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Saturday, June 12, 2021
Friday, May 21, 2021
Pre-Pandemic Plot Twists
Before the pandemic I did some crazy mirror shopping (no, my legs are not shaped like that......much) and took a lot of pictures of myself taking pictures of myself. All true bloggers know this affliction. I wish I had paid more attention to what the outdoor crystal ball was trying to tell me. It was just before I landed in my own personal mini-pandemic-before-the-pandemic (vile, it was, so vile) and then the whole planet got sick. You've heard of mini strokes? I had a mini-pandemic-before-the-pandemic. Global virus? Pffffft! Please. I dealt with a whole slew of severely malfunctioning people before the first cough coughed. I called it The Plague of Severely Malfunctioning People. It's the underlying cause for all the rest of the plagues in the Holy Bible and on planet Earth as we speak. People!
Did I mention people? (not any of you, mind you) Just people. It gave me PPSS (Pre-Pandemic-Stress-Syndrome) and THEN I came down with PPSD (Post-Pandemic-Stress-Disorder) for which there is no cure! Why? Because people.
I'm so tired of people. Aren't you tired of people?
Still...... I could have used a warning: "Hey Lady! Your reality is about to be distorted!"
And it was.
In so many ways. You can relate, yes?But adversity makes for good plot-building and great midnight reading. My writing is beginning to gush out of me like a well in the middle of the Sahara AND in the middle of the night. A whole new chapter (maybe a whole new series!) has been practically writing itself in Bloggingham Tales.
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| Coming to a bookstore near you... |
If you need me, I'll just be here untwisting my legs (no, I haven't had the Covid vaccination yet....that's next week....my legs are fine!...sort of...stop looking, will ya?) If all goes well at the neurologist - who just wants to look at my pencil brain for a minute or two and ask me a few nosy nerdy questions like 'what day is it' and why are you up at 2am writing a blog post? and tap on my temple to see if anybody's home - we'll get that nasty little jab and be done with it. I know. I know... Some of you are hoping it will change my personality back to whatever-NORMAL-is. Pfffftttt!!! A wise man once said to me, "Who wants normal?" I bought chicken soup and a new box of Tylenol today just for the lobotomy-inducing-vaccine occasion. You're all invited to the after party. Fun times, no?
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| Call for a good whine |
I'd better write all this turmoil down. Pre and post.
She's going to want to know why my legs are twisted.
It's a long story.
Sunday, May 9, 2021
It's Been a Minute
Hello again from the blog that took a pause.
Writing has been personal for me since the pandemic began last year. It's been a bit like the ancient days of unlocking the mystical teenage diary and scribbling in screams instead of peace, love, and blue jeans.
Words come in spurts and fits. No cohesion or unity.
And then I lock it back down again with my little gold key.
But perhaps that is perfection in a pandemic world.
The ride has been jolting, hasn't it? Instead of a roller-coaster it's been more like sudden stops and emergency braking for deaths and miracles all in the span of a day - except the day never ends.
Emotional whiplash. Physical inertia.
Soul-searching salvation.
Yes, that too.
I won't say that I now see that light at the end of the tunnel - it's such a tired phrase.
The Light has always been there. We tend to forget that the light made its way through the darkness to the end before we even entered the tunnel. We're not supposed to reach for and steal its strength: we're supposed to find our own along the way. I see remaining slivers of illumination cascading from crevices in the tunnel wall. That is what I reach for. They stop me in my tracks - reminding me that the end game is never the peace we seek at the conclusion of our journey. It's all the places and spaces we've seen on the road that matter as much.
It's how much light of our own we left in the tunnel.
How much peace we leave for others determines how much peace we find.
That's why the Light at the end is so brilliant.
I hope you and your loved ones are doing well.
Let me hear from you. I want to know how you're doing.
Much love from Bloggingham
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Monday, January 18, 2021
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. ~ A Legacy of Wisdom
Today we celebrate the incredible life and legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Most of us think of him as a warrior for social justice. And he was. But roots in his character and associations suggest that at the heart of all he was, he was first and foremost - a peacemaker.
