Dear Friends ~ All around us seasonal changes are beginning to mark the passage of time and I wonder—have the efficiencies of technology and the urgencies of modern culture's pace changed our relationship with time itself? I recently participated in a workshop on nature drawing. With naught but a couple of charcoal pencils and a sketchbook, I sat down in the dewy morning grass to look at a mushroom. Twenty minutes passed as we encountered each other. The feathery white fringe encircling its narrow dome caught minuscule pearls of dew. Peering under its cap, I discovered a delicate collar necklace draped at an angle around the top of its pristine silk-smooth stalk. Without disturbing this elegantly turbaned upright specimen, I peered inside another fallen-over comrade to discover a whole ream of filmy, tissue-thin "pages" hidden within its cap. Only later did I begin to wonder if these caps were already fully formed to remain tall narrow parabolas or whether they were just waiting to open like a parasol being raised. Had I opted for the instant gratification of a photograph, the phone would hold an image but would I have spent time noticing how the gills inside morphed from charcoal grey to salmon to ecru? Would I have left any space for wondering how this moment fit into before and after? Or would this little wonder have flitted in and out of memory in a careless heartbeat?
Where fear and doubt imprison, faith and love liberate;
Where fear and doubt paralyze, faith and love empower;
Where fear and doubt dishearten, faith and love encourage;
Where fear and doubt sicken, faith and love heal; and,
Where fear and doubt make useless, faith and love create new life.
My life has been perhaps harder than the normal, but I have learned to endure what cannot be altered, with only my own inner strength to sustain me. During disastrous times, the inner voice was always there to comfort me, even if it did not always speak to me in so many words. Faith, though, has always played a great part in my life; faith and inner certainty. Endurance, coupled with love and faith have been the keynotes of my life, and through them I have been blessed beyond all measure.