A NEW VIEW...

The window cleaners came today. 

This is a present I give myself now that it's not the simple little job it used to be for me to wash the windows.  It's work! And most of the time I have done it myself since you all grew up and went your own ways.  Oh, I have had you pitch in now and then when there was a wedding or I was getting the Secrest Court house ready to sell.  I even roped Burgandy into it one time here at Sweetbriar with a bribe of money if she would get up on the ladder and do the second story windows, too. 

Truthfully, I have convinced myself that I am worth it to have a professional team come and do the WORK for me. There are some things that are priceless.  Today it was clean windows. 

I leave in the morning for several days so I won't  be able to gaze out and marvel that it doesn't even seem like there is glass in the window frames right now.  Or  come down the neighborhood path behind the house after my walk and catch the glint of light reflected in each clean window.  No, I will miss that day-after ritual that I love.

Probably by the time I get back from my trip, there will have been some kind of wind storm whipping up gritty dirt and dust.  Or maybe a sprinkling of rain along with it to make muddy finger painting like the year of the Windsor tornado just a day after I had washed the windows AND blinds all by myself.

But today.....ahhh, today after the window cleaners left I had such a beautiful perspective on my outside world again. 

It put me in mind of when I was a little girl, and each Relief Society chorus was called The Singing Mothers.  In our ward my mother played the piano and Wanda Van Zandt with her "Relief Society Chorister Arms" led the choir.  "Bless This House" was one of the songs they used to sing.  I loved it then.  I still do.  However, now it is the Tab Choir singing "Bless This House" for me on my cassette tape that I listen to on Sunday mornings when I am getting ready for Church.  (That tape is so old there is not even a copy of it on CD.  I know.  I have been looking for one for years.)

Tomorrow I will be long gone before the sun even thinks about getting up.  But later it will be coming through the east windows infusing everything familiar and favorite in the kitchen with its rays of golden light.  The glory of the sun--symbolic of the best and the brightest.  How lucky I am to live in the Rocky Mountain West where the sun is not a stranger but a welcome guest.  Now I need to remember to mention clean windows in my prayer....

Bless these windows shining bright, letting in God's heavenly light!

Bless This House

Bless this house, O Lord we pray,
Make it safe by night and day . . .

Bless these walls so firm and stout,
Keeping want and trouble out . . .

Bless the roof and chimneys tall,
Let thy peace lie overall . . .

Bless this door that it may prove,
Ever open,
To joy and love . . .

Bless these windows shining bright,
Letting in God's Heavenly light,
Bless the hearth, ablazing there,
With smoke ascending like a prayer!

Bless the people here within,
Keep them pure and free from sin . . .

Bless us all that we may be,
Fit O Lord to dwell with thee . . .

Bless us all that one day we may dwell,
O Lord! With Thee!
Words and Music by Helen Taylor
And May H. Morgan ( a.k.a. Brahe ), 1927