Dear World {In defense of watching sunsets}

Dear, Darling,World,
     Tonight I took time to lay aside my broom in the middle of evening chores and watch the sunset. A simple thing, but one that might tell a lot about a person if you'd only listen.
It is a maxim of mine never to grow too busy to watch a sunset. You see, a person who is too busy to watch a sunset now and then is to busy to live, and if one is too busy to live, then one had much better die. It sounds harsh, yes, but if you'd only bear with me a moment longer you might understand...

What do we rush through life for but to get to the end and look back with a sigh of relief? Then it is the end you are rushing after, so go ahead and rush toward it if you will. I'm afraid I take a rather Peter-Pan-ian view of this life:
Of course I want to be in Heaven with Jesus, but I am not one of those cardboard people who think this world is rotten through and through with nothing to enjoy. Heaven will be marvelous, I know. Far better than anything I've imagined it out to be. If I knew what perfection is I'm sure I'd die here and now from sheer longing to be there. But how can one be quite certain that there will be sunsets? One cannot be certain of anything on that account because there won't need to be a sun with God's glory shining. Now wouldn't it be a shame to get to Heaven only to realize that you'd missed all the sunsets on earth? Heaven will undoubtedly have things far more beautiful than a sunset, but think of the benefits of taking a bit of time to lay aside your broom! What a longer life it might give you, just because you watched a sunset. Think of it in a logical manner:

1. You lay aside your broom, therefore you add a moment of leisure to your life that might never have existed.

2. You step out onto the porch and your skin soaks in the last rays of vitamin D while you heart and soul are fed by this beauty of the Lord's making. Right there, one has ministered to all three parts of one's body.

3. You let your mind wander a little which improves brain capacity and intelligence.

4. You watch this sunset with your senses alive to the beauty of the world--the colors flooding the sky, the sound of the frogs and crickets, the feel of the cool air against your skin. Thus your awareness of your five senses will be heightened and your dinner will taste better

5. You go back inside and you are in a happier mood.

6. You finish sweeping and probably do a much better job because now that it comes to it, you can see all those spots you missed.

7. You live your life this way, stepping outside to watch sunsets. Once you get to Heaven you see there might not be any sunsets, but there is something infinitely better--you are slightly prepared for the glory by absorbing beauty in little doses.

8. You are twice the winner--you tasted heaven on earth, and you'll recognize earth in Heaven.

So you see, watching the sunsets will extend your life, make you healthy, wealthy, and wise, and all around improve you in every manner. How the philosophers would laugh at my reasoning, but I say Let Them. I guarantee that I'll be the happier by the end of this life while they argued that I was the one in error. :)

Love Everly,

                  Rachel

The Booklover's Mind: a peep

Observations from a book-lover...

• I'm so glad the Marshalsea and other debtors' prisons no longer exist
• The Micawbers and I? Yeah. We're like this.
• Dear old Dickens and Lewis--how do you manage to be so quotable?
• I have been much amused by the fact that Jane Austen's most famous quotes come from her villains (and villainesses) so one can only wonder if she disagreed with all the things people tout around as her wisdom. :P
• Green Gables--how does one tack a name onto a place and enmesh the name and place together in so effortless a fashion that every green and white farmhouse you see thereafter reminds you of a certain red-head?
• Josephine March--may I mention to you that I whole-heartedly agree when you say, "Oh, I hate money." It also amuses me how you can so cheerfully speak of your family's poverty as "a temporary poverty" when it has stretched years already. You're a darling.
• Yes he can be blunt and sarcastic and a tad vulgar, but Mark Twain was a star-spangled, gold-plated genius, that's what.
• There is a certain point in a thick book--*glares at Les Miserables*--when you think you will never get through. It is precisely at that moment that you decide whether you will beat it or not by the manner in which you respond to the doubt. If you toss the book aside you will fail. If you grab hold of it, grit your teeth, and sludge through yet another historic description, you will prevail. :)
• Bookmarks are so under-appreciated. "You never know what you got till it's gone," to quote the song. Anything will do--tags, tea-bags, napkins, post-it-notes, receipts and--in an extreme pinch--you can make do with...toilet paper.
•  I wish getting published was as "easy" as Jo March and Anne Shirley made it seem. I mean, at least editors accepted submissions back then. :P
• Read outside--there is an indescribable something that happens and quite transports you from this world to that.
• The best books never grow old. They grow soft, worn, battered, but they gain faces and you get to know them as well as you know your best friends. :)

In Which I'm Taken for Princess Leia. :)

If it was not Daniel and I, I would have deemed the couple going out for Blizzards from Dairy Queen on a freezing night a bit odd.

But it was Daniel and I. It appeared that Sarah, Dad, and the various and sundry everybody elses had eaten all the left-over ice cream from the other night. 

National Security deemed it a State of Emergency. I suggested that Daniel and I run up to the Dairy Queen nearby and get ourselves something. He was agreeable to the idea and we decided to go. 

And then I realized...

...I looked an awful lot like Mickey Mouse. I had my hair in double sock-buns on the top of my head and I looked quite Mousey. "Well, let's stay in the car." I suggested.

Daniel looked much aggrieved. "Oh come on, it doesn't look that bad," he said. I gave him a sidelong, very skeptical glance, but I really didn't want to sit in the car either. I would have to do it. I would rely on the cover of darkness and the lateness of the hour to keep me from any embarrassing encounters with anyone that mattered.

He and I piled into the car, zipped down the road, and walked into the restaurant. He ordered first. I ordered next:

"I'd like a double-fudge cookie-dough blizzard, please."

The cashier was very sweet, but she is not accustomed to seeing me in such a rodent-like state. I saw her politely trying not to stare at my hair. I saw her eyes sparkling and the way that amused smile kept stealing across her face. I knew she thought I was nonsensical, but people, a girl's gotta do what a girl's gotta do, right? I didn't care so much.

And then I saw them. Them. People we knew. People we knew enough that it would be rude to ignore them. People that would see me impersonating Mickey Mouse and get into their car and laugh all the way home. It was a bit mor'ifying, to quote Mr. Guppy. But I began to see the humor in the situation. I was enjoying myself a little, actually.

We did the unavoidable rendezvous. We greeted them and found they didn't quite remember us. Embarrassment #1. But I smiled. Well of course they didn't remember us. I didn't look like Mickey Mouse last time they saw me. Huge ears definitely change a person's look. ;)

I prepared my excuse--prepared to admit that my mouse-ears were simply vanity--perched up there only because I wanted wavy hair the following day And yes, I planned on sleeping that way. And then the situation suddenly turned around. I was mistress of myself all at once because the wife said something that gave me an open door to be proud of my Mickey Mouse ears.

"Your hair looks so cute!" she cried. "I told my daughter you were Princess Leia!"

Suddenly the world was turned right, I stood a little straighter, and I laughed. Princess Leia?

Yes....I can take that. :)