Whew! It appears that the issue is together, and I can relax a bit while Denise and Mike put it on-line. This month of working with Denise in editing Seeker has been enjoyable and enlightening as I get the reins more firmly in hand for the coming months. Denise is returning to her own writing, so we can look forward to reading her creations again.
I chuckled when she told me that in the early issues, when stories and articles were hard to come by, she had many pen-names. With her hard work and perseverance, though, the magazine now has a group of people who like to submit their stories, poems, and insights. There's a little story in how I came to be here, though.
My son loved roaming through the web once we got a modem three or so years ago, and it was he who discovered Seeker and connected up with Denise and Michael. He began writing for it, and I began answering the phone and hearing someone named Denise ask for David. That went on for a year or so, and I would call up the latest issue and read what was on his mind for that month. Always interesting to get a perspective on one's son through writings posted for all the world to read. But I wouldn't call our mother-elder teen-age son relationship typical; nor would he, I think.
The short story is that he told Denise I wrote, and she invited me to submit a piece, which became "Skyearth Letters." Then I called Denise one day several months ago and actually conversed with her in person. We talked for quite a long while, and my editorship grew out of my offering to help in some way.
I'm looking forward to it, with a bit of trepidation. Denise has done a wonderful job, and hers will be tough shoes to fill. Let's see, I've called them "big shoes" to someone else, and now "tough shoes." No, I don't have a hang-up on footware, except that I'm disgusted with a pair of athletic shoes that have big holes in them within four months of buying them, when I generally get a year's worth of wear.
In closing, I'll pass along an experience told by the leader at a service I went to this morning. He had gone walking in one of the high prairie parks here in Colorado, where I went walking last week and heard meadowlarks. He watched a large hawk above him, noticing the coloring under its wings and on its belly. Occasionally a wing would flap to adjust direction, but generally the wings were still. After a few minutes, he noticed that he couldn't see the coloring as distinctly. It dawned on him that the hawk had climbed much higher in the sky without effort on its part just by riding a thermal of hot air rising from the ground. He applied that metaphor to us. We, too, can be lifted and held up by the source of all our beings by trusting that we are loved and cared for.
So long,
Cherie Staples