enough is enough...and everything is beautiful

Tomorrow I'll preach at the memorial service of Dick Harris, 87, who was a friend and a supporter.

In less than 6 months I've preached at the funerals of Reed Smith, Bill Penfield, Kay Bergin, Sue Parker, Zeinith Punter and tomorrow, Dick Harris.

Plus, my remarkable friend, Norman Harrower died but left explicit orders that their not be a funeral or memorial service.

I don't know if I more resent not being able to honor Norman or having to honor the half-dozen dear, dear people I've preached for to God and whoever else was listening....

It's beginning to wear on me. All this dying.

Today I took the Puli to walk the canal. The town of Cheshire plows the pathway brilliantly. The only snow on the asphalt had fallen from trees.

Snow was falling from the trees into the water of the canal. Those remarkable concentric circles water has were spreading out and colliding with other concentric circles of water. It was the "Chaos Theory" in action.

And it was beautiful.

The dog and I had the canal all to ourselves. The silence was deafening. Bela didn't go darting off in all directions, sniffing madly. He walked right beside me for a half a mile out and a half a mile back. At the beginning he had peed a quart or so and at the end he pooped copiously. But in between, he walked at my heel and seemed, in my understanding, at any rate, to notice how beautiful it was--how quiet, how absent of humans, how lovely....

'Course he didn't, I know that, it was just that the snow made smells of other dogs muted so he just walked with me.

All those wondrous people were like the concentric circles in the water of the canal. Their lives swirled out and out, touching so many and making chaotic patterns in the river of life.

Sometimes I am simply astonished by how beautiful life and people are.

I subscribe to the Chaos Theory of wonderment....And I am so glad to have known those people, now dead, and to hold them in my heart.

Ponder, for a moment or so, the dead you hold in your heart....You'll realize, I believe, something about the beauty of life.