WEP: A Christmas Miracle

Thought for the day: At Christmastime, anything is possible.

I enjoyed participating in the last WEP challenge so much, I decided to submit something for this one, too. Why not? It's fun!

As you can see, the theme this time around is ribbons and candles, and for lack of a more inspired title, I'll call my offering A Christmas Miracle.














                                               A CHRISTMAS MIRACLE

Ella’s eyes sparkled as she bounced in place, fairly vibrating with excitement. “Hurry UP, Nana! Open it!”

Gertrude shakily removed the last bit of wrapping paper, revealing a laminated bookmark decorated with enough gold and red glitter to fill a small bathtub. A gold cross shone at its top, and down its length, glittery red hearts alternated with equally glittery red letters that spelled L-O-V-E.

Ella clapped her hands. “Do you like it? Do you?”

 “Oh, my goodness!” Gertrude gushed, pressing one gnarled hand to her chest. “This is so beautiful a famous artist must have made it!”

“NO-O-O! It was me! I made it for you!” Ella giggled, her face more radiant than ever. “Now you can throw away that icky ribbon.”

Gertrude looked at the faded ribbon peeking out from the pages of her well-worn Bible on the table beside her. Then she patted Ella’s cheek. “I’ll happily use your bookmark in other books, sweetie, but my ribbon stays right where it is. That’s where it belongs.”

“But why?” Ella asked, her bottom lip trembling. “I thought you’d like something new and pretty.”

“Oh, I do like it, dear. I promise you I like it very much, but not for my Bible, because that ribbon is much more than just a ribbon.” With a smile, she whispered, “It’s a miracle.”

Ella sniffled. “It just looks like a dirty old ribbon to me.”

“Looks can be deceiving. Would you like to hear about it?’

The little girl nodded and climbed into her grandmother’s lap. “I like your stories.”

“Oh, but this one isn’t make-believe. It’s about something that happened a long time ago, when I wasn’t much older than you are now.” She tweaked Ella’s nose. “But I wasn’t nearly as cute as you.”

When Ella stopped squirming and giggling, Gertrude hugged her and continued. “It was just my parents, my younger brother and me back then, and we didn’t have much money, but we were happy. We had a roof over our heads, and we never went hungry. ‘Course, most of what we ate, we grew ourselves, and we rarely had meat, but we were fine. We had each other, and like I said, we were happy.”

Gertrude stroked Ella’s hair, a faraway look in her eyes. “Mama cooked a chicken on Thanksgiving, and after all these years, I still remember how good it was.” She closed her eyes and smiled. “The best meal I’ve ever eaten.”

“Why didn’t you have turkey? We always have turkey for Thanksgiving.”

Gertrude kissed the top of Ella’s head. “We didn’t have enough money, pumpkin. Hardly anyone did back then. Anyway, Papa lost his job a few days later, so we all knew it’d be an even simpler Christmas that year than usual, but Mama made me a new flour sack dress and told me I could have one small toy.”

Ella laughed. “NO-O-O! That’s silly! Nobody can wear a flour bag.”

Fabric flour sacks

Gertrude chuckled. “We sure did! Back then, flour bags were made of pretty fabrics, and lots of people used them to make clothes. The dress Mama made me was covered with tiny purple flowers. It was beautiful.”

Ella nodded her head solemnly, absorbing this new information. “What toy did you ask for?”

“I didn’t. I told my parents to get my brother two, because he was younger. But when I said my prayers on Christmas Eve, I asked God for a piece of purple ribbon to match my dress, so I could wear it in my hair when we went to church on Christmas. And Papa heard me.”

“So he got it for you?”

“He tried. Mama told me he walked all the way to town in a snowstorm and knocked at the door of every single store, but they were all closed. She said he was really sad when he got home.”

Ella kissed her grandmother’s cheek. “I’m sorry, Nana. So you didn’t get your ribbon until after Christmas?”

“Oh, no,” Gertrude said. “When I woke up on Christmas morning, it was lying on my pillow. One uncut piece of ribbon that was the same deep purple as the pansies I used to plant in my yard here every year. It was the perfect length to put in my hair, too, as though it had been created just for me.”

Wide-eyed, Ella gaped at her grandmother. “Where did it come from? Your mother?”

Gertrude shook her head. “No. She was just as surprised by the ribbon as my father was, and they both cried when they saw it.”

Ella gasped. “Elves?!”

“No, dear,” Gertrude said gently. “I believe God answered my prayer.”

