Children and Water

This week my oldest grand-daughter turned nine. She was very excited about the bike she got from her parents, the notebook she got from her brother and the seashell souvenir I send her every year to mark her birthday.

I love exploring with her the tidal pools on the rocky shoreline near her home on the Atlantic coast. As an artist she loves the colors; as a story-teller she can imagine the drama of the snails and mollusks and other creatures competing or cooperating in their tiny biomes only inches across.

The Discipline of Compassion

Before I get to today’s theme … here is this week’s exciting news. After three long years in the writing, revising, editing and publication stages, the soft-cover proof copy of Downstream from Eden finally arrived at my door.

With some visiting friends and family, Tiffany and I celebrated with champagne and a prayer of thanksgiving. After a quick inspection I gave the green light to the publishers, and in a few short days both hard-cover and paperback editions will be available from this site. Watch for exact details.

For those who can’t wait, the e-book version is already available on Kindle, fractionally priced at $3.99 which is less than a penny a page, or even better at $3.49 from Kobo Books.

Now, for today’s theme from my list of disciplines for living in the most fully human way in our less-than perfect world --

“The Discipline of Compassion”

There’s a lot of pain in our world – and tears give that pain a poignant human face. Tears are perhaps the most exquisite form of water in the world – tears of suffering or loneliness, tears of grief or lament, tears of sympathy or of regret. And the frequency of tears in the Bible is a clarion call to compassion.