jiexi19

on every occasion we sat together in our Kyushu apartment

06:17, 2009-Nov-11 .. 0 comments .. Link

Our only son, Yuki, lived with us and my husband's parents in their large old farmhouse at the foot of the mountains in Gifu, Japan. He always ignored his father and me even though we lectured him every evening that respect and a sense of duty were essential for becoming a responsible adult. His choice of clothes became increasingly wild, and he returned one night with an earring and orange hair. We were horrified, and let him know it in clear and loud voices.

We lay in bed at night staring out of the window at the crisp white moon, whispering our distress to each other until we tired of repeating the same useless worries. The jagged mountain horizon seemed to add to the pain in our hearts.

As soon as he had finished high school, Yuki left home to continue his life alone, which we were sure would lead him nowhere. He was swallowed by the pearl jewelry large city of Nagoya and gradually our anguish turned to glum silence, not from lack of care but exhaustion. Sometimes at dinner, his grandparents would ask us if Yuki had telephoned, although we all knew that any news from our son would be sung vigorously to all corners of the farm the minute it arrived.

After several years, my husband's company transferred us to a branch more than 600 miles away in Kyushu. His father told us they would be all right, but we knew that his mother had become quite weak and that they were both nearing the age when they would not be able to harvest the crops and protect the cows. Gifu has very cold winters. Even keeping the house fire going and maintaining all the farm machinery is hard work. There was nothing we could do. We telephoned them several times a week from that faraway city.

One evening "Granddad," as he liked to be called, said that "Grandma" had taken a fall. My husband appealed to his company supervisors to send us back to Gifu to help his parents, but they said it was impossible at that time.

That weekend we called the farm with our disappointing news. A strong young voice answered the phone.

"Gifu Castle," it said, and we immediately knew it was our son, because that was the happy name he always used for the property.

"It's Yuki," I called to my husband.

"What's happened?" My husband rushed to grab the phone. "Son, tell me..."

"Everything's fine, Dad," Yuki said brightly. "Granddad and I have got things pretty well organized, and I carried Grandma upstairs to her favorite room where she can watch us working outside and call out orders to us, as she loves to do." He gave a loud laugh, and we heard Granddad and Grandma joining in.

Later we heard all the biwa pearl details. Our son had established an independent base at the farm for his computer consulting work. He no longer had time to dye his hair and the earrings were gone because they became tangled in the cows' hair when he milked them. He and Granddad always preferred to milk by hand than use the cold steel automatic equipment.

Thereafter, on every occasion we sat together in our Kyushu apartment, my husband and I were unable to stop our foolish grinning and sudden laughter. We reminisced about our "happy ray of sunshine."

On his fifth birthday, Yuki, which means "snow" in Japanese, had declared "Now I'm big enough to help Granddad," and the next morning he stumbled out of bed before dawn and went with his grandfather to the cowshed. It was the warmest place on the farm with all the animals steaming in the frost of autumn. A few minutes later Granddad came trotting back into the kitchen, where the rest of us were preparing the meals for the day, and beckoned us to follow him to the shed. There was Yuki, fast asleep slumped on the milking stool, with his cheek nestled against a fat cow's cozy belly. The animal had her head turned, gazing affectionately at her little friend, gently accepting that she wasn't going to be milked anytime soon.

It became a regular routine, the happy boy trudging through the mud in his oversized rubber boots, refusing to hold Granddad's hand, and within a few minutes he was fast asleep again cuddled against his favorite old cow, which regularly looked back to puff warm breath on Yuki's tiny neck.

Last spring, my husband was finally transferred back to Gifu in time for his retirement in three more years, and I have started to teach again at the akoya pearl elementary school in the village. Granddad has definitely regained his former sturdy stride, and Grandma sits at her window in every season, knitting her mufflers without taking her eyes off her "men." Yuki seems to thrive on just a few hours' sleep, and never loses that same wild grin he always had as a youngster, running after the owls with a handful of paper aeroplanes.

Respect and duty are inside us all. We don't have to make repeated lessons about them. You can't teach love or responsibility. Just provide the soil, the sun, and the water, and they will grow by themselves.

tend to be pretty stable

06:16, 2009-Nov-11 .. 0 comments .. Link

friend just back from a few days in Chicago remarked that one of the pleasures of the trip was how much easier it was to drive there than in Boston.

When she overshot a garage entrance, she just went around the block and made another try. In many parts of the United States, this is no big deal. In Boston, it is a cause of conscious delight. In Boston you can't count on the block being square or on the street going all the way through or continuing to run in the same direction.

