One-liners and Robert Frost

[Deb Go]

Almost two weeks after the fact I finally sat down to clunk out some reflections. I guess it's more of a sampling of things that I've learned, that have convicted me, resounded with me, etc., all in cute, compact one-liner form. Some are from sermons, others from the mouths of the Ride:Well family. Some are obvious, others profound. But simple as some may be, I think there's a little more to be taken from each one than first meets the eye.

One dollar provides clean water for one African for one year.

I am a golden retriever, not a beaver.

With great privilege comes great responsibility.

Gluttony is having more than you need.

I do not love engineering.

It's about the journey, not the destination.

Err on the side of risk and faith.

Do what you can with what you've got.

I need people.

This last one really struck me as the trip was coming to an end and I had to face leaving this 19-member Ride:Well family. I'd always considered my quietness and independence as signs that I didn't really need to be around people too much. I was wrong. And in my loneliness/isolation, this one poem kept coming back to me. I rediscovered it with Bethany somewhere around D.C., and now I can't get it out of my head.

Mending Wall by Robert Frost

Something there is that doesn't love a wall,
That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it,
And spills the upper boulders in the sun,
And makes gaps even two can pass abreast.
The work of hunters is another thing:
I have come after them and made repair
Where they have left not one stone on a stone,
But they would have the rabbit out of hiding,
To please the yelping dogs. The gaps I mean,
No one has seen them made or heard them made,
But at spring mending-time we find them there.
I let my neighbor know beyond the hill;
And on a day we meet to walk the line
And set the wall between us once again.
We keep the wall between us as we go.
To each the boulders that have fallen to each.
And some are loaves and some so nearly balls
We have to use a spell to make them balance:
'Stay where you are until our backs are turned!'
We wear our fingers rough with handling them.
Oh, just another kind of out-door game,
One on a side. It comes to little more:
There where it is we do not need the wall:
He is all pine and I am apple orchard.
My apple trees will never get across
And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him.
He only says, 'Good fences make good neighbors'.
Spring is the mischief in me, and I wonder
If I could put a notion in his head:
'Why do they make good neighbors? Isn't it
Where there are cows?
But here there are no cows.
Before I built a wall I'd ask to know
What I was walling in or walling out,
And to whom I was like to give offence.
Something there is that doesn't love a wall,
That wants it down.' I could say 'Elves' to him,
But it's not elves exactly, and I'd rather
He said it for himself. I see him there
Bringing a stone grasped firmly by the top
In each hand, like an old-stone savage armed.
He moves in darkness as it seems to me~
Not of woods only and the shade of trees.
He will not go behind his father's saying,
And he likes having thought of it so well
He says again, "Good fences make good neighbors."

[Bethany Stallings]

I LOVE YOU.

that's my one liner.

thank you for this post.

[Andy]

Leave it Bethany and Deb to drop the Frost. I love it. I am a beaver/golden retriever (70/30), but not an otter. And I think you are a Felt, even though you ride a Scattante :-] Nice meeting you all the way back in June, and CHEERS from Minneapolis :-]