Sheilaclapkin's Blog;

.

I just want to die in my sleep, not midstream, but in the stream, close to where it melds into the sea. That will be just perfect for me. I know, I know, we cannot choose. Still, I want to be in the stream and in my sleep. Okay? Just for the record.

This afternoon I opened the front door and beheld the sight of blooming day lilies. They are magnificent and straining, as you can see from the photo, to attain the most outstretched fully and wholly into the environment they can be. Why stretch so hard, work so completely, so totally and abundantly? It is their only day on earth and the only time they have to show their worth. So be it. “Here today and gone tomorrow.”

Now, tell me, what does here today and gone tomorrow, mean to you? Perhaps, it is describing an opportunity that does not last. Certainly it means lacking permanence, fleeting. But referring to humanity and alluding to the briefness of the human life span, this phrase was first recorded in John Calvin’s: Life and Conversion of a Christian Man (1549) “This proverb that man is here today and gone tomorrow.”

Sometimes I feel myself stretching, not as fully as earlier in life, but still stretching to reach a goal. Have you watched the flowers come and go? They are buds, open slowly, begin the stretch, out for the full stretch of life, then, begin to soften the stretch until it is gone and the petals fall off. What have you then? You must remember, if you pick flowers to gladden and create more elegance in you home, you must keep them in water, trim the stems at an angle, keep away from direct heat and sunlight, but in any case, you have the final, out of flower time. When you are out of time, hopefully we will meet somewhere in the stream.