Ella looked at her grandmother’s Bible with awe. “Wow,” she whispered. For once, the fidgety little girl sat perfectly still, as though deep in thought. Then she turned to her grandmother, her eyes aglow and an angelic smile on her face. “Think he’d give me a pony for Christmas?”

Gertrude laughed. “Do you think one will fit on your pillow?”

Ella giggled. “I was only kidding. Can I help you plant purple pansies next time?”

“Oh, I’m afraid my planting days are done, but thank you for offering. You’re a sweet child, Ella Bella.”

The little girl jumped down from her grandmother’s lap and faced her with hands planted firmly on her hips. “Then Mama and I will have to plant them for you!”

Tears sparkled in Gertrude’s eyes. “That isn’t necessary, sweetheart. I don’t need to see purple pansies to remember how beautiful my ribbon was. To remember the miracle.”

“But I do!” Ella insisted. “I want to plant purple pansies every single year until I’m old like you, so I never ever forget.”

Gertrude smiled at her beautiful thoughtful grandchild, every bit as much of a miracle as that piece of ribbon ever was. “Well then, Ella Bella, purple pansies we shall have.”

                                                              ******************

                                              May all your Christmas dreams come true.
                                    Until next time, take care of yourselves. And each other.

P.S. This story was inspired by a lovely old song called Scarlet Ribbons. 

A Snowball's Chance

Thought for the day: When you pray for rain, better carry an umbrella. 

[image courtesy of seniorark.com]

And if you pray for rain in the middle of a drought, maybe you should carry an umbrella that can also save that precious water, like this inventive fella. Waste not, want not, right?

If you think about it, umbrellas, like parachutes, have something in common with human minds. They all function best when they're open.

When you become comfortable with uncertainty, infinite possibilities open up in your life. [Eckhart Tolle]

That uncertainty, that willingness to accept that what one believes to be true may, in fact, not be true, is what I mean by keeping an open mind. Even so, sheer logic often tells us that some things are so off-the-chart improbable that we pretty much accept the fact that they're never going to happen. For example, when I walk out our front door tomorrow morning, I find it highly unlikely that a mountain would have sprung up in our front street overnight, or that the Atlantic Ocean would suddenly be lapping at our front steps, and what's more, I think most people would agree that such a ridiculous scenario goes way past improbable and hovers somewhere above the downright impossible. It's also highly unlikely that the U.S. Olympic swim team could swim laps in the middle of the Sahara Desert... during a drought.

                                                                           Or is it...?

[the Sahara Desert.- courtesy of wikipedia]

The Sahara desert is more than three and a half million square miles of sand, which is comparable to the area of China or the United States. That's a LOT of sand. (FYI: Even so, it's only the third largest desert in the world... behind Antarctica and the Arctic.)

Anyhow, In August of 2014, right in the middle of a relentless drought, something highly unlikely happened in this unforgiving desert. Something very improbable, verging on the impossible.

In Tunisia, in the middle of the drought, a lake was born in the Sahara desert... virtually overnight.

[image courtesy of morguefile]

A man named Mehdi Bilel trekked through the sandy expanse to attend a wedding, and when he returned home via that same route just three days later... he found that a 2.6-acre crystal clear turquoise blue lake, 10 to 18 meters deep, had miraculously appeared. Needless to say, at first he thought it was a mirage... (Wouldn't you?)

But it wasn't a mirage. As highly unlikely as it was, as improbable as it was, as nigh on impossible as it seemed, the lake was real.

The clear water soon turned a murky green, and the authorities issued a warning that the water might not be safe. They said because of all the phosphorus mining in the area, it could be contaminated or radioactive. Undeterred, the locals continue to flock to the water, which they've dubbed Gafsa Beach, or Lac de Gafsa, and they still contend that the lake was created supernaturally as a blessing to the people. And the lake, an unexpected and blessed refuge from the desert heat, has become a bit of a tourist attraction.

Geologists say a minor earthquake could've fractured an underground aquifer, allowing the water to rise to the surface. But no tremor registered, and no evidence of an aquifer has been found.

 Sometimes, something as unlikely as a lake in the middle of a desert has to be seen to be believed:

For clarification, this isn't the only lake that mysteriously appeared in the Sahara in 2014. On November 11, a lake also materialized in the Enuga State of Nigeria. It's now revered as a place of healing, and people travel from far and near to bathe in and drink the water. It's also not the first time this lake appeared in Nigeria. One of the elders in the area said the lake has actually appeared three times over the past 80 years ... always in the midst of the driest, hottest times... and then disappeared. Nigerian legend holds that if a righteous man scratches the ground on that spot while at prayer, the healing water will magically begin to appear.

