I think that I must be a bit Irish as many of my ancestors came from that part of the world.

When we traveled to Ireland I was captivated by the scenery. Our guide sang an Irish song that was haunting and I can still remember it. I enjoyed immersing in the Irish culture and even had the correct answer to a trivia question that no one in our group knew.

MJ and I had dinner at Houlihans in St. Louis on St. Patrick’s Day many years ago. We had a Mexican dish and wine which we were not accustomed to drinking. Upon the second glass of wine, MJ asked me if I wanted to visit the Peweter store, and by a figurine of a father holding a video camera…which is something I did a lot of as Aaron and Jonathon were growing up and I quickly saw the magic of St. Patricks Day and wine…

Once we joined our friend Lee for a St. Patrick’s Day Dinner at a local pub. Many of her friends were there and I thought the experience was enriching.

Joan and Jim graciously invited us to their home for several St. Patrick’s Day dinners and I have never eaten such delicious corn beef and cabbage…and bread…

I met an Irish man from Northern Ireland when we were traveling with Margo and Jeff and he told me that I must visit as they had wonderful peat. The man was a friendly rough-hewn gentleman who looked as if he did not suffer fools gladly.

So…we need holidays to remind us of who we are and the joy of living. We get bogged down in the minutia of our day-to-day walk. Holidays remind us of how special our gift is. We all have a history. We all came from somewhere. We need to be reminded of where we have been and where we are going.

Cinnamon and spice and everything nice is not only what little girls are made of but also the pauses we take to connect with each other and relish our shared humanity. Darkness is pierced by the light of love. Hope awakes anew each morning.

The cords that bind us together are so much stronger than the artificial and self-serving rhetoric of those who would divide us…

Looking for inspiration and waiting for Godot. At times this is our life. We look to the north, the south, the east, and the west and find only those waiting with us. We understand each other, are all from the Seeker family…we know our own.

Tick Tock the world turns and we turn with it. The problems seem overwhelming and the solutions are few. Whatever happened to the public servant? Where are the three Wisemen when we need them.

‘He speaks like no man I have ever heard,’ She said. ‘His words are a bit of a balm for my soul,’ She continued.

‘Follow me and I will make you fishers of men,’ Hope Bringer said. ‘I have come from my Dad and he sent me with a message,’ HB continued.

‘HB seems more than human…perhaps a shaman or a prophet,’ They said. ‘His brothers and Mom and Dad are among us…we know where he lives,’ They continued.

‘Out of the night that covers me, Black as the pit from pole to pole, I thank whatever gods may be For my unconquerable soul.’

‘In the fell clutch of circumstance, I have not winced nor cried aloud. Under the bludgeoning of chance, My head is bloody but unbowed.’

‘Beyond this place of wrath and tears Looms but the Horror of the Shade, And yet the menace of the years Finds and shall find me unafraid.’

‘It matters not how strait the gate, How charged with punishments the scroll, I am the master of my fate, I am the captain of my soul.’ Invictus, William Ernest Henley

Today is one of those special days where you can feel see and smell spring in the air. The blooms are showing their brilliant faces and a breeze is blowing out old man winter. So it goes with us. We are waking from our winter naps and preparing for the challenges of new life.

I recall being at a church meeting in Topeka, Kansas when I was a wee lad and waking up to the lovely scent of spring. I was sleeping in a dormitory with several of the men of my church at the time and we were attending a Camp Meeting. I had never attended a Camp Meeting. The dormitory had massive open-air windows that allowed a brisk wake-up before the morning breakfast which was plentiful and good.

When our hopes are at their lowest ebb…then comes spring and the renewal of life, dreams, and plans…

A Cardinal is sitting on a hospital window ledge. He is singing, ‘Do not give up hope…I have been sent to bring you joy.’

