So many memories rush in as I think back to when I was young and the new school year was about to start.  When I was very, very young I was very fearful of leaving home to go to school.   It was as if I was afraid that my home would disapear while I was away at school.  Things at home were often so shaky that I was always fearful, and in starting school I seemed to be afraid of everything — the new kids, the new teacher, the new things to learn.  It took me a long time to learn how to read and I was only able to do so as a wonderful teacher stayed after school with me and helped me build my confidence so that I could finally relax a little and make sense of the letters and the sounds they made.

Once I mastered reading, things were different because books became my world — they took me out of my problems and into new lands through my imagination and the images the stories evoked.  And I began to love school with all my passion; I began to dread the summers when there would be no school and I dreaded the emptiness I would feel without the structure of the classroom.  I looked eagerly to school beginning again at the end of summer.

I was thinking, too,  of the prayers I would say for my daughter when she was young and starting her new school year.  I would pray that she would be happy in school, that she would love to learn, that her teachers would treat her well — even with love — and be nurturing to her, and that she would not be hurt by the other children.    I wanted her to feel safe at school and treasured as a student.  God was good to her.

So, I ask you if you are a parent, what are your prayers for your own child for the new school year?  What are your hopes and dreams for your baby?  If you’re a teacher, what are your prayers for yourself and for the people whom you will teach? And, if you are a student, what are your prayers and hopes for yourself in the months to come.

Please share with us.

I read an article recently about how people deal with the last days of loved ones who are dying, and one man said some words which have haunted me these last days.  As his wife was taking her last breaths, he tried to comfort her, telling her it was okay to let go, and he said something like ”I’ll join you soon.”  His words touched me —  they made me cry, they made me wonder what words I might speak to someone I loved who was leaving me.  They made me wonder what words I would want to hear in my last few seconds of life.  How can we comfort someone who is dying and afraid?  What are the words we need to say from our heart?  What are the gestures we need to make to help a loved one?   I have lost people these last years and have tried my best to comfort them, but did I say the right words to them?  Did I help ease their passage? I’m not sure.  How helpless we each feel in the face of death.  How does one answer Death?  How afraid I am of death.

What are your thoughts?

In addition to running this blog page, I also have another web site, MakeBeliefsComix.com, where you can create your own comic strips online.  It offers you fun characters to selected from and blank talk and thought balloons which you can fill in with text, and you can print and email your completed comic strips.

Now, MakeBeliefsComix.com has begun posting each week a new theme or topic for visitors to create a comic strip with our comic strip generator and submit to us. After reviewing all submissions, we’ll  select a sample to post on our Facebook wall.  ’The theme for this week is:  ‘’You and Your Friend Share Happy or Funny Memories.’’

Our educational online comic strip site also has added another feature that enables users to post their comic strips on their very own Facebook walls.   Those who create a comic strip and send it to themselves will receive an email with two links: one to view and print the comic, and the other allowing them to post  the comic to their Facebook wall to share with friends and family

The link to the site which explains the new Facebook features is: http://www.makebeliefscomix.com/Comix/MakeBeliefsComix_on_Facebook.php

I hope you’ll try it and enjoy making your comic strips.

In his July 17, 2010 column in The New York Times (”Tweet Less, Kiss More”), Bob Herbert warns against our constant multitasking as we’re so locked into technology — email, tweeting, watching television — and suggests we put down some of our gadgets and spend more time just being ourselves.  He says we need to pay more attention on the nonmaterial things that ”fulfill us, give meaning to our lives, enlarge us, and enable us to more easily embrace those around us.”

Herbert tell us: ”There’s a character in the August Wilson play ‘Joe Turner’s Come and Gone’ who says everyone has a song inside of him or her, and that you lose sight of that song at your peril.  If you get out of touch with your song, forget how to sing it,” the character warns, ”you’re bound to end up frustrated and dissatisfied.”

Then this same character,  recalling a time when he was out of touch with his own song, says ”Something wasn’t making my heart smooth and easy.”

These are important words that August Wilson wrote, and I ask you to write about the ”song” in your own life.  What is your  personal song telling you?   What is its message?  Can you hear your song, or have your lost touch with what is most meaningful in your heart and soul?   Write about the song within you and share it with us, please. Sing it to us.

Aung San Suu Kyi has been locked up for nearly 15 of the past 21 years because of her efforts to bring a democratic form of government to the Southeast Asian nation of Burma which is led by a military dictatorship.  The  Nobel Peace Prize winner, who just turned 65, has said that in a political system ”which denies the existence of basic human rights, fear tends to be the order of the day.”  Such fear, she said, undermines  ”the small, daily acts of courage which help to preserve man’s self-respect and inherent human dignity.”

Think of her small, daily acts of courage as she tries to survive house imprisonment.   What are the small, daily acts of courage that you show in your own life?  Please share with us.

I recently saw a heart-breaking photo in the newspaper in which a soldier fighting in Afghanistan reads the Bible and lovingly extends a cigarette to another soldier who was stunned by an explosion in that country’s Arghanab Valley.  The hurt soldier asked the other to read to him Psalm 91, a favorite from his childhood.  The headline, quoting from the psalm, said ”You Will Not Fear…the Arrow that Flies by Day.”  Another translation of that line is: ”Thou shalt not be afraid for the terror by night; nor for the arrow that flieth by day.”  I was very moved by the brotherhood of the two soldiers trying to support one another and by the words of the Psalm that were meaningful to the fallen soldier.

Will this terrifying war never end?

I would like to know what words comfort you when you are in need.  Would you share them with us?

My heart breaks as I view the setbacks in the effort to stem the flow of oil gushing from a well a mile beneath the Gulf of Mexico that was dug by BP.  The spill reflects all the terrible man-made things we have done to destroy our Earth, and it sickens one’s stomach.   The poor people in the Gulf Stream, as if they didn’t have enough woes caused by the flooding in 2005 when we hadn’t adequately prepared the dikes and area to handle the natural catastrophe.  We have not taken the steps to protect our natural resources and we have made what we have vulnerable to the exploitation by corporations who seem to care about nothing but making money.   We will be a cursed people if we continue this way and not take care of all the richness in nature that was once ours.  How can one watch the video of the oil gushing out of the well and not cry as we realize that all the cursed oil will stay in the waters, perhaps forever, and destroy wildlife and living things in the ocean?  How could we have done such a terrible thing? We are a cursed people.   We should cry in shame and despair; we do not deserve what we have been given.  Heartbreak, heartbreak!

How do you feel?

I read a letter where someone used the phrase ”A House of Memory.”  It struck me as a beautiful phrase, even though I wasn’t sure what it meant.  We all have memories — of people we love, of things we have done, of the way we have lived our lives — and l guess these memories will always be stored within us.  Is each of us, then,  a ”house of memory” or is it actually a physical place where we should store our written and drawn memories?   Again, I’m not sure, but I have a gut feeling that a house of memory is something each of us must build, whether inside ourselves or externally, in a physical setting.

I realize I am writing about something that is hard to pin down, but it seems important. I think memories are what make us as human beings — how can we forget what is important, what we have experienced, whether good or bad.   I’d welcome your own thoughts about what you think a house of memory is.

You have woken up today with a memory that keeps coming back to you?  It lingers in your mind, and somehow is very important to you right now.

What is this memory?   Why is it important?  What does it tell you about your life or what your needs are now?  Write about it.

You are welcome to share it with us, too, if you wish.