Catching up

Sometimes it is necessary to do the mundane things. In Sue's life and mine, they had piled up and were drifting off heaps of paper on desktops onto the floor while we planned meetings, attended meetings, and involved ourselves in endless email chains and Facebook connections having to do with social justice. This week has been a time to pay bills, do laundry, wait online endlessly for automated systems to allow us to solve mundane problems like mistakes on bills. We have made phone calls and ticked items off our "to do" lists. For weeks I have not had time to notice what was happening in the natural world. Now as I come up for air, I see there are buds on the trees, the green fuses of daffodils are pushing up through the mud, and dawn is about an hour earlier than it was the last time I checked. Next we will be building a papier maché Statue of Liberty puppet for a very different kind of public statement a group of Buddhists is planning for mid-March. Stay tuned. (The bumper sticker in the foreground, "Your Silence Will Not Protect You"--Audre Lorde, was sent to us by a friend who asked, "Does anyone use bumper stickers any more?" I answered yes, because my car is 14 years old and just barely holding together. The bumper sticker may help to hold the fender in place.)