Buffeted by words,  I lose my balance. The dark clouds of confusion, worry, and frustration creep in.

The words keep coming: from the news, my screens, my thoughts.

One thing I know, deep down: the answer is not there, in the chaos. I need to look elsewhere.

To words that enlighten, inspire, renew.

I turn away, and consciously choose quiet. Not avoidance, or ignorance; but stillness.

My thought slowly fills with a fragile sense of hope, indistinct, but there. It grows as I continue to discover words that speak of hope, of healing, even of joy.

Not the kind of joy that comes and goes with the evening news; but the joy that hunkers down and stays. A tough joy. A hang-on-to-your- hat joy.

The joy I have been looking for all my life. The joy everyone is looking for.

And, after a time, I turn back. Back to the chaos. But now, I have something that makes it seem less fearsome, less overwhelming. I have confidence. Confidence in a higher power, confidence in mankind’s ability to hear and see and feel what will help brighten the clouds, and lessen the buffeting.

I know where that confidence comes from, – from others. Others who have dared to speak up about their faith, their hope, their love for man and God. Men and women who have left kind but definite signposts on the trail for those of us who are struggling up the mountain.

I remember some words written and shared over a century  ago, about joy and meaning, by a Scottish Reverend, Henry Drummond, in 1880, who longed for truth, as we all do. He wrote:

“You will find as you look back upon your life that the moments that stand out, the moments when you have truly lived, are the moments when you have done things in a spirit of love. As memory scans the past, above and beyond all the transitory pleasures of life, there leap forward those supreme hours when you have been enabled to do unnoticed kindnesses to those around you, things too trifling to speak about, but which you feel have entered into your eternal life. I have seen almost all the beautiful things God has made; I have enjoyed almost every pleasure that He has planned for man; and yet as I look back I see standing out above all the life that has gone four or five short experiences, when the love of God reflected itself in some poor imitation, some small act of love of mine, and these seem to be the things which alone of all one’s life abide. Everything else in all our lives is transitory. Every other good is visionary. But the acts of love which no man knows about, or can ever know about – they never fail."               The Greatest Thing in the World

So, in this season of gratitude and hope, my wish is that we all be "enabled to do unnoticed kindnesses to those around us." And I feel confident that, if we do, the chaos will get a good, swift kick in the pants. And we will all be better for it.  

Happy Thanksgiving.

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