When we first become a parent, we see our child with love that seems unbounded.

Then the second child approaches in the horizon of life. The concern becomes how we can love another child as much as the one that lights our home now?

Like most questions in life the answer comes as a matter of course..
Looking at the new life before us we feel love and wonder. In that moment all is revealed.

The truth of love is that it is not limited. The truth of love is that it is as boundless as the universe.
We can say this truth but it will mean nothing to most. The truth must be lived.
Living truth and love.

And what teaches us is the new life that we are part of.

When we walk with our children, on the halloween march, and they wear little costumes our hearts sing. Sometimes we capture the moment in pictures or in stories we tell each other.
But more it lives in our hearts.

And when those children are stretching into adults, and their behavior shocks or disappoints us, maybe looking at them through the memory of a Halloween costume would help us to see, the child we love, inside.

whoops!

Any reason for a party. I remember the Halloween Parade on a small Pacific Island. The Kids soaked in sweat as they walked down the potholed street in 90 degree heat. I watched thinking of the cold rainy evenings in the Pacific Northwest, walking the kids on their Halloween march in search of treats.

Back then I worried that I was honoring some dark ritual, but I realized the kids just thought it was another reason to get to stay out late, and have fun as a family. As the kids got older, they talked about Halloween more in terms of a benchmark in the change of season. Halloween was usually the first cold rain of fall. No deep significance, just a position on a seasonal clock.

Sometimes, as parents we try to control and read into something more than is there, or take our fears and concerns and place them on our children. It is a mixed bag.
Like any event there are those who can make it a condemnation of others or a simple celebration.

In Kenya there is a mountain that can be seen from much of the landscape of that East African country.
In day to day activities people go about their lives and consciously or unconsciously see Mt Kilimanjaro. Some use it as a point of reference in their travels, some make pilgrimages to it, and some ignore it.

Everyone has their Mt. Kilimanjaro. The Mountain in our life landscape.
It may be distant or close. It is always there. All humans have a mountain in their life landscape. Like Kilimanjaro in Kenya it is a landmark. The landmark can be sensed, sometimes felt, often forgotten or ignored. A Kilimanjaro can be where we come from, what happened to us, a great loss or great gain; it is significant.
The mountain in our lifescape can hold our fears, our dreams, a turning point, a nexus point, or it can be something entirely different.
This mountain in our lifescape can be climbed and from it's top, we can look out upon our life and see with a different and enriching view.
We ask ourselves, What is my Kilimanjaro?

Or are we simply breathing in......breathing out...
passing.....gas...in our own Kenya.

How do you drive into tomorrow?
When I lived halfway around the world I would talk on the phone with friends in the States while they were still a day behind me. I liked to say that I would tell them what the next day would hold for them. Silly and just a fun addition to our sharing of news and information about home for me and reports from me.
as I flew home, I flew out of tomorrow. I landed in Seattle and I landed in yesterday. Not really. Just a fabrication of human need to measure.
Yesterday is history. Nothing can change it, however we try. We rationalize, explain, we blame, we confuse and confabulate. No matter what we do, it does not change the past.
.
Long distance thinking is like making a call to the future. No answer, no dial tone. Forget about it. The future is a dream that changes. The past is a dream of what was.
Now, today is life. Our life to do with it as we choose.
Do we have a choice or are our choices made by our memories or our dreams?
God bless life! (and hang up the phone; yesterday and tomorrow are out of service)