May 27th, 2008  a Tuesday

Some parts of my holiday weekend were really sad.  The most popular approach to Memorial Day is that you should be reminded by reading the newspaper or watching tv that while this late May holiday signals the beginning of the American summer season, it is also a day for remembering the dead.  But honestly, if you don't have a dead soldier in your family, or as a friend of yours, chances are you enjoyed an extra day off without giving it a lot of thought.  One tv guy said that we remember those we lost in military service for ourselves, not for the fallen.  But I don't agree with that.  Anyone who has ever been to the Wall in Washington DC knows that those guys are spiritually alive and quite aware that people just keep coming to see them and remember them.  It may do us a lot of good as well but the dead know when someone is tuned in to them.  Any believer knows that. 

But still, three days off is something to be treasured by working people, no matter what the reason.  You love it so much that it seems even more devastating at the end of Monday to consider Tuesday than it usually is on Sunday to consider Monday. 

Not a day goes by that cancer doesn't pop up somewhere.  Maybe we should have a three day weekend to honor cancer survivors and patients, a day to hate the disease openly and with great enthusiasm.  I'll bet a lot more people would participate than the usual holidays.  But the disease still offers blessings galore.  Today I am thinking of Hamilton Jordan (with the funny pronunciation of Jerden).  He was the brilliant political thinker who in his late 20's masterminded the successful Jimmy Carter presidential bid and later become the youngest ever White House Chief of Staff.  He battled cancer for many years until his death a few days ago.  He spent the later part of his life dedicated to causes related to childhood cancer along with his wife, a pediatric oncology nurse.  In a photo taken at Camp Sunshine that they founded for sick kids, you could see the purpose and peace in his face.  Ham was a believer.  A true cancer blessing.

I don't know about you, but I spend a lot of time wishing I was something or someone else.  Mostly, you know, that I was a person instead of a bear, so I could enjoy everything that people get to do.  On Monday morning, I woke up to a din, a tiny roar, in the bedroom.  The Dutchman went straight to logic and figured it was water running, a stuck toilet, or when he couldn't find those, just unusually loud traffic noise off the lake (early on a holiday morning?).  But the night before, the weather had been so cool that we opened all the doors and windows.  And zillions of tiny double winged creatures flew in and took up residence on the ceiling.  I told the Dutchman that the tiny roar was the little creatures having their say but he wasn't buying it.  I was sunning myself outside later and a hummingbird came right up to me and hovered for at least fifteen seconds or so, looking me in the eye.  We made a connection that was unmistakable.  It was then I realized that we shouldn't spend so much time wishing we were someone else or something else.  Instead we should work with what we have because that is exactly what we are supposed to have, who we are supposed to be.  Maybe only I could hear the tiny roar of the double winged congregation or visit with Mr. Hummingbird on a sunny, cool holiday morning.  That's not so bad, is it?  Maybe being a person isn't all it's cracked up to be after all.  For today, I'll take being myself, thank you very much.  Just a bear with a blog.

GR