It is a caring concern and a joyful enthusiasm for Life, Living and Song that we write this celebration of Life . . . "Appalachian Celebration".
There is a wholeness about all life from the smallest of wildflowers to we who people the Earth and to the Earth that shares the Universe with its mysteries.
We the people can help to perpetrate the whole of the Universe through our own awareness of partnership among ourselves; women and man, bird and insect, flower and animal, fish and reptile. We are a part of the spectrum that makes the rainbow.
Life is the light just refracted out of rainbows to reflect all that can be when there is a mutual sharing and caring for one another.
When we think only in terms of I and my we are tuning out
the togetherness that is so richly rewarding, so mutually sharing and so meaningfully
caring in this our human condition.
Every living thing from big to small is there to help one another, to promote the goodness and the positivity, the color and the light, the joy and the laughter.
When you walk down a country path, smile, and . . . pass it along . . . to some other living thing . . . they will too . . .
Copyright © 1988, 1999 Barbara A. Smith and John G. Hipps. All rights reserved.
This essay was first published August 17, 1988 in the Free-Press Courier, Westfield, Pennsylvania.