Who knows? A natural geological occurrence with a simple explanation, or something supernatural, as the people there believe?

All I know is there's a snowball's chance in hades that it'll ever snow there.

                                                             Um, never mind.

Yep, it snowed in the Sahara last week.  In a small Algerian town... and it snowed there in December, too. In this world, I reckon just about anything is possible. 

Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities. Truth isn't. [Mark Twain]

Until next time, take care of yourselves. And each other. 

Oddities and Endings

Thought for the day:  What is this life if, full of care, we have no time to stand and stare? [W.H. Davies]

There's no end to the number of things in this world that are worthy of a little staring and studying. We can never know or understand it all in one lifetime, but that's no excuse for not trying. For not questioning. For not appreciating.

Today, we're gonna consider a handful of little-known facts that simply struck my fancy. Mental odds and ends, I guess you could call them.

If there's only one thing in your junk drawer, what do you call it... an odd or an end...?

[wikipedia]

This first one is about an ending. Everyone's familiar with the sinking of the Titanic in 1912, but did you realize what a vital role engineers played that day? What sacrifices they made? Of the twenty-five engineers on board, not a single one survived. That's because they manned the pumps, and kept the electricity running for as long as possible, so the lights and radio remained operational... so others could escape and survive.

The disaster was not of their doing, but they died heroes, trying to correct the mistakes of others; knowing their own survival unlikely, they died so that others might have a chance to live. [ F.J. Blake, White Star Engineering Superintendent]

[Daily Knowledge Newsletter]

This one is more of an ending, followed by a shiny new beginning. In 1999, Australian Bill Morgan, 37 years old, was involved in a serious truck accident. While being treated in the hospital, an allergic reaction to a medication caused him to have a heart attack. A fatal heart attack. The guy actually flat-lined for fourteen minutes before doctors could revive him... only to spend the next twelve days in a deep coma. With no expectations of a recovery, doctors advised his family to pull the plug. But nope...  this guy wasn't done yet. He not only woke up, against all odds, but he was fine... all of his faculties were intact. With his new miraculous lease on life, he proposed to  his long-time girlfriend, and when she accepted, he bought a lottery ticket to celebrate. He won a new car. A Melbourne TV station, intrigued with his tale, asked him to re-enact buying and scratching off a lottery ticket for their news segment. So he did... and he won again. Two hundred and fifty thousand dollars. Dontcha love stories with a happy ending and a bright new beginning?

[RIA Novosta]

This picture shows people lining up to get water during the WWII siege of Leningrad, a 900-day period of oppression and deprivation that lasted from September of 1941 until the spring of '44. Many people died during that time, and among them, nine Soviet scientists who starved to death while protecting... the world's largest seed bank.

Created in 1926 by scientist Nikolai Vavilov, Pavlovsk Station contained four hundred thousand seeds, roots and fruits, and was established with the goal of ending world famine. When the Germans took over their city in 1941, the Pavlovsk Station scientists starved to death rather than eat any of the food they were protecting, because they considered it to be their country's hope for the future.

The fictionalized retelling of this story can be found in the novel Hunger, by Elise Blackwell. It is also immortalized in the song When the War Came, by the Decemberists.

[wikipedia]

In 1947, boxer Jimmy Doyle challenged welterweight champ Sugar Ray Robinson to a title bout. Robinson initially agreed, but then tried to back out after he had a vivid dream in which he'd killed his opponent in the ring. The promoters stood to lose a lot of money if they had to cancel the fight, so they got a priest and a minister to convince Robinson that it was only a dream, and the fight should go on as scheduled. It did go on, but in the eighth round, Doyle hit the canvas, and never regained consciousness. He died seventeen hours later. Following his death, boxing rules were changed, so that fighters who suffered serious head injuries (as Doyle had in several previous bouts) wouldn't be allowed to fight again. The twenty-two year old had promised to buy his mother a house with his winnings, a promise he was unable to keep... but Robinson kept it for him. He donated all of his money from his next four fights to Doyle's mother. Robinson retired in 1965, was inducted into the Boxing Hall of Fame in '67, and founded the Sugar Ray Robinson Youth Foundation for inner-city children in '69. Ironically, his foundation never sponsored a boxing program.

Rhythm is everything in boxing. Every move you make starts with your heart, and that's in rhythm, or you're in trouble. [Sugar Ray Robinson]

[Australian Red Cross]

Back to Australia for the last story. Meet James Harrison, AKA the man with the golden arm. When he was fourteen years old, he had major surgery, in which he received thirteen liters of blood, He swore that as soon as he turned eighteen, he'd pay it back by becoming a blood donor. He was a man true to his word. Matter of fact, he's been in the Guinness Book of World Records since 2003 for the most blood donated by one person. And his donations have saved more than two million babies.

