Daffodil Days Are Here Again!!!

So now that the kids have gone I must clean and wash clothes and dust and wash sheets and clean the shower and wash towels and ..... more company coming for the weekend.  Yes!  It's DAFFODIL days in Nantucket and we MUST be there to record the event for posterity.  Dogs in tutus and old cars covered with ribbons, yellow of course, and ladies in LARGE daffodil adorned bonnets.  Remember last year?  No?  Well here's a bit of a reminder - - -

And this too

Can't wait.

Tired Tired Tired

It's Sunday and this busyness thing?  It is really, incredibly exhausting!  Just sayin'.

Busy Busy Busy

Did I say that my husband had reunited with his children after an absence of about 40 years?  We went to visit in September and then went back for a week in March.  They are really great kids and this week they are coming for a visit with us to see the area and meet family.  Here's the Itinerary:

Tuesday:

Check the house, make the beds, bring supplies;
Grocery shop
Drop off Raven at Canine College

Pick up DD in Providence approx 4 PM

Pick up DS in Westwood approx 7:30 PM

Grab a bit to eat

Return to Cape

Wednesday:

Breakfast

Walk to beach and around neighborhood

Eventually drive to Ptown stopping along the way to view Marconi, Highland Light,

Coast Guard Beach walk to water for Atlantic dipping and on to Race Point

Ptown – see the Monument and walk through town to pier – etc

Back home and ?

Thursday:

Breakfast and walk

Drive to NY

Check in and see Central Park and Empire State

Dinner at Gallaghers

?

Friday:

Breakfast

Check out

Drive to Ground Zero

Drive to NJ and Liberty State Park

Tour Ellis Island and Statue of Liberty

Drive Home

Saturday:

Breakfast

Darling Niece arrives

Drive to Boston – The Pru to get tickets for Duck Tour

Hopefully do the Duck

Drive to Constitution for a tour

Drive to Marketplace – walk around and eat at Durgin Park

Home

Sunday:

Breakfast – Walk

Drive to Plymouth – Rock and Mayflower

Lunch in Kingston at 1 – til?

?

Home

Monday:

Breakfast – walk

Drive to Holbrook pick up Raven

Back to visit in Kingston

No plans

Tuesday:

DD leaves

Wednesday:

DS leaves

Thursday:

Be sad

I'm Organizing Today

How does this lady know me so well?

The Miracle

C. S. Lewis, Miracles (New York: Macmillan, 1947), 112, 115-17.

The central miracle asserted by Christians is the Incarnation. They say that God became Man. Every other miracle prepares for this, or exhibits this, or results from this. . . .

In the Christian story God descends to re-ascend. He comes down; down from the heights of absolute being into time and space, down into humanity . . . down to the very roots and sea-bed of the Nature He has created.

But He goes down to come up again and bring the ruined world up with Him. One has the picture of a strong man stooping lower and lower to get himself underneath some great complicated burden. He must stoop in order to lift, he must almost disappear under the load before he incredibly straightens his back and marches off with the whole mass swaying on his shoulders.

Or one may think of a diver, first reducing himself to nakedness, then glancing in mid-air, then gone with a splash, vanished, rushing down through green and warm water into black and cold water, down through increasing pressure into the death-like region of ooze and slime and old decay; then up again, back to colour and light, his lungs almost bursting, till suddenly he breaks surface again, holding in his hand the dripping, precious thing that he went down to recover. He and it are both coloured now that they have come up into the light: down below, where it lay colourless in the dark, he lost his colour, too.

In this descent and re-ascent everyone will recognise a familiar pattern: a thing written all over the world. It is the pattern of all vegetable life. It must belittle itself into something hard, small and deathlike, it must fall into the ground: thence the new life re-ascends.

It is the pattern of all animal generation too. There is descent from the full and perfect organisms into the spermatozoon and ovum, and in the dark womb a life at first inferior in kind to that of the species which is being reproduced: then the slow ascent to the perfect embryo, to the living, conscious baby, and finally to the adult.

So it is also in our moral and emotional life. The first innocent and spontaneous desires have to submit to the deathlike process of control or total denial: but from that there is a re-ascent to fully formed character in which the strength of the original material all operates but in a new way. Death and Rebirth–go down to go up–it is a key principle. Through this bottleneck, this belittlement, the highroad nearly always lies.

The doctrine of the Incarnation, if accepted, puts this principle even more emphatically at the centre. The pattern is there in Nature because it was first there in God. All the instances of it which I have mentioned turn out to be but transpositions of the Divine theme into a minor key. I am not now referring simply to the Crucifixion and Resurrection of Christ. The total pattern, of which they are only the turning point, is the real Death and Re-birth: for certainly no seed ever fell from so fair a tree into so dark and cold a soil as would furnish more than a faint analogy to this huge descent and re-ascension in which God dredged the salt and oozy bottom of Creation.

Thank You Lord for Miracles.

Easter Round Up

Sorting through the Easter activities and things have really turned around.  We are having a new septic system put in and right now the house is almost inaccessible.  The size of this thing is unreal.  We have a teeny tiny house and the system we have to install takes up more land than the house does.  There is a moat that runs along the house on two sides.  I say we could flush a bazillion more times than we ever have in all the years of the house's existence and it will still never be full.  Oh well.  For that reason we have changed plans to have the whole fam here as we usually do.  There is no parking available and with the rain, the mud and muck is everywhere.  Easier to go out and go out we shall.  Meanwhile I still have to clean and such since my nephew will be with us for the weekend.

Oh and yes, at the moment we only have one car since on the way back home on Tuesday my husband went through what he thought was a puddle and instead it was a lake.  The car ran for a while after that but then stopped.  Fortunately he was able to coast into a rest area and call AAA.  Naturally parts have to be ordered and blah blah blah, might take until Monday to be back with us.  So, as you see, business as usual here.

I will probably be back before Easter but just in case I don't have a thought to share, let me share this one.