Thirty-Six: By the Numbers

One: expected guest.
One: bunch of flowers.
One: dancing e-card.
One: Rachmaninoff Prelude.
Two: happy birthday calls.
Two: types of pie.
Three: cards.
Three: unexpected guests.
Four: helium balloons.
Four: candles to blow out.
Six: pizzas.
Eight: birthday texts.
Eleven: birthday emails.
Thirteen: hours of party.
Fourteen: Facebook greetings.

It’s been a good year!

The Fruit of the Spirit

The Word:
Love, Joy, Peace,
Patience, Kindness, Goodness
Faithfulness, Gentleness, Self-Control.

The Message:
Affection for others,
Exuberance about life,
Serenity.

A willingness to stick with things,
A sense of compassion in the heart,
A conviction that a basic holiness permeates things and people.

Loyal commitments,
Not needing to force our way in life,
Able to marshal and direct our energies wisely.

Sounis

All my life they had made choices for me, and I had resented it. Now the choice was mine, and once it was made, I would have no right to blame anyone else for the consequences. Loss of that privilege, to blame others, unexpectedly stung.

We read all day, hour after hour,
A couple hundred pages of intrigue.

I hadn’t understood it all the first time,
But now, with the help of a map I drew and
The slower pace of reading aloud and explaining,
We waded through what was said and unsaid,
And came out, in the end, quietly moved.

The first three books rely on sheer awesomeness,
With a hero who can do everything
With aplomb and foresight.
And though he orchestrates all still,

This book’s hero is one more human-scale,
Uncertain, peace-loving.

He chooses what he would not,
Hoping, in the end, for what comes to pass:

Peace.

Ugly Duckling Hospitality

We have several friends who excel in hospitality.
In Boulder, I always felt like the ugly duckling,
Not ever quite the most-loved, the most-popular,
And it frustrated me both in its understandability
And its predictability.

So it caught me off-guard recently to realize both
That our home may be the most-popular,
And that we might, inadvertently, discourage others
From using their gift of hospitality.
The former I have no wish to change;
The latter I have no idea how to prevent.

But it is good for me to consider my heart,
That hospitality is not a competition,
That there is room for us all,
And, indeed, need.

Thirty-Five: By the Numbers

Five: sons another year older.
Four: divorces of friends.
Sixteen: major parties.
Four: people cry in our recliner.
One: house finished.
Two hundred: pounds of apples from trees.
Six: cows to the butcher.
One: week at the beach.
Four: shockingly powerful prayer times.
One: album release.
Seven hundred: poems written, plus a few more.
Uncountable: laughs, tears, friends.

Anticipation of the Unknown

I delivered sons to a friend’s house today,
And happened to get stuck behind a grader.
I was surprised by how irate I felt,
Until I glanced at the speedometer,
And it didn’t register a number,
Hovering around zero.

I was prepared to turn around at the next drive,
And admit defeat amid a rising sense of panic,
When the grader pulled over and let us squeeze by.

Gracious … but I thought about and dreaded
The return trip.

Which ended up being a non-issue.

So much emotional upheaval over a three minute delay.

Anticipation of the unknown often is worse than
What we deal with.

Puzzles

I am not very good at puzzles,
Possessing neither an artist’s eye
Nor the patience of Job,

But sometimes I find it satisfying
To lock piece with piece,
Creating order out of chaos.

To sit and be present,
And talk a bit,
While we see what picture unfolds.