Walk and Roll

After a very long, complicated school session, Cassie, Caroline, and I decided to leash up Sammy and go for a stroll during a break in the rain storm yesterday afternoon. Caroline wanted to roller blade. Cassie didn't. Rather than have a squabble about it I suggested we just walk and roll.

So, we did, after we all chuckled at my incidental pun.

As I mentioned, it had rained and hailed all day, off and on. The skies were a beautiful mix of dark gray storm clouds, lighter gray clouds, and little patches of blue peeking out here and there. Everything was wet. It smelled like the first day of creation! (No, I'm not really THAT old!) The flowers wore droplets of rain as if jewel bedecked for a fancy ball.

Our local Starbucks has adopted our neighbor-hood park, planting many flowering plants under the tall cedar trees. New loveliness appears every day.


Though there is much grief and sadness in the world, beauty still abounds. The more ugliness is realized, the more beauty must be sought. Otherwise, like the victim of a mafia hit, cement boots of ugliness will weigh us down, pulling us under dark waters, until we are drowning in the bad, unable to breathe in what is still good, and lovely, and noble.

Shots rang out. People died. And the response? The response to the evil is the goodness in the self-sacrifice of a man for his students, the lovingkindness of parents who greeted their horrified, yet spared children with earnest, tight hugs, and the heartfelt expressions of compassion by friends and strangers for those whose lives abruptly ended and for their families whose shock remains deep. Let the response's brightness force the evil back into its oozing abode. As long as we live here on Earth, may we not allow evil to triumph, but make every effort to overcome evil with good.