Winter has settled into the High Desert.  

The weather is gray and windy here in the mountain desert of Nevada.  the air is filled with snow flurries and a growling persistant wind,  Life seems to have slowed just a tiny bit.  A few folks out doing that last minute shopping thing that we in America are want to do.  

We are planning a move ... again.  Hopefully this will be the last one for either me or my Mother.  We have a mobile family - in the extreme.  I love this high country....mountain range after mountain range.  Feels somehow safe - a comfortable illusion.  

In the quiet of the high altitude winter I've been pondering human violence.  I think Karen Armstrong is right, it is time to practice compassion.  No more dead children by the hand of man...where ever it happens:  Afganistan, Israel and Arab occupied lands, weary and war torn Africa, Detroit, Newtown...anywhere.  Enough!  No more grieving parents because someone set off a gun, a bomb, a land mine.    

The CEO of the NRA suggested a police man in every school.  Very cavalier of him but perhaps he is not entirely wrong.  Perhaps we should use our National Guard or regular Army or Marines or Navy Seals to protect ours from us.  At least until we can agree on what is the national acceptable level of violence.  Yes, I think we need to be that blunt.  Let's talk about what we ignore.  We haven't yet figured out domestic violence let alone killing children in their schools and on their streets.  Perhaps this is the time we look at all of it.  It is all so much larger than developing a sane agenda for gun control.  We love our guns.  A loaf of bread and a hand gun in every home.  So be it.  Let's at least talk about those "fences" and who or what they are keeping in or keeping out.  Let's discuss those of us who are unstable and need a solid mental health program.  Let's discuss why we feel unsafe and afraid of strangers and worry about intruders.  Let's talk about how much gun Americans need to feel safe!

On another note...to my Christian friends out there, I wish you a peaceful holiday.  May the New Year be safe and healthy for you and those you love!  I dearly hope for a New Year that is more filled with pece than violence.  May the passage of time be kind to us all.

Puddle and Leafs on the roof

"Man's real possession is his memory.  In nothing else is he rich.  In nothing else is he poor."

~ Alexander Smith

I was gazing out the window between classes. It is a moment between one group of learners and the next.  The staff and I had been chatting about communication in the face of a dementing illness.  From the window I could see wet leafs piled on the roof below.  It reminded me of the subject that so recently stimulated discussion...memory and and the mind struggling with clots of 'plagues and tangles'...of the frustration of the adult who knows she has something to say and can't find the word.  The reflection of the word ~ the memory of what she knows still a shadow in her mind, but she is unable to breech the mass of protein plague to let her care givers know what she needs or wants.   I am reminded that to think in abstraction is a gift of health.  To discuss 'communication' with a classroom full of people who want to understand is also a grace of health.  That I can look out the window and discern that it is a rainy wet day and that there is a puddle on the roof and leafs are piling up is a blessing of health.  It is all so simple and so complicated ~ at the same time.  It is moment when I feel the brush of the eternal.