Author: James Browning

Profoundly Tender Affection & Mood of Merriment

/ James Browning

Happy St Patrick’s Day!

This morning surfing on-line for an Irish wish and prayer to send to a few friends on St. Patrick’s day I found this one I liked most:

May love and laughter light your days…
And warm your heart and home…
May good and faithful friends be yours…
Wherever you may roam…
May peace and plenty bless your world…
With joy that long endures…
May all life’s passing seasons…
Bring the best to you and yours…

Those words stuck me as being exactly the wish I wanted to send to a few people .  After reading the prayer several times I began to drill down and focus on what some of the words actually meant.  Through doing that I came away with a more personally meaningful insight of what is expressed in those eight lines.

LOVE:  a profoundly tender affection for another person

LAUGHTER:  A mood of merriment or amusement.

WARM: feeling of kindness or vitality

HEART:  the center of emotion and feeling

HOME: retreat of safety or shelter

GOOD:  virtuous; righteous

FAITHFUL: allegiant; loyal

FRIEND: people attached through feeling

ROAM:  go, walk or travel

PEACE:  freedom from strife or dissension

WORLD:  your part of Earth

PLENTY: abundant supply without impairment

BLESS:  sanctify, bestow good; holy

JOY:  great happiness; delight

ENDURE: sustain without impairment

LIFE: human existence; animate existence

SEASON:  periods when conditions are best

BEST:  highest quality; most advantageous,

YOU:  total of who you are

YOURS:  what belongs to you.

Then taking those definitions I reworked the eight lines to say essentially the same thing in a different (albeit a little longer) manner.  I am grateful for the added relevance that flowed to me as I reshaped the words to how “Mr. Spock” might have expressed them.

A new interpretation of an old Traditional Irish Wish and Prayer
by James Browning
May a profoundly tender affection & mood of merriment light your days…
And bring a kindly feeling in your center of emotion & retreat of safety…
May virtuous & allegiant people attached through feeling be yours…
Wherever you may go, walk or travel…
May freedom from strife & an abundant supply sanctify your part of Earth
With great happiness that long sustains without impairment…
May all human experience in periods when conditions are best…
Bring the highest quality to the total of who you are & what belongs to you…

Only In Your Mind

/ James Browning

Not long ago I came across a slight twist on “as you think, so shall you find” written by Wayne Dyer.  It’s a long paragraph and took a few reads to get to the essence of what he had said.   So here I have broken it apart into five pieces so it is a little easier to absorb.

As you think so shall you be! Since you cannot physically experience another person, you can only experience them in your mind. Conclusion: All of the other people in your life are simply thoughts in your mind. Not physical beings to you, but thoughts.  

Your relationships are all in how you think about the other people of your life. Your experience of all those people is only in your mind.  

Your feelings about your lovers come from your thoughts.  

For example, they may in fact behave in ways that you find offensive. However, your relationship to them when they behave offensively is not determined by their behavior, it is determined only by how you choose to relate to that behavior.  

Their actions are theirs, you cannot own them, you cannot be them, you can only process them in your mind.

People are as you perceive them, not as they are is.  That’s the truth Dyer’s paragraph boils down to for me.  Of course, EVERYTHING on Earth is as we think of them and not the completeness of what they are.  For example, what we see is not what is actually before us.  It is what we perceive based on reflection of light.  Even then there are spectrums of light we can see and many we can not.

How I live today is far different from how it was ten years ago.  It is not the conditions of my life that have changed.  I am still me, the same person as before.  The world remains round.  The sun continues to rise and set.  Folks around me are still basically the same.  I have the same job in the same profession.  It is not people, places, things and situations that have been altered:  It is MY WAY OF THINKING that has become changed.

My practical discovery is the only way to change one’s life is to change my thoughts.  My previous experiments of applying external things to alter my existence did work sometimes, but only for a short while.  Rapidly my life always returned to the same as before:  the life I wanted to change.

These days I am mostly happy because I chose to be.  There was no internal switch I flipped and caused that to be.  I worked at it.  When I began to live as if I was happy, I began to have more happiness.  Optimism came to me because I planted the seed of it within, nurtured it and over time it grew.  And so on.

