Listen to Jim:

 http://redclaydiary.com/mp3/asmatteringofmattering.mp3

or read his story below:

 Smattering of Mattering Couldn’t Hurt

 Having been steamrolled by the year 2015, I guess it is time to savor what good there is, time to hope for what might be, time to actually come up with a plan to make 2016 better.

Where to start?

Maybe the simple act of looking around me at life as it is, will help me jump start the year.

I am full of dreams and imaginings. Dreaming and imagining is a pleasant way to expend the time I have, but does it do anybody else any good?

RESOLUTION: Once every 24 hours, I will ask myself two questions—1. At start of day, What can I do that will actually affect someone else’s life in a positive way?…2. At end of day, What did I do today that actually affected someone else’s life in a positive way? First question is easy. Second question is tough. It tends to hold me accountable for my do-good intentions.

RESOLUTION: Once a day, I will ask myself whether I opted for the easy way out. Did I slide past an opportunity to do good or did I pause, stare straight into the face of a difficult situation and address it in a constructive way? Did I at least try?

RESOLUTION: Sometime each day, I will pull the plugs and find personal peace within, ignoring all superficial stimulation. Silence and solitude for twenty minutes will give me a chance to calm down, let go, search for what little goodness and mercy I still harbor. I know it is there, I just have to give it a chance to assert itself.

RESOLUTION: Each day I will look at least one person in the eye and really listen to what is being communicated to me, silently or aloud. I will remind myself that this should be a person whose existence I generally ignore or avoid. Something good will come of this, I just know it.

Before I try to impress myself and you by listing a dozen aspirations for the year, I will stop here. Just accomplishing all of the above will be a challenge.

Besides, each and every day, I begin a new 365-day cycle of living, so why just do resolutions one day a year? The best is yet to come

© Jim Reed 2015 A.D.

jim@jimreedbooks.com

http://www.jimreedbooks.com

http://www.jimreedbooks.com/podcast

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Listen to Jim:

http://redclaydiary.com/mp3/dumpty.mp3

or read his story below…

In the way-back land of fond memories, I find these notes about a special Christmas moment that lingers in memory always green…

DUMPTY

 The first Christmas decoration of the season to be broken is broken, I guess, by me.

It happens every year.

Sometime during the process of getting everything done getting everything just right getting each and every little item in place if you hold your mouth just right… something gets broken.

In this case, the tinkly shattering of a glass ball causes a momentary lapse of movement. Five-year-old Hallie stops decorating the tree, her brow furrows as she looks up at me—first of all to see if she is suspected of having anything to do with the breaking, and second of all to see if her Grammy (my wife) will scold me, for it is clear that I am the culprit.

Grammy is careful not to moan too loudly, although she always cringes when any of our old, old decorations are maimed.

We have a stack of broken Christmas ornaments waiting patiently for Santa’s workshop makeovers, and I actually believe that this coming year will be the year I’ll try to repair what I can repair. However, the hollow glass ball that I just dropped on the hardwood floor is not repairable, so we’ll just have to try to remember it fondly and pay attention instead to the wide array of family keepsakes that now swing from the greenness of our tall tree, the tree that’s getting harder to decorate each year since we’re getting older and the ornaments are proliferating.

That’s one reason why Hallie is helping us this year, just as granddaughter Jessica used to help. The young ones are here to delight in the project, to brag that they helped decorate two trees this time, and to learn the process for the times when we’ll be too old to do it all ourselves, Grammy and me.

Anyhow, this ritual we carry out each and every year is indispensable to Christmas, and the challenge is, we never get it exactly right—daughter Margaret would prefer we have a REAL tree instead of a manufactured one, Hallie would prefer we have three more trees to decorate, her mother Jeannie can’t wait till it’s all done and over with so she can take a long winter’s nap.

Jessica would rather the trees come pre-decorated so that she can get down to the business of anticipation, grandkids Rebecca, Reed and Ryan would rather just let us entertain them with Christmas cheer all year round, son John can’t wait to share another family story or two, and grand kids Robby and Becky would just as soon get on with opening the gifts now, if you please.

