Smiles That Change the World

"I say why all the loneliness and why all the fear,  if it's up to me there'll be none of that here."
Joe Crookston

A smile offers a little bit of sunshine that is not only lasting, it can very often begin or create a connection that can spread to all of us. When words cannot be found for appreciation, comfort, delight, pleasure, excitement, and often hope, a smile can be the expression of our feelings for such moments. It is in gladness the present becomes real, and the present becomes our life forming experience that changes our lives; often for the better. Like a birdsong evokes the first breath of dawn, a smile can be that instant where darkness starts to fade into the light.

It is this mystery that cannot be held, even for a moment. Like water running through our hands, we have the moment to create something that is for the moment. Smiles offer a consoling, knowing welcome, an agreement in unison, or a sign that the fearful have seen a light at the end of the tunnel. Even when despair lingers and confusion swirls into our minds or causes chaos in our lives, a smile is that breath of fresh air that becomes understanding. Understanding that there is more than all this sorrow, loneliness and fear.

Joe Crookston sings from his soul, evoking his desire to leave a better world for the generations that will inherit what we leave behind. He doesn't want what he has seen others or maybe even himself face. That's why he sings and asks why we have all the anger and greed that are the seeds of war and poverty. The injustice that tear us apart rather than bring us together can begun to be reconciled with a smile, with a seed of hope from a hand of welcome and embrace.

Yesterday in becoming better acquainted with one of my neighbors, I felt his warmth not from his words, but from the combination of words of friendship and the gentleness of his smile. Once affected by a smile, we are never the same, we feel it in the roots of our heart as we know our lives matter that we too can take the smile we received, and offer it to another as night becomes day and the moment becomes ours briefly to create a way of healing out of this fear and into jubilation and peace.

The sunlight of dawn reflecting off the water as its light spreads everywhere; like a smile spreads hope.

Outstretched Hands

What we touch often with our hands, we feel, and what we feel gives us our experiences of life. We open our hands to embrace our neighbor who is grieving or our family who is celebrating. We extend a hand of welcome to the stranger who seems out of place. We create and build our lives with our hands. Most of all, our hands are often our connection to the surface and depth beyond what we directly sense immediately.

When we cannot walk barefoot, or do not want to, we sense our touch with the way we use our hands and if we do not have the use of our hands, we compensate with how we hold onto what we need. Our hands can create or destroy and the choice is ours in understanding which we will do. Hands are often a symbol for community when they hold an outstretched hand of another person in their midst or for building community through our relationships and our work to make the world a more livable place.  The dance of life is led and followed as it ebbs and flows through the nights and days we form and create in beauty and wonder.

I was inspired to write this post by what I saw in a compassionate action that could not have been done if we did not value the role our hands have in shaping life. In caring for another person in a more difficult place in life, a friend was able to provide dignity and a sense of cleanliness and beauty to a woman who needed a bath. While doing this, she soothed this woman's skin and provided love and care with gentleness and patience that transformed life for both women. This act in hospice care is simple, yet very important to giving and providing life-filled moments. We can beautify our world by holding our hurting sisters and brothers, picking flowers and brightening a dark day, welcoming a new friend into our midst, tell a story that will change lives, and shape our days one minute at a time as our hands direct the path we choose to live.

Flowers picked to fill the room with color.

A New Day, A New Tomorrow

This morning while working my shift as a caregiver at hospice, I stood near the bedside of one of our residents while she passed away. To me, death is a very mysterious thing that connects us to all that is living on this planet while bringing us in more of an awareness of our humanity. The peacefulness of this passing combined with the hopeful and mournful expressions of grief and transition in the life of our resident's family gave me a deeper look at the experiences we feel from the overwhelming emotions of life's permanent changes.  Rains can fall for a long time, but when they clear leaving a misty cloud or rainbow so that the sun can open the heavens to the clear skies above, they show the hope that life can continue to grow and emerge after the water has nourished and strengthened our souls.

Our lives are never just one experience after another. One forms while another one is still continuing to shape our life. It's almost as if the ambiguity that allows us to feel hope at the same time we feel fear is the antidote to creativity that may be stunted by boredom. It creates a greater sense of humanity as the complex assortment of our sensory experiences is our entryway to being our truest self.  It changes everything as the light of day becomes the sunset that bridges the gap between day and night in our temporary moments.

As time comes and goes, moments are found to be measured in what we feel, what we live through, and what we remember.  It's as though the present becomes our forge for memories and our perspective, what we choose to do with what we have and how we learn from our past. As Calvin once told Hobbes as written out by Bill Watterson, "the problem with the future is that it keeps turning into the present." Perhaps, though, this conundrum is not a problem, but a chance to take hold and live for the present where everything becomes clear for what has been and what will be in how we experience our lives in our interconnected world.

The rain clears slowly while the sun becomes a source of hope as the love we can feel brightens our fear.

A Time To Plant

As the rain fell today, I thought of the trees I helped plant in Hamlin Beach State Park on Saturday during a statewide event held for New York State Parks called I Love My Park Day. As an initiative to improve the air quality of our planet, the park leadership has worked to plan trees in an area of the park that would become a small forest if the young saplings don't become food for the deer first.

Trees are the lungs of our planet as they regulate the gas exchange in the atmosphere surrounding Earth and provide us much of the oxygen that we need to live vibrant lives. In planting some fifteen to twenty young trees, I began to feel connected. I often feel connected to life when I give of myself to others, but when giving of myself to the planet I felt myself look up to the sky and down to the ground beneath my feet. I was becoming part of more than humanity, I was becoming alive amongst everything that lives.  This was different than paying attention to cows when helping them go through a routine milking. This was giving life to something new that had the potential to change the lives of many animals and people.

In a rural setting along Lake Ontario, trees are homes to animals and closer to the water they protect the land. In planting trees,  I had moments of connection with the land. It had been wet and muddy from recent rains making the planting a messy, yet enriching process. The clean soil surrounding roots that would take in this water showed me the base of life for these young plants much the way we can form connections with those who we have lived and grown with as they form our base and help us know or core or heart.

Planting ourselves in life is a hard process in a world moving frequently with little space for rest. Sometimes to survive we have to plant things in our hearts and our souls if we want to be deeply rooted in life while accepting the flux of movement of the human race. The trees of love, hope, peace, charity, and empowerment can be nurtured by our actions as people are lifted to hold each other as one family. I will write more about experiences that can only be felt by the heart and by the soul of life as the things cannot be felt by the mind once they begin growing in our lives in future posts. It is my hope we can nurture the soil of our lives through our work with what we can bring to life.

Trees growing in the rain. (Note: This is not Hamlin Beach State Park)