May God bless and keep you always

May your wishes all come true

May you always do for others

And let others do for you

May you build a ladder to the stars

And climb on every rung

May you stay forever young~

Bob Dylan

Mother Jones would declare she was going to be with Jesus every Sunday morning with a tambourine in her hand. I mean every Sunday she would say in the middle of service that Jesus was calling her home today. It never seemed strange then. It seemed as normal as her starting the whole church singing a tune she felt and loved in her bones,

"Lord I'm striving to make 100 (one hunerd), 99 1/2 won't due"

She would be wailing and moving back and forth, hitting that tambourine on her thigh and making a chorus of her own: convinced that any minute she was going to tambourine it right into heaven and stand before Jesus. The theatrics of this was beautiful to me. But, I get it more now than then. Why she couldn't die at her home by herself, but only on a Sunday in a small church packed with people, with a tambourine in hand and a song in her mouth was lost to my 7 year old self. But my 36 year old self gets it.

Every human being needs to be seen. Needs to feel seen. Every human being needs feel that they are important. That some how, their being here on this earth matters. And in a small church packed with about 75 people singing loud and strong to a God they believed in with all their might, and Mother Jones being the Mother of that fold and being honoured as such, I suspect in that moment, Mother Jones felt seen. Felt important and as if she mattered!

Why wouldn't she want to go to heaven in a moment like this? From my current vantage point, ain't no shame in it. While she may have been more theatrical in her need to be seen and embraced in "you matter", she was NOT unique.

We all want to be seen and surrounded by, "you matter". Because we do matter and the echoing back of this truth corrects our course faster than chocolate melting on a sidewalk. So in moments where you forget your value, or the "you matter" in your days, just think of Mother Jones and her tambourine singing you a song like she'll never sing again. Simply because, YOU MATTER~

p.s. Mother Jones died peacefully in her sleep 2 years ago at 111 years old...looks like 99 1/2 was left in the dust...