Stopping being obsessed with my past came only when thought by thought, little by little I began to catch myself thinking about it.  At first being able to push away tripping over my history only worked occasionally.  However, with long-term consistency and practice I can now, more often than, successfully push the past away.  All I have done and all that has happened is still within me and thoughts still arise about it.  The difference is I can exercise some control and shorten the duration of such thinking.  In this way my life is no longer directed by what happened and I live more in the present than ever before.

Nirvana eludes me.  Enlightenment has not descended upon my being.  Instead as an athlete trains to get in shape, I have trained myself mentally over time to compete with my thoughts.  I don’t always win, but I am victorious a lot:  enough to be permanently life changing.  My gratitude for these insights is profound and my thankfulness for the many teachers I learned about this path from humbly resounds within.

We tend to get what we expect
Norman Vincent Peale

A Straight Line From Then To Now

/ James Browning

Going through a tattered trunk filled with old things dating back to my teen years I came across an old wallet.  Two things were inside:  a photo of my brother when he was about thirteen and a small much yellowed clipping.  I remember cutting the piece out of a Sunday newspaper “Parade” magazine and recall it was writing by a man in prison.

Why do we usually view the past as a straight line from then to now, yet view today as filled with uncertainty and chaos?  In time what makes us feel lost today will eventually be perceived as part of a future straight line view. Why can’t I have that future view now? 

It’s quite ironic I found that clipping in a wallet made by a convict.  In my formative years road maintenance, right of way mowing and trash pickup on state highways was done by trustee convicts.  These were not “chain gangs” like the movies where men are chained to each other.  All dressed in white except for their prisoner number on the back and front of their shirt and jacket, these men were free to do their work unencumbered by bindings.

In these prison work crews were usually six to ten men who were transported in the back of dump trucks.  One or two guards with side arms were present to keep track of the convicts. Usually these men were those imprisoned for nonviolent, lesser offenses and had little to gain from trying to escape beyond extending the time they had already been sentenced to.  That’s why they were called “trustees” and were men who appreciated being allowed out in the open.

The work these men did was patching potholes, putting up signs, picking up trash and driving tractors to mow the right of way.  Most appreciated the chance to work and do something meaningful.  I’m not sure of the amount but seems like that got a quarter an hour for their work or less than $3.00 per day.  Back then cigarettes were less than fifty cents a pack and so a few bucks was a lot for men who had so little.

My home Alabama county had nothing but two lanes roads until about ten years ago. In my early driving years the convict work crews would block a lane when doing work on the other side.  At each end of the work area a convict would have the job of directing traffic into the one open lane.  It never failed if you were stopped and had to wait the prisoner there would try to sell you leather goods they made.  Wallets handmade and tooled were small enough to carry in their pockets and pull out to sell.  The one I found in my old trunk was one of those:  navy blue dyed, thick leather with a tooled design all over one end.  There is no memory of what I paid the convict for it, but I remember clearly the man and joy on his face that I bought it.  Such happiness for just a few dollars for something so well made that had to have taken days.

Around lunchtime convict crews working within a few miles would come into the family store I worked at in my early teens.  This was back in the days when soft drinks almost all came in reusable bottles that were worth three cents to a bottler.  We paid two cents per bottle to anyone who brought them in.  The prisoners would frequently bring in bags (we called toe sacks) filled with bottles they picked up on the side of the road.  We paid two cents for each one to the convicts who always seemed respectful and polite.

Once observation that sticks with me yet today is almost all the men on the work crews were African-Americans.  As the years passed I connected the dots to realize that these men were being discriminated against, likely to a degree I can’t even imagine.  Yet, they were probably better off than some since they got to “work” on the “outside”.  I can’t imagine what went on with minority men who were viewed much more sternly.

Today I am grateful for several things learned seeing these prison work groups as a kid.  Between seeing these crews and visiting my Mom’s cousin in prison one time I gained a healthy respect for the law and the basic values I was taught.  Witnessing the appreciation of the convicts for being “free on the outside” helped me know I never, ever wanted to be locked up.  Seeing their appreciation for tiny, little things made an impression never to be forgotten. And my memory of the work crews is a vivid reminder of the discrimination that went on in the Deep South when I was growing up.  All those nameless men on the work crews taught me well by just by their presence.  I am grateful.  In return I tell their story here as a testament to the fact they lived.

