A Summer's evening is for this...

I know the idiot's warehouse is always full
I know each of us
could run back and forth all day long
and show everyone our vast collection
though tonight...retire from the madness for an hour.
... Gather with some friends or sit alone
and sing beautiful songs to God.-Hafiz

Uncle Tony

My Uncle Tony, Lord rest him, has gone to God. 

He was a gem of a man - the patriarch of the family (big brother to a dozen siblings, including my mom!) when his own father died. A man of good humor, constancy and a great appreciation for life! He is threaded through my childhood memories.
He taught me to value curiosity:
He worked in the steel mills and his garage/workshop was scattered with magnets - magic for any child.  We could search out magnetic bits in the dirt like treasure hunters!  He knew how to play, explore, wonder.  Introducing us to magnets was to make of us appreciative explorers of the mysteries before us.

He taught me how to pluck a chicken:
A sight and experience I recall, but not pleasantly, so I will spare you the details...
He taught me to while away an afternoon in a backyard hammock:
I must have complained of 'nothing to do' because he led me to the backyard with great sobriety, to a hammock on a stand in the shade, and he lay down with me beside him.  Will you look at those branches.  We chatted awhile, and he told me this was a good thing to do when I didn't know what to do, just to lie here and look, to think about anything or nothing at all.  Then he went back into the house.  But he took the time to teach me a valuable lesson firsthand.  And he got me out of his hair!
He taught me to hang out in the kitchen for the latest scoop:
He was always there.  Sitting at the kitchen table, or standing with a dishtowel in hand.  He'd quietly laugh at the things he heard, a good listener.  Unobtrusive, he got all the juicy details.  He'd watch me, watching him, chin on the table, let me stay until the conversation took some turn and he'd shoosh me out.  I always wondered what it was the grownups talked about that I couldn't hear.  But it didn't bother me.  I just headed out to the hammock...

Without Intention

I wake in the night.  Cricket song fills the air, so expansive I can barely hear the hum of the fan at the foot of the bed as I lay beneath the thin summer sheet.  I listen awhile and then realize I am thanking God for such a moment, and all the graces this has stirred within me.  Thus occupied, thoughts flow easily in gratitude until I am overcome.  And then I hear it...silence.  The crickets have quit their song.  I hear the hum of the fan at the foot of the bed as I lay beneath the thin summer sheet.  I hear my husbands steady breathing.  I roll over, settle in, and sleep.

Helen Masacz - Empty Bed / How Can You Sleep At Night. Oil on Board

Sunday's Gospel...

This image of Martha and Mary caught my eye...do we listen to Jesus from 'a safe distance', even while in the same house, doing what is necessary in our own minds, or will we allow ourselves to be drawn intimately closer...

Walking

The thin veil, communion of saints "Walking, I am listening to a deeper way. Suddenly all my ancestors are behind me. 'Be still,' they say. 'Watch and listen. You are the result of the love of thousands.' "  ThankFULL for all the love that I have known...for all the love that I have received unawares...

In the world to come I shall not be asked,

"Why were you not Moses?" 

I shall be asked, "Why were you not Zusya?"

-Rabbi Zusya

A girl and her papa