In my last post I introduced the basis for my own spirituality as I understand it.  I would like to say this is what that spirituality is, but I’m still discovering new aspects of it.  Here are the basic tenets:

• God is the original creator and continues to create.
• Everything is part of God, God is in everything, everything in the Universe is therefore connected.
• We humans, as part of God, participate in creating.
• The consequences of our actions are far broader than we can see.

I’ll develop these ideas over future posts and today I will start with the last, concerning consequences of our actions.  It begins with this: we were on our way to Maine for the wedding of the daughter of friends of over 40 years.

These friends were originally from Tennessee but have lived in Maine ever since we have known them.  Tennessee is still in their voices.  We stopped for dinner on the way up and my wife Ellie wanted to get a small gift for Mary Lee.  She saw a t-shirt with the inscription ‘GRITS  Girls Raised In The South’ and bought it.  Mary Lee liked the shirt but with all the activity around the wedding, it was quickly forgotten.

Our friends go back to Tennessee every year and we make it a point to get together for a couple of days.  Some years after the wedding we were together and Mary Lee asked if we had any favorite Southern women writers.  We mentioned Bailey White but didn’t come up with others.  Then Mary Lee said ‘Oh, let me tell you what this is about.’  She had been walking down the street in Brunswick ME wearing the GRITS t-shirt.  A woman came up to her and said that she was raised in the South too.  Well, one thing led to another, and out of this came a kind of support group of several women raised in the South.  They have lunches, a book group, etc.  All of this out of the choice of a simple gift.  Who would have known?

On another occasion, Ellie, our friend Joyce and I were coming back from a trip and stopped in Berea, KY, a community strong in arts and crafts.  We were wandering around a gift shop and since we were the only customers in the store, the clerk wasn’t busy and there was an appealing dog there, I asked the clerk if she minded if I photographed the dog.  She said sure, go ahead.

I offered to send her pictures via email but she said while her husband did email, she didn’t.  The way she said that suggested that she didn’t want to ask her husband to bring the pictures up for her.  I asked if I could send her prints and she gave me her address.  I sent off a couple of 5 X 7s and forgot about it.  Several weeks later I got a thank you note in which she said that she and her husband were now divorced and that Aris, the dog, was one of her few friends.  Who would have known?