Higher Than You Know!

Sometimes it is just seems hard getting things off the ground

You have all the right tools

All the right motives

All the right plans,

but things just do not seem to fly

You have prayed about it

Dreamed about it

And journaled about it

You have taken all the right seminars, and webinars

and read the right books

You have networked

Reinvented

and branded

But as the days and weeks and months and even years go by

You are still running with that plan tied to a string of hope

waiting for a gust to lift it all above

Stop for one moment- just one

And look back

Look how far you have come while you have been working on getting that idea airborn

The people you have met!

The ideas you have shared!

The hearts you have touched.

Isn't that idea?

Isn't that really what you wanted to do all along?

To be a blessing?

Look at you!

You are flying!And that's poetiquejustis

Dear Teacher.....

Dear Teacher…..

I know you have read a letter like this before, but here I am......

Our grandson is starting first grade in your class.

Do you remember when you started first grade? You had just learned to navigate kindergarten and the playground, and now this!

First Grade is a very big deal, so I thought you might want to know these things about

our grandson

He likes pirates ships, and strawberry milkshakes.

He does not like to see his little sister unhappy

and can make very funny faces to make her laugh

He still lets me hug him in public

He is not a real fan of sports

But he likes to draw and read

He got up the other morning and made his sister breakfast

(eggs well- seasoned, just the way she likes them)

His Italian heritage shows up in his passion, his love of life and his flair for the dramatic.

He does not care for loud noises, people who yell, or guns.

He is just a little kid,

so I am not quite sure why he has to sit still for 6 hours

I teach grown ups who could not sit still and learn, learn, learn for that long.....

But there you have it....

He is kind, caring, and has a bunk bed with a fort down below

He likes to visit his uncle and aunt at the beach

and go to the lake to feed the ducks with Grandpa Bruce

He is perfect.

He has only been on this this earth for six years, so he is still learning his way

yet I see more wisdom in him than I have in many grown ups

including myself

I just wanted to tell you things so you would understand why

I would prefer if you did not change him.

Respectfully, Grandma Patty

and that's poetiquejustis

When the Storm Has Passed

The silence is beautiful
When the storm has passed

It wakens us and we dare to look about, forcing the fear from our eyes

Is it over?

The winds and rain of tragedy and trouble of the moment-
have they moved on?
We rest in the bliss of this new found safety, taking stock....counting heads....
What was lost?
When the storm has passed, who is missing from our life?
Who is still beside us?

When the storm has passed, we sweep away the debris
and straighten the pictures on the wall memory.

We go on when the storm has passed.

We throw open the door of life and step outside of ourselves
just to prove we are survivors
Nodding to others who also have lived through the storms.
There are so many!

When the storm has passed
We are not the same as we were before these winds blew through our life
But we are still standing.

And that's poetiquejustis


Artwork: Passing storm by Robert Pritchert Page

Ancora Impari....

Ancora Impari…yet I am learning

Michelangelo at 87

Henry Ford said anyone who has stopped learning is old, whether they are 20 or 80.

Do you want to know what I have learned recently?

I have learned that you cannot point your finger if your hands are folded in prayer….

I have found that there is no correlation between faith in God and faith in a political party.

I have learned that if you reach out to help others, you are never alone

I have learned that being happy is a choice you make moment by moment

and that being unhappy is a waste of the precious time of life

And I have learned that every moment of life is precious.

I have learned that I do not have to know every thing....but that I want to

I have learned to count calories and blessings

I have learned from books, people, mistakes, victories, and pets.

I have learned to ask God for wisdom, believe I have received it, and then to act.

I have learned from saints and sinners and, as is usually the case, those who are both.

I have learned that I am both a saint and a sinner.

I have learned that we are all making this journey and would just like a smile from the passers-by.

I have learned to love.

Ancora impari.....

And that's poetiquejustis.

~ Trust opens up new and unimagined possibilities. ~

Robert C. Solomon

If we are wise, we trust in God.

If we are fortunate, we have around us those whom we can trust with our hearts.

If we want to pull our feet from the concrete of yesterday before it hardens and leaves us there

we must trust ourselves

Emerson said: Do not be timid or squeamish about your actions. All life is an experiment.

Today, the experiment begins

Our motto?

I can do that

Go ahead

Give life a try

Leave no possibility unimagined

Why should you?

It is your life- your experiment.

Learn

Believe

Live

You want people to trust you
but first
you have to

Trust in yourself

No one is going to have confidence in you if I do not believe in yourself

Trust in yourself

You will not let yourself down

I trust you.

And that's poetiquejustis

Song Sung Blues

I merely took the energy it takes to pout and wrote some blues

Duke Ellington

When my four year old granddaughter is unhappy with the way life is proceeding,
she screws up her mouth,
making herself look like a little fish
and silently stares at whatever or whoever is displeasing her until we figure out what has gone awry in her sunny world.
She is quite capable of doing this for extended periods of time.

