My Mother’s Gift Holiday Re-Broadcast
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(Lose the Net by Rasmus Faber Courtesy of Epidemic Music)
Isn’t it amazing how good questions lead us so naturally to good answers, and how beautiful questions lead to even better answers! When we open ourselves to the things we don’t know, we’ve opened the doors to discovery and wonder and greater understanding.
I’m Scott Lennox and you’re listening to The Beautiful Question, a consideration of things that matter every day.
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Marjorie and Leslie Lennox
In this season of Thanksgiving, I once again honor my mother’s birthday by reprinting a tribute to her.
My mother’s gifts deserve to be shared. When the podcast of this episode launches this weekend, you’ll be able to hear her music for the first time. For now, you can let yourself imagine it.
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On Thanksgiving Day, my sisters and I celebrate our mother’s birthday by recognizing the gifts she so freely gave us, and the ways in which those gifts are still very much alive in us.
Marjorie Gertrude Edwards Lennox was a singular force of nature who helped shape each of us into the people we are today. It would be quite impossible to name all of the gifts she gave, but a number of them stand out.
One of the strongest, was the way she loved our father and was his equal partner. Working together, they created a family and quite literally negotiated their way through the world. As a military pilot, Daddy was the Flight Officer. Mother was the Communications Officer, Finance Officer, and Transportation Officer, Housing Officer, and Logistics Officer.
When Daddy got orders to move to Guam, or the Philippines, or Mississippi, or North Dakota, or Texas, or countless other places, it was Mother who sorted out the details and made it happen.
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Another gift was her deep love for learning. When my younger sisters were grown and out of the home, Mother began taking a few junior college courses and went on to earn her master’s degree in Social Work. It took years, but true to her nature, she stayed the course, and she got it done.
It probably won’t surprise you that we cheered wildly when, at the age of sixty-nine, she was handed her diploma. Her grin was priceless.
It was a gift that she told us and showed us that the only limits we have are the ones we impose on ourselves.
It was gift that she inspired each of us to live lives in service to others.
It was a gift that she was a model for living a life of faith.
It was a gift that she was our living template for compassion in action.
And it was a gift that she passed on to each of us her love for language and for music.
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When I would come home from school in the afternoon, Mother would often be at the piano, playing songs from the forties as well as her own compositions. I remember standing outside our front door with my ear pressed against it, listening, eyes closed, and tumbling into whatever she was playing. I knew that if I rattled the knob or opened the door, she would stop, and then go to the kitchen and start cooking dinner.
But I didn’t want her to stop. I wanted her to keep playing, and I wanted to keep being transported by her music. If I was lucky, she’d be playing my favorite song, Blue Smoke. She wrote it after my father made three low passes in his B-17 bomber over the rooftop of her Rhode Island home, then wagged the wings in “goodbye” as he and his crew flew off to England and the War.
Each time I heard her play it, her stories and my father’s stories about that time flickered through my mind like old black and white movies.
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While I was serving in Vietnam, she recorded Blue Smoke onto a cassette tape, and mailed it to me. When I finally received it, weeks later, I borrowed a player and listened to it. At the sound of the first few notes, those “movies” in my mind and the feelings of nostalgia from my boyhood all came rushing back.
Now, decades later, because of the gift of her music and that cassette tape, they still do.
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Gifts take so many different forms, simple and complex, tangible and intangible, and everything in between.
I think of words of guidance or kindness that someone spoke to me that were such rich gifts, they actually changed my life.
I think of gifts that seemingly came out of nowhere.
I think of situations that seemed at first to be obstacles or setbacks, but later turned out to be gifts.
And I think of gifts that I can never begin to repay.
Some of Mother’s gifts lit fires in each of my sisters and in me to consciously pay forward to life and to those around us. In multiple ways, her gifts are still alive in us, and keep giving.
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And so, in this season of Thanksgiving, I have two Beautiful Questions.
One: What gifts, large and small, have you been given?
Two: In what ways can you honor, and possibly expand the gifts you’ve been given in your life?
My Light with Your Light!
Scott
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I’m happy we can engage this way as we consider things that matter and what to do about them. If nothing else, I hope you feel inspired to look more deeply at ways of caring for yourself.
You can be further inspired by visiting my friends at Kosmos Journal. That’s K O S M O S Journal. Their mission is to inform, inspire, and engage global transformation in harmony with all life. You can easily find them online at Kosmos Journal dot O R G.
And at thebeautifulquestion.com, you can read the illustrated transcript of each podcast as you listen. We’ve also included an archive of all previous podcasts, including guided relaxation audios that can help you practice letting go on a daily basis.
If you find these podcasts useful, I encourage you to share them and tell others about them. That’s a great way of helping me get a voice of calm and collaboration and balance and encouragement out into the world.
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I’m Scott Lennox, and this has been The Beautiful Question.
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The Beautiful Question is a One Light production, written, produced, and engineered by Scott Lennox at HeartRock Studios in Fort Worth, Texas, as a way of paying forward to life, being fully present, becoming better engaged with things that truly matter in a complex world, and committing to a healthier future for all of us.