#70Days - personal musings

26/70

I’m taking a break today from reading professionally.  Today I get to play with the grandsons for a bit.  The older one will be five soon, and the younger is about 2 ½.  We will imagine super heroes today, play Legos, eat yummy snacks, and maybe swim in the pool!  These boys bring so much joy!

While I’m taking this break, I thought I might share a bit of my personal writing.  Last week we spent a week by the sea.  The beach we visited did not have shells.  I missed them!  I often have shells lying around - visual reminders of the calm I find by the sea.  I love Anne Morrow Lindbergh’s musings … Gift from the Sea …

But his shell — it is simple; it is bare, it is beautiful. Small, only the size of my thumb, its architecture is perfect, down to the finest detail. Its shape, swelling like a pear in the center, winds in a gentle spiral to the pointed apex. Its color, dull gold, is whitened by a wash of salt from the sea. Each whorl, each faint knob, each criss-cross vein in its egg-shell texture, is as clearly defined as on the day of creation. My eye follows with delight the outer circumference of that diminutive winding staircase up which this tenant used to travel.

My shell is not like this, I think. How untidy it has become! Blurred with moss, knobby with barnacles, its shape is hardly recognizable any more. Surely, it had a shape once. It has a shape still in my mind. What is the shape of my life? ~ Anne Morrow Lindbergh

A few years ago I wrote a few poems.  They are simple.  This is one of my favorites - I share it with you.

Musings by the Seaside 1

In the beginning, the alpha and omega

His paintbrush so vivid

               Deep, rich hues

               Blues, greens, whites,

               Endless, transparent, sparkling

The work of his hands

              Sculpting, rippling, swirling

              Molding, shaping

              Wings, fins, joints

              Scales, feather, shells

Diverse yet interrelated, interdependent

Seemingly mindless

And yet …

              What knowledge of the divine

              Permeates their existence

              Do they hear the still small voice

              Do their hearts leap within them in his presence

Can it be unknowingly they pay homage

To the creator by the sea

~original, 2008