Inside these walls
things look so gray.
But, the crimes I committed
are why I’m here today.

I keep my head up
and learn to cope.
Freedom will come again
and this gives me hope.

So many different people
with faults to accept.
Looking to God with a smile
is all I have left.

My life has been better
and I still have waters to wade.
I plan to make my life good;
Turn lemons to lemonade.

From “These Walls” by a prisoner identified only as C.S

The Point Is To Live Everything

/ James Browning

In my 20’s there was this feeling that one day everything would be just the way I hoped it would be.  I grew up believing all would come if I worked hard and was a good man who did not murder, steal, lie, commit adultery or covet what someone else had.  In every single ‘rule of life’ I was not an “A+” student, but was a good, honorable and decent young man.  Disillusion came by my early 30’s wondering why my graduation into the life I thought I deserved had not unfolded for me.  Oh, to have known then what I know now!

I beg you, to have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language. Don’t search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer. Rainer Maria Rilke

Rilke wrote that over a hundred years ago, but his advice is as good now as then.  For me what rings most true are his words “the point is to live everything”.  In stunning simplicity I believe he states wisdom that will help lead anyone toward a richly meaningful life.  Not only the good, joyful and pleasurable should be embraced and lived; pain, disappointment and sorrow needs be lived fully as well.

My thinking used to be that grief, distress and heartbreak were interruptions to my life; just detours on the way to the “good life” I was convinced was ahead.  In retrospect it’s clear now I was living a richly wonderful and good life in my younger years, yet had limited awareness of it then.  Like one who chews food so fast they get little satisfaction or taste I was chewing up life without fully experiencing the myriad of flavors of life.

With regularity I come across quotes by Helen Keller and am touched by them, such as Life is either a daring adventure or nothing.  She gained a deep and profound wisdom that came through “living everything” well including being deaf and blind from the time she was a toddler.  Everyone knows a few people who seem to be able to bear life’s pain with poise and grace.  They have a special way of showing the world their magic without even knowing it and illustrate well the best way to live.

Famed psychologist and philosopher Carl Jung said what we resist persists.  Within those four words he encapsulates why I encountered so many malcontented years:  I resisted ‘what was’.   Fighting unchangeable reality only created more of it.  Amazingly simple to me now!

My life experience got a lot better as I learned to open up and accept ALL of my life’s circumstances. Today I know the more I resist the longer a difficulty or discomfort continues.  When I am able to accept my circumstances there is no immediate calm and joy.  Life does not work like that.  But when I can “just be” and say yes to what is, a frame of mind comes that enables me to cope well with what challenge is upon me and “live the questions” well.

Everything will be okay in the end. if it’s not okay, it’s not the end. Unknown

How You Made Them Feel

/ James Browning

The story below has come into my email several times over the last ten years, yet it never fails to touch me in a positive way.  I hope it does the same for you.

— — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — —
The Cab Ride

I arrived at the address and honked the horn. After waiting a few minutes I walked to the door and knocked.. ‘Just a minute’, answered a frail, elderly voice. I could hear something being dragged across the floor.   After a long pause, the door opened. A small woman in her 90’s stood before me. She was wearing a print dress and a pillbox hat with a veil pinned on it, like somebody out of a 1940’s movie.

By her side was a small nylon suitcase. The apartment looked as if no one had lived in it for years. All the furniture was covered with sheets. There were no clocks on the walls, no knickknacks or utensils on the counters. In the corner was a cardboard box filled with photos and glassware.

‘Would you carry my bag out to the car?’ she said. I took the suitcase to the cab, then returned to assist the woman. She took my arm and we walked slowly toward the curb.  She kept thanking me for my kindness.. ‘It’s nothing’, I told her.. ‘I just try to treat my passengers the way I would want my mother treated’.

‘Oh, you’re such a good boy’, she said. When we got in the cab, she gave me an address and then asked, ‘Could you drive through downtown?’

‘It’s not the shortest way,’ I answered quickly.  ‘Oh, I don’t mind,’ she said. ‘I’m in no hurry. I’m on my way to a hospice’.

I looked in the rear-view mirror. Her eyes were glistening. ‘I don’t have any family left,’ she continued in a soft voice.. ‘The doctor says I don’t have very long.’ I quietly reached over and shut off the meter. ‘What route would you like me to take?’ I asked.

