Turning the Page

This morning, I turned all the pages on the calendars to November.  For my family, always a big-deal month. My father-in-law Ted’s birthday and now Zadie’s birthday is on Nov. 18^th and my Dad’s was one day later on the 19^th. My nephew Ian’s birthday is the 25^th and my daughter Talia’s one-day later on the 26^th. (Her 40^th!!) One friend’s birthday is November 8^th and another November 9^th. Three sets of such paired birthdays feels unusual! Can’t think of any other month where that happens with people I know.

 

November is also the annual Orff Conference that I’ve attended without pause since 1984 (and two before that in 1976 and 1982). As I believe I’ve shared before, I can recite the order of the cities where they were held and tell you a few stories about each one. But I’ll spare you the list for now. 

 

Then there’s Thanksgiving, mostly always shared with my sister and her family and now a bit more complicated as we’re all spread out. But it looks like we’ll have a small one with daughter Kerala and kids in Portland on the real Thanksgiving and then a larger one the next day with my sister and her husband and nephew Ian’s family (another paired celebration two days in a row!). 

 

And so. The photos on the turned calendar pages include two lovely smiling people in Kenya picking coffee beans as part of a small-business social justice initiative. A temple in a lake in Bali. A beachfront on Lake Michigan. A 5-year-old girl’s painting that looks like a bright water lily in a pond. Happy, hopeful, uplifting images suggesting good news to come. And how we need it.

 

So my friends, as we turn the pages on the calendars, let us turn the page to a new book, discard that same old tired story of greed, hatred, small-mindedness, fear, ignorance, injustice and begin telling the new story, begin living the new story of care and kindness and compassion. The flooding in Spain and typhoon in Taipei are alerting us in the strongest possible terms that business-as-usual cannot continue. The young people are counting on their elders to do the right thing to protect their future and uplift their present. So let us drop the first paragraph of the new needed story into the ballot box and make this November the moment when we chose life, love and laughter, the beginning of the story our kids can tell their grandchildren— “Yes, that was the moment we finally said  ‘Enough!’ and began telling the new story that we’re all enjoying now.”

 

May it be so!