In 1964 Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. received the Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts to end racial discrimination and segregation through the avenues of civil disobedience and other non-violent means. He was also awarded the Catholic Pacem in Terris Award (Peace on Earth). It is awarded "to honor a person for their achievements in peace and justice, not only in their country but in the world."
Four years after his work for social justice began in the streets of Montgomery, forcing social issues to the forefront and into the American and international psyche, he began to focus his energies on stopping the Vietnam War and ending poverty. He started a process of shifting, re-sifting, toppling norms and ideologies long held by establishments at odds with anything resembling human dignity and justice. These monumental shifts in the soul of our nation and the world are largely attributed to his courage and his voice.
Oh, but there was more to the man.
I was reminded today that he was inspired by the writings and teachings of another such activist.
When Dr. King visited India in 1959, he came away with a profound respect and understanding of the non-violent teachings of Mahatma Gandhi.
He later reflected, "Since being in India, I am more convinced than ever before that the method of nonviolent resistance is the most potent weapon available to oppressed people in their struggle for justice and human dignity. In a real sense, Mahatma Gandhi embodied in his life certain universal principles that are inherent in the moral structure of the universe, and these principles are as inescapable as the law of gravitation."
He knew how to connect spiritual laws with scientific laws, science with morality, spoken words with unspoken fire, and generations of spiritual evolution into threads of commonalities within all cultures and religions while steadfastly holding to his own. Intrinsic ideas and truths became actions and deeds.
It is always the intrinsic that matters the most.
What I admire and appreciate about Martin Luther King, more than the amazing dream speech, more than his courage, more than his learned theological spirit, and even more than his political and social causes of injustice and equality, was his ability to intellectually intertwine all of those attributes and aspirations into powerful common sense purpose. The sum of all those parts made his greatness.
Sometimes we focus on a few shining moments of publicity and grandeur so long that we forget what made him great in the first place. He knew who he was. He stayed in his lane. That was his true genius.
Dr. King surrounded himself with learned men, intimate and scholarly mentors, often controversial, books and a love of words, prayers, and a burning desire to pour out what was inside of him in letters and essays to the rest of us, even from a Birmingham Jail.
Because he honored the wisdom of others, to his credit, we not only find a profoundly cerebral giant among men, we find humility.
We mostly remember a speech, a bullet, a march, a statue, a remarkable iconic individual - and all those things are to be remembered, mourned, and revered about the man - but what lay underneath is more important to me, because without that brilliant, questioning, analytical ability to connect the dots and eloquently espouse them into one cohesive truth the whole world could understand, there wouldn't have been a march, a speech, or a movement.
The rest of his legacy would have been impossible to achieve and he would have become not a shining human light upon a hill of ugly darkness or a seeker of truth in Gandhi's shadow, but just another speech maker, noise maker, rabble-rouser and activist marching down roads at the whim of every wind with no direction and no clear path. No leader can lead walking blindly around corners of pivotal change and unrest, and take others with him, unless he already knows what lies ahead.So today I celebrate Martin the man. The thinker. The preacher. The spirit. The leader.
And a man who understood who he was, where he'd been and where he was going.
This is one of my favorite quotes by Dr. King:
How I long for a time when the leaders we see before us in the world today, humble themselves before voices of wisdom gone by.
May we find ourselves worthy of his fine example.
Edited and reprinted from a previous version of Mimi Writes
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Monday, December 21, 2020
COVID Christmas? I Don't Think So.
Dear Peace Bloggers,
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| Miss Bee of The High Seas |
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| Sanni in Germany |
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| Skeezix the Cat ~ RIP ~ He still makes me smile. |
Templates on this page and at blog4peace.com
#peaceglobes #blog4peace #peaceonearth #christmas2020 #CrazyChristmas #CovidChristmas2020
Free template to us
Dona nobis pacem ~ Grant us peace
Follow Me 
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Sunday, November 29, 2020
I Am Sure, Quite Sure, That Today is NOT My Birthday
In the year 2020 on the 29th day of November, ye olde calendar ("olde" being the operative word) has declared that the Queen of Bloggingham is having a royal birthday. As a wise man once said to me upon the eve of my 50th some light years ago, "Mimi, it's just a number." I'm trying to remember those words today. Since it is the year of horrors and crisis, I think I should be grateful that I'm able to celebrate a birthday at ALL. And coincidentally, that same man is here today to help me get through another ...umm....number. Our relationship/friendship/relationship/friendship etc etc etc has been a revolving door over the years, but always open and changing as we travel in and out of life seasons. And this is one heck of a season! Let's face it, alone is never good during a birthday OR a pandemic.
