So much So new

Today I met Bill
affable, bright, and polished

We had met quite by accident
and as we talked connections appeared
through the pentimento
one after another,
shared clients
shared products

Then opportunities for synergies beyond ours.

I left the meeting very high
connections
possibilites
new beginnings
nice guys

always turn me on

First Class

Today I met the folks with
whom I will spend the
next three years. First class.

bible study, faith journeys, reflections

laughs

and love...lots of love


all very different people
First class; all are called
to one apostolic faith

each a body in the Church
of Jesus the Christ,
we found, in this gelling space

Now that we've begun

I wonder who will go the distance...

Star Light

heady stuff
the congrats
and compliments

I smile and,
Elvis like, say
Thank you very much
Thank you vereh much

Can I never be a star?
disappearing in the bright
sun light

Can I just be?
bright Arcturus
lost in the lightness
of the day

Awash in star glow
receding,
a latent image
of used to be

Fellowship

They elected me a Fellow
How swell
I am jolly
and good
sometimes

Fall

She tripped and fell
going too fast
not watching her step
she went pell mell
into stop

To heed the call
Of sirens or beauty...
All pretty choices...
To want them all
Is a trap

Over-living is greed for life
Choosing the one
is to de-select a thousand other options

She who hesitates
at least avoids
the pain of choice

To choose a worthy life
Is risky

Soul

Is the soul sole?
Unique, undivided, alone

Crises rock the soul
fracture its integrity

Crisis changes the soul

Connection with the other
Empathy
Is observing
through the other's eyes
Tasting the bitterness, joy, grief
Hearing with new ears

As my soul senses the other's view
it is destroyed in tiny ways
and re-forms different
different for all time

Different from what it was
Different yet from what I thought it was

Catch a changing soul?
In being it will slip away

Time

And indeed there will be time...
Time for you and time for me
And time yet for a hundred indecisions
and for a hundred visions and revisions
Before the taking of a toast and tea....
- excerpted from Thomas Stearns Eliot "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock."

In the time - space continuum time is elastic and space is too

There will be time and there will be time
Until the moment of death

One lives as two
Until the moment of death
Then whose time tells the truth

Crisis

Today I read that chaplains encounter people in crisis.
As I prepare for hospice chaplaincy, who will be in crisis?

Crisis: from the Latin crisis; from the Greek - discrimination, decision, to decide - OED

"Don't Know" mind

not knowing the outcome

I pace

trace the possible resolutions

worry and rant

not knowing the outcome

of a something important

takes a whole lot of chant

to find the "don't know" space

of contented waiting

Pears

observation on observation

When I taste a pear, it is destroyed
no longer the whole, perfect fruit

taste or see?

Looking down the three-day Labor Day weekend



washing dogs can smell up the house

but not as bad as not washing dogs



the summer is over and gone

the heat is on

work begins for real now