For the next two hours, we drove through the city. She showed me the building where she had once worked as an elevator operator.  We drove through the neighborhood where she and her husband had lived when they were newlyweds She had me pull up in front of a furniture warehouse that had once been a ballroom where she had gone dancing as a girl.

Sometimes she’d ask me to slow in front of a particular building or corner and would sit staring into the darkness, saying nothing.  As the first hint of sun was creasing the horizon, she suddenly said, ‘I’m tired. Let’s go now’.

We drove in silence to the address she had given me. It was a low building, like a small convalescent home, with a driveway that passed under a portico.  Two orderlies came out to the cab as soon as we pulled up. They were solicitous and intent, watching her every move. They must have been expecting her.

I opened the trunk and took the small suitcase to the door. The woman was already seated in a wheelchair.  ‘How much do I owe you?’ she asked, reaching into her purse.  ‘Nothing,’ I said.

‘You have to make a living,’ she answered.  ‘There are other passengers,’ I responded.

Almost without thinking, I bent and gave her a hug. She held onto me tightly.  ‘You gave an old woman a little moment of joy,’ she said. ‘Thank you.’  I squeezed her hand, and then walked into the dim morning light… Behind me, a door shut. It was the sound of the closing of a life.

I didn’t pick up any more passengers that shift. I drove aimlessly lost in thought. For the rest o f that day, I could hardly talk. What if that woman had gotten an angry driver, or one who was impatient to end his shift? What if I had refused to take the run, or had honked once, then driven away?

On a quick review, I don’t think that I have done anything more important in my life.

We’re conditioned to think that our lives revolve around great moments..

But great moments often catch us unaware-beautifully wrapped in what others may consider a small one.

— — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — —

Reading again about the kindness in the story I am grateful to be reminded that people and love is all that really matters.

I’ve learned that people will forget what you said,
people will forget what you did,
but people will never forget how you made them feel.
Maya Angelou

Content and Worth of My Thoughts

/ James Browning

Having had a series of little things happen all in one day I found the peace of mind from a wonderful week’s vacation knocked slightly off-balance this past weekend. I lost my car keys and never found them, a candle melted on a pillow and a speaker, a folding closet door broke off its hinges, an electronic photo frame a deceased friend gave me stopped working and three other similar annoyances came at me inside six hours.  But I am OK! I used number one and number two below of my ‘twelve guidelines for peace of mind’.  Almost always when I find myself agitated, uneasy, worried or irritated it is because I am violating one of my own guidelines.

1.  The only control possible is control over myself.  I can’t change what happens to me, but I can exercise some power over my feelings about any occurrence.  Plus, only when I am in self-control can I learn any lesson that might be shown to me.

2.  Accept what is.  Every day I will face inconveniences, annoyances, accidents, aches and pains that are completely beyond my control. The power of peace comes from my enduring them cheerfully.  When I do sometimes a disadvantage becomes an advantage.

3.  Give up the need to be recognized or noticed.  Praise is only momentary.  Nurturing my sense of worth is far more important than the praise of another.  All I need to do is believe in myself, do my best to live ethically and sincerely and let go of perfection.

4. Keep the green monster of jealousy out of my life.  Being jealous blocks my peace and ties me up with animosity, longing and fear while showing only insecurity.  Jealousy or envy always brings restlessness and is a quick and easy way to show just how stupid I can be.

5. Stay out of other people’s business.  I need to mind my own business no matter how good my intentions are.  Because I think my way is the best does not mean it is for someone else!  I must let others have their “own stuff” without interfering.

6. Forgiveness is a gift I give myself.  Nurturing ill feelings is like taking poison and expecting someone else to get sick.  Resentments and grievances fester to hurt only the one who bears them:  ME!  Forget, forgive, and move on.

7. Limit intake of information.  After a point “the news” is simply mental noise. My rule of thumb is consume no more newscasts, data and information than I need. Over indulging makes peace elusive as my mind becomes like an overloaded ship that’s difficult to sail and keep on course.

8. Listen to my intuition and my heart. My heart accurately guides me toward what is right.  When I pay attention to my intuition, deepest values and principles I find them to be nearly always a more accurate navigation system than my thoughts.