Dogwoods bloom outside the home of the homeless…children laugh and play with no worries about tomorrow…they know that God is in control…

The rivers run into the sea and the cares of today await the eclipse of the Sun and the demonstration that we are all part of something so much bigger than we are…

We forget what manner of woman and man that we are. Debt, child care, work, and life are abundant with pitfalls, while another spring is here with all of its abundance and the gift of beginning again…

Memories lurk in the shadows of our minds. We remember that once we were happy…once we were free of the artifice of fake life and its constant demands…we recall laughing at cartoons and Big Books for Kids…a trip to the Orpheum Theatre was the adventure of a lifetime and swimming in Pounds Hollow Creek was the joy of our summer…

All the joys and happiness of our lives are part of us. We are not diminished. We are not reduced by our struggles. We are conquerors of all…the mighty oak tree tells us as he rustles from his slumber to be enjoyed in all his splendor…

I read of the challenges my good friend in England is going through and admire her courage. For many of us life is seemingly all uphill. To be on that grueling ascent and still be determined to find the good in life is amazing.

The clarity of our vision to live positively and effectively is inspiring. This world is a mixture of light and dark. There are days when we can climb the mountain…and other days when the mountain is on top of us. Much depends on what we do with what we have been given.

The author Helen Keller, a political activist, and lecturer who lost her sight and her hearing, when she was 19 months old, became the first deaf/blind person to earn a bachelor’s Degree from Radcliff College of Harvard University.

We fear our lack of education or advantage or money has locked us out of the door of opportunity. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Thomas Edison once said that his success in inventing came from 99% perspiration and 1% inspiration.

My dear friend Jeff went from being homeless on the streets of Chicago, Illinois to being a multi-millionaire and the owner of his own business in the United Kingdom.

We all can take the lemons that life gives us and make our own derivation of lemonade. Each of our circumstances is different and yet we have the unbreakable similarity of being from the same family…the human family.

Each of us can make it with a little help from our friends. None of us has a stamp on our back that says Reject or Seconds. I admire President Biden who has suffered from stuttering since his childhood and has worked on it for his entire life. Now he could have said, Well I can not be a public official or certainly the President of the United States when I slip on some words…and words are the coin of the realm in politics… Not only did he not let his disability thwart his success but is known for meeting youngsters at his political rallies who are stutters and giving them his personal telephone number so they to call him and he encouraged their quest to overcome the malady.

’30 Things a Standardized Test Can’t Measure…Resilence Passion Strength Wit Faith Compassion a sense of humor Intuition Kindness self-esteem Intelligence Motivation Fortitude Morals Courage Work Ethic Empathy Determination Personality Manners Diligence Common Sense Ingenuity Grit Character Physical Fitness A Love Of Learning Creativity Effort Life Skills.’ currclick

I saw a lovely series on Netflix the other night that intrigued me. It was regarding space travel and the search for immortality. The ending was the capstone for me where a father and daughter traveled to a place in the desert where a UFO was to land. Their wife and mother had been killed in a plane crash shortly after her return to Earth but had provided her family with the GPS coordinates as to where and when the craft would land. Now there was a load of intrigue in the middle of the film including the nefarious plane crash but the ending was surprising. The much sought-after UFO was the satellite that we sent to space in the 70s with greetings from all over Earth and our best wishes to understand and unite with other intelligent life in space. The takeaway thought was how much we inhabitants of Earth have changed in 50 years and are no longer united in a common goal. The realization was that Aliens had sent our 70s greeting back to us…

So it goes as we fight with each other and seek new lows and new words to describe those with whom we disagree. We cut the taxes of the top 5% and failed to provide money for the hungry in our land. We say President Biden is too old for office and we forget that former President Trump is only less than four years younger. We catcall and harangue the President in the State of the Union Address and think that is top-notch politics. Many of our politicians are on a Lone Ranger Crusade and have no interest in legislating or working together. Compromise is a dirty word when in fact our government is set up on the bedrock reality of compromise.

Not so long ago we sat out on our porches in Eldorado. Neighbors would leisurely walk back and forth to each other’s porches, sit a spell, and discuss the day’s events and how their families were doing. Each person that we knew was important to us. When someone was ill we took a casserole and visited them daily to ensure they had what they needed.

We might curse a little among friends who were not offended by our colorful language but never in front of women or children and never in a public setting. When Sunday came we were the first ones through the door because we knew that we needed help beyond our own understanding.

