(12/06/99) Am I less opinionated? More busy, or what? A little weary, perhaps. Although I love excellence, excellence takes time. It is my hope to create a masterful website, I need to be attentive and wholehearted in my childraising, I dream of the garden that is a vision of paradise. Time is evading me, resources evaporate, and half-built castles mock me. I am moving on in the continuum, hoping again, refocusing, reassessing. All of this page and it's record of this years thoughts will be archived, who knows what the new will hold? May I be stronger for what is right, and hold dearer what is true, burning brighter, flowing deeper, inured to the frivolous, alive to the opportunity of living. God help me.

(4/1/99) OK, here it is ...that time again and what is it this time? April Fool? Only if you count what is happening in our world as one big April Fool...the kind where you laugh, because if you start to cry you're afraid you will never stop.

Today I read an internet news item,Baby Selling. So what's new? For years Sudanese Muslims have been trafficking in Christian Black slaves, with little outcry and no repercussion, and baby deprived couples are often faced with moral dilemmas today. But this time, in reading this article, it was not the horrific idea of trafficking in human life, but the impetus behind its increase. The merchandising of humanity, reducing the worth of a human being to some dollar signs or units of pleasure and usefulness...what is this??? Our whole view of human life is skewed, gone awry in some twisted sad way. When the spiritual base of Judeo-Christianity gives way to the materialistic self-involved philosophy of measurable, pragmatic, tangible worth, then you find people ready to sell themselves and one another, oppression of the weak unquestioned, no life sacrosanct, and every soul for sale.

Every human life has a value.....priceless. Only like equal to like can even be the beginning of its comprehension. So, the next time you think of yourself, or the beggar on the street, or the elderly in the nursing home, or the little baby with birth defects, remember...the worth is incalculable, incalcubly high. And who says so? I say so, because Jesus says so. If you have a problem with that , take it up with Him.

(3/3/99) Is everybody out there Y2K compliant,...are you kidding? I heat solely with a wood burning stove, have a wood cook stove available-although OLD and inefficient, and an old hand pump well to keep the toilet going. Yep, my crazy homesteading ideas from the 70's may come in handy-What do you think? And I was getting tired of loading the woodstove all winter. It almost makes me sorry I didn't buy a cow, but I don't see the sense in hoarding up silver or gold...if things get that bad, what use will those things be?
I sound like I come from the hills, don't I? Just a City girl gone Country, I guess. Or should I start saying "reckon", now?

(Jan 21) My last entry was a little macabre; yes, that is the right word. I don't like to face death or hurt in other creatures, my own doesn't carry as much hesitation for me, but it is torturous to see others come to harm . One of those strange things, I guess. That has nothing whatsoever to do with this latest random opinion, though.

Seasons and women are twining together within my thoughts, the blurring and disintegration of the two, and our losses because of it. The thread of explanation:

We (our society and our own selves within it) try to create a seasonless environment. Changes and the need to make adjustments just make us irritable, such interference with our plans and schedules! We get this false sense of control from heating, cooling, and humidifying systems, from the mini environments of our cars, homes, and offices, and it extends into our mental and emotional environments. We have these ideal pictures of what we will accomplish and how we will fit living into our frameworks so carefully wrought. But weather, electrical supply, and other personalities don't always amenably comply, and we wake up exhausted and disappointed from trying to form our world. That can be a blessing, you know: to step outside of the perfect, tight, and well-run schedules. There is even a cliche' for it...smelling roses.

In a woman's life there is such a crush of busyness that runs from the mid-twenties to the mid- thirties. It seems we must become so many titles and fulfill so many expectations that we build our card houses precariously balancing everything and hoping all the while that all will "just stand steady". Please, please, please.

But life as a whole is a progression of seasons, seasons of learning, seasons of doing, seasons of resting. There are beginnings and progressions and endings, and we are wise to observe such things. Because we may artificially mask the changes of the seasons does not always mean we should. Our means are tools for us to make our adjustments, not our weapons for fending off phases forever. We would not choose only sunny days all the time if we really thought carefully about it, and we would not stay fixed at twenty years old, or in a high state of romance, either, if it was static and false. A woman's life has phases like the moon and seasons of nature, each with its own particular joys and chores.

