Dear Friends,
Theologians call is grace, a gift from God. The word itself is from the Latin gr_tia, gr_tus – it is pleasing. My son Jonathanʼs name meansʻ’gift from God.’ He and my daughter Susan were the first gifts that came to me as a real, immediate and lasting kind of grace.
Then I was graced with grandchildren, Alex, 23, and Hannah, 20, now young adults. Each stage of their lives has been a remarkable gift Iʼve treasured. What a blessing!
Last year Alex surprised me with hand-made gift – he had learned how to knit and he made me a nice warm woolen stocking hat, which has gotten a lot of use on cold-morning walks at Compo Beach.
This year Alex, who will graduate from college this spring, bowled me over with a hooded sweater and a pair of mittens he knitted for me. The warmth of the hat, mittens and sweater is a perfect metaphor.
Hannah, who is a dance major in her junior year of college, graced me with a DVD she made for me, which she titled, ‘Winter moving thoughts for Papa.ʼ
She filmed herself doing a dance she choreographed and performed as her interpretation of Robert Frostʼs poem, Looking for a Sunset Bird in Winter, which begins:
The west was getting out of gold,
The breath of air had died of cold,
When shoeing home across the white,
I thought I saw a bird alight.
She went into the snow-covered woods in back of her home, set up a camera, and recorded the delicate dance, much of it on a snow-covered log on which she moved ever so carefully in delicate dance patterns.
To complete the three and a half minute piece she wove Frostʼs poem into the sequence of graceful movements on the log and around the bare trees.
She wrote out Frostʼs poem on a card with a note, saying, “Thanks for inspiring the poet in me, whether written or moving.”
Yes, ‘it is pleasing.’ Theologians call it Grace. I know.
Yours,
Frank
