At Kats Rest. First time we’ve been here since fall. When I watched Steve walk across the creek yesterday evening—hobble is more accurate—I realized how old we’re getting, how our days are limited and precious. May they not be spent in tedious and wasteful bickering.Yesterday would have been my father’s 84th birthday. Requiescat in pace.
He died so young. What would his life have been, had he lived? It hits me so strongly today as I sit facing east, listening to the creek babble, and what must be a bullfrog warning me it’s his territory, I think: life is a gift. Each day. To sense/acknowledge that, to feel the deep green enter the bone: even the recognition is a gift.
Of my family, why are Philip and I left? Philip must ask the same, but I doubt he thinks of the question in familial terms.
I feel . . . almost spared, as if an epidemic such as the smallpox has swept through, and only I’m left. Why? Why me? No illumination breaks forth. I read this morning the passage about Jesus as the light of the world, from John. What does it mean, concretely, vocationally, for me to hear this? How am I sent forth as light-giver and light-bearer?
These questions acute because in three weeks, the president is effectively gone. Our last visit here, we had no expectation of such crisis. Now we’re in it—again.
+ + + + +
The Appalachians have more blue and green, the Ozarks more yellow in their color palette. The Ozarks are clearly drier, something one recognizes as summer nears and the creek beside Kats Rest diminishes.
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment