Downwind from a mystery….

From any angle, we have a beautiful home, as I was able to see when I flew over the island last autumn, with Cape San Juan stretching out before us...

Let’s see how this day unfolds…each day we know on the earth offers glimpses of mystery & hope. Keep your eyes wide….

• Keep Japan in your thoughts, prayers & good deeds these days, as they struggle with those reactors, bury their dead, and start to piece things back together on their little island. I know you will, because you’re that way…

It's easy to see the beauty around us...can you see the beauty in the heart of the person you disagree with? That's where the chance for finding common ground will begin.

• Thirty years ago this month, when President Reagan was shot, and about to get operated on, he was awake & aware, and said to the doctor in charge, joking, “I hope you’re a Republican.” The doc, who was a liberal Democrat, said, “Mr. President, today we’re all Republicans.”

That’s a good doc.

I hope there comes a time when all the present hard times with the school district pass, that we remember that we used to disagree, but are able to say in that future time, “Today, we’re all islanders, and we all love our children.” I believe that of us now, and believe it will be the base of our kids’ future. There will come a time when we come together again.

• Through the years on the island, the main business of the island has changed color & hue – for a while it was farming; before that, fishing & incredible canneries that fed the nation; sometimes timber; more fishing, and now the business of welcoming visitors to our beautiful spot, often to renew themselves and to connect with the trees & water & our animal friends here.

Those previous years had ebbs & flows (we who live with tides understand better than most that what goes up eventually comes down, and every day’s low tide will always rise again), and the low ebb of the last couple of years has a chance to rise again this summer. It is my hope that we welcome our visitors, not with the faces & air of desperate business people with strained finances, but with open hearts & open arms & the smiles that go with living in a place that nourishes us each day with such beauty, and the love we have for each other.

Is the sunset more lovely than the sunrise? If you hold the memory of one more closely in your memory & heart, you miss the chance to let the other grow inside you.

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