I hope you have something nice to keep from breaking this season, some fragile object or fragile memory that you can hold onto while gazing glazed-eyed at the glowing starry sky this winter

© Jim Reed 2015 A.D.

jim@jimreedbooks.com

http://www.jimreedbooks.com

http://www.jimreedbooks.com/podcast

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Did I Ever Tell You What to Get Me for Christmas?

http://jimreedbooks.com/mp3/tell.mp3

If you really want to please me, if you truly wish to give me something that will make me smile, if you want to feel you’ve done the right thing by me, then read on:

This Christmas, give me something personal, something of yourself–not something you picked up at the Mall or ran into the Pharmacy and grabbed at the last minute. Just this one Christmas, I would love to receive something truly personal, something that is part of you.

The gift you give as a part of yourself could be any number of things.

You could write a little poem for me, one you made up all by yourself.

You could sing me your favorite Christmas carols, the ones you’ve loved since childhood.

You could do a little performance for me–a funny jig or a joke or two about what it’s like to know somebody like me.

You could draw me a picture and sign your name at the bottom and date it, “Christmas, The 21st Century A.D.”

You could take me to dinner all by yourself and sit and chat with me over some nice food and drink, I listening to what you have to say and you listening to what I have to say.

You could make a little album of photos and memorabilia about me and you, and give it to me with a loving hug.

Get the idea?

You may come up with something better or something more interesting than any of these–that’s ok. As long as you give me something personal, something affectionate and caring, I will be happy.

Maybe you feel uncomfortable, trying to improvise a Christmas gift for me. Perhaps you’ve gotten used to going to the store and purchasing something, and maybe you feel this IS a personal way to gift me. If that’s so, then here’s something you can try, something that may please us both: Go to the store and find a delightful little toy, a toy that makes you smile, involuntarily. Then, bring me that smile–and the toy, too. We can enjoy the toy and our mutual smiles together at the same time!

If all of this is just too much trouble, you could even do this: take me to lunch and ask me what I’d like to give to you, if I could only afford it or if I could only do it just right, in a way that you would appreciate.

Anyhow, I thought you might get a kick out of learning the answer to that age-old question we all ask each other every year: “What do you want for Christmas?” This year, I thought I’d tell you the truth, as I feel the truth this year.

Give me part of you, and I will try to return the compliment next Christmas

© Jim Reed 2015 A.D.

jim@jimreedbooks.com

http://www.jimreedbooks.com

http://www.jimreedbooks.com/podcast

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Listen to Jim’s podcast:

http://redclaydiary.com/mp3/bookingthemagiccarpetride.mp3

or read his story:

Booking the Magic Carpet Ride to Reality

I am sitting cross-legged and pious atop a floor mat that looks sort of like a Persian carpet. Since I have only seen such a carpet in movies and in fairy tale illustrations, it is easy for me to imagine that this floor mat might just be a Persian carpet in disguise.

I am only a kid now, and it will be years, even decades, before I learn to distinguish reality from fantasy, so this is a good day.

I close my eyes, keeping in mind that some of my fictional heroes—Sinbad, Abbott and Costello, Hope and Crosby, Aladdin—have managed to levitate and pilot magic carpets. If they can do it, why can’t I? Even Bugs Bunny takes a magic carpet ride once in a while.

I press my palms together in some semblance of Judeo-Christian-Middle Eastern prayer mode and wish for levitation.  Time flies, but the mat does not. I open one eye to see whether I’m still aground. In my imagination, I am flying, but in my reality I’m rooted to the floor.

Maybe I should wear a turban, but I don’t know how to make a bath towel remain on my head.

Since nobody in the family is around right now to witness my liftoff failure, I am relieved. I stand straight, fold the mat, place it in the closet, and return to my room. I open a volume of The Arabian Nights and return to my imagination, searching for further adventures that apparently happen only in stories. But what fun they are.

I now appreciate how clever and imaginative Scheherazade must have been to make up those 1001 tales designed to entertain and distract the doltish sultan who threatened to take her life. I now know what she knew. The tale is everything, the story is everything. If the tale does not carry you away and suspend your disbelief for a few moments, it could cost you your joy, even your life.

From this day forth, I often find myself simultaneously in two worlds, the real one and the hoped-for one. As long as I walk the tightrope between them, extracting the best from each, I am guaranteed a good day.

And perhaps a good life

© Jim Reed 2015 A.D.

jim@jimreedbooks.com

http://www.jimreedbooks.com

http://www.jimreedbooks.com/podcast

Twitter and Facebook