Today I talked with a grandmother who is raising her six-foot eighth grade grandson who got kicked out of mainstream public school. I gave her good news about the focus, positive action and risk-taking that the boy was achieving in our mural for the Juvenile Probation Department, after he started out foul-mouthed and resistant. She was the second grandmother I talked with this week who is raising a grandson on her own this week That can’t be easy. “God loves you for being there,” I said to the grandma.

In thinking of about the adults who don’t abandon children, no matter where they are – I say again, thank you, thank you, for the sake of the innocent children, for the sake of the Village, for the sake of all of us.

That struggle dimmed, however, when I got a call from my beloved friend, Ayesha, the hospice nurse who took care of my mother the last months of her life. Ayesha suffered from a stroke three months ago, her left arm and leg becoming paralyzed, and then she had two heart attacks a month later. Her call came to let me know that the doctor had found lymphoma. What to do or say in the face of such odds? All I could do was to get a clear picture of Ayesha in her apartment and then I sent golden light, tinged with pink that surrounded her and absorbed the pain and fear. We remembered old times painting murals together in McKees Rocks and sitting on the patio in Mt. Lebanon, sipping tea. Focusing on love and fellowship aleviated the odds for just a moment. Perhaps that’s all we can do.