I have experienced that sometimes if I hold on to my coveted silence, tuck my feet under and really nestle into it, I am startled by any intrusion.

I’m into sewing and quilting on these blistering hot summer afternoons. It’s an escape into a cool air conditioned cave where I put my head down and get lost in fitting together color, shape, and a story.

Do you remember that picture in the old storybook about Paul Bunyan, the legendary logger who was so tall he could straddle a valley with a booted foot firmly planted on opposite mountain tops?

It seems like our American culture pounds us with messages to camouflage weakness, to vindicate contempt, to thwart persecution, to detour around frustration, and to blame away hardship.

I’m watching my grandchildren making friends while walking through the minefield of Junior High School! My inclination is to hold their hands, not that they would take mine at this age, and absorb the inevitable blows for them. I don’t want to shatter their tender idealism about friendships, but instead I want to protect their precious ingots of innocence.

In an old gardening calendar, a poignant sentence illustrating a pathway littered with rose petals jumped out at me. There was no reference to an author, but the sentence read, “forgiveness is the odor flowers give off when flowers get trampled on.” It reminded me of a discussion I recently had with one of my sisters about forgiveness.