And get this – in Chicago there were street signs. Not only signs at the pearl jewelry streets, but signs positioned so the out-of-town visitor can anticipate what's coming. There are other cities besides Chicago that provide this, I know. But Boston is not one of them.

Small-town New England is known for its general paucity of street signs – as if directors of public works were bound and determined that no one would ever be able to get up at a town meeting to complain about reckless extravagance in the posting of signs – no sirree, not on their watch.

And in the tonier burbs, I can never quite resist feeling that keeping signs to a minimum is part of the town's overall riffraff control plan.

I mention all this because I've been thinking about how important it is, on the road and in language, to have ways to circle back, or around the block, or to change direction.

On the road this process takes place through the interaction of street signs and traffic lights, plus the turn signals and brake and backing lights on our cars. In biwa pearl language, it takes place through, among other means, the use of conjunctions – but, and, or. And let's not forget albeit.

Albeit?

Yes, albeit. It's a word we may see in print more than hear in conversation. It's a marvelous little folding umbrella of a word, collapsing the phrase "all though it be" into a akoya pearl compact six letters. It goes back to the 14th century and means roughly the same as "although" or "even though," or "notwithstanding." But, you'll note, it's shorter than any of those.

You may be surprised that a word going back to the 14th century is still in use. But conjunctions, as a part of speech, tend to be pretty stable, unlike nouns, for instance.

All it takes to get a new noun is for a new thing to be invented. Sometimes it need only be imagined. Television, the noun, predated television, the thing, by a couple of decades.

It seems I'd read a while back that albeit has been through a rough patch. But a quick check of Google News shows it in wide use, and not just by the old-fogy demographic.

A USA Today story on the frequent phenomenon of comebacks in professional tennis noted, "Andre Agassi, Jennifer Capriati and Monica Seles, to name three, all took major breaks and returned to win majors, albeit for different reasons." That "albeit" signals a quick change in direction, from what "all three" did, to the way each did it differently.

The writer went on to explain a little more in the next sentence. But the "albeit" construction came in handy – like circling the block when you make your turn.

fleeting season – a small

06:16, 2009-Nov-11 .. 0 comments .. Link

Her mother tongue fails her
in this moment – she has no words for
what she holds in pearl jewelry her hand.
It's like watching someone study rounded, purpled
light. I give her a piece and she licks
at the edge where skin releases flesh,
squints at the tartness, pauses
and I hold
an image of my father
laying out a plate of pitted and sliced
plums during their
fleeting season – a small,
tender gesture with small, tender fruit.

Her pause gives way to a bite
which gives way to a biwa pearl rush
of a smile as she finds
sweetness. And for a moment –
as Mala declares I would eat these
every day if I could –
this hot throbbing day in akoya pearl this hot
throbbing city expands until
I can almost believe it holds home.

especially the ones we are trying to help

06:15, 2009-Nov-11 .. 0 comments .. Link

In the last few days, Ethiopia has appealed for food aid to help 6.2 million of its citizens avoid starvation. A five-year drought, which is affecting more than 23 million people in seven East African countries, is part of the problem. Government policies designed to keep farmers on the land instead of moving to cities are also a factor. Their plots are divided and subdivided, and overfarmed so that they become less and less productive. The added stress of a drought, along with rising grain prices and fewer available funds to buy emergency supplies, only exacerbates the pearl jewelry situation.

Turning to prayer on behalf of all these people is one way we can contribute to their welfare. There are many examples in the Bible of people being supplied with food as the result of prayer, sometimes in unexpected ways. One of them is the time when the children of Israel were in the wilderness and had no more food. Moses prayed to God, who provided something they called "manna" – possibly a breadlike substance – in the morning, and quails at night.

I love the description of that event as it's given in the book of Psalms: "Man did eat angels' food" (Ps. 78:25). This statement beautifully describes the real source of good as spiritual, and as coming from God rather than through cutting back on supplies for one needy area so that another can have a few more crumbs. When one stops to consider that God is divine Love, and that being infinite, Love is actually ever present, it follows that right where the need is in Ethiopia or some other place, Love's solutions are already at hand. The challenge isn't ultimately lack of food but the ability to see the divine answer.

Our prayers can help light the way to perceiving the solution "on the ground" in Ethiopia and elsewhere. This description of angels from Monitor founder Mary Baker Eddy helps reinforce the spiritual nature of this quest: "God's thoughts passing to man; spiritual intuitions, pure and perfect; the inspiration of goodness, purity, and immortality, counteracting all evil, sensuality, and mortality" ("Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures," p. 581).

