Opinion

Acouple of times a year the men of one of my churches gather in the church kitchen (yes, we have special permission from the kitchen overseers). We get together to make cinnamon rolls to sell at the annual Bazaar and every other year for the Yard Sale. These rolls are popular with folks because they have a unique recipe - they are made from a yeast dough. Because of the special properties of yeast, the rolls come out light and chewy (unless we add too much flour).

This world we live in is fixated on power.

This year America is celebrating the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence. I feel very fortunate to live here in Virginia, which contributed so much to those formative years of a young sovereign nation. A few months ago I vowed to myself that, in celebration of the semiquincentennial, I would try to partake in as many historical opportunities as I could.

Flora Molton was a street singer in Washington, D.C. She accompanied herself on guitar and sang religious songs and songs of her own composition; “spiritual and truth music,” she said. Her roadside marker on Three Notch Road (U.S.-250) near Zion Crossroads tells of encounters with generations of people on the streets of Washington and speaks kindly of the love she sensed coming from all of them. Flora Molton (1908-1990) was born here in Louisa County, daughter of the Reverend Mr. and Mrs. William Rollins. She embraced the joys of singing at church gatherings early in life. For many, the songs of youth linger unknowingly embedded only to flourish later in a thriving adult. So it was with Flora Molton. Her spiritual and truth music and her compositions are lasting here at home, on the streets of Washington and beyond.

There was a time in my life, a time in all of our lives, when we were young that we would look around and “what should I do?” Some of that came from boredom, some came from true bewilderment at a situation we faced, some came from being at a crossroads where we had a choice to make and we were struggling with the import of the decision. “What to do” is an important question, if not the most important question of our lives. Afterall, most of us spend a lot of time thinking about what we want to be doing with our lives. How will we live our lives; who will we love; what will we make for dinner/breakfast/lunch; where and how should one live; how am I going to spend my time today; the questions are myriad and often need time and more information to answer.

Dear Reader, something amazing happened last Friday evening. My husband turned on the television set in the hotel room we were in for the night. To my best recollection, he’s never done so - ever. We just don’t watch tv in hotels. But the amazing thing is, if Rick hadn’t turned on the tube, I would have. What the heck was going on?

Dear Readers, we have several Alexa devices set up throughout our home, and use them constantly. A recent guest asked us if we weren’t worried that someone was listening in to all of our conversations. He said he didn’t want that for his own home, because then the government could have an easy window into his privacy. That conversation got me to thinking. It is certainly true that Alexa listens to everything said. She has to, to know when her name is mentioned, so she can respond accordingly. But what if the CIA is actually listening in at the Schupp household? How would that go? Well, read on for my imagination taking hold and runnning!

We have reached that great time of the year when light has become longer than dark. It gets light earlier each morning, and the sun sets later every evening. This will continue for another 2.5 months or so and then the days will slowly begin to shorten and nights lengthen. This is how the world works based on the way that we have agreed to measure time. There are folks who each year suffer from Seasonal Affective Disorder which brings on a feeling of melancholy and even depression when the nights are longer than the days. The treatment is often to use special lamps that mimic the sunlight and to sit under it for a prescribed amount of time. Our world is dark right now and people are feeling despondent because there doesn’t seem to be much light right now. Physician and wise healer, Dr. Rachel Naomi Remen, tells a story about the birth of the world that helps us rediscover our own light and how to shine it into our darkness. She writes, “… In the beginning, there was only the holy darkness, the Ein Sof, the source of life. And then, in the course of history, at a moment in time, this world, the world of a thousand thousand things, emerged from the heart of the holy darkness as a great ray of light. And then, perhaps because this is a Jewish story, there was an accident. And the vessels containing the light of the world, the wholeness of the world, broke. And the wholeness of the world, the light of the world, was scattered into a thousand, thousand fragments of light. And they fell into all events and all people, where they remain deeply hidden until this very day.