“Oh, for goodness sake!”  Who has heard their Mum say that?  (Most of us I am willing to wager.)  If you break it down, it is a very powerful “Mum kinda thing” to say.

How would you define goodness?  I asked my best buddy what he thought, and he just said, “Goodness is the absence of evil – it doesn’t have to be perfect to be good.”  He says he is simple – I beg to differ.  I will concede, however, that life really is that simple, and I have been noticing some particularly spectacular acts of Goodness lately.  I am not saying that this is something new, just that I took some time to keep track of all the Goodness in my life recently, and it is rather spectacular.

Back to that wonderful sojourn back to Maine this fall – it has brought joy and healing for me.  Rekindling friendships with friends I thought were long-lost, family I had lost contact with, and a clear sense of my roots and what I left behind 20 years ago.

And, the biggest thing I got out of this visit was gaining the understanding of the goodness of gifting – something given with love for the benefit of others.

Everywhere I went I left something behind and took on another offering of love and joy.  Here is an incomplete but nevertheless earnest attempt at a jot list of the Goodness I encountered riding around last month:

• Gardens and their bounty shared (see “Beet-Mobile”)
• Clean beds and showers everywhere I went!
• A lesson in soap making
• A handmade basket that is proudly displayed in my living room
• A Greenville, Maine mug
• Long heartfelt conversations and words of encouragement freely given
• Fresh picked raspberries for breakfast
• Shared meals
• Becoming the proud owner of the Poetry Contest sign dedicated to Grace (see Full Moon Haiku 🙂 )
• A drum lesson I had been dreaming about
• Hiking in the beauty of the Maine wilderness
• Homemade donuts
• Hugs
• Memories shared in loving kindness
• CDs to ride home with – in fact this particular gift was from a friend I hadn’t connected with in 17 years………and I listened to it all the way across I-90 to get home.

Here is my favorite song from that album.  Listen to the words real careful, it talks about the people who walk with us.