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      When we arrived on Tuesday, the meteorologists’ forecasts were grim. They warned from Tuesday all the way to midnight Friday: “If you thought our surprise fifteen-inch spring snowfall last week was something, wait till Saturday!” For four days they did everything but guarantee a three to six-inch snow Friday night followed by several inches more on Saturday.

      Our flight home departed at 6:20 a.m. Saturday. I lost three hours sleep Thursday night strategizing, sweating (literally) how I would cope with a foot of snow. What if we get stuck in Denver for days? What if I wreck the rental car driving through a foot of ice and snow? What if the car gets stuck and we miss our flight? What if the rental car employees cannot make it to work and shuttle us to the airport? What if the alarm clock fails to go off at 3:30 a.m.?

      The apocalyptic forecasts were greatly exaggerated. Denver got a dusting. “Man!” I heard one red-faced weather expert report early Saturday morning, “If that storm hadn’t gone one hundred miles north of where we expected it to go, Denver would be in really big trouble this morning.”

      That experience reinforced a life lesson: never put all your eggs in the basket of experts. My wife had said as much all week: “You know, they could all be wrong.”

      Concentrating on undesirable possibilities or even probabilities fuels endless worries. The snowstorm-that-never-was taught me what Mark Twain learned: “I am an old man and have known a great many troubles, but most of them never happened.”

      February Notes

      1. Shakespeare. Much Ado about Nothing. Act 5. Scene 4.

      2. Griffin, “Love the Marigold,” 66–67.

      3. Lindbeck, Nature of Doctrine, 117.

      4. King, “Loving Your Enemies,” no pages.

      5. Waskow, “Sukkah of Shalom,” 107.

      6. Toobin, “Real I.R.S. Scandal,” no pages.

      7. Peters, Wendell Berry, 8.

      8. Hertsgaard, “Green Dream,” 254.

      9. Deuteronomy 30:19.

      10. Everett, “Life of Elizabeth Barrett Browning,” no pages.

      11. Browning, Sonnets From the Portuguese, 43.

      12. Reed, “James Clyburn,” no pages.

      13. Holguin, “Happily Married,” no pages.

      14. Gottman Institute, “Research FAQs,” no pages.

      15. I Corinthians 9:27.

      16. Sakya, “Life of Buddha,” no pages.

      17. I Corinthians 13:3.

      18. Hyde, “Choose Life,” no pages.

      19. Solzhenitsyn, Gulag Archipelago, 516-517.

      20. Biography, “Candy Lightner,” no pages.

      21. All writers who use this quotation attribute it to Augustine. I have not been able to find it in Augustine’s body of work. The earliest I find the quotation is in a book written in 1988 by eminent American theologian, the late Robert McAfee Brown. In his Spirituality and Liberation: Overcoming the Great Fallacy, Brown introduces a chapter with the quotation, but does not give his source. Allan Aubrey Boesak in Dare We Speak of Hope: Searching for a Language of Life in Faith and Politics comments on page 43 that the quotation “seems to have come to us via Anselm of Canterbury, who attributes it to Augustine.” Boesak does not give his source for that assertion. Whether Augustine ever said or wrote it is largely immaterial and irrelevant to me. What does matter is that this characterization of hope speaks truth, and I believe it does.

      22. Curry-Knight, Top 500 Reviewer, no pages.

      23. Popova, “Kurt Vonnegut,” no pages.

      24. Wood, “Secret Fears,” 1.

      25. Roc, “Enough,” no pages.

      26. Matthew 18:3.

      27. IMDb, “Schindler’s List Quotes,” no pages.

      28. Warner, “Man Behind the Window,” no pages.

      29. The Economist, “Van Cliburn,” no pages.

      30. Shearer, An Unquiet Life, 346.

March

      March 1

      I once received a lovely gift from someone in or around Leavenworth, Indiana. It is a framed piece of embroidery that has one of my favorite Bible verses sewn on it. I only wish I could find out who made it (or had it made) so I could thank her (or him).

      Some of life’s greatest gifts—the ones that mean the most—are the anony-mous ones.

      Last weekend I listened to two different couples tell of their recent experience in a restaurant. When they asked for the check they were informed by the waiter that someone had already picked up the tab. I have also heard of people at a drive-through restaurant, or in a grocery check-out line, or at a gas station who had a similar experience—some anonymous donor, for whatever reason, had already paid their bill.

      My favorite “anonymous gift” story comes from Chilean poet Pablo Neruda. He tells of a time as a child, playing in his back yard, when he saw the hand of a little boy or girl come through a hole in the fence. The next time he looked, the hand was gone, but in its place was a little white sheep. Little Pablo spontaneously ran in his house and brought out his own treasure, a pine cone he loved, left it in the same spot, and took the sheep. The two children never met. Years later, in a house fire, the little white sheep perished. Pablo Neruda said that even as a grown man, whenever he passed a toyshop he looked in the window for a little white toy sheep to replace the one he lost.58

      To feel the affection of someone whose identity is unknown enlarges our souls, tenderizes our hearts, and binds us to a not-all-bad human race.

      March 2

      I have lived, by my account, a charmed life—definitely not in the eyes of the rich and famous, and probably not to those up close and personal who know my deficiencies and heartbreaks. But as one who for three decades saw some of the worst things that befall individuals and families, I have become something of an expert at putting things in perspective.

      My charmed life? I grew up a much-loved son. I won that lottery. It could have been different.

      In 1969 I became a husband. I know now I could not have done better. I won that lottery. It could have been very different.

      In 1972 I became a father. Our three sons have grown up to be responsible, interesting, respectable human beings. I could not be prouder. I won that lottery. It could have been very, very different.

      Thanks to our sons and their wives, I acquired a fourth title-for-life in 2008. Six grandchildren for as long as they live will refer to me as Popple.

      On the birth of our first grandchild on February 24, 2006, a picture and a quotation came to me. I am sure they will never leave my mind. The picture came from the 1977 television miniseries Roots. It is the scene where Omoro, Kunta Kinte’s father, took his eight-day-old baby boy into the jungle. On a beautiful, starlit night he reverently lifted his eyes and his newborn to the heavens and solemnly proclaimed: “Behold, the only thing greater than yourself.”

      That blessing brings to mind words from Wordsworth: “A child, more than all other gifts that earth can offer to declining man, brings hope with it, and forward-looking thoughts.”

      This is the story of my charmed life and I am sticking with it: the world should go on.

      March 3

      Two professions vie for top spot on my most-respected list. One is teaching.

      Yes, I know that some teachers are flat-out incompetent. I had a few doofuses. All of our children, unfortunately, also had a few.

      For

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