Page created 15 Jan 2003 by scinatfilm , last modified 15 Jan 2003 by scinatfilm
There's a quote from C.S. Lewis (I think, being only an English minor) that refers to looking for miracles in the mundane details of life.
So what miracles have you found today?
They can be as simple as you like.
I'll start off with the 6 inches of snow that just blanketed Bozeman.
...I woke up and got out of bed after being in a coma for 7 hours! I made it out of yesterday's coma, too.
A friend of mine that is now no longer used to tell me a lot of things I wish I now remembered. One of my favorites was "Every morning you wake up is a good one." ... or something to that effect. Another was "At my age, when you feel a tap on your shoulder, you look up." I miss him.My miracle for today is waking up at 9:30 and not worrying about being late for work because I have no set hours. Life is good.
at Target, after 48 hours of being lost, with everything still in it. Yay!
what has been going on with the Diner, and for that I feely keenly apologetic. I try generally to be a conscientious (as far as reading everything) Diner customer. I have been in Iowa since Thursday for my dearest aunt's funeral, and got back late tonight, and I am too physically and emotionally exhausted to even read right now. But I need to share this. And I debated at length with myself if it should be shared. It is so special that it seems almost inappropriate to discuss it in words. But the more I thought about it, and the more beautiful it seemed, the more I wanted to share it. A lot of you here are good freinds, and even those whom I don't know personally I still feel very close to after reading so many of your stories and feelings here.My Aunt Dorothy was the purest, kindest soul I have ever had the privilege to know. I understand that it is customary to discuss the best things about someone at their funeral, but with Dorothy you didn't need to pick and choose. Any word from your mouth would have been delightful and complimentary simply by the virtue of knowing her. She was such a phenomenal human being, and such an example for me (among many, many other things). She was my first Sunday school teacher. She loved life. She was my great-aunt, my maternal grandma's sister, and though I love my grandma, she is mentally ill. I guess there's such a thing as being too honest here, but those are the medical facts, and in essence my Aunt Dorothy was my grandma. I loved (and love) her so very much.
Sarah (my sister and I) got into town Thursday night...late. Like, 3 in the morning late. Sarah, my cousin Amanda, and myself, shared the same bedroom. Poor Sarah, who had to drive all 8 hours herself (because I can't drive) was asleep. Amanda, who is 20 and has always been as close as a sister to me, were up talking about Aunt Dorothy in the dark. We couldn't, and didn't want to sleep. Good, wonderful memories. Funny anecdotes, wonderful stories about the things she has taught us, the role she has played in our lives.
Suddenly, the room lit up and the brightest flash of blue-white played in the room, up on the wall near the ceiling. It sort of shimmered and danced for about three seconds, and then disappeared. The best way I can decribe it as a strobelight. The hair went up on my arms. I was just in awe, and my cousin Amanda was really freaked out. At first we were too shocked to discuss it, but after a few minutes we knew it was my Aunt Dorothy letting us know not to mourn, that she would still always be with us.
Seriously, I know how bizzare this sounds. I am the biggest skeptic about such things, and always thought people who had seen such things were just over-tired or grieving or so on. And nothing even close to that has ever happened to me. My aunt that we were staying with lives on a hill in a quiet Iowa town. There was no way it was something from the street or any kind of outdoor thing. It was so...spiritual, andf impopssible in any other way except through spirit. It was as if she were telling us not to mourn so. And the Bible verses about witnessing miracles and having more than one person present hit so much closer to home now--it is to aunthenicate what has been there, and to have a true community there, rather than just one person, to appreciate it. It was truly too big a miracle for me to ever experience on my own. Amanda and I have always been very close, but we have an unspeakble bond now, after seeing that together. And I feel so much more at peace.
Today we attended Easter services at my Aunt Dorothy's church, the church she was a member of for all 78 years of her life. At one point during the sermon the sun broke through and illuminated the whole church, which was odd because it was a very gray day and raining outside. I heard my mom crying, and looked over and she and my Aunt Lynne, her sister, were quietly crying and holding hands. They said the felt Dorothy's presence so strong at the exact same moment. The only way I can rationlize it is to say that at all the right times Aunt Dorothy let us know she was still with us, though she had moved on to a much better place. She was so good, so kind, so wonderful. And she also had a very earthy and singular sense of humor. She was amazing. I miss her so much, but I am so happy for her.
