Category comfort
FMM 7 14 17 Tell me a Story
“Storytelling reveals meaning without committing the error of defining it.”~ Hannah Arendt. When your father is a minister you grow up seeing him as a man of authority, commanding space, making pronouncements. More than the average father, his word carries weight. People defer to him. Teachers used to hold that kind of space too, traditionally in […]
FMM 6 10 17 Fret not, nor fear
“In a time of destruction, create something.”~Maxine Hong Kingston. I have never been fond of scary movies. I prefer to escape into a light comedy, to be amused for a while. I remember accompanying a friend to watch a couple of movies that were outside of my comfort zone (Jaws, and Carrie). For her punishment […]
FMM 6 2 17 Angels Watching Over Me
“We shall find peace. We shall hear angels, we shall see the sky sparkling with diamonds.”~Anton Chekhov. In Jamaica, when you discover that you have put on your underwear inside out, it is said that you are chasing away ghosts (you a run duppy). Apparently ghosts get spooked easily, and that is one way to […]
FMM 3 10 17 As a Tree
“Trees are the earth’s endless effort to speak to the listening heaven.”~Rabindranath Tagore. I remember as a child making a determined effort to get my untidy room under control. I knew I was the one who needed to change my ways, and when I was finished I made a poster with a positive message, and displayed […]
FMM 2 17 17 Sweet Mouth
“To handle a language skillfully is to practice a kind of evocative sorcery.”~Charles Baudelaire. Welsh, it is often said, is the language of heaven. To be honest, it is mostly Welsh people who say this! It was my father’s first language, the language of home and church. It is a challenging language, full of strange sounds […]
FMM 9 30 16 Hope Springs Eternal
“Hope is being able to see that there is light despite all of the darkness.”~Desmond Tutu. The wonderful thing about being a child is that life is full of mystery and pleasant surprises. Until life teaches us differently, we awake looking forward to what each new day will bring. The other day my grandson wanted […]
FMM 8 5 16 Fingerprints and Footprints
“I have learned silence from the talkative, toleration from the intolerant, and kindness from the unkind; yet, strange, I am ungrateful to those teachers”~Khalil Gibran. The older we get, the harder it is to be fed a line. We have grown from being idealists to being cynics. When someone pays us a compliment we may […]
FMM 6 3 16 The Power of Grace
“Grace has been defined as the outward expression of the inner harmony of the soul”~William Hazlitt. One of my mother’s four older sisters was called Grace. She was named for their mother, my grandmother. My Auntie Grace was a character, with a wicked sense of humor and a ready laugh. She died when I was still […]
FMM 5 20 16 Create Space
“But let there be spaces in your togetherness, And let the winds of the heavens dance between you.”~ Khalil Gibran. When my mother died last year, we found ourselves going through stacks of correspondence; piles of papers; items that had not only been transported from Jamaica to England when my parents retired, but may […]
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