Spiritual intuition can unleash inspiration so that biwa pearl one can approach prayer with joy and a conviction that divine Love will indeed open a way for food needs to be met. "Goodness and purity" are perfect antidotes to the corruption and greed that sometimes impede food shipments. A conviction that the men and women of God's creating are spiritual, not material, brings to light the power of Spirit to sustain its children, not in a theoretical way but through actual adjustments to their circumstances. These loving convictions, resting on the proofs that Jesus supplied in his healing ministry, sustain our hopes even as they support workers' efforts to find speedy and workable solutions.

According to a report titled "Band Aids and Beyond," the international aid organization Oxfam says that "imported food aid saves lives in the short term but did little to help communities withstand the next shock" ("Ethiopia asks for urgent food aid," BBC News, Oct. 22). This indicates that it's also important to pray for long-term answers.

In these economic times especially, people long for stability. Working together to find answers and to eliminate the shocks can do much, and our prayers can support this effort also. That description of angels as "counteracting all evil, sensuality, and mortality" is again helpful. These negative facets of thought represent what the Bible calls "the carnal mind" – that which is opposed to the perfection of God's creation. We can overcome these destructive elements by seeking the beauty, power, and strength of divinely inspired thoughts, which remind us of God's goodness and enable us to feel love for God and His children, especially the ones we are trying to help.

Angel thoughts also counteract the mentality that keeps people looking at life in material terms and feeling trapped in a constant material round of akoya pearl just barely surviving. Prayer for inspired government can promote a new look at policies and the emergence of solutions, easing the burden on citizens and those charged with helping them.

Our prayers don't need to take on outlining just how Ethiopia and other countries will get the resources they need. But by "entertaining angels," we can support their progress with joy and hope.

In a well-known Bible story

06:15, 2009-Nov-11 .. 0 comments .. Link

When flying at night or through clouds, pilots don't have the usual visual cues. They may think they are flying straight and level, when in fact the aircraft is in a turn or descent. Occasionally, inexperienced pilots have flown into the ground or into the water because they trusted these physical messages rather than applying the flight-school mantra, "Trust your instruments."

The gauges on an aircraft's instrument panel are designed to guide pilots during conditions of low visibility. People who train to fly under such conditions learn to pearl jewelry override the input from their physical senses and fly the aircraft according to what the instruments tell them. This can be very difficult at first, but over time it becomes second nature.

As a pilot, I've found a strong correlation between instrument flying and using spiritual intuition. For example, when our physical senses indicate that the body is sick, it is tempting to believe that information and conclude that this is fact. Yet Jesus healed people of grave, chronic illnesses by refusing to believe what the physical senses conveyed. Christian Science explains that he looked beyond them to the spiritual truth of the situation. To Jesus, illness was not the ultimate reality about an individual; wholeness was.

Mary Baker Eddy, the founder of the Monitor, wrote, "Even though you aver that the material senses are indispensable to man's existence or entity, you must change the human concept of life, and must at length know yourself spiritually and scientifically. The evidence of the existence of Spirit, Soul, is palpable only to spiritual sense, and is not apparent to the material senses, which cognize only that which is the opposite of Spirit [God]" ("Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures," p. 359).

In a well-known Bible story, a storm arose while Jesus and his disciples were at sea. Afraid of losing their lives, the disciples woke Jesus, who was asleep in the biwa pearl back of the ship. And he "rebuked the wind, and said unto the sea, Peace, be still. And the wind ceased, and there was a great calm" (Mark 4:39).

How was it that Jesus was able to sleep while others were not? To me, he trusted his instruments. Evidently, his spiritual sense told him that in God's universe all was at peace, so that he was not fooled by the physical evidence of a dangerous storm. According to Christian Science, which is based on Jesus' teaching, his clear understanding of the spiritual fact that God is a loving God, who cares for everyone, explains how he could speak to the storm with authority.

A pilot may take off on a clear, sunny day, and then encounter clouds. Those who aren't prepared for instrument flying may panic, but pilots trained on instruments will feel calm as they transition from looking outside the cockpit to inside. The information they need is right in front of them; the instruments are built into the aircraft.

Similarly, our spiritual "instruments" are built in. God is always near. Spiritual facts are always there for us, telling us that good is real, and we are each capable of akoya pearl responding to a situation with the spiritual sense that's built into our very being.

Just as pilots practice flying on instruments, trusting spiritual sense may take some practice. But the more we rely on it, the more our ability to counteract physical discord through the power of prayer will be strengthened. In so doing, the reality of God's goodness will become increasingly apparent in our lives

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