I love you, H. God is good.
im glad you were able to have this experience.
Thank you so much H for sharing that amazing experience.
for giving me a place to talk about what I saw. It was the most palpable physical manifestation of the divine I have ever seen, and it blew me away. It was totally inexplicable.I feel bad for ever having doubted stories like this--not that I thought the person was lying, but I've always thought, you know, they were confused or half-asleep and dreaming or...something. I'm going to go eat a big serving of humble pie now.
I dropped my sister off at school today and I noticed a bunch of kids walking to school in twos and threes. And it hit me, as I saw the identically dressed identical twins pass, that each human being is wonderously unique (not just the ones currently living and breathing, but every being that has ever lived). And, then, in innocent awe, I thought about the 100+ kids I see day in and day out at my school. How they can appear a faceless blob, but how when you learn their names they are strikingly unique... I know that this is no surprise to anyone and if you had asked me yesterday I would have told you that each person is different from every other. But, it became so real for me this morning that I just had to thank God for the joy of it.
have you ever read "Franny and Zooey"?i think you found the fat lady.
I love F & Z. It's my favorite Salinger. I am crazy about those Glass kids. I actually thought of that this morning when I read your post about re-reading Catcher each year. I think it is time for a re-reading.
Definitely my favourite JDS book.
So remember folks: Put a LOCKED gate around any pool you have (even the kiddie pools should be kept empty unless there's an adult outside).FULLERTON, Calif. - A toddler who was revived nearly two hours after she was believed to have drowned and 40 minutes after doctors had declared her dead was responding to touch and sound Saturday, hospital officials said.
Twenty-month-old Mackayala Jespersen was in critical condition but responsive a day after she was found in her family's swimming pool, said Children's Hospital of Orange County spokeswoman Denise Almazan.
The little girl's family thanked the public for their "prayers and support," Almazan said.
Mackayala's mother found her floating face down in the backyard pool Friday morning, police Sgt. Sean Fares said. Police and paramedics tried to revive her and rushed her to Anaheim Memorial Medical Center, where doctors pronounced her dead.
Forty minutes later, police Detective Mike Kendrick was conducting a routine investigation into the death when he noticed Mackayala's chest was moving. He summoned doctors, who were able to revive her.
"It was a very emotional moment for everyone," said Fullerton Police spokesman Sgt. Ron Gillett. "We thought she didn't make it and then she did. It was the lowest of the lows and the highest of the highs."
Mackayala was later transferred to Children's Hospital. Anaheim Memorial Medical Center spokeswoman Gina Esparza declined to comment Saturday.
Mark Langdorf, chairman of the Department of Emergency Medicine at the University of California, Irvine, said it is not uncommon for toddlers to survive drownings after showing little or no signs of life, especially if the water is cold.
What was unusual in Mackayala's case, he said, was the time involved.
"If you had said she came back to life after 10 minutes I would be surprised, but 40 minutes is just exceptional," he said.
thank God for creating the mammalian dive response. And I think that her parents learned a very hard lesson, there's a reason almost all states have a law requiring fences with lockable gates around pools.
mammalian dive reflex
An interesting article you found, but as you read it is more pronounced in deep diving and cold water, but in a small child the water doesn't have to be that cold in order for her to lose a lot of heat really quickly and have that dive reflex kick in and start limiting blood flow to non-essential organs and keep enough blood going to the heart and brain to keep her alive for a long time with little oxygen. An amazing thing indeed. Glad you found that Pedro, I couldn't have gone into that much detail.
and those free divers are crazy!
That a lot like Jedi Hibernation, actually.Umm... I mean.... nevermind.
Working on becoming a jedi master?Or just another Star Wars kid?
(as well as resurrected a FEoTD, it seems!). I am taking Survey of Exceptional Learners with N. B3rggr3n, which is a great class. She is a wonderful and engaging teacher. Tonight she had a friend of hers in, an educator, who has a son with Asperger's syndrome. Asperger's is a high-performing form of autism. This kid was...amazing. For one thing, he is a stellar and gifted person. He speaks five languages, is knowledgeable about, basically, the entire history of the world, and is also a miracle. He was born prematurely at 3 pounds, then dealt with bacterial meningitis as an infant. He has had five brain surgeries. I tried to speak French with him and I couldn't even keep up, his French was far superior to mine. And he just graduated from high school this year. He is involved in translating Dante's inferno from Italian to English (Italian is one of his languages), has studied 5000 African tribes...I could go on and on. It was incredible. I truly witnessed a miracle tonight. God works in such awesome ways.