So, last night, just when I thought my birthday was going to be a flop and I would end up researching Make-Your-Own-Birthday-Cake videos...DING DING!! the doorbell rings and in walk two very live lobster fellas not even realizing they're about to meet their lobster-Maker in the form of a big shiny pot of boiling water. " Surprise! We're having lobster for dinner!" said the Lobster Killer.
"You remembered!" said the Pencil Skirt with a flash of memory in her head.
Just like the first date we ever had back at the dawn of blog-civilization, I ran screaming from the boiling pot of squirming life forms as he expertly tossed them in and made a baked potato. He told me not to look and to stop taking morbid pictures. Some things never change.
And just for good measure and sweetness, he handed me these...
Anyone who knows ANYthing about the Queen of Bloggingham knows she's addicted to Cheetos.
Major points, my friend, major points.
It was a very happy birthday indeed.
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Tuesday, November 3, 2020
Dona Nobis Pacem ~ The Fedora in the Window
Our theme this year is Peace in the Time of Quarantine. Your words are powerful and never more important than they are in this global moment. Please sign the Mr. Linky at the end of this post so that others may visit you and see the beautiful peace globes. Remember to tag me on Facebook or wherever you are on social media. Thank you for being part of this community of peace bloggers. May we lift and encourage in our quest for peace in the world - even in the middle of a pandemic.
Our motto has always been: If words are powerful...then this matters.
"Why are you running? Why is everyone in such a hurry? And whyyyy are you wearing masks?" I asked. Strange whispers and strange looks.
facing transfusions, IVs and cranky people who were tired of cleaning the dust off the dust off the dust to keep me alive.
It is my greatest weapon.
Dona nobis pacem ~ Grant us peace
The Fedora in the Window
In a small and sterile room that looked out onto a concrete rooftop, my body knew sickness, fever and pain. The year was 1978. I'd been in the hospital a couple of days when I watched a medical team of nurses descend upon my ginger-ale world with the precision of Ninja warriors; stripping bedsheets, unplugging oxygen machines, pulling curtains with lightning speed around the bed of my roommate - an international traveler who'd brought some mysterious illness from a faraway land to MY hospital room. No one could figure out what was wrong with her. Before I knew it, in a whoosh of sterile gowns and nauseating sanitizing sprays from ceiling to floor, her exotic germs were swiftly escorted out - bed and all - to leave me alone in petrified peace. Hmmmphh! I thought. That was a close one. The kind sickly lady from a desert-rich continent was gone and I was left with a group of worried mumbling people still mulling about like a tactical team of strategic warriors.
"It's the fever," I heard them say. "She's talking out of her head."
"Ohhhhh. You must have found out what disease she has...and you don't want me to catch it, right?"
"Actually, we're not protecting you from her. We're protecting her from YOU."
Then the anemic hysteria started
What??!! What is wrong with me??!
"You have no hemoglobin to speak of."
"Seriously? I've lost my hemoglobin?"
Only I could lose a hemoglobin. I've lost nails and cars and husbands and shoes, but never in my experienced age of twenty-one years had I lost a hemoglobin.
Yet, there I was in
I.S.O.L.A.T.I.O.N
with a life-threatening case of viral enteritis
(aka a really bad case of the flu with complications)
For nine days I had no visitors and a lot of green jello. Quarantined with no one to talk to. Shut off from the rest of humanity wondering if I've ever again see the light of day. Oh, the drama! Who can rest with crossbones and skulls on the door? No one to hold my hand. No familiar face. Only masked nurses in sterile gowns right down to their covered shoes and gloves that smelled like inexpensive rubber. Uncertainty. Loneliness.
To know that I was a contagious risk to everyone else and they were a risk to me, made me feel like an outcast. It was the worst kind of alone I'd ever known. Just when I thought it was safe to jump out the window and steal away home, I noticed something moving in the high horizontal window at the top of the hallway door.
