Let it be fun!

Potato chips and ice cream at the lake with Marz yesterday—she leaves for Camino in ONE WEEK… The girlette Low, below, who has been staying with her, is coming home with me for the duration. Forty days and forty nights… I one-thousand percent am excited for Marz to go, but I miss her already.   

What kind of ice-cream, did someone ask? (I would.) Häagen-Dazs Irish Cream Brownie—new to me.  

And potato chips? Little bags, “Miss Vicky’s”, one salt & vinegar, one jalapeño. Also kombucha—one ginger and one tart cherry. 

Biking on the lake path, (I was early) I stopped and talked to a guy with a handmade sign offering Free Prayers. I liked his vibe—goofy, musical—a young-middle aged white guy sitting on an upturned bucket, he had a shell necklace and an upright drum (a conga drum?) and was wearing an arrow joke hat, “like Steve Martin”, he said. 

Catholics don’t do public improv, in my experience—at least not the ‘free-prayer’ type—but the evangelical types I’ve encountered, like Big Boss, are often great at spinning it—like those cotton candy machines at the state fair—magic. 

I like to see what people with signs serve up—to me it’s like stopping at a garage sale. 

As I’d hoped from his vibe, sure enough, I told this guy about my young friend at a turning point in her life—what next?—going on pilgrimage (he knew someone who’d walked Camino)—and he offered a terrific prayer—for clarity and guidance—“…and let her have fun! Your way is joyous!”

I love that! A book came into work called Surprise Me!—about a woman who every morning prayed, “Surprise me, God!” My immediate response was to think of the unexpected horrors of recent years—even the surprising yellow color of the smoky sky a few days ago. “Eek! No more surprises!” 

But I like it, adapted—“Delight me!”  Or, as the lake guy said, “Let it be fun!” And especially for peregrina Marzipan!