Miraculous Moments

We live in an age of wonder, in a world of wonder. We  have so much, we often live in a state of numb unawareness.


When you look outside, is the earth daily regenerating itself, plants, animals, air and water constantly in a state of renewal and revival?
Do birds build nests, raise their young and sing songs in your trees?
Have you enjoyed the variety yet predictability of the seasons, each with their own beauty?
Do dogs love you and cats make you love them?
Do plants and flowers flourish around you with a rainbow of colorful blooms and fruits with numerous hues and textures of green leaves?
If you have family, do you know the companionship that comes from being related in blood?
Have you looked at your children lately and remembered that they are a product of mutual love, new creatures literally called into being by two others, and two others alone?
Have you noticed the insects in your lawn, the worms eating and releasing waste to enrich the soil?

When you got up this morning, did a device that you pre-programmed, make a noise of your choosing to wake you?
Did you don clothing that was made in a factory by someone you've never met, and displayed in a temperature controlled, fashionably decorated building and sold to you by clerks who sign agreements guaranteeing they'll be treated with fair and equitable business practices?
Did you go to work in a metal box ten times faster than you could walk yourself, the temperature controlled,  while listening to the latest happenings all over the globe, and the music of musicians you've never met playing songs that are heard all over the world?
At lunch, did you eat food that had been transported from as far away as China, grown in hothouses if it was out of season, and shipped to you in a variety of conveyances, while drinking water that had been filtered through a hygienic system, and pumped to your facility and possibly even dispensed to a cool drinking temperature by a chemical and electronic process?
At your place of employment is it a given that your employer won't usually ask you to do any work without being paid on the scale you both agreed on, and that if you are laid off, you will be eligible for government aid?

Does the current administration hold it's position because the majority of citizens decreed by vote that it should be so, and not by a military victory over all opponents, or by blood lineage?
 Are you confident that if you should have an emergency, competent help at no charge will be dispatched to your aid within a matter of minutes?
Do you know people, or are you one of the fortunate, that have been cured through modern medicine of diseases that in the last century would have wiped out entire populations?
Do you have access to information that has been gathered for milliniums, and organized into a system that allows you to retrieve it by either typing in a keyword, or speaking that word into a device from the comfort of your own home?
Can you connect with someone in nearly any country of the world with no more effort than the flick of a wrist, and for approximately the price of a week's pay, travel to the farthest country in the world in less than a week?

Well if it was true in Robert Louis Stevenson's day, it must certainly hold true in ours:

"The world is so full of a number of things, I'm sure we should all be as happy as kings."

An Orange Bracelet

A beautiful and wonderful thing.

E. Nesbit says, "Beautiful and wonderful things do happen, and we live all our lives in the hope of them.

My husband and I enjoyed a lovely evening at the Modesto Symphony's Picnic at the Pops, on the Gallo Winery grounds. We were hosted by our oldest friends in Modesto. This is no commentary on their age, only on how long we have known them!

It was a delightful treat to be with friends, some new, some old, and enjoy live music from 'our' era. Usually we are making music for other people, so this was indeed a treat!

I saved the orange bracelet they gave us and wrapped it around the steering wheel of my car, because I didn't want to forget that 'beautiful and wonderful things' do happen to me and I don't want to forget them, especially when those beautiful and wonderful things are not happening. Perhaps the opposite. Those happen too.

When something beautiful and wonderful happens to you, how do you remind yourself of it?
When was the last time you did something beautiful and wonderful for someone else?
It's our turn now!