Ella is an open book, or as strong as a rock, or as gentle as a jewel. You should have seen her the other night, around dusk. She was sitting on the porch in a lawn chair, wearing a beautiful peridot-colored sundress, like spring and summer at the same time.

Peridot, which can be pronounced “peridoe (like the female deer),” is the birthstone for the month of August, which is Ella’s birthday month. Lots of things can be learned about peridot, like from the Oxford Dictionary on-line, which says peridot is a mineral made of magnesium and iron and other elements, from igneous (volcanic) rocks or from metamorphic rocks, which have changed over time from heat and pressure.

Ella is like that, so strong against all the elements that assault her life, day and night. In a way, Ella is Everywoman. She’s been through nearly all of it. We know and don’t know the details. But Ella is still a clear spring green like peridot, the way she loves to dance and sing and talk to people and just live life the best way she can, sometimes wearing a summer dress, with that gracious breeze touching everything with an aching elegance.

Ella laughs. She loves to laugh. She’s almost 74 years old and she can still light up a room in a peridot dress or one with silver sequins but mostly with her smile, with her courage, sometimes with her tears because life hurts so much sometimes.

Ella never gives up on a chance for joy, even when she can’t sleep or can’t find a ride or can’t get the ride to find her, because she lives at the front of the building but the identifying numbers are at the back. Ella finds a way, even if she has to mark her place with red silk roses from an anonymous friend.

Ella has many friends. We went to church the other night to hear the Roaring 50s sing that Old Time Religion and Ella knew more people in that church than maybe some of the members. She smiled and greeted everybody she knew. She didn’t leave anybody out.

Before we heard the music (and Ella loves music), Ella and I went to a little Bible study group at that church. Unexpectedly, she asked to sing. With a strong clear soft voice, Ella sang a song about how she was grateful for a roof over her head and for food on the table and not much else but Jesus. We believed her because we could tell she meant it.

When Ella sang that song, her eyes welled up and it sounds like I’m making this up, but I cried with that aching elegance. That song came from her heart and somebody in the back of the group said everybody got the gift of tears from Ella that night. God moves in mysterious ways. We went to church to hear that Old Time Religion, but first, Ella sang. The joy broke our hearts right open.

I still mourn. I can’t get that massacre in Aurora, Colorado off my mind.

One day at a time, sweet Jesus, like Christy Lane sang. I looked up her name. Other people sang the song too.

It feels bad to write today. The news is bad. I’m sitting here feeling sad and lost and scared for myself and the world.

I Surfed the Net. One thing led to another again and I found lyrics to a song the late Laura Nyro wrote many years ago, back in the 1960s. History really repeats itself, only worse. Even then, before this massacre in Colorado, the late Ms. Nyro wrote a song called “Save the Country.” That song says, “Come on people, come on children, come on down to the Glory River, Gonna wash you up and wash you down, Gonna lay the devil down, Gonna lay that devil down.” Who knows everything a songwriter thinks, but those lyrics seem to fit for today. Laura Nyro gave us that song and many other songs. We all have a song of some kind. But everything seems sad today anyway. It’s better to be sad when bad things happen than to be indifferent, according to the late rabbi and philosopher and activist Abraham Joshua Heschel, when he wrote about God‘s prophets of old.

Today, when I walked by my friend’s place to return that food container, he told me to pitch it up. He caught it and smiled. He saved me a trip up the stairs and that smile helped. I feel sad off and on today, for reasons personal and national and universal. Can you feel it too? Just look at the news, or not look. How can we not look and not feel sad?

Thank you for sitting here with me. It’s okay to feel sad for now. When something terrible happens, I’ve heard you just do the next good thing you can do. We have to qualify it now—do the good thing. Right now it seems right to mourn the sad things, but not to give up on life and the good things. As long as there’s God, it’s not hopeless, because God is eternal. God’s been there and back and out there too. God is the great I AM. Pastor Joseph Prince says God covers the past, the present and the future. God never leaves us alone.

So, we just have to do the next good thing and hope against hope. I looked that up too. It means hope when there’s no reason to hope. When nothing makes sense, that’s when we’re supposed to walk by faith, not by sight. I’m gropin’ around in the dark here. Let’s hold hands. I mean it. Let’s hold on to each other.

1898 advertising poster (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

At Snopes.com, I looked up Ivory soap, which floats because they whip a little air into it.

The soap is made by Proctor & Gamble.

They named that white soap after a Bible verse. It’s from Psalm 45:8 where it says, “All thy garments smell of myrrh and aloes and cassia out of ivory palaces.”

Sometimes we are not in an ivory palace, but somehow involved with family feuds and silent treatments and unpaid bills and lost jobs. We’re over the worst of it. At least we don’t stay in bed too shocked to move and then cry half the day. Maybe we can eat a little, or stop eating too many Krispy Kreme doughnut holes, heated up in the microwave late at night.

Have you ever watched the movie “Hope Floats?” Sandra Bullock and Gena Rowlands are in that movie and I like both of those actresses. I looked up some lines from the movie, since I’ve never watched the movie all the way through. The movie is about how Sandra Bullock’s movie screen husband wants a divorce.

