Part 1 from Joyce Hifler’s book, To Everything There Is A Season.
“To everything there is a season___A time to be born, a time to die__A time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which has been planted___A time to kill, and a time to heal__A time to break down and a time to build up__A time to weep, and a time to laugh__A time to mourn, and a time to dance__A time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together__A time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing__A time to seek, and a time to lose__A time to keep, and a time to cast away__A time to rend, and a time to sew__A time to keep silence, and a time to speak___A time to love and a time to hate__A time of war, and a time for peace__He hath made everything beautiful in its own time.”
Part 2 From book Joyce Hifler’s book.
“Would God take a human being so marvelously made and in such a brief span of life have his (or her) journey completed? Or is this one more phase in man’s development, one more lap on the journey to a perfect soul? Am I the same spirit, the same one, the whole of one person as I started out to be? Or am I bits and pieces of greater souls, maybe some of lesser__yet as the pieces fit into place, ruled by the best or the strongest or most dominant, no matter what it might be, I cannot believe I was born knowing nothing, free of past hindrances, inherent except by thought-dwelling on what my eyes and heart conceive. I cannot believe I am limited in this brief time, but that I am here to work and carry with me, knowledge to do a greater work, How can we be like the lazy old sun, lying around heaven all day? But the Universe with its creativity, its generously endowed possibilities, holds a tremendous interest. It is that creativity which holds the stars in their course and the world’s part in the pattern of things.”
My beloved Joyce Hifler, her words from “To Everything There Is a Season” was given me by my grandmother when I was 16. It has been my reference for how to understand what it means to be a human being, and from that how to carry myself, and to put things into words. I wish these things would fall from my own lips. However, they start me off. Hiflers books seem forever timely.
My parents did not necessarily give me these fine examples to follow as they did not know them, or could not convey them, as they were caught up in their own learning curve. I did receive a lovely gift from my grandmother and my mother. From my grandmother I was given incite and knowledge of a educated world. A love of classical music, which she played. As a young women she played piano in the Portland Symphony Orchestra. Went to Westbook Seminary to be a teacher. She was a friend and fan of Del Bissonette. She played soft ball as a young women. Always watched the Olympics. I did gymnastics because I was interested in these. I learned to love plays, and Shakespeare. https://sabr.org/bioproj/person/del-bissonette/. My mother fostered these things as well, that I should go for more out of life. LOL How to carry myself well and use etiquette, manners, to be respectful, and thoughtful were important to her. She impressed upon me because we don’t have things now___does not mean we can never have things nor can not reach for them. She did not mean that having a life of wealth was all it either. It was how to have life of quality, a richness that comes from being all you can be while caring about the world at large and the people in it. She too loved people. She spent a life time learning about her roots to know where she had come from. Who did what in the family tree?
Who in there took a hold on making a difference in the world? Just by being a good version of who we are does change things…There is commonality of all humans, and this should be kept in mind. That we are more alike than different. We all are on a learning curve and not on the same page at the same time. Knowing that allows us to make allowances for others. Change is something that does not happen until we see the need for it.
As for me I had turned to literature, lucking out to have marvelous classical stories to read, a library that would allow me to bring books home (for my mother, LOL__not really). I cultivated my interests beginning in high school with books on psychology, Physics, Philosophy. What kind of kid researches due to interests, writes papers on Plato or Hippocrates? I learned to love writing, and poetry! Writing poems became a way to express my feelings.
I read books that taught me the things I wanted to know. Later I had to learn as much as I loved all I read, it did not give me some things I needed such as experience itself. Identifying with what you read does have limits for all if its riches. Like art it says what we feel and translates into what we need to say but in well put ways. It is not that I can’t convey such thoughts. It is that I love the elegance of how Hifler wrote. I will end here as I can see I am getting into philosophizing. The writer in me thinks a great deal about why we do as we do.
Best wishes! P.J. Nunes (AKA Pejj)
Anisette Studios & Shibui Fine Arts 