never stop loving
As I sat in church last Sunday, I looked around me. Not many people were there since it was the first Sunday after the holidays. More people come during the Christmas season...and Easter, and other traditional holidays but then slack off and stay home and drink coffee and read the newspaper. I have been there. That's okay though cause going to church every Sunday as we all know, (and as Garrison Keillor said) "won't make you a Christian, any more than sleeping in your garage will make you a car".
I felt some sadness as I looked around at the empty places where some of my old friends used to sit. In the years that I have been going to this church, I have met and befriended many elderly people, who, it seems have been plucked out of their pews, one by one - plucked out of this life and placed somewhere else. And let's face it - whether we go to church or not, we don't exactly know for sure where they go. No one has come back to tell us unless you count my mom coming to my sister in a dream and telling her the food in heaven sucks!
We hope that there is more than this life and that our friends and loved ones look down on us and in some way protect us. I like to think so, but won't profess to be sure. I do talk to my dead family members like my mom, dad and Siggie. I give them credit for things...like making it snow here at Christmas cause they know I like snow. I talk to Jack the dog and imagine him telling me I have to run for both of us - even in the snow which he loved.
Yes, I go to church but for me it is the community of people all doing good and being in one place where good thoughts are creating some positive in a world that is too often not positive. I am not one of those people who can say "I know this is all true". And, I have found that many people who I thought were that way, confess to feeling the same way I do - unsure but hopeful.
I thought of all the people who started 2012 with me but are now gone - also plucked out of this life like eyebrow hairs. Siggie, Enid, Paula's dad, Carol Ann's dad, my friend's husband, many people from my hometown who seemed to be permanent fixtures in my growing up years, and our beloved Jack dog to name a few. This is how life is though and maybe it is normal to feel down at the first of the year when you look back on it and miss those people.
I hugged my sweet 89 year old friend Mary Alice - the last one left of my "church girls", as I left church. "See you next week, God willing" she says to me.
As I drove home, still kind of sad, I noticed a defaced stop sign.
The sign, and it's message made me smile. Never stop loving....life, those you have left who love you, and even those who may have been less then kind. Love them all. It's easier than hating. Life is about loss. But it is more about love if we make it be so.
I felt some sadness as I looked around at the empty places where some of my old friends used to sit. In the years that I have been going to this church, I have met and befriended many elderly people, who, it seems have been plucked out of their pews, one by one - plucked out of this life and placed somewhere else. And let's face it - whether we go to church or not, we don't exactly know for sure where they go. No one has come back to tell us unless you count my mom coming to my sister in a dream and telling her the food in heaven sucks!
We hope that there is more than this life and that our friends and loved ones look down on us and in some way protect us. I like to think so, but won't profess to be sure. I do talk to my dead family members like my mom, dad and Siggie. I give them credit for things...like making it snow here at Christmas cause they know I like snow. I talk to Jack the dog and imagine him telling me I have to run for both of us - even in the snow which he loved.
Yes, I go to church but for me it is the community of people all doing good and being in one place where good thoughts are creating some positive in a world that is too often not positive. I am not one of those people who can say "I know this is all true". And, I have found that many people who I thought were that way, confess to feeling the same way I do - unsure but hopeful.
I thought of all the people who started 2012 with me but are now gone - also plucked out of this life like eyebrow hairs. Siggie, Enid, Paula's dad, Carol Ann's dad, my friend's husband, many people from my hometown who seemed to be permanent fixtures in my growing up years, and our beloved Jack dog to name a few. This is how life is though and maybe it is normal to feel down at the first of the year when you look back on it and miss those people.
I hugged my sweet 89 year old friend Mary Alice - the last one left of my "church girls", as I left church. "See you next week, God willing" she says to me.
As I drove home, still kind of sad, I noticed a defaced stop sign.
The sign, and it's message made me smile. Never stop loving....life, those you have left who love you, and even those who may have been less then kind. Love them all. It's easier than hating. Life is about loss. But it is more about love if we make it be so.
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