a year already? wow.

happy first birthday to baby jude, daughter of annie and helen.

yay for their beautiful fambly and their love. their building of a home filled with love is an example to everyone. they continue to be harbingers of hope and it always leaves me feeling gratitude.

and yesterday’s minor storm in a teacup has led to some fruitful dialogue. for that too i am grateful. where there was anger, there is peace being sown. and i haven’t had to let go of my conscience to be a part of it. which is important to me.

so, i’m moving on. and amen to it all.

LB

yup. good people…

pete has this analogous thing (for something philosophically useful but i can’t remember what it is right now) where he talks about falling in love. it goes something like this:

you can have a list of characteristics, attributes, traits, talents or interests you want in a person and you carry it around looking for someone who’ll fit the bill. but that’s not what you fall in love with. you fall in the love with the person. that is, the human that is made up of those characteristics, attributes, traits, talents or interests and maybe a whole lot of other stuff besides. maybe you fall in love with someone other than what you thought you wanted or needed, who doesn’t match that list you were carrying round at all. when it happens, whether they match that list or not, the list doesn’t seem to matter much anymore. you can’t fall in love with a list of characteristics. what you love is a whole person.

as i see it, what you love is the ineffable them-ness.

and sometimes i get to wondering if community, or indeed church, is no different…

HFASS keeping it absolutely Real

for as far away as they may be, i’m glad Nadia and her people are there. for they tick many boxes on the list. and then there’s the them-ness.

everytime i think i’m done with it all, i am reminded of what matters most…

LB

indigo hosannas

this poem from today’s writer’s almanac reminded me of the garden at the degrazia gallery/house in tucson. adoring love drips from the page… timeless, dazzling devotion…

Wind chimes ping and tangle on the patio.
In gusty winds this wild, sparrow hawks hover
and bob, always the crash of indigo
hosannas dangling on strings. My wife ties copper
to turquoise from deserts, and bits of steel
from engines I tear down. She strings them all
like laces of babies’ shoes when the squeal
of their play made joyful noise in the hall.

Her voice is more modest than moonlight,
like pearl drops she wears in her lobes.
My hands find the face of my bride.
I stretch her skin smooth and see bone.
Our children bring children to bless her, her face
more weathered than mine. What matters
is timeless, dazzling devotion—not rain,
not Eden gardenias, but cactus in drought,
not just moons of deep sleep, not sunlight or stars,
not the blue, but the darkness beyond.

– “The Waltz We Were Born For” by Walt McDonald, from Blessings the Body Gave. © Ohio State University Press, 1998.

love was never meant to be restrained or reserved… at least not to a 4 like me. i wonder if mcdonald is a 4… seeing beauty in the darkness beyond…

LB