9. Eliminate unessential stuff.  This is a work in progress, but I FINALLY get “less is more”.  It is easier to have a peaceful mind with less to worry about. Eliminating the non-essential allows more focus better on the essential.

10. Think about self less.  In the past the majority of time was spent thinking about my needs and problems.  The lesson learned has been that purely self-centered thoughts rarely bring peace. More than ever I try to cultivate thoughts of what I can do for others and then do them.

11. Slow down.  My life is far too much of a rush, but I realize the detriment of it.  Another work in progress.  To make the best decisions I need to slow down and step away from distractions.  Only then can my heart and intuition best guide me.

12. Less procrastination. Failing the first time does not really matter.  Mistakes usually can be rectified.  Too much time previously was wasted with “should I or shouldn’t I?” Months and even years were lost in my futile mental debating. The key is to get off my buff just do it.

My gratitude this morning?  To be past the nagging happenings of Saturday!  The quality of my life begins with the content and worth of my thoughts.

Do not confuse peace of mind with spaced-out insensitivity.
A truly peaceful mind is very sensitive, very aware.
Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama

Frequently What Passes As Common Fact

/ James Browning

On occasion I find myself daydreaming about living in a different time; a simpler time as I perceive it to be. It is then my romanticized thoughts often drift to the mental imagery I have of the Victorian era of 120-150 years ago.

Many of my favorite poets and writers lived then.  To a large degree it is through their work my thoughts about that ‘old time’ have been created.  However, I often forget those authors were among the priviledged, if not wealthy.  Their time of the “Victorians” was a grand one of change and invention such as the telephone, radio, toilet, camera, train, vacuum cleaner and sewing machine (but only the very rich could afford them).

There were some curious and odd beliefs then. For example, If a single Victorian man called another single woman by her first name, it implied engagement. When a woman entered a room, it was considered rude for a man to offer his seat to her because the cushion might still be warm. For a lady to show her ankles was considered very risqué!

People thought food digested better in the dark, so a dining room located in the basement was considered the best spot in which to eat during Victorian years. A glance by a visitor into a bedroom was considered improper, so bedrooms were usually located on the second floor. Toilets were always stealthily hidden behind walls and/or curtains and it was considered grossly impolite to ask to use the bathroom when visiting another’s home.

And another little oddity: The Victorians began keeping Hedgehogs in their basements in an effort to control insects. The little things curled up and slept during the daytime, but roamed around dark kitchens at night eating cockroaches and other insects.

To shake me fully out of a fantasy world there are the Victorian health concerns such as Tuberculosis, called “consumption”; the main killer of the time along with rampant pneumonia, influenza and diarrhea. To make matters worse the poor or sick were often sent to harsh institutions called a poorhouse or workhouse.

And to make sure I have returned to reality, the following are all true facts about life in the United States in the early 1900’s just after the Victorian Period:
– The average life expectancy was 47 years.
– 14 percent of the homes had a bathtub.
– 8 percent of the homes had a telephone. 3 minute call from Denver to NYC cost $11.
– 8,000 cars and 144 miles of paved roads. Max speed limit in most cities was 10 mph.
– Average wage was 22 cents per hour. Average worker $200-$400 per year.
– 95 percent of all births took place at home. 90% doctors had no college education
– Sugar cost 4 cents a pound, eggs 14 cents a dozen and coffee was 15 cents a pound.
– Most women washed their hair once a month with borax or egg yolks for shampoo.
– 2 of every 10 adults couldn’t read or write. Only 6 percent graduated high school.
– Marijuana, heroin, and morphine were all available over the counter at the local drugstore including Bayer’s heroin, Metcalf coca wine, opium for asthma, cocaine tablets and drops.

All of a sudden everyday simple things mean a lot more. Just a few minutes ago I made a roundtrip to the kitchen where I flipped on the lights to get another cup of coffee from my automatic coffee maker, then moved the hallway furnace thermostat up a couple of degrees and stopped for a bathroom pit stop on my way back to my office. Very quickly Victorian life seems very challenging and difficult as compared to now. Already being eleven years past the average life expectancy of 100 years it is impossible not to stumble across gratitude for the time my life is being lived.

