Pioneer Stock

The other day my husband and I were musing about the general good health of his high school contemporaries in his home town. They are in their early 80's now and all are living independently. Except for those who smoked and succumbed to emphysema, they, for the most part, are free of deadly cancers and mental or emotional illness.

What is the reason for this exceptional hardiness, I wondered? I began to think about their families, their parents and grandparents. Most of them had lived in the area for generations and, since this northwest region had been founded only 75 years before they were born, that brought me to this conclusion: their grandparents were pioneers.

Pioneers were, and are, of an adventurous spirit. They had to be clear minded and healthy to survive the many obstacles and unknowns of "heading west". My husband's grandparents moved west from Missouri and one of his great-grandfathers moved to the west coast from England via sailing ship "around the Horn". Now that took gumption! (There's an old fashioned word for you.)

My parents and grandparents, and for generations before that, lived in and around Maine, Massachusetts and Rhode Island. At some point, two or three hundred years before I was born, my ancestors had to sail to the "New World" from Europe, mainly England. However, it was so many generations ago that I can't even trace the lineage.

My "pioneer" ancestry has been diluted by many generations whereas my husband's is only two or three generations back. I'm convinced that this is a strong contributing factor in my husband's and his contemporaries' healthy longevity.

Labor Day

Labor Day is a day to celebrate the work force by giving them a rest from it. Interestingly "rest" is a very important part of life. Even God rested on the seventh day after his creative work the previous six days. Of course, to God, in infinite time, "... a thousand years in your sight are like a day that has just gone by, or like a watch in the night." (Psalm 90:4) So His seven-day stretch could have been thousands of years.

Our bodies need rest daily and, sometimes, on our journey through life we are abruptly stopped for a period of time. It may be an illness, ours or a loved one's, or a loss of some kind. It is disruptive and usually unpleasant but it reminds me of a poem I found many years ago and, through the wonders of this modern technology, I found it again. It was written by John Ruskin in the mid-1800's. I'd like to share it here. It's called "The Music in a Rest".

There is no music in a rest,
but there is the making of music in it.
In our whole life-melody
the music is broken off here and there by "rests,"
and we foolishly think we have come to the end of the tune.
God sends a time of forced leisure,
sickness, disappointed plans, frustrated efforts,
and makes a sudden pause in the choral hymn of our lives;
and we lament that our voices must be silent,
and our part missing in the music which ever goes up to the ear of the Creator.
How does the musician read the "rest"?
See him beat the time with unvarying count,
and catch up the next note true and steady,
as if no breaking place had come between.
Not without design does God write the music of our lives.
Be it ours to learn the tune, and not be dismayed at the "rests."
They are not to be slurred over,
not to be omitted,
not to destroy the melody,
not to change the keynote.
If we look up, God Himself will beat the time for us. With the eye on Him, we shall strike the next note full and clear.

Welcome Relief

Loud and long thunderclaps awakened us this morning. My husband asked if I had seen the lightning but my closed eyelids prevented that. Before long I did see jagged flashes in the dark clouds. However, not much rain came with the storm. The five-minute showers every hour or so leave our patio with countable raindrops - about fifty per square foot.

For us this weather is a welcome relief from the heat. In fact, we enjoyed sitting outside between showers absorbing the humid ambiance. It's great weather for weeding, too.

We appreciate today and will remember it tomorrow when the sun will return and the temperature will soar over one hundred degrees again.

Why did I do this?

I have just registered myself and my husband on this blog site which I had no intention of doing when I woke up this morning. What prompted this was an e-mail message from a granddaughter which included a link to her blogspot. I clicked on it and saw that I could leave a comment. What I didn't realize was that I had to be a registered blogger here or somewhere else in order to leave it. So I succumbed.

What will come of this?