I'd love to talk to somebody like that. I wonder how stressful that is for the guy.
For instance at one point he mentioned how the Patriot Act worries him because he studies Arabic and Islam (he actually wants to get his PhD in that and study in the Middle East) and he thinks he may be a government target. I said, amen to that, buddy, the Patriot Act freaks me out too. So when I was talking to him individually I asked if he was going to vote in the presidential election, since he's 18 now. He said yes, but instead of continuing that conversation he launched into a dialogue on the Sanskrit and Punjabi and such and such dialects and how they relate to modern Arabic...while I was truly interested in that, and I love languages, I was completely out of my depth. But he just kind of went on unaware. He also does not look you in the eye when he talks, which is an Asperger's thing. They have tics and converse in a different sort of way. It was getting late and I needed to get home (and there were other people clamoring around to talk to him, and I did not want to monopolize the conversation), so after ten minutes I put on my jacket to indicate ``I'm leaving soon.'' No effect. Then I put on my backpack. Then I picked up my books. THEN I started inching my way towards the door, and he followed me, talking all the while. I guarantee I would have been there until five in the morning talking to him had I been able to (I wish I could have).Don't get me wrong, he was witty and fun and really great. It's just that they have a different sort of intelligence than the average person. They get really into a certain idea or subject and they are totally absorbed. Nothing else (or no one else) exists. They sort of see people as objects, and they relate to concepts and ideas and objects, not people. His mom was telling us that if, say, someone says, ``Guess what, my house burnt down last night and we lost everything we own,'' he would answer that statement by letting them know all about the section of the Qu'ran he is currently studying. It is not a lack of empathy or a lack of kindness, it's just the way they are. Needless to say this makes social interaction...difficult. These people generally do not form any close friendships or romantic relationships. In a way it is a very sad condition--they are human, so of course they want friends, but they are not really programmed to relate to other people. There are varying levels of the severity of the condition, but that's the general characteristic. And this is the really sad thing--here is the amazing, gifted person, and he is having trouble getting into a college because he has little capacity for math. He can add, subtract, divide, and multiply, and that's about it. So these colleges are saying he can't get an actual degree unless he fulfills all of the required curriculum, etc. beauracracy stuff. This kid will never live on his own or away from his parents. He went to the bathroom at one point (the bathroom is literally across the hall from the classroom we were in), and he got lost coming back (and there was a sign on the door indicating the classroom). Someone had to go out in the hall and lead him back. He can't cross the street on his own because he has no spatial or perceptual depth and may get hit by a car. While his dream is to go to the Middle East and study, he'll never be able to do it unless his mom or a caretaker is with him. While there is this profound brilliance there are also severe limitations. So it is kind of sad.
Does anyone here have relatives/know anyone with Asperger's? I'd love to here about it...
I haven't had much chance to see her since she was a kid, but I am seeing her this July 4 for a barbecue and 5 for a Giants game. They live in the mountains in California and her best friend is her horse. She is a serisouly good rider, and she has put everything she has into learning it (I can't remember what style she does but it's very hard). It has been very hard for my aunt, and Becca has attempted suicide several times. Right now they are working on getting her into a communal living system so she can get out and experience some of her own life, and because most experts agree if people with Asberger's don't move out before 20 or so they will never have the ability to do so, making it quite hard on parents and guardians.It is very difficult to interact with her since she prefers the company of animals and thinks of humans as objects, but she is smart, funny, and when she puts her mind to something she is completely absorbed and eventually masterful at it.
I have a theory that Asberger's and other forms of autism hit the children of educated parents. I am not sure if it is because they over do it on "proper natal care" or if it's simply because the genes of two smart parents just don't mix well, but from my experience, and I've heard this from others, most of the autistic kids they know are white and their parents are well educated and very intellectual. It's probably bunk, but it's just a trend I've noticed.