Sounds of Hope

Maybe you've seen this scene from Madmen as the Kodak Carousel is introduced.   If not, go here and watch it and then come back to the blog. In Greek, nostalgia literally means, a pain from an old wound .  In someways, this blog has been about nostalgia.  Even those topics of current inspiration draw life from the past.  You never escape where you came from or who you were.  We change, we grow but somehow the past is always with us beckoning us to remember. I think the pain we feel as we recall the past is cause not by the wound by knowing we can't go back.  We see visions of the past and we want to go back. We want to go back not because we made some horrible mistake and need a do-over.  Rather we want to go back to experience the joy, the wonderment, the excitement, or any of the myriad of human emotions that can explode at anytime.  While a small substitute for time travel back to that moment, a memory can cause us to relive such joy and so...

Yesterday, I made connections with two childhood friends.   I am prone to looking up people from the past.   Their names and faces pop in my head.   All my senses come alive with a memory.   Are they on Facebook?   Can I Google and find them?   How much I learn and benefit from the gifts of the internet! I was an early comer to AOL and all things internet.    I’d browse and push buttons.   I had no fear.   I found one friend, then two.   With Facebook, I’ve found most of the friends whose memories flood my heart.   Yesterday, thanks to a new feature on Facebook, I saw that a year ago yesterday I had posted about the death and home going of my mother’s oldest and dearest friend.   As children, they had played under a streetlight until the persistence of their mother’s voice called them inside.   Her friend brought her to Jesus.   Long before BFF, they were BFF’s… and now forever they are in heaven under the lig...

We are in the midst of birthday season.  In May we celebrate lots of family birthdays!  We had birthdays on the 3 rd , 4 th , 5 th , 6 th , 7 th , 10 th , and one to come on the 15 th .  It used to be we’d eat birthday cake for days.  When the children were still home we tried to get each one of them their own cake.  This year, I didn’t get any birthday cake.  We only bought a cake for our son and he took it home with him.  It was chocolate too.  Oh well, I don’t need cake. Near the end of these birthdays are two other birthdays that I always remember.  One is my Tante Bitta’s oldest daughter's birthday.  She was my childhood playmate.  She was the one who came faithfully every day to visit me when I spent weeks in the hospital in the seventh grade.  I had rheumatic fever.  Every day, Grace would walk from school to the Norwegian Lutheran Medical Center.  She would keep me company for the afternoon.  After we sh...

It was spring of America’s Bicentennial year.   It was the year my step sister married her husband.   Like this year, Easter must have been late.   The wedding came before Easter as their anniversary celebration did this year.   My sister’s wedding was a big deal.   She did it up right!   Everyone was beautiful.   The bride was radiant as all brides should be.   Dressed in a powder blue tux, her husband was the dashing prince.   Her huge wedding party did not include me.   I was asked to be the guest book attendant.   That meant I got to choose my own dress, as long as it was blue. Granny dresses with pinafore ruffled sleeves were popular.   I knew how to sew.   I liked to sew.   In my little trailer home I made a floral blue pinafore granny dress.   I had little room for a sewing machine. Nevertheless I would sit for hours constructing garments for myself and my children.   Then it was economical to sew. ...

When I was a child I used to hear sermons of hell       Someone would say they saw it          The vision of people falling into a fiery pit imprinted on my soul              I’d wonder and fear, cry and repent…                     Now I only think of another line, the line of saints going home I see them in line, in robes of white with sparkling crowns       As they near the throne, they stop and bow             They bow as they have always bowed, before the Lord of Lords I see my godly mother and father, flawed and imperfect made whole by the blood of the Lamb.       I see them together again, worshipping their Lord              They gave there best, they gave me life, they gave me LIFE – they gave me Jesus I see my Sunday School teachers a...

My husband woke me up from a very sound dreaming sleep this morning. He usually tries very hard to be quiet but after 32 years of marriage, I hear him. However, I didn’t this morning. I guess because I have been sleep deprived and this was good sleep. I get up with near perfect predictability and fix his bowl of oatmeal every morning. He doesn’t like oatmeal particularly but he’s been on a cholesterol reducing diet for a while. I fix the oatmeal for him the way my mother fixed it for me when I was a kid, with milk, on the stove. No micro oatmeal here. Some mornings I want to play possum and just stay in bed. He wouldn’t care. He’s not demanding about his oatmeal. But love gets me out of bed and to the stove. Occasionally I really do oversleep. I thought that was the case this morning. My husband leaned over and kissed me. When your prince gives you a kiss, you wake up. My initial reaction wasn’t princess like. I thought geez I was sound asleep. Then for a split second I thought oh,...

Yesterday I was wondering a lot about whether I should keep telling my story in this blog or beyond. I got a really nice comment from someone that meant a lot. I didn’t really expect a lot of comments. I was just trying to be honest about how I felt. It was a legitimate question. I have this amazing memory. I don’t take it for granted. I realize that memory is a powerful gift. Like all powerful things, it can be a mixture of blessing and curse.  There are many times I wish I didn’t have such a good memory. Often I wish I could hit some button and clean the hard drive of my brain or at least defrag. Memories that are painful don’t leave a person with a good memory either. My memory causes me to remember names of people from my long past. Every so often a name will pop into my head. Now in the days of google, I can google them and see what I find.  I was trolling memories last night. From previous such activities on Facebook, I had found the children of the Sunday ...