On This Day, November 9

"Shining true and smiling back at all who wait to cross.  There is no loss." 

~ Kansas, The Wall

On This Day in History, November 9, 1989: "East German officials today opened the Berlin Wall, allowing travel from East to West Berlin..." 

And that's not all this date carries, for those who might look, for those who remember.

We get to choose.

We get to choose what sort of a November 9 THIS one is going to be.

I feel we are choosing already, many of us. I'm personally choosing the same thing I chose yesterday, in what might feel like an imperfectly perfect kind of a way (that's why we chose to be human).

We can simply choose to choose Love.

L-O-V-E

The choice doesn't need to appear to be perfect. Just by existing, it IS. It's about honest, heartfelt intent, in the most human of ways.

I remember early November 1989, perhaps more in feelings than in details. It was like some kind of a Miracle, back then, inexplicable, yet Real.

How could it be?

It simply was.

I remember the years leading up to it. I remember the years that came after. No, not all the details. I remember the feelings.

On November 10, they started tearing the wall down. I DO remember at least some of those details. I was 25 years old. And I had recently fallen myself - that Fall, I had fallen in love. I remember studying the images, astonished. They didn't arrive quite as rapidly in those days, but still, we all watched. I remember the front page of the newspaper. I remember the evening news. And we did already have cable.

We tended to believe back then that the wall would never actually fall (except through the madness of mutual destruction). I remember a friend telling me what it was like to have visited there, how forbidding it actually was - traveling there wasn't needed to feel it - we felt it in plenty of ways. Falling like that, truthfully, it wasn't even "a concept", for a very long time, not for most of us. As long as many of us could remember, that wall simply >was<. Yet fall it did. And it all came about in a way nobody expected.

It's time to begin.

It's time to continue.

We get to choose.

November 9.


Photo from July 1, 1988, permitted use with this attribution from Wikimedia Commons: By Neptuul (Own work) [CC BY-SA 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)]

Hide and Seek

As an indicator of just how busy of a week it has been, I discovered this unfinished blog entry from several days ago as I was about to blog again, actually an expansion of a personal account I shared with a friend...no need to delete it of course...here it is...

"You may choose to hide, or you may choose to seek, it is entirely up to you." 

~ Steve Rother/The Group

I headed out on my walk to the park earlier this morning, in a state of peaceful reflection, consciously walking in a space of quiet Joy amidst the roses blooming in the sunshine.  It's "Rose Festival" time in the City of Roses, and the area actually does live up to its name.   For a time, I enjoyed the peaceful solitude of the park, practically all to myself, exactly what I had hoped for.

And then...

The lawn mowing crew.  A loud and monstrous thing right in front of me, plus the truck and trailer it came in heading straight for me on the gravel access road.  I of course quickly changed direction.  But no matter where I seemed to go to evade the giant mower, there he was. I headed for a smaller path, just to discover a man with a smaller hand-pushed mower up ahead.

So I went even  farther out of the way to sit on a bench under a tree, and from seemingly out of nowhere, another big mower literally showed up right behind us to mow the grass where my dog was about to lay down! It was then that I got a bit angry, all but destroying my peaceful state of mind, fleeting as it was.

I decided to leave the park, my quiet meditation clearly not going as planned. That's when even more people arrived with their dogs (normally I don't mind people and dogs, but today I was looking for peace), followed by van loads of preschoolers laughing and playing as they tumbled out onto the trail.

It was then I finally realized God was laughing too. It was a bit of a test, you see - of course it was! What a magical thing it is to play a game with God. And Who Is an Omnipresent God anyway?

"Can you still feel the Joy?"  Joy comes in many forms of course.  And even though the walk had utterly defied my peaceful expectations, yes, indeed I could.

I left the park and headed up the steepest route to home (that's my workout challenge every day, I'm so determined to get in better shape). Now the entire thing was making me laugh, as I was in on the joke.  Could I still enjoy the walk in the midst of all the noise?  Loud planes flew right overhead, one quite low. 

In the final block, I have to say I couldn't help but smile.  Then I went out to my little garden. Finally it was quiet, and I took a deep breath, smiling, watching my roses bloom, looking up at the evergreens I love under such a beautiful clear blue sky.

Playing hide and seek with God as we walk upon the Earth has its rewards. And isn't that really why we are here?