Sometimes it’s good to go to the movies, because good movies are good therapy. Sandra Bullock’s character in “Hope Floats” is named Birdie Pruitt. At one point, you know Birdie knows (and the writer knows) just what you feel like, how unhappy and lonely (for now) and trying to deal with the way back past as well.

Birdie says, “Childhood is what you spend the rest of your life trying to overcome…try to remember that when you find yourself at a new beginning, just give hope a chance to float up.”

Here’s another good line by Gena Rowlands’ character Ramona Calvert: “Look at me. My life has no meaning and no direction, and I’m happy.”

It lifts your spirits to realize it’s possible in real life to lose all the meaning you once had and still find some aimless happiness.

That Ivory soap sure does last. I started buying Ivory soap to save money. Two little slivers fell in the tub water the other night and they floated right up, easy to find.

God blesses the smallest aimless things sometimes. Dear lady, we don’t have to search in that murky water for why anymore. God knows why.

God’s got us and He won’t let go. So let’s take a good shower or tub bath or a boat ride, or dangle our feet in a creek, or pull every bit of cover up under our own chin, for once, or for now. It’s time for a good movie. It’s okay to be a little bit happy.

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The . Original title: The original Star Spangled Banner “Museum” (from unverified data provided by the National Photo Company on the negative or negative sleeve.) This glass negative might show streaks and other blemishes resulting from a natural deterioration in the original coatings. cropt from LOC file before upload to Wikimedia. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Living in or visiting a foreign country offers the incredible opportunity to see, hear, taste, smell and touch many different people and different ways of life.

In the mid-1990s, I lived in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia because of a building project, the Petronas Twin Towers, once the world’s tallest building(s). This magnificent structure, with the amazing sky-bridge, is featured in the excellent movie “Entrapment” with Sean Connery and Catherine Zeta-Jones.

The culture of KL (nearly everybody called it that) included Malay, Chinese and Indian people (from the nation of India) with the major religions being Muslim, Buddhist and Hindu, with other religions, or not, as well. Besides the citizens of Malaysia, there were many expatriates from many nations, including Japan; Korea; Great Britain; France; Australia; New Zealand and many others.

The people of Malaysia were mostly friendly and helpful and nearly all spoke English. Still, it was possible to feel stranded or lonely or just plain bored.

One day I decided to go to the library at the United States Embassy. One embassy, I forget which, had gold paint on black wrought-iron spires surrounding the building. It was a hot (but not miserably hot) day, since Malaysia has year-round tropical temperatures, as well as exotic fruits like nose apples and lychees and the stinky (but reportedly tasty) durian. The flowers of Malaysia are beautiful and abundant. Orchids, regal white and purple orchids, were “everyday” flowers there. I enjoyed buying a dozen coral-colored roses for about 23 ringgit, which was less than $10 American dollars then.

Still, it wasn’t home. When I got to the US Embassy that day, there was a long line, people from many nations, waiting to get inside. I looked around at other places, but the line was longest at the guard house of the American embassy.

Then I looked up, my chest hurts a little now when I think of it. A silent misty longing took my eyes up to that familiar flag—the red, white and blue, with the stars. This is my country, I thought. This is where I belong. This is mine. Of course, the United States of America is not mine. Mostly we belong (or used to belong) to everybody.

Anyway, back in the 90s, which do and don’t seem so long ago, I went inside the US Embassy that day and there was President Bill Clinton‘s portrait and I was too misguided to miss him then, but the President’s familiar face stood guard from the wall.

So, calmly, I looked at the Embassy library books, suddenly feeling that attachment, that sense of belonging to something grander than myself, something that was protective and brave and loving. It was the first time I really paid attention enough to feel love for my country and love for my flag, like millions of people love their own countries and their own flags around the world. Being alone enough, life forcing me to pay attention, made the difference.

It will sound like I’m making this up, but I’m not. While I browsed the books, an announcement came over the embassy intercom system. Everybody already inside the US Embassy was told to stay inside. There was a bomb threat. But, because of that American flag and the honor it stood for, and the people (I was acquainted with two of them) working at that embassy then, and the honor they stood for, I was not afraid.

There’s a reason they call that flag Old Glory. No matter how old that flag gets, it represents the best and the brightest, which can never be a cliche, even when we mess up or act ugly or act out or get hated because, sometimes, we deserve it. With our continuing civil wars, we are still the United States of America (with fear and trembling) although we are worn, torn and tattered.

Nevertheless, when you’re a down and out American, and far from home, you will look for that Star-Spangled Banner. You will look for her. And, if and when she finds her best good self, she will find you. She will reach out and embrace you and take you home and then send you out again for another hard good day.

Even if she dies trying, the better part of the United States of America will have your back. Let’s wish her a happy Fourth. Once upon a time, she deserved it. She may still yet. She’s a mess, but let’s wait and let’s hope and let’s believe. It’s hot, but the sky is blue.

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