The good old days are never as good as they are reminisced to be…NOT EVER!  Time has a way of hiding away the jagged and sharp edges while keeping mostly the smooth and inviting parts.  Frequently what passes as common fact is actually only myth. Instead of wishing for what is long past, I choose instead to be grateful for the time of my life. One day, many will look back and wish they could have lived in my here and now.

In daily life we must see that it is not happiness that makes us grateful,
but gratefulness that makes us happy.
Brother David Steindl-Rast

Right Outside Your Door

/ James Browning / 3 Comments

Life unfolds in the present. But so often, we let the present slip away, allowing time to rush past unobserved and unseized, and squandering the precious seconds of our lives as we worry about the future and ruminate about what’s past. “We’re living in a world that contributes in a major way to mental fragmentation, disintegration, distraction, decoherence,” says Buddhist scholar B. Alan Wallace. We’re always doing something, and we allow little time to practice stillness and calm.

When we’re at work, we fantasize about being on vacation; on vacation, we worry about the work piling up on our desks. We dwell on intrusive memories of the past or fret about what may or may not happen in the future. We don’t appreciate the living present because our “monkey minds,” as Buddhists call them, vault from thought to thought like monkeys swinging from tree to tree.

Most of us don’t undertake our thoughts in awareness. Rather, our thoughts control us. “Ordinary thoughts course through our mind like a deafening waterfall,” writes Jon Kabat-Zinn, the biomedical scientist who introduced meditation into mainstream medicine. In order to feel more in control of our minds and our lives, to find the sense of balance that eludes us, we need to step out of this current, to pause, and, as Kabat-Zinn puts it, to “rest in stillness—to stop doing and focus on just being.”

We need to live more in the moment. Living in the moment—also called mindfulness—is a state of active, open, intentional attention on the present. When you become mindful, you realize that you are not your thoughts; you become an observer of your thoughts from moment to moment without judging them. Mindfulness involves being with your thoughts as they are, neither grasping at them nor pushing them away. Instead of letting your life go by without living it, you awaken to experience.   From a “Psychology Today” article By Jay Dixit November 01, 2008 link

“True Joy” by M. Jolynn Rawson-Hunt
I’ll be happy once I’ve done this certain thing.
We all say this often not realizing what it brings.
We look only to the future for our happiness.
Letting life slip through our fingers in its fullness.
Will we really feel complete when the task is done,
or look back and see how we missed so much fun?
Self consumed so we can’t see anything else,
hurting those we love as well as ourselves.
So many things around us to be grateful for,
when seeking for an answer willingly open the door.
So often, others see what’s in front of our face,
but we’re too blind to look as we’re snared in the race.
What is this life supposed to be about?
Is it money, fortune, fame, or a big house?
When speaking to a man on his dying bed,
none of these answers are what he said.
Family, love, laughter are what we should seek.
These are the precious things right outside your door.

Trying to be fully present in the “now” is a battle regularly fought and I am grateful for any reminder that brings me more fully to “this moment”.  Frequently I drift into the “stinkin’ thinkin'” about the past or present, but find more quickly than ever I can snap back into the now.  All I have to do is be mindful of what I am doing and reset myself.  I am grateful for the path I have walked and am still on, that moves me ever so slowly to being more and more fully present in the “now”.

Waste not fresh tears over old grief’s.
Euripides

To Go Somewhere Without Moving

/ James Browning

Pressed for time with the hour or so unavailable I usually spend on “Good Morning Gratitude” included here today are two favorite love letters. One by a man who was President written to a woman almost as well-known (President Ronald Reagan to Nancy Reagan); another by a woman known only by a single name (Maribella) to someone completely unknown. Open your heart and feel the love.

Letter #1

Dear First Lady,

I know tradition has it that on this morning I place cards Happy Anniversary cards on your breakfast tray. But things are somewhat mixed up. I substituted a gift & delivered it a few weeks ago.

Still this is the day; the day that marks 31 years of such happiness as comes to few men. I told you once that it was like an adolescent’s dream of what marriage should be like. That hasn’t changed.

You know I love the ranch but these last two days made it plain I only love it when you are there. Come to think of it that’s true of every place & every time. When you aren’t there I’m no place, just lost in time & space.

I more than love you; I’m not whole without you. You are life itself to me. When you are gone I’m waiting for you to return so I can start living again.

