my friend Ann sent this...

 Ann and I just finished a zoom, three session course on Forgiveness with 14 people in Ireland. It was amazing.

Someone mentioned that engaging with forgiveness made them see themselves in different ways.

That's why Ann sent this.

For the first time in my life perhaps (though I am supposed to meditate every day!), I took the lamps and, leaving the zone of everyday occupations and relationships where everything seems clear, I went down into my inmost self, to the deep abyss whence I feel dimly that my power of action emanates.  But as I moved further and further away from the conventional certainties by which social life is superficially illuminated, I became aware that I was losing contact with myself.  At each step of the descent a new person was disclosed within me of whose name I was no longer sure, and who no longer obeyed me.  And when I had to stop my exploration because the path faded from beneath my steps, I found a bottomless abyss at my feet, and out of it came -- arising I know not from where -- the current which I dare to call my life.

 

Teilhard de Chardin

The Divine Milieu

 

Well worth pondering again and again.

 

Be well and stay well. 

Staying out of the way

 Bern is in one of her "move things around/throw things out" phases.

They come every year or so, usually in the spring.

She puts things out on the sidewalk near Cornwall Avenue and they tend to disappear.

Today she took a load of stuff to Good Will.

She also cleaned out her closet and drawers and took two large trashbags of clothes to the bin for recycling clothes.

I just try to stay calm and out of the way. I'm a guy that would leave everything where it is for always.

Our dog, Brigit, is also freaked and slinks around trying to understand what's going on.

If Bern comes into my little office (8 ft. by 12 feet or so) and starts moving things around, I stand up to that.

It's warmer today so soon she be out rearranging the yard and leaving Brigit and me in peace!

Come on warm weather!

A zoom reunion

Today I was on zoom with Chris and Buck, two priests who I knew in West Virginia but haven't seen in over 20 years.

We were on the Junior High Camp Staff together and good friends.

They call me 'Bomber' because I once told them I liked to shoot outside with the basketball and 'bomb' the nets.

It was amazing. We caught up on families and where we've been since the Mountain State.

It was like we'd talked a few months ago instead of too many years ago.

I am so thankful they tracked me down.

What a blessing.

(By the way, Joe Biden tripped going up the steps of Air Force One. It was all over the news.

I trip several times a week going up our front or back stairs and I'm not on CNN.

How unfair is that?)

 

 

A good way to end something

 I just finished a J. P. Beaumont novel by J. A. Jance called Justice Denied.

Last night Bern and I watched the last episode of "Shitt$ Creek" on netflix.

Why do I mention these two together?

They both end with a wedding.

In the Beaumont novel, "Beau" marries his detective partner and long time life partner, Mel, after 370 pages of somehow unraveling a long list of killings that at the beginning had nothing to do with each other.

On "Shitt$ Creek" the son of the Rose family marries the love of his life after 4 seasons. The Rose family lost their fortune and moved to Shitt$ Creek--with the family owned because of a birthday gift when they were rich. The series tells us how each of the 4 members of the family came back from bankruptcy and made their way in the world again.

And both end with a wedding.

No better way to end a drama or a comedy.

A wedding is a good way to end anything....

Anti-Vacers

 There are so many people claiming to not wanting the Covid-19 vaccine.

One out of four members of the House of Representatives have not taken in--and it's been available to them since it was approved.

40% of Republican men say they won't take it.

Reasons vary from thinking there is something in the vaccine to alter your DNA to not trusting the government to saying it was developed too fast.

Republicans--it was developed so fast because the former President--you're guy--shut down science to get it developed. Many projects were abandoned to work on the vaccine! In the end, that was good for all of us who want to be safe.

Taking the vaccine isn't 'for you', it is FOR ALL OF US.

Those who say masks and social distancing and the vaccine are taking away you're rights, let me give the Governor of Texas' misquote of Patrick Henry.

The Governor said, when announcing the re-opening of his state in spite of the CDC and WHO's warnings:

"Give me liberty AND give me death."

An very telling misquote....

Heart breaking

 I was in the grocery store yesterday when I saw an elderly woman coming out of an aisle. She practically had her head on the handle of the basket. I thought she was just watching to make sure no one else was coming.

But no. Her back was bent so her head was near her right shoulder. I should remember the name for such things, but I don't.

She was painful to watch. My back even started aching for her. So I tried to avoid her.

But sure enough, she ended up behind me in the checkout line.

But by then there was a man--her son?--with her.

He was so kind to her, asking if she needed to sit down and taking her groceries--quite a few of them--out of the cart for her.

I was upset with myself for trying not to see her after the first glance.

But it was so heart breaking.

I don't often pray about specific things--I usually meditate as my prayer--but on my way home I prayed for her, for her being bent, for whatever pain she must feel. And I gave a prayer of thanks for the kind man with her.

Praying helped me feel a bit better about myself as well.

Pray always for those less fortunate than you. And give thanks for those who seek to help them.

 

Where I've lived

 The first 18 years of my life, I lived in an apartment over a grocery store in Anawalt, West Virginia. We had a coal stove in the living room and electric heaters in the bed rooms. Our bathroom was not connected to the living space, so it was unusable for baths in the winter, so we bathed in the living room in a large steel tub. The grocery closed in my late teens, so winters were really cold.

The next four years I lived in Morgantown, WV, in a dorm the first year, an apartment at 69 Ridgewood Ave. the second year, as a Junior I was a hall monitor in another, off campus dorm, and my Senior year I lived in an apartment at 89 Ridgewood Ave.

The next year I lived in a dorm at Harvard Divinity School and the year after that, having married my high school sweetheart, Bern, in an apartment in Somerville.

The next five years we lived in Charleston, WV in a house on Hazelwood Avenue.

For seven years after that we lived in the Rectory of St. Paul's, New Haven for five years and then, separated for a while, in different apartments in New Haven and then, together again, in a house in New Haven.

Since then, we've lived on Cornwall Ave. in Cheshire. Almost 30 years now.

So, I've lived in six different (very) towns and 12 different dwellings.

But here on Cheshire for much the longest--this is 'home'.

Interesting to look back and notice that.

You might want to do that too.