There hasn’t been a delicious ease in my body since the age of six when I got polio, and I’m sixty-eight not sixty, but specifics are immaterial. Mary Oliver has, once again, reached deep inside my heart and given exquisite voice to my feelings.

Playing Frank Chacksfield’s Summertime in Venice today on iTunes I felt young and in love and it hit me that I’ve spent most of my life in love. The thought amazed me! It’s been a long life and one with the normal share of problems and sorrows, so what’s going on here?

The answer is, I’m blessed. Sounds simple, atheists might say simple-minded, but neither would be the case. My life is a complicated process demanding constant adjustments in thoughts and actions, in beliefs and reactions, but there are certain constants that bring me joy regardless of good times or bad. The major constant in my life has been my Christian faith and that faith has led me to perpetual thanksgiving.

This blessing of gratitude colors all my thoughts and life views and grows stronger and stronger by the day. To begin with, God loves me. What could deserve more gratitude than that?

My great joy comes in prayer, in nature, in art and beauty of all kinds. And so I am in love and in a state of wonder at the sheer magnitude of God’s creation. But I am not always happy. The miseries of this world are far too apparent and too appalling to ignore or minimize. A friend writes today about the seven deadly sins and votes greed to the top of the list. Yes, I agree. And want to shake the apathy from the placid and the evil out of the wicked, but who will listen, who will care? Most importantly, who will change?

So, I ride the waves of bliss and despair and my heart suffers, but scratch the surface of that bleeding heart and as it bleeds the hint of paradise appears, the promise, the glory of a God who is righteous and who will judge fairly, with both compassion and vengeance.

Mary Oliver lives in that state of wonder, too, senses and articulates that hint of paradise in nearly every poem. I’m grateful to her for adding to my hope, for singing her psalms of praise and joy, for loving the world and God as I do.

*This quote appears smack in the middle of Ms. Oliver’s poem Am I not among the Early Risers?, from both Thirst, and New and Selected Poems–Volume Two.

It is late August and, as always, Charlotte has returned. I swept away her web twice yesterday. I regret this, but I didn’t want my friend, Milly, to panic if she saw a plump, juicy body dangling from the roof of the balcony.

After my first attempt at home wrecking Charlotte scuttled up and away as soon as I came outside. She did it again today. Does she equate the sound of the door or my physical presence with danger? Is it cleverness or simply survival instinct?

What an incredible skill the Creator has given these creatures. I wonder how it feels to spin yards of thread from one’s abdomen. Does it tickle? How much can she spin before the bobbins run out? Does she get frustrated and tired (Out of sticky thread again?)and have to rest and resupply herself? How in the world does she do that? Does she cry when wind and rain batter her neatly woven strands and guide lines into a tangled mess or when an annoyed human plows into her completed web by accident or whisks it away on purpose?

I marvel at the mystery and economy of her life. Her home satisfies her every need. It is her work and her God-given talent, her larder and resting place. It is her artistic endeavor.

I hope and pray it is her absolute delight, but if she decides to winter in here, I will be moving in with Ed.

Wish I could see what I’m writing but the visual editor disappears behind the right side of the screen that contains the save draft and publish buttons.  Very annoying!  Ah! There’s a button called toggle toward the right of the list that gives me a full screen.  Wonderful.  Now there’s nothing in my way!  It does remove a lot of the buttons for formatting, though.  Switch back to work with color text or italic, etc? Since I can’t see the text color icon on the small screen, how am I supposed to choose the text I want to change!

Good thing there’s an undo button!

I just made the entire text a headline, lol.  Still working in small screen so I can access all the buttons.  There should be a way to access them in full screen.  I wonder how many days it would take to do find that? I gave it a quick look and I don’t think you can access them.

What’s with the small screen being so quirky though.  It’s maddening not to be able to see my full text.  That a WP bug or is it just in my blog.  Anybody else have this problem?

People remember the Bible saying that we will “know the times are close when we see these things,” but it has been a mystery to me from the beginning how Mr. Camping and those who follow him so closely failed to remember that Christ clearly states, “No one knows about that day or hour, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father.” Matthew 24: 36

Atheists are having a heyday ridiculing not just Christians who believed the prediction, but the idea of faith itself. They see this “failure” as proof positive that all religions are false and those who adhere to them delusional fools. Many Christians have joked their way through the waiting and are somewhat gleeful that the day has passed and we are all still here. At the moment, Mr. Camping is keeping a low profile, either too embarrassed to show himself or busy recalculating his dates and figures to see where he went wrong.

So what next? What about the people who staked their lives, their faith and their fortunes on May 21, 2011, like a woman in my building, who told me she’d lost her family several years ago when she began preaching they should leave the church because “the end was near”? What happens to her and other “believers” who have been disappointed and left behind with the rest of humanity?

It seems to me, that moderate Christians need to reach out to those who have put their faith in Mr. Camping instead of in Christ. This huge disappointment can easily lead to a complete denial of faith or major depression. Many have burned their bridges behind them and may feel completely abandoned. At the very least, no one likes to feel he’s been a fool.

From the start, I’ve been skeptical because of the above reasons, however, yesterday morning I left a note near my computer for my sweetheart telling him where the cash was kept and listing a few people he might call if I suddenly disappeared. I added that if he’d wanted proof, this was it. Today, I thought about tearing it up but decided against it.

As a Christian, who does believe that Christ will come again and that there will be a rapture one day, what’s next for me? A great opportunity, I think. Who hasn’t wished for more time, a longer life? As an individual and along with my church I am still here, still able to right some wrongs, to reach out to those who are hurting, and to tell the generations, “Jesus saves”.

Winston, reminding me what I should be doing right now.