Happy Anniversary & thank you for 31 wonderful years. I love you.

Your Grateful Husband

Letter #2

Darling,

We have gone through many hard times together. We have been through the difficulties of our relationship and we even came to a point of almost losing each other because we got tired of each other’s weaknesses and shortcomings.

I thank God; we were able to make things right between the two of us. We learned how to deal our differences in a proper way. We learned to listen to each other and we became sensitive to each other’s needs.

Now look at the two of us, we are still here and getting stronger as time goes by. We are enjoying each other’s company and making each day special by showing our love and care in a very special way.

Sometimes, when I come to think of what we have been through before and how we have dealt our problems. I cannot help myself but to laugh at it because we were like children fighting over petty things and made it such a very big deal until it blown out of proportion.

However, I am very thankful ’cause we have grown so much. We have become more mature in handling our faults and our shortcomings. It would have been my greatest mistake if I did let you go and let go of our love.

I promise to continue to love you more each day.

Maribella

I am grateful for a mind that can conceive words together to express loving sentiment and the ability to write them down. I am thankful for the love letters of others who touch my heart, inspire my mind and remind me of the multifaceted angles of loving another.

To send a letter is a good way to go somewhere
without moving anything but your heart.
Phyllis Theroux

Beauty Seen Is Never Lost

/ James Browning

Last year near sundown the day after Christmas I witnessed an incredible sunset. This morning something I wrote about that stunning spectacle just hours after witnessing it was discovered.  Through one good photograph taken with my phone while driving and the four paragraphs below, he beautiful memory is fully awake within this morning. 

It is late afternoon and near the end of a 750 miles road trip.  My friend and I are heading to visit my son in Boulder and are about 50 miles outside Denver, Colorado.  The mountains are due west directly in front of us.
 
Near the horizon in front and on both sides of my car, a spectacular display of wind shaped clouds is underway.  Strips of shredded yellow torn from clouds fill the sky almost to the horizon.  Above, the depth of the reds is so striking it appears surreal. The light of the ending day strongly accents the long furrows in the clouds enriching the reds and yellows as the clouds evolve and change in the wind. 
 
The wind is strong and the clouds are changing quickly.  To the south, long thin strips of red have been blown and tangled together.  A large oblong cloud without noticeable texture lies just above.  To the north there is less light from the fading sun and darkness is reaching there first. 
 
Within only a few minutes the sun has become a large half-circle directly in front view.  The big red ball is fast disappearing; turning the sky a deeper and deeper burgundy as the sun’s departure nears completion.

Sunsets happen every day and probably because they are so common people hardly notice the beauty of them most of the time.  On-line I found a short piece written by Kimbaline Navas of Ft.Collins, Colorado. The feeling she writes about of a sundown over water describes near perfectly how the memory of my late December sunset touches me. 

I close my eyes and I can vision my sunset laid across the water with clouds gently placed on top. 

The yellow is so bright that it consumes my thoughts I fall deeper into the colors of the sun so that I could touch the orange glow; what a soft feeling; my sunset.

My sunset takes me to another place and time where there will be no problem too tall to overcome. This vision is imbedded in my mind; it is like a river running free; a clear thought on a sunny day and it ends with my sunset and me.

My sunset frees my thoughts from confusion; it leads me to believe that I am on top of the world; setting me free to scourer over the waters of my mind.

My sunset places me in a part of heaven where the day comes to an end with the beauty of my sunset.

From John Greenleaf Whittier’s 1876 poem “Sunset On The Bearcamp”:
…beauty seen is never lost,
God’s colors all are fast;
The glory of this sunset heaven
Into my soul has passed,
A sense of gladness unconfined
To mortal date or clime;
As the soul liveth, it shall live
Beyond the years of time.

…I shall see a summer sun
Still setting broad and low;
The mountain slopes shall blush and bloom,
The golden water flow.
A lover’s claim is mine on all
I see to have and hold,–
The rose-light of perpetual hills,
And sunsets never cold!

Whittier expresses a gratitude that I find to be a near match for the thankfulness felt for the sunsets I remember, especially my cherished Colorado sundown of a few months ago. 

Everybody needs beauty as well as bread,
Places to play in and pray in,
Where nature may heal
And give strength to body and soul.
John Muir