It’s “Mindday,” and here’s what was on my mind late last night and into the wee hours of this morning. (Free-write stream-of-consciousness, stirred by a randomly chosen prompt word):

Pine:

I’m pining, and feeling utterly without hope for consistent happiness in this life, for ever again being that person about whom was asked, “Does Mrs. B____ ever not smile?” Just bereft.

Oh, I know God is with me, He has done wonderful intervening things. We’ve even had private jokes together, He and I, come to think of it. I’m feeling better already, thinking of that.

But I have been feeling so bereft of the hope of smiling inside like that former me again, it just doesn’t seem like it’s ever possibly gonna happen in this life. It seems that my only possible hope for the restored smile-maker heart is in the Resurrection and the Kingdom, where no bullies are allowed. And I’m afraid I’m getting so jaded that even that seems like it might have been somebody’s pipe dream instead of God’s reality.

So I’m pining. But, still obsessively hanging onto that dangling, fraying strand of hope, I flail around inwardly, thinking where can I get a word of hope that’s biblical? I open my iPad [I know, unlikely place, but God leads in mysterious ways sometimes], and tap the Kindle icon, thinking I still have my book about narcissitic abuse and covert aggression up in that app, and I glance where my eye falls, and lo, it’s not that book at all, but LLBarkat’s God in the Yard, in the early part talking about play as a means of soul restoration, conjecturing that even Wisdom itself/herself, like a child, played alongside God as He produced His flamboyant Creation–in Proverbs 8. (To see what Barkat is referring to, click on the link for these two references, and for the second, hover over the footnote: Proverbs 8:30 KJV, Proverbs 8:30 NIV).

I’m stopped. I consider the concept. It plays at the edges of my heart. Really. I read a little bit more, and see nine areas of play enumerated, and the first is linguistic: words, sound, and signs. I think, play with words, well, how would that be? I see freewriting mentioned, and think oh, why not, and randomly move Kindle pages and point down a finger and see where it lands, and it lands on “pines,” meaning the trees, because the nearest word other than “and” is “maples.”

I think of pine and into my mind comes remembrance of its fragrance, so vibrant I can almost smell it: fresh, spiky like its needles’ shapes, and similar to rosemary, that herb I rubbed between my hands this afternoon, then lifted hands to nose and inhaled deep, deep, again, again, and imagined it cleared my brain and lifted my spirits as it’s puported to do.

I think I’ll go play with those branches in the pot in the next room right now, even though its bedtime, because I’m playing, being just a kid at heart and little kids don’t care if they get to bed on time, in fact they often fight against it with a will. Too much fun to be had to go sleep.

Well, I don’t know if it’ll be fun exactly but I’m gonna go massage some rosemary sprigs and see what transpires. As if they were a magic plant… or something… I’m really sleepy now, kind of a good sleepy, even though again I’ve been weepy. I feel like the little kid that just had a big cry over a lost balloon that’s never coming back, and is finally done pining about it and ready to lay head on pillow. So maybe I should wait till morning to go greet Rosemary, but I’m not gonna… “I wanna… I’m gonna…” (Though I don’t want to be like him who speaks that like a mantra either, do I?…)

Later:

So I went and petted the pikey plant and sniffed and sniffed my piney(ish) hands, and oh, yes, it did smell invigorating, mind-clearing.

Which somehow made me consider play and how old “senior” people can often get away with play when nobody else can but the very young. And so I thought of play I’d like to play, and ended up in the kitchen, kneading up a double batch of Scottish shortbread and experimenting with three cookies to get the size and thickness right, including their oven incubation, and then of course tasted (ate!) one of them, with warm milk, and purposed tomorrow sometime when the snow and icy slop gets melted and settled and I’m done with my bi-weekly allergy shots, that I’ll gather pine, pine, pine—sweet smelling pine, to put in every room of this house to impart its fragrace to the air.

And maybe I’ll stamp pine stampings [inked images] on cardstock tomorrow, and thus make my Christmas cards that “I wanna” send to friends I seldom or never see anymore…

As for my mood and demeanor: I’m no longer pining. And I think there might even be a trace of a smile playing at the edges of my mouth…..

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