Reflections on a Hex theme: Smooth Sailing Through Life

One of the more traditional themes in Pennsylvania Dutch hex sign painting is the scalloped border with many small, inward-facing scallops which surrounds the larger motifs. This design is interpreted as an additional prayer for "smooth sailing through life." They face inward, towards the energy of the main focus of the circular design, for the outer circle is drawn as the boundary of the Gods' will so of course all prayers remain inside this sphere.

I was thinking about that today, in the light of what we may want out of life. Many folks whose lives are overly busy, stressful, difficult, and who face challenges that they may not believe they are up to meeting, are prone to pray for an easy life, to ask for fewer problems.

Believe me, if I were one of those folks, they would have been a day for wanting to make such a request. From "simple" web change requests that weren't, to my favorite vegetable stand now being closed on Tues, to having to run an extra errand WAY on the other side of my normal route, to the flat tire that I got after that errand, to a reported printing problem with a project that I thought I was done with weeks ago, to the discovery, upon picking up the mail, that my newly rehabilitated school loan had been sold to yet ANOTHER sleazeball outfit (instead of being passed off to Ford, to be consolidated with my other loans, as requested)... today had plenty of challenges.

HOWEVER like a big ship sailing through rolling seas, none of these challenges proved more than that... a challenge which was dealt with. We were not the little sailboat, being capsized by the waves...

And that, my dears, is "smooth sailing through life."