Love-30, or Tennis Courts I have known...

Webster's Dictionary: Love (Tennis) a score of zero.
Wikipedia article on tennis scoring.

We're experiencing warm weather here in the Burgh. Well, colder today--36 degrees Fahrenheit. But mostly, it's been in the 40s and 50s. I've been wearing my pink fleece jacket instead of what I normally wear in December--my brown Russian coat.

I'm grateful for the warm weather. They've been finishing up the Mae West Bend on Rte. 8, and the nice weather makes it easier for them to finish--before Christmas??? All I want for Christmas is four lanes of highway?

On my birthday, in late November, I went for a walk. Not so unusual, as I try to go for one every day. But it was coldish on my birthday, and yet, in the middle tennis court, two men were playing tennis. I don't claim to read two men playing tennis on my birthday as a sign from God that..x y and z, but it was hopeful. For a good (or bad) year, I walked daily to and from the Seminary on my morning walk. Their tennis court is abandoned. It became a metaphor in my mind, the abandoned tennis court. So imagine my surprise and delight when this morning two men were playing tennis in the middle courts again. It's not a sign of x y or z, but hopeful. That my neighborhood has people that play tennis, that care about the upkeep of the tennis courts, and the community gardens. That there are people walking their dogs.

When the sparrows flew away as I walked through the grass where they had been resting, I thought of the sparrow, and how not a one falls without God knowing about it. "His eye is on the sparrow, and I know He watches me; His eye is on the sparrow, and I know He watches me." (Hymn)

And when I think of hope, I think of the lady poet from Amherst...

Hope is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul,
And sings the tune--without the words,
And never stops at all,
And sweetest in the gale is heard;
And sore must be the storm
That could abash the little bird
That kept so many warm.
I've heard it in the chillest land,
And on the strangest sea;
Yet, never, in extremity,
It asked a crumb of me.

(Emily Dickinson)