That's because he has a rare antigen in his blood that can cure Rhesus disease. Research based on his blood led to the creation of RhoGAM, which is administered to women whose blood may be incompatible with their babies because of Rh factor. (Like me!) By donating on the average of every three weeks for fifty-seven years, Mr. Harrison reached his one thousandth donation in May of 2011. He reached 1106 as of June of 2015, and he's still going strong. Why? Because he still sees it as a duty and a way to pay it forward. What an amazing man. He gave the gift of life to millions of people. Including my children.

[David Gray/Reuters/Landov]

                             On that happy feel-good note, I'll say adieu for now.

                           Until next time, take care of yourselves. And each other.

On the Side of Miracles

Thought for the day:  There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is.  [Albert Einstein]

[morguefile]

So which kind of person are you... one who believes in miracles, or one who doesn't? One who sees the wondrous beauty of life and creation itself as miraculous, or one who believes everything can be easily explained by mere logic and scientific laws?

If you don't believe in miracles, perhaps you've forgotten you are one.  [author unknown]

Me? I'm on the side of miracles. Not that I don't believe in logic and scientific laws, mind you, but some things fall too far outside of my box of expectation to be explained away by simple logic or law. Like the little 18-month-old girl from Utah I read about earlier this year. She survived for more than twelve hours hanging upside down in her car seat after her mother's car skidded off the road and into a river. Police officers and firefighters claimed a mysterious voice called to them from the vehicle, saying Help me!  Not a child's voice, they said. Not the mother's voice, either, because she died on impact. But because of that voice, they kept working in the frigid water, and were able to rescue that miracle baby, who later fully recovered. There are many other tales of miraculous medical recoveries, of people awakening just as they are about to be declared dead, after an hour or more of attempted resuscitation. Of malignant tumors that miraculously... disappear. Of all sorts of wondrous things and instances of serendipity that defy explanation. Some people only believe in the miracles as described in the Bible. Some don't even believe in those. I'm more liberal. I watched one of my grandchildren push her way into the world, and although I could give you a medical and scientific explanation of how she came to be... I still see her birth and the beautiful child she is as a ... miracle.

 The word miracle comes from the Latin mericulum, a form of mirari, meaning to wonder, and I don't know about you, but the longer I live, the more wonders I see in this old world of ours. And the more grateful I am to be here to see them. Where there is great love there are always miracles. [Willa Cather]

So what's all this talk about miracles, you ask? Well, it's actually a roundabout way of introducing a brand new book by the lovely TB Markinson. Just released this past Monday, it certainly isn't a miracle that she's written another book, because this talented gal is some kinda prolific, but the word miracle is in the title...

                                                        Wanta see the gorgeous cover???

                                                                I know. WOW, huh?

                             Tagline: To secure a loving future, she must shed an addicting past.

                                                      Intrigued? Here's the blurb:

Newspaper publisher and world traveler JJ Cavendish continually feels pressured to live up to her Miracle Girl nickname. Not many people know she's living a carefully crafted lie. She may not hide her ties to the LGBT community, but she does hide past struggles with addiction.

When the Colorado native is handpicked to take the helm at a dying Denver newspaper, she ends up reconnecting with her long lost love in this contemporary lesbian romance. Only there's a catch. If JJ fires the most belligerent editor at the paper, she risks losing the love of her life.

Mid-afternoon office romps abound in this romantic comedy while also focusing on what it takes for a newspaper to remain relevant in this age of social media.

Must JJ lose everything in order to gain a life more fully her own?
                                                 ********************

I haven't had a chance to read this book. Yet. But I plan to read it, because TB's books are always well-written, touching, and about universal themes anyone can easily relate to. And this one is a romantic comedy! A romp! Sounds like fun.

Expectancy is the atmosphere for miracles. [Edwin Louis Cole]
(Pssst! I'm expecting this to be a really good book!)

A miracle is a shift in perception from fear to love.  [Marianne Williamson]

God gives miracles to those who believe, courage to those with faith, hope to those who dream, and love to those who accept.  [author unknown]

I'm gonna be away from the computer for a while. Gonna (woo HOO!) be spending some time with some of our grandchildren, including the not-so-little-anymore cutie I watched enter this world. But fear not. As Arnold Schwartzeneggar said... I'll be Bach. 

                               Until next time, take care of yourselves. And each other.