This last thing

This final thing

 

       The older I get, the fewer things I find I have to believe. I think I've got it down

to the basics of my 'creed'.

          These are the things I still need to believe:

          *God loves me (us) unconditionally. Everyone, no matter how twisted or even 'evil' is a child of God.

          *Treat others as you want to be treated.

          *Welcome the stranger always, even if the stranger means you harm.

          *Give to those in need.

          *Be thankful always, for everything.

          That may be enough for me. I'll ponder it, but right now I can't think of anything else I need. That will be quite enough I think, to carry around. “Travel lightly” has become my motto as I've moved into Medicare years.

          There's lots more I could write about—events and people...oh, so many people that made my life as an Episcopal priest, though I never wanted to do it, the best life ever. Really. I can't imagine, looking back, being  more joyful or more fulfilled or more complete in any other calling. (I actually teach at the University of Connecticut in Waterbury every other semester or so in a program for those over 50. So, I've gotten to be a 'professor', though when I think it through, that's what I've been all along—a professor—one who professes, just about God rather than Hemingway and Fitzgerald.)

          I do miss having not written the Great American Novel—though I've written a couple of novels...three in fact: one straight fiction, one mystery and one fantasy...just the kind of books I love to read. The novel is titled The Igloo Factory, with the sub-title “a romance of the 60's”; the mystery is Murder on the Block, about a crime on Block Island, RI; the fantasy is called The Princess and the Sailor. If you want to read any of them, get in touch and I'll send them to you. My son, the lawyer, is frustrated that I've never got them published. He doesn't understand that the 'writing' is the gift to me. The business of trying to get them published is just too complicated for my aging mind. Maybe he'll get them published after I die. Good for him! That's the only way I could pay for his 3 daughters' college education....