If I garden like crazy, working on too many plans, where is my joy in the June's special rose effects? It will not be repeated for another year and maybe not in that special way in a lifetime. So, seasons of marriage, and children, of skills and production, of caring and being cared for, wax and wane. We have a marvelous skill of discernment of time, and we have only the need to take the time to put it to use. "Lord, teach me to number my days".

(Nov.6) It's time for another addition to the opinion pile. One of my dogs died today. The traffic goes fast on our rural roads- too fast for one slightly arthritic dog. It reminded me of something that impressed me years ago when I was still in my twenties.

My husband and I were driving some friends home from church and as we exited the freeway we came upon the scene of an accident that must have happened moments before. As we looked at the car, the macabre sight of two sets of legs sliced by the door made us realize that the people were still there. Someone must have called the ambulance since we heard the approach of sirens. I remember feeling the presence of death. Later, we read of the accident; the feeling had been a real sense, the occupants of the car had died instantly at impact. I remember reeling at the sight of death's appearance and my first thought was to call a cousin of mine. He was a doctor and I wanted to talk with him about seeing, sensing death in its suddeness and implacability.

Then, the absurdity struck me: to call the person who witnessed death as part of his job. He worked against it, studied its approach, daily came against it as an adversary. He was aware, it was me that was taken by surprise. What I came to realize is that death is very normal in this world, it is a daily reality; it is life that is the miracle, the surprise. Life, that we so often take for granted, is the fragile wonder that we should ponder and plan for. Death will always be there in this present world, it is life that is fleeting and uncommon.

In the future I might have to put in a "dark page"; because, although I believe in taking " whatsoever is lovely" and presenting it here, there are many atrocities in the world and the truth must be spoken. Pilate could not escape his destiny with the dismissal " What is truth?" and we cannot, either. In the meantime, there are Sudanese to pray for, there are Chinese to pray for, there are many in this world who have yet to taste peace.

It is not politics that concern me, but the suffering humanity. In politics, especially on the global scale there are always the injustices of the many sides against one another. The Catholics have theirs, the Protestants have theirs, the Serbs have theirs, the Croats have theirs,...the Chinese, the Tibetans, the Sudanese, the Tutsis, the....Ad infinitum. It is rather the demoralized men, the victimized women, the children, the children, what words to speak of the children? Our hand should be ready to relieve and our heart open for opportunity to lift up, should we find it in our power to do so. I don't demean the importance of politics, but should we wait until all is sorted out to help those snared in the sweep of events?

I'm placing a little thought here.I've been considering the nature of cyberspace-what it's good for and what the limitations are.What do you get when you are interacting with people through a computer? Why are there so many caveats? (I probably should verify the meaning of that word before I use it; well, later)

Right now,I'm thinking this: This medium is mind meeting mind-without the extraneous physical or, even emotional(if one chooses to edit that out).It is alot like the Victorian practice of letterwriting,but with a freedom and spontaneity that allows for a whole fantasy-life to be played out, if that's what is wanted.

In some ways I would compare it to watching soap operas on TV.At first, you are very aware of the difference between what you see on the screen and real life. It seems the plots are so "out there" and then,after some time, they seem more plausible and the characters seem like they "could be real". The final progression can end up in a place where the whole episode of the soap opera is more real than "real". A person can end up having real worries and speak audibly to the situation "No,no,no don't do that you dummy-can't you see he's just using you?"

The beauty of the internet is the possibility of meeting minds in so many different spheres and cultures from one's own, and allowing other's in on your own inner world-at their time and leisure.It's a great opportunity,but it does have it's limits. That's my opinion at this time-and that's why I'm really enjoying this thing right now-opinions with no immediate repercussions.I do try to be as authentic as possible,partly because that's how I am and partly because people who know me sometimes read my stuff.