I love that about her.
It is so honest

Sometimes, you just have to get it out

The frustration
The sadness
The dust of life that has settled on your soul

You just need to let it out
and if the people around you hear those blue notes,
the ones who love you will nod and tap their toes in understanding,
and the others can just move along their radio dial.

Sometimes the only song that is rising up in you is the blues
It is as beautiful as any other melody because it is yours
Belt it out!
I am listening...
And that's poetiquejustis

Awake Enough to Dream

The sun rise up
I climb the ladder
A new day breaks
I'm working on a dream....
Bruce Springsteen

I want a life that is dedicated to a dream
I want a life that is not just about making a living

I want to believe in something so deeply and be so sure that this is what I am meant to do
Who I am meant to be
That I do not care how many doors slam in my face
How many detour signs pop up on my road
How tired or bloodied or discouraged or old I get
I will not give up.
How about you?
And that's poetiquejustis

Grading Life On A Curve

...the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

"How do you deal with the curve balls in life?"
I have been asking myself that a lot lately, since I have my fair share of cosmic baseballs coming in to my life just as you do.

I want to know, because it is not how we handle the great moments that make us- it is how we handle the disappointments and the troubles.

Me?
I can go in to pout mode.
I stand there staring at the Pitcher and try to guilt Him in to not doing that to me any more.
That never works since the Pitcher is also the Coach and wants me to be able to handle it all.

I am learning to take Hank Aaron's advice - be patient...be ready for the fastball and if you are set up for that, you can easily hit the curve ball. Just play your best game- now.

It is easy to be calm and positive and collected when in my study surrounded by my books and insulated from the world.
Bring on the fastballs!
But once I step up to the plate- be it at work, or in the community or on the Internet...ah, that is where my true ability to play the game is revealed.

It is when things do not go the way I want them to that my batting arm must not fail me.

That takes practice....and that means more curve balls coming my way
And that's Poetiquejustis

Somewhere Down the Road

Opportunities fly by while we sit regretting the chances we have lost...
~Jerome K. Jerome, The Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow, 1889

It's comfy there...in the past
There is nothing to achieve other than a perhaps a good sense of remorse
There is nothing to do because it cannot be changed
Looking back is like worrying- it gives us something to do....makes us feel useful...but it accomplishes nothing
Opportunity cannot come to knock on yesterday's door.

The ironic thing about looking back is that no matter how much time and effort we put in to the looking,
we are never going to really see life as it really was then
because we are looking through the eyes of someone who was never there.
Like looking at the scenery in your rear view mirror.
It just is not the same.

We will never see the things that happened the way they were because we have been changed by time, and experience.
We can never be an eyewitness to something in the past.

I like what the wonderful novelist Edna Ferber had to say:

Living the past is a dull and lonely business;
looking back strains the neck muscles,
causing you to bump into people not going your way.

To share a memory is a wonderful thing
Just make sure you are making more for down the road.
And if you find yourself bumping in to people going toward the future- turn around!
And that's poetiquejustis

The Rainy Day People

Game Called Because of Rain
Norman Rockwell

I can see clearly now, the rain is gone.
I can see all obstacles in my way.
Johnny Nash


Nothing wrong with a little rain- it clears the air,
waters the ground
and gives you a great excuse to stay inside and read
without feeling as though you should be out and about.

A little rain in life is all right as well, I think

It makes me appreciate the sunny spots of friends
The fresh winds of kindness
The unexpected rainbows of love and laughter


when the clouds disappear

You can always tell the people who have come through the storms-
They are a little softer around the edges
Less quick to judge
More eager to help


The lyricists Kenney and Sheppard said it well:
I made it through the rain and found myself respected By the others who
Got rained on too
and made it through....

I do very respect you, my rainy day friend.
You have made it through so many times,
And will again

And that's poetiquejustis

Wanted: A Poet

• The world seems to be always waiting for its poet

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Wanted: Persons with beauty of soul who can take the words and make them not hurt our eyes

Please, not another pundit or anchor with a furrowed brow need apply

Spare us the person who with microphone in hand, with booming drums and crescendos rising instructing us on how close the peril is

but telling us no more

And who does so without the whimsy of the bard or the melody of the troubadour

The world wants- no needs!- someone who can, like a lover, see the faults but speak of the best in the one they love

A person who may not always make our world rhyme, but will at least make us not ashamed to read our story and will probably never be seen on a Sunday Morning News Show..

A poet who will lift us above it all with a ladder of words that will let us see where we are and where we can go and make us want to go there.

Perhaps it is you! I do hope so!

The world seems to be always waiting for its poet.

And that's poetiquejustis