Setting Sail

Theme for March: Vastness

Tuesday, March 9, 2021

Recently, as I was listening to someone speak about the audacious mariners who, centuries ago, sailed off the edge of the horizon and revealed the roundness of the globe, it caused me to think, again, about sailing off some edges myself. Those discerning seafarers simply did not believe what everyone’s eyesight suggested – that the earth was flat and ships would sail over the edge to destruction. They trusted that there was a larger and more wondrous world out there, even though their eyes couldn’t see it. They saw through the façade of appearances and discerned the astounding truth beyond.

Like many of us, I frequently get confounded by appearances, especially by the apparent smallness and separateness of my life. I appear to be just a fairly old body containing a brain that’s slowly slumping with age. Outward impressions say my faculties are probably fading away and, before too long, I’ll be falling off the edge of old age into who-knows-where. However, more and more the older I get, I feel like those mariners of history who held true to their vision of a spherical and spectacular world. More and more often now, I get a glimpse of the truly immeasurable grandness of the universe, and of life itself and my special and necessary part in it. It is at those times that I ‘set sail’, with no borders or boundaries in sight. The edge called ‘old age’  dissolves, and what’s left are vistas of wisdom and  serenity stretching out without end.          

PLEASE COME, SPRING!

We do love snow, and winter sometimes wins
our prize for pristine beauty, but
today we hope that spring begins
tomorrow. We need to sing and strut 

in warmth and sunshine. We would like 
to stroll on silken grass and ride our bikes
down pleasant streets. We want to take a hike
up springtime hills. We’re shouting “Yikes!

We’re sick of snow and ice! We need spring
to come! We need to hear the robins sing!”



Below, some scenes from recent walks in beautiful Elm Grove Cemetery ...