Kennedy said, ‘We shall go to the moon and do the other things not because they are easy but because they are hard.’ He said, ‘Ask not what your country can do for you…ask what you can do for your country.’

Once we understood that we are all in this together. Once we knew that we all belonged to the human family. Once when our neighbor suffered…we suffered.

‘Hi Rosie…are you ready to go shopping,’ Neva J asked? ‘I hear that they have some good sales at the Food Center today,’ she continued.

‘Nevie…you are so good to me…before you, no one cared if I lived or died,’ Rosie said with a tear in her eye. ‘After JFK assassination it seems all has gone arye,’ she said.

‘Kiddo…it is up to us to keep his vision alive,’ Neva J said with a wink and a hug. ‘If we do not do it…who will…’

It is Monday again and I am reminded of my habit of many years when I was working on saying, ‘Good Old Monday.’ My colleagues knew this refrain and often smiled wanly while Nancy would greet the sound of it with a wonderful grin. She said she had never heard anyone refer to Monday as ‘Good Old Monday.’ So today I have resurrected the clarion call to say, ‘Good Old Monday.’ I do this with some passion as Monday is the seventh of our week and thus much of our life. Hope springs eternal and it is almost spring. We are living in a magnificent gift and every day is like Christmas with the surprises that it brings.

The other day I wrote of being in the new house for 23 years. As I thought about the significance of this fact of life I saw the connectedness of the events that brought me to the point I find myself today.

The joy of living is the journey. Southern Illinois University fascinated me since my childhood. The Theatre Department at SIUC sent their actors to many of the small towns in Southern Illinois and conducted plays for us students. I knew that I must find a way to be closer to the University. The results were an over 34-year career at SIUC.

University aided me in thinking big thoughts. I began to question some of the closed thoughts that many with whom I associated proclaimed as truth. I discovered the beauty of all peoples and reveled in their diversity. Some of the kindest folks I know are from other countries races and religions. I have said that travel is the act of reading the story of life…one chapter at a time.

Time goes by as a weaver’s shuttle…it is difficult to see the landscape passing by our train windows when we took the train to Paris from England… We wonder who we are at times. Our sense of place comes from where we have been.

Presbyterians are good people. They made MJ and me and Aaron and Jonathon welcome 26 years ago. An older couple in the church drove to Elkville to bring us cookies the first Sunday we attended. The group loved Aaron and Jonathon and the first Christmas that we were there I understood that this is a church that does Christmas right. The Christmas Eve Service was reminiscent of what a Service must have been like in the time of Charles Dickens. It was a midnight service and everyone wished each other Merry Christmas and we sang Silent Night by candellight. I was in Heaven with the beauty of the event.

We are walking our way back to Jerusalem right now. We need not wait for tomorrow. This is the trip as Jerry Seinfeld told his nemesis Banya to whom he had promised a meal for an Armani Suit that Banya had given him. Banya kept trying to extend his gift to another time until Jerry proclaimed when Banya was enjoying a third or fourth food consumption event on Jerry’s ‘Dime’…’This is the Meal!’

The clouds are subsiding on a cold pre-spring day. I have been reflecting on the subject of suffering. None of us are immune from the word. In fact, for many, it consumes much of their lives. I have yet to hear a satisfactory rationale as to why there is so much suffering in our world. The trite and pithy explanations fall short of a balm to ease our condition.

Often I have heard that we are members of a fallen world and suffering just goes along with it. Job’s comforters guided him with words that were of little comfort. One of them admonished him to curse God and die. Well, that does not seem like a winning argument. It is a bit easier to look at the sometimes positive results of the trial of suffering.

At times a bit of wisdom comes from suffering. Our minds and hearts become extremely focused on our condition when feeling the hopelessness at the moment of loss whether it be our own physical pain and deprivation as well as the seeking of help from God while we are going through the ordeal. After our trial, we see clear-eyed…for a while the beauty surrounding us. Stopping in place is the result of suffering. We know that we need others…a community to help us. We feel that we really are not on an island of one. Hope is a lovely thing and our penury causes our reflection.

Our Pandemