Choices...

 February 28, 2024

Choices.

So much of how we live, what we experience in our lives—so much of our very life itself—hinges on the choices we have made in the past and will make in the future.

There is much that happens to us and around us over which we have no control. That is no different for us here in this ultramodern year of 2024 than it was in Medieval times.

We cannot control the weather, or the actions of other people. We can’t control fate, really. You could walk out your front door tomorrow, and an airplane could fall on you. You could do everything right in your life, and still end up coming to harm and a way-too-early end. Yes, there is so very much that happens to us that we simply cannot control.

But that does not make us victims.

Because we do have an ace up our sleeves: we do have free will. We can control how we respond to what happens to us. That’s a concept that I know I’ve shared many times in these essays of mine: a well-known and oft quoted maxim states that life is 5 percent what happens to me and 95 percent how I deal with it.

It’s really all about our choices.

We, none of us, know how or when we’ll exit this life, either. Oh, some of us may have a pretty good idea as time goes on, especially if we’ve developed heart disease, diabetes, or any one of a number of other health conditions. But until we get to that part of our life’s path, we don’t really know how we’ll end up.

Except.

Except we can make a choice that finds us making the most of whatever we have, wherever we are, and whoever surrounds us. We can exercise control over our minds and our attitudes. We can make it our tenet to be content in whichever state we find ourselves. We can make the choice in our hearts that we will face each day saying, “good morning, God,” and not “good God it’s morning.”

That is what we can do, and I can tell you this, without reservation, because it’s my own personal experience: If we choose to live with an attitude of gratitude and to make the most of each and every day, if we tell ourselves that today is a wonderful day often enough, and I’m doing great, thanks for asking, often enough—then we will not only know that as true, we will feel that as true to the very depths of our souls.

Many of you may recall that in 2013, my sister passed away. In the aftermath of her death, I promised her widower that I would see to it he would be laid to rest with her. And a few weeks later when he asked me to, I told him that yes, I would serve as his power of attorney should the need ever arise.

It was a promise I gave freely, and I can admit to you here and now that I didn’t really believe, at the time, that it was one that would require my attention. And yet, in 2018, it did. And so, of course, I took on that responsibility because for me, a promise is a promise. And while there may have been a time or two over the past nearly six years when I did so not quite as good-naturedly as I could have, I never once considered relinquishing the obligation, or deserting that promise.

This past Monday, my brother-in-law was finally reunited with his beloved wife, my sister. We will all say our final goodbyes to him on Monday.

I don’t tell you this personal information to gain your sympathy, though I do appreciate all of you who immediately feel moved to express it. I tell you this because if I had one do-over in this life, it would be this: to have learned at an earlier age what I know now about everything I’ve expressed in this essay—about choices and our power to live in a state of gratitude—and to have been able to share it, to preach it, and to make disciples of my siblings and their spouses of this very “everything” tenet. And yes, I know it likely would have made no difference as to how the following years played out. Because, well, choices.

After my sister’s funeral, our brother, who was aware that I’d spent a lot of time over the previous many years doing things for her and her husband whenever she would call, shook his head and said, “I don’t know, after everything, how you could have done all that.” I told him to ask me again later, and I would tell him. But he never asked, of course, and I never brought it up—mainly because he knew the answer to that question, but for whatever reason he chose not to hear it.

That answer I will share with you, and it really was something he understood from our many conversations over the years but didn’t choose to acknowledge—at least not to me. And that answer is this.

All that I was able to do with and for my sister—and now, her widower—wasn’t me at all. It was the power of God’s grace through me.

 

Love,

Morgan

http://www.morganashbury.com

https://www.bookstrand.com/morgan-ashbury

Winter thoughts...

 February 21, 2024

The snow arrived precisely as predicted last week. We received about two and a half inches of the white stuff, and except for a bit of it melting on the roads thanks to the daytime sunshine, when I went to bed last night the white still covered most everything.

But before turning in, I scanned the forecast for the next seven days. Beginning today, we are supposed to hit the 40s every day except Saturday. Tuesday of next week, our predicted high temperature is pegged at 50. And while there is some rain that is supposed to be falling off and on in the interim, as it stands right now, they’re not calling for any snow at all.

I’ll take it.

By nine a.m. this morning, that “snow covered everything” had been replaced by “patches of snow remaining”, and I had real hope that by the end of today, the only place snow would remain would be in the shadowed corners near buildings and curbs. The drip, drip, drip of water leaving the down spout and hitting a rock provided my morning’s rhythm.

It really has been a relatively easy winter in southern Ontario this year, all things considered. Some might even say that we have no right to complain in this area of the country, and really—since I do watch the news every night and see what some of y’all have been dealing with this season—there’s truth in that opinion. The lack of ferocity this year, while welcome, certainly hasn’t changed my mind about the nature of winter in general.

I’m sorry, but I still don’t care for it.

Whatever the weather, I do truly appreciate it when I look out my window and can see sunshine. David is the one in this house who truly enjoys the out-of-doors. No, he’s not a sportsman. The habit formed during a career spent working outside, year-round. Before he began to endure his own leg pain, he would kind of nag at me to get outside and enjoy the day. And I would, sometimes, but never without a blanket to place around my legs. And I certainly wouldn’t sit out for as long as he would do.

If I leave the house during the wintertime, I always wear a thermal layer over my legs; and in the car I have a large towel that I use as a lap blanket. Drafts of any kind on my legs are likely to produce a great deal of pain.

Getting outside is likely something that I should do more of, going forward. I do need to keep moving, and I know how good fresh air and sunshine are for the body and soul. This is just a habit I need to form—and one that truly will have more pluses to it than minuses. Now to move that idea from head knowledge to heart knowledge, and then act on it!

This past week I took a few moments to think about my father, on the 109^th anniversary of his birth. He died far too young, before any of his children came to legal age. He never got to walk either of his girls down the aisle, and never had the opportunity to enjoy being a grandfather. He and my mother were together just shy of twenty years, and that’s just a damn shame.

My mother once told me that she and my dad had lived their lives as if they had all the time in the world, when really, they had barely any. And I know that while as a widow she did have many moments of happiness, of smiles and laughter over the years, she never got over losing him. She never married again, and, in fact, never even dated.

I asked her only once about that, shortly after I, myself had married—and just a couple of years before she died at the too-young age of 57. She told me that she’d been in charge of her own life by then long enough that she didn’t have any desire to turn it over to another man to run.

This would have been in the early 1970s, and as you can see, attitudes were much different then, than they are today. But I do recall even that at that time, if I had been physically capable of raising either of my eyebrows, I would have.

Life goes on, one day after another. We change over the days and weeks and months, but don’t often recognize the minutia of the process. So while Mother Nature tries to decide what comes next for us here, I will try to remain grateful for the moment I’m in—even if sometimes those moments are difficult.

 

Love,

Morgan

http://www.morganashbury.com

https://www.bookstrand.com/morgan-ashbury

Age is only a number...

 February 14, 2024

The last time that Valentine’s Day fell on Ash Wednesday was in 2018. It will happen next in 2029. This tells me, therefore, that this is something that has, indeed occurred intermittently throughout my lifetime. And yet this is the first time I’ve actually been aware of it. That I recall.

So much for my always being in full possession of all the facts. But then, I am getting older, and I know it.

A word of advice, then, for those of you yet to purchase something special for a loved one to acknowledge this day, a loved one who is also a devout person. Flowers and not chocolates would be the way to go, in my opinion.

In three out of four years, this day would be the exact middle point in February. But this is a leap year and so it is not. But it’s close enough for us to celebrate that we are indeed halfway through what had always been, in my memory at least, the worst month of winter. By the six-month phiilosophy of winter outlook of the Ashbury household, once February is in the can, there will be only one more month of this awful season to go.

I am here to confess that while we always bemoan how terrible and long the winter has been, we’ve actually been fairly lucky this year. At least we have in this area of the world. We still have had no snow on the ground since we had that rain and melting in the last week of January. However, we are expecting to get several inches of the snow tomorrow. When that last batch of the white frozen stuff disappeared, I never thought for even a moment that meant the end of accumulation for the season. Mother Nature is a contrary woman, so I figured we were sure to get more.

In fact, it would be just like her to ensure we get some in April or even May. So I never breathe that particular sigh of relief until the May 24^th long weekend.

Here in my neck of the woods on this Valentine’s Day, the sun is shining, and the air is below freezing cold. The dogs are noisy, because I think they think that spring is coming and they, being critters of nature, are responding with barely leashed exuberance. A couple of them are lovers of sunlight, and beginning in spring, will take as much time as they can in the yard to lay down and bask in the sun.

One of them, my daughter’s nearly thirteen-year-old Chihuahua Bella, like me has some issues with arthritis. She particularly loves the heat. She knows when I have my heating pad on my knees under my blanket and will ask to come up on my lap. She also immediately gets herself onto our reclining sofa in what is David’s spot, the moment he vacates it. David doesn’t always remember to turn off his heating pad when he gets up; Fortunately, she won’t have long on that heat, because we have the kind of heating pads that shut off intermittently. Yes, they recommend that dogs not experience the joy of a warm heating pad. You can rest assured that she doesn’t get much of that luxury.

