Child With a Garden Hose



Good Morning Sweet Friends!

Freely flowing, fast moving water, gushing into puddles beneath him. Garden hose stretching long in an exaggerated twist, squirting fluid without restriction. Grass and mud clothing his water-logged feet, and dripping ringlets of wet straight hair. Unconfined...

That's how I want to look. Even in this weak and worsening economy, I pray for hands wide open. Not open to grasp with selfish hands, open to pass on and move all that I can.

My grandmother once told me that we must never lose our spirit of generosity.

It's so easy to store shoe boxes in the ground.

I once knew a woman who gave generously. She gave with utter abandonment. Her home, her food, her time, her resources...it didn't matter because she never really took ownership of them to begin with. She understood that she was just using them temporarily.

I still have the crumpled, yellowing sheet of paper that holds the words that I had hoped to tell at her memorial. You see, the same day that Mimi died, a boy in Africa died from AIDS. His motto was, " Do all that you can, with all that you have, for as long as you can, wherever you are."

These two people, continents apart, lived their lives the same way.

Like a child with a garden hose.

Warmly,

Alis