus.
Doors open, and they carry treasure boxes--plastic containers probably purchased at Wal-Mart. Thirty boxes of Crayola markers, a few pails of Crayola super chalk, bountiful supplies of beads of all colors and rolls of blue twine. A football. A soccer ball. Four hula hoops. A tall, slender pink jar filled with bubble juice and three lovely bubble blowing wands. These are the gifts they bring. Parumpapumpum.

If you're happy and you know it . . .

A boy with large almond eyes stands with his two sisters at the end of the sidewalk.
His eyebrows arch up as his face explodes with a smile. This is his question.
He does not speak Karen, either. And though his native Bengali tongue speaks enough English to ask me the question aloud, my heart is more than happy to join in this silent conversation with my little friend from Bangladesh.
I reply, beckoning to him with my hand, nodding my head and returning a smile explosion his way.

then your face will surely show it.

He walks up to me carrying a long yellow freshly dipped bubble wand. The bubble juice trickles down the wand and slides unto his tiny latte colored fingers. Blow these bubbles for me, he politely asks silently. I oblige. He watches as I slowly blow a bubble. He follows it as it bids farewell to the circle on the wand and takes flight. His smile breaks abruptly as the bubble he watches suddenly disappears to nothingness and air and memory. I blow another bubble quickly, before he has a chance to mourn the other one for too long. He falls deeply in love with this one, too. He doesn't say this. But I know from the way his hand reaches up to it as it soars into the sky. And from the return of that darling smile.

If you're happy and you know it, clap your hands.

We circle up. It's time for us to leave. We stand there together--different churches, different religions, teenagers and adults and children, multiple languages, citizens of the U.S. and Bangladesh and Burma and Thailand and Iraq and maybe other children whose names I did not catch and whose home countries I did not ask. Communicating sometimes with words, mostly with smiles. All refugees really. None of us belong here ultimately. We circle up to sing our prayer each time we visit these children at Turtle Creek apartments: three verses of a childhood tune that gets us all clapping our hands, stomping our feet and saying hooray! And though I don't hear Jesus audibly speak to us in that moment, I feel his smile on all of us. I take a deep breath and inhale this Saturday morning memory.

The kingdom of God is near. Come, Lord Jesus. Amen.

**

"Everybody smiles in the same language. And for that, I am so thankful." Jena Lee, Executive Director of Blood:Water Mission

**Image by KatJo

Hopscotch & Hula Hoops: Praying in Color

I discovered this book online a while ago and put it in my Amazon wish list. It's called Praying in Color. I was immediately fascinated by the idea of it, but I never physically saw a copy of it.

When I was in the office of one of my editors last week, however, I saw the book on her desk and got really excited. The author Sybil MacBeth had written for their magazine, so my editor had just finished looking at the book and was willing to let me borrow it. So I began diving into my childish ways and let coloring be a major part of my prayer life this past weekend.

It's been such a neat practice. Basically you doodle around someone's name like I mastered in middle school science class. But you doodle after reading scripture, lighting a candle and preparing your heart for prayer. When you finish a doodle for that one person, you write another name and begin doodling around theirs on the same piece of paper (or journal page, as is the case with me). Eventually, your doodles create one image, which serves as your prayer icon for the day. Then during the day, I remember this image, I remember the people and their prayer needs, and I'm faithfully offering intercessory prayers for my family and friends (and even for my own prayer needs). I love it. You don't have to know how to draw, and your icon doesn't have to be a coherent picture, though some of mine have been.

Sunday I colored a prayer that was kind of a coherent drawing when I decided to doodle flowers around people's names. I'm having a hard time with one of my housemates and her boyfriend. We were addressing some house issues on Sunday, so I decided to add his name to my doodled prayer. While it didn't fix the problem, it definitely calmed me tremendously to enter into conversation about him after I had prayed his name on a page filled with flowers.

Sunday's colorful prayer

Experiencing that with my prayer for him reminded me about one of my favorite quotes from Dawson's Creek (Hey! No snickering . . .) that said that prayer isn't about changing God's mind, it's about changing me. Even though the situation still stinks, my attitude about it became a bit more flowery--even if only for that day.

Praying in color . . . there's much joy to it.

Hopscotch & Hula Hoops

When I was a child, I used to talk like a child, and see things as a child does and think like a child; but now that I have become an adult, I have finished with all childish ways.
- 1 Corinthians 13:11 (NJB)

Paul messed us up terribly. He's done a lot of good, sure. And I agree that we must mature in our faith and move on toward perfection. We would be foolish to remain in diapers when we have a big-girl panties kind of radical faith. He's done us a great disservice, however, with his metaphor suggesting that we should put aside all childish ways.

There are days I long to act like a child more. I want to do nothing but play "sister princesses" at Sevier Park all day with Emma Anne, the two of us ruling the world and playing in our fabulous "castle" (what the unimaginative call a jungle gym). I want to eat popsicles slowly, not caring that the sun will melt them because I'll just lick my fingers in the end anyway. Some days I want to see things as a child does. I want to believe that all children play games and can hardly sleep on Christmas Eve and hate broccoli instead of the reality that some hide from war lords, are molested in the night or wish they had anything at all to eat. I want to talk like a child more. I want to ask questions all of the time. I want to instinctively know that something is wrong and just crawl in my mother's or father's lap and give them hugs and kisses, rather than trying to fix marital bliss gone awry with words.

I love my childish ways and am happy that I can still find healing in hopscotch and hula hoops, remember how small I am and how big God is, be comforted with crayons and a a coloring book. I wish that I would always believe that, even in my smallness, I can put on super powers to run faster than any human being. I don't want to be naive or disobedient or living in a pile of crap for hours; there are some childish ways I happily put behind me. Unlike Paul, however, I have no desire to put away all of my childish ways. In fact, I'm committing to embracing them even more--practicing forgiveness like a child, drawing on more sidewalks, laughing in my hula hoop and coloring outside the lines. This month I plan to incorporate play into my daily routine and spiritual practices. I'll title any blogs I write about this "Hopscotch & Hula Hoops." I hope you'll play with me . . .