Life is really what we make it out to be. I try to balance doing chores around the house with simply enjoying the day. That’s not a hard thing to do these days as my spurts of busyness and energy are not long in duration and require recovery time. Mostly, I have a good attitude about the limitations I have as I approach my 70^th birthday. Not based on the number of birthdays I’ve celebrated—because everyone ages differently. But based on my abilities, and my stamina.

I’ve witnessed with my own eyes the vitality of folks several years older than I, who’ve been blessed with better genetics—or perhaps, more to the point, from better habits formed in their youth.

No two people are exactly alike in any regard. This is something that we all know, and we have all acknowledged at various points throughout the years as being true.

Sometimes I marvel at the strides we humans have made in our quest to be more open minded and more just in our treatment of others. And sometimes I want to cry upon the realization that we are still a people riddled with prejudice when it comes to our fellow human beings—and not only when it comes to their skin color or their sex or their sexual preferences.

God knows that we are useful for as long as He deems us to be so. If that weren’t true, He wouldn’t have asked Noah—well meaning elderly man that he was—to build an Ark to save humanity.

 

Love,

Morgan

http://www.morganashbury.com

https://www.bookstrand.com/morgan-ashbury

People are hurting....

February 7, 2024

People are hurting. People are scared. Life changes, and this is something we’ve always known. An old saw that dates back at least to my childhood tells us that the only things certain in life are death and taxes.

And yet.

And yet, as we have observed, technology advances at an ever-increasing pace, and it is a pace that is very difficult for most ordinary folk to keep up with.

Some days it feels as if we’re on a hamster wheel that is turning faster and faster. All the laws of physics tell us that there is a point when that wheel whizzes so fast that it’s impossible for mere mortal human beings to hang on to it. Eventually we get flung aside, and in that process we feel untethered. Unwanted. Rejected. Abandoned.

Still, we are human beings and operate according to our natures and our nurtures. We tend to look to our “leaders” to lead us through the hard times, through the inevitable valleys of life. And who can argue that this valley we’re in now seems the deepest one, ever? To co-opt a line from the original Mary Poppins movie, it’s awfully dark and gloomy out there.

Because we are humans who’ve grown up in this western culture and society in which we live, we follow our leaders, confident that they will lead us in good faith. Confident that we can follow their examples, as we have always done. Confident that they have our best interests at heart and will bring us through these perilous times.

It doesn’t occur to us that the ones leading us may not be doing so in good faith. That they might be motivated by greed and a hunger for power. That’s not been the life we’ve known. In the past, when charismatic people have led in bad faith, those not under that person’s sway have readily seen the danger. During the reign of tyrants, through time, the only ones completely enamoured have been not so much the weakest, and the most malleable. It’s been those most hungry to escape the desolation their lives have become. Others have fallen in line, because it was a means not so much of survival, but of placing themselves in positions of nominal power, to enhance themselves and line their own pockets.

I will reference instances that are examples that occurred in my lifetime. The aftermath of both Waco and Jonestown were tragic, more tragic than there are words to say. But they were not unexpected—for those on the outside, looking in. And those on the outside, looking in, did what they could to try and prevent the inevitable outcomes.

If you’ve ever wondered where the saying, “he drank the Kool-Aid” came from, it was from what happened at Jonestown. Only theirs was laced with cyanide, and all those poor souls who drank it, died. And the ones who refused were gunned down.

Because we are human, we tend to imbue our leaders with qualities that may be more aspirational than they are factual. You need to be aware. Loyalty is a fine quality, when it is not misplaced.

We’re on the verge of, and we are in danger of entering a post-truth world. In the last nearly ten years, folks have been tossing around catch phrases such as “alternative facts”, “fake news” and even out right trying to tell you that “truth isn’t truth”. They lie to you, all the time. Easily, and with a flair that is nearly mesmerizing. They tell you that you should not believe the evidence of your own eyes, or your own logical, reasoning mind.

It can be a challenge for anyone to know what to believe these days. It can be hard to know when someone is lying to you, especially when those lies are so damn alluring. When those lies give you someone to blame, and a target for all of the fear and hatred that may be seething within you. Those feelings of being untethered, unwanted, rejected and abandoned vanish when you cling to that which was designed to emptily fill those holes within.

The question is begged, then how can we know if we’re following a true leader, or a false one?

That is the question that many are trying to answer, that many are struggling to reconcile. And as with Waco, and as with Jonestown, the answer is obvious, when looking from the outside, in. There is one quality of genuine leadership, which once you know it, can clear away the fog of confusion.

A false leader will tell you that you must give all to them and for them to help them do whatever it is they want to do—claiming they are doing it for you.

A true leader will do their best to give their all to you.

 

Love,

Morgan

http://www.morganashbury.com

https://www.bookstrand.com/morgan-ashbury