“People think pleasing God is all God cares about. But any fool living in the world can see it always trying to please us back.”
–Alice Walker, The Color Purple
My week has gotten away from me, what with hours spent prepping for and acting in the library’s literary haunted house and no, I did not have to Find the Bad.. my books were not featured. We had scenes from Frankenstein, Dracula, and The Tell-Tale Heart. This time of year is when the spirits of the departed are flying close to the ground, one friend says that when we think of those we have loved that are no longer with us, they are near, very near, maybe even whispering that very thought we are having right now that reminds us of them in our ears, we just can’t see or hear them in the way we do the living, is all. I like to believe that, don’t you?
I like too, that the Irish clean the house and leave a glass of something special for family ghosts, and that Mexicans celebrate the Day of the Dead with whole altars filled with favorite foods, and flowers, and scents and sights, to welcome spirits back for a visit. Then there’s the joke I heard recently from a Catholic friend:
“What’s the first question St. Peter will ask when you knock on the Pearly Gates?”
“How’d you like Heaven, and what did you do on earth to help make it so?”
As we Episcopalians say– “In the midst of life we are in death.”
Tonight there is another meeting on the harbor parking lot and sport fishing facility at 6:30 in the Chilkat Center, tomorrow there is another Lynn Canal Art Matters show at 10-11 on KHNS. Margaret and I will co-host. Then there is the Big Brothers Big Sisters of Haines fundraising dinner at the school at 5:30 with homemade lasagna, Josie’s bread, and salad. (Dessert donations are welcome.) The dinner is by donation, so you choose how much to give. If you want to donate but can’t come, you may go online at www.bbbsak.org/donate. After that there’s another socially responsible event, an Arts Council film, Road Forward, about Canada’s First Nations and the struggle for civil rights from the 1930s to the present. Friday it’s First Friday, with all kinds of events downtown and up at the distillery, from 5-7. The new museum exhibit — both the 6-week spotlight show and the redone main hall– are impressive. Really wonderful. Hospice of Haines is also hosting an open house in our new digs at the Soboloff-McRae Wellness Center, beginning at 4:00, so please stop by.