It was the hat that gave him away.
He wore it with such precision.
I was familiar with the tip and the swagger, you see....the way it dipped and bobbed in conversation, dancing in a silent movie script outside my door. Why is it, when you're sick, everyone "discusses" you without your permission? It wasn't long before he'd developed a system to get my attention through the high glass. I could turn my head a certain angle and see his worried face staring at me. He wore a gray hat, sterile gloves, and a whitish-gray surgical mask. Standing and standing and standing, loving me with his eyes, only to stand longer. When I fell asleep he was still there when I woke up, winking and waving, darting eyelashes back and forth behind the mask and readjusting the familiar hat to steal a glimpse of the ninety-pound girl he guarded so closely.
"How long has he been there?" I asked.
"Every day this week," said my saviors in white.
"He won't let us in until we tell him how you are."
No one could hold sway over that hat, I thought, you might as well give up the ghost. It was the same hat he wore out and about in the town where we lived. The same hat he removed every day precisely four steps inside the house when he came home for chicken and biscuit gravy lunches.
The same hat he let me wear when I sat on his lap
Oh, it wasn't the wearing of the hat that caused such a stir
It was the removing.
It always began the same way, "Dear Gracious Heavenly Father..." That hat heard more unspoken petitions over the top of it than it had a mind to tell you. But I remember...and to this day I can feel the hush in the room when he said those words. Four steps to the kitchen. Four words to Heaven. It didn't matter what came after, those four words opened portals. Pine-railed altars, kitchen tables, or hospital hallways - it mattered not. His voice was low and reverent, but the presence of God was instantaneous. I knew what wars he waged out in the hallway of freedom. They had no idea who they were dealing with.
Papa could only get as close to me as the hallway,
but that Presence came all the way in.
And that's how I knew that I knew that I knew that I knew
that the only reason he would wear his gentleman's hat inside a building to the quarantine ward
was just so he could remove it
It was his greatest weapon.
And that is why, in this time of corona, when worlds are fragile and time yearns to be redeemed, that we are going to have to call on our better angels to remember us to peace. Until we can hold our loved ones and touch their faces without cloths and barriers, we're going to have to conjure up a memory, an emotion, a touch.
And maybe a hat....
One night not long ago, as I was quietly finishing up a nightly ritual with my grandson (four drops of lavender oil behind both ears) he happily and sleepily whispered,
"Say the words."
"You need more lavender?"
"No. Say the words."
"The words?"
"Yeah. Say the words, Mimi."
I never realized he was listening to the words.
Blessings and prayers for a good night's peaceful sleep deliberately wielded with precision. And he smiled himself to sleep.
Papa taught me well. If you believe that objects are alive with molecular energy,
then toss Papa's hat in the ring.
It was brimming with memory.
The girl eventually healed and found herself walking in a quarantine world some forty-two years later, with all of you. How are we sane in this world of no touch?
I submit that what lies within us is much more tangible than what we can actually see and touch. When I remember the fedora and the four thundering whispered words (Dear Gracious Heavenly Father) I feel my grandfather's touch, swiftly moving through time and space, held in a memory of a room with no view, heard in the footsteps of one-two-three-four and seen in the graceful donning of felt.
Because I walked in that presence under Papa's tweed jacket in the space of our lives, I can still feel safe under the crook of his arm. He only needed four words to reach a place so real its essence travels eons through my memory from quarantine to quarantine. It was the presence, you see, the presence. A place where no separation exists. A place where love can wield peace through barricaded windows.
He taught me how to find it by his example, so that when he couldn't be with me, I could find it myself.
That is how we teach our children to live in a pandemic.
It may be our first, but it won't be their last.
Because I remember so vividly the feel and the faithfulness of felt,
I am not alone. I want my grandson to remember the smell of lavender all his life.
I want him to remember the words.
How do you love people through a pandemic when you can't touch them?
You stand at the door.
Don't worry. Love will walk right in.
Four steps
Four words
Four drops
Feel free to continue to post the peace into the coming week. There's an election I heard of that's grabbed our attention. We will keep sending out that powerful vibe.
Join us for Blog4Peace Nov 4
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