Summer Short 4
On Expansion

I finally read Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankel this winter. I believe summer should be reserved for lighter reading material, Girl on the Train etc. While reading, I found myself in his description of those who were mentally strong in the face of such horrible adversity. Frankel wrote, “Sensitive people who were used to a rich intellectual life may have suffered much pain (they were often of a delicate constitution), but the damage to their inner selves was less. They were able to retreat from their terrible surroundings to a life of inner riches and spiritual freedom.”

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Summer Short 3
Gathering Branches

There have been lots of big, thundery rain storms this summer. The kind that scare you even though you are way too big to be scared by thunderstorms anymore. The wind doesn’t howl, it screams. The rain doesn’t fall, it is driven, hard, merciless, and torrential. The trees do not sway, they creak, bend and moan, their fine limbs ripped away. Sometimes they are fully uprooted.

Being human, it is inevitable that you will be hurt and that you will hurt others. Unintended hurts are as common as small branches scattered on the ground after a storm. But I have found that it is the unacknowledged hurts that really uproot us.

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Summer Short 2
Life on the Playground

When my kids first entered school I noticed how little things had changed since I was in pigtails. The alphabet song was still going strong, the mixed bouquet of Elmer’s Glue and water-based paints still lingered in the air, kids still ate their sandwiches with the crust carefully cut off and sat in circles on the floor with their legs crossed, as we used to say, Indian Style. Being PC wasn’t really a thing then.
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