Reflections on Mother's Day Plus an Alice Walker Poem

Selfie on November 2013 Excursion

Sometime in my daughter's growing up, I read Khalil Gibran's chapter on parenting in which he says that our children are not our children. They do not belong to us.  Our task is to love and raise them up, and then to let them go.  We are not to hold onto them as if they were possessions to keep and admire, or servants to take care of our needs for affirmation and love, or mirrors of our vanity.  As the single mother of one child, this was incredibly important advice for me to heed.  I did my best.  I can say that my daughter is self supporting, self-actualizing, loving adult who is on her own exciting wonderful journey.

I feel very blessed on this Mother's Day.  Here's a poem I found in the section called "Forgiveness" in Alice Walker's 1991 collection Her Blue Body Everything We Know

Hilary at one month old.

EVEN AS I HOLD YOU

By Alice Walker

Even as I hold you

I think of you as someone gone

far, far away. Your eyes the color

of pennies in a bowl of dark honey

bringing sweet light to someone else

your black hair slipping through my fingers

is the flash of your head going

around a corner

your smile, breaking before me,

the flippant last turn

of a revolving door,

emptying you out, changed.

away from me.

Even as I hold you

I am letting go.

This Must Be The Way

February's snow and cold outside my window

Bloomington Township Trustee

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indiana_Township_Trustee

Primary 2014 Season Begins - Filing for Re-Election as Township Trustee

A campaign photo

This morning I filed for re-election as Bloomington Township Trustee.  It was a warm friendly process on a cold winter morning.  As I walked through hall outside the County Clerk's Office, I paused for a moment. A soft but unmistakable smell of cigar smoke was in the air. I smiled to myself and continued on my way.

Here is the statement I submitted to my party - the Democratic Party - for posting on the website.  The beginning of many I will draft in the next few months, I am sure.

Lillian Henegar is seeking re-election as Bloomington Township Trustee.  The Democrat precinct chairs elected Henegar in March 2013 to finish the current term for Linda Sievers, who resigned early due to family issues.

 

Henegar said “I want to continue serving Bloomington Township residents.  The Township has many challenges ahead. I want to address the myriad conditions arising from a widening income gap in creative and collaborative ways that empower and respect individuals and families. In addition, funding stability is crucial to providing the quality of fire and emergency services the Township’s residents expect and deserve.  Ensuring this stability into the future is a priority of mine.”

“My diverse combination of experiences, talents, and education qualify me to tackle the responsibilities of the Township Trustee. I am dedicated to public service and Democratic values – striving for a compassionate equitable society and for sound stewardship of public resources and responsibilities.”

Henegar grew up in Monroe County and has been involved in the Democratic Party since a young teen. She has lived in diverse communities across the country, earned a master’s degree in public administration, and held professional and volunteer leadership positions in government and nonprofits serving local government and low-income communities.    

Did the Inner Dome of Heaven Fall?

Photos of Meteorite Falling Over Urals' Chelyabinsk

"Soon the sun's warmth makes them shed crystal shells
Shattering and avalanching on the snow-crust--
Such heaps of broken glass to sweep away
You'd think the inner dome of heaven had fallen."

                                     Excerpt from the poem, Birches, by Robert Frost

Clean up after Meteorite Falls to Earth in Siberian town

Cosmic Activity

 

Be your true self - Be cold in winter

"[Merton] ate, worked, walked in the woods and prayed. In the winter he was cold and in the summer he was hot. And that is the true self. It is the self that is nobody, that is ordinary and poor.  It is this ordinary self that is extraordinary for it is this ordinary self one with the moment, one with concrete reality of everyday life, that is the self God creates, the poor self made rich in the poverty of the cross."

"Merton's message is that each of us lives in the hermitage of our daily self. Beneath all our achievements, plans, travels, and conquests we have but life."

page 113, Merton's Palace of Nowhere by James Finley