What I Learned From My Friend Susan

Today Susan gave me a push.  I needed one.  I made a lot of creative glass tableware by gluing beautiful pieces of glass together to make candy dishes, vases, chip and dip servers, candlesticks, etc.  I thought they were great.  “One of these days I’ll find somewhere to sell them,” I said. 

After a few “No, thank yous,” I shoved my artsy glass dream onto the back burner and left it there. 

Then Susan came along. Now Susan is a laid back California girl, but she urged me to keep looking for a venue. She took me to Tunkhannock, boldly carried the tub full of glass art into the vender and expected me to start talking. 

I had convinced myself that nobody wanted what I offered but the vender thought I made art. When the vender suggested a way to display it, Susan and I ran around town and got some silk flowers and starlight peppermints for vases and candy dishes.  

I let myself get a little creative in the display. I signed a contract, and my things looked really nice adored with candlesticks and peppermints and flowers. 

If it wasn’t for Susan all my art would still be packed away in the basement. She calmly believed I made art. I had no confidence until she lent me some.  Sometimes, I wish I was still twelve. I knew then that I was unique, creative, beautiful. I didn’t have to have anybody tell me.  

But I’m sure glad Susan told me today.  I never could have done it without her steady help. I really do need my friends.  Thanks to all of you for all the times you believe in me so I can too.

PS Shop at FRIENDS  on Tioga Street (main street) Tunkhannock. Great name, huh? And great art!

What I Learned From A Paperback

 

Once I had a wonderful hard-backed study Bible. Roger bought it for me when I talked to my ladies group in my church about the Bible. It had wonderful scholarly   features like cross references so you could look up related verses, and footnotes of what the scholars thought the passages meant.  You could really appear smart quoting from this Bible.  

Then one day when I was talking to the ladies I accidently pushed the hard- backed Bible off the stand where I had opened it to read from it.  I was probably gesturing wildly like I do when I get really going with something.  

I broke the poor Bible’s back! Now about a third of the Bible, falls out when I open it.  Other parts of the Book are barely hanging in there. All the references from the back have to be put back in the book before it can use them. 

Then I had a paperback Bible. It has some extra features, but nothing like the fancy Bible.  My more humble Bible, the paperback one, is yellow and dog-eared and goes in and out of my purse and my back pack and my car. It has been to more than a few camping events, and has been dropped, accidently pushed off a desk, more than once.  

Yet the paperback Bible, because it is less rigid, is still going strong. It is a book I can pick up and read without stopping to piece it back together. 

The other Bible has to be held together by me before it offers me anything. 

I think I’d like to be the yellow paperback Bible. I’d like to be still offering words of hope and encouragement in my plain wrapper. I want to be still trudging along until I’m ashes to ashes. I think there might be something to adapting yourself to situations. There might be something in being flexible and not so rigid. Both books have the same good news. Yet one of them is more useful day in and day out.  

I guess I aspire to be a paperback book.  Don’t you?

What I Learned From National Geographic

Someday I’m going to burn my bra. Not because I’m  a belated feminist. The only statement I want to make is, “BRA I HATE YOU!”

I have hated every bra I ever owned.  They cost too much. They never really do “lift and separate” like they claim. Or if they do lift and separate, they seem more like a straight jacket or some torture device, instead of something to make me more feminine.  As if something made of spandex and nylon could make me more me.   

Then , of course, if the cup fits, the straps fall down. If the straps fit, the elastic part around you cuts you in two.  Or makes ridges in your shoulders. And if you find one that fits in all areas, the company stops making it by the time you need a new one.  They show too much or look like those high way cones under your T-shirt. Or you wobble like jello as you walk down the street.

It’s not gauche anymore for your straps to show. But I’ll never get used to it. Even if I spent a small fortune for  pretty colored bras so my straps could show with flair .

I always kind of admired the cultures where women only had to wear skirts. Where they weren’t  jabbed by under wires, or chaffed by elastic, or had to keep shoving straps back under their shirts.  Where they weren’t held hostage by Victoria’s Secret or Playtex. Where they didn’t hang on Oprah’s every word about  fit and then feel incomplete if they didn’t make a pilgrimage to the right boutique to pay a million dollars for THE bra.

I always secretly thought it was nice that the “girls” could swing in the wind in those National Geographic pictures. Should would feel better. Don’t you think? 

Even me, nonconformist that I am, will not get rid of my bras anytime soon. I have dispensed with stockings and heels for the sake of comfort. But I probably will always wear a bra. 

But I just had to rant a little. Get it off my chest, you know?

So  

What I Learned From Yolanda Powell

  


I just talked to a group of ladies about something my cousin Sue Gillespie labeled RADICAL HOSPITALITY.  You see, I attended this great class at the Greater Philadelphia Christian Writer's Conference last week. Yolanda Powell explained some basics of public speaking.

She is one amazing teacher, sensitive to her class and to God. She helped us pull topics out of our hearts, our passion. Anybody who ever stands up in front of a group should listen to what she has to say.  (Find her at www.yolandapowell.com.)

So, in class we had to tell the group what we could offer them as if we were introducing a longer speech.  I introduced myself and said, "I practice radical hospitality."

I picked that topic because it’s easy and I had to say something, but the women leaned forward listening.
I said, "I can teach you how to be relaxed when you have people over or dinner."
They nodded. I could feel them listening.  
But that was all I had. Because it was only an introduction.
But here is what I would/ will develop:

Keep the Important important.  You are having company to get to know them. Don't let silly things like dishes and tablecloths and even food interfere with getting to know the other person. 

·         Keep it simple. 

·         Practice a couple meals until you can cook them in your sleep. 

·         Get the table set the day before. 

·         Enlist your husband's help. (Roger is good at refilling drinks, and serving bowls)

·         Forget about your house after they walk in the door. (At my house a young woman just starting out cleans for me. Makes it easy and I am helping her get on her feet.)  

·         If they say what can I bring? You say salad. Looks great on the table and they can have the fuss not you.  You can serve salad then dinner—more elegant

It is precious to get to know somebody else. You are loving them. And they are loving you back. Come on over for dinner. And bring the salad.

What I Learned From: A Writers Conference, A Wedding, and a New Baby

 Townes was born last night at about 1:30 in the morning. He is the second grandbaby of my extra kids. He weighed eight pounds, From his picture I'm sure he's  beautiful!!! I get to meet him this afternoon. I can hardly wait.

On Saturday Josh married my niece Erin. The sun didn't set in DuBois PA, that night because Erin glowed so brightly.

On the way home from the weekend in DuBois, we stopped at an antique shop. We talked  philosophy with the antique dealer. He said, "Hope is the rarest of diamonds."  He talked about how hopeless people were and how it was so hard to maintain hope.

I say, go to a wedding like Erin's and you will see hope. She is not naive. She knows how hard it can be to maintain a marriage, yet she and Josh jumped in with both feet, as my mother would say.

Go look at Townes little face on his mother's shoulder. Bobby and Shayna know something about the world, yet they welcomed Townes into it. 

Hope might be rare. It might just be an ember guttering out until we go to a wedding or see a newborn. They fame the flames and our hope lives again.

Or go to a writers conference. People there come back year after year, take rejection after rejection, yet do not give up on what it is they are called by God to write.

Hope is hard to kill and easy to see.  Just as Mrs. Erin Fredrick or Shayna and Bobby. Only Shayna and Bobby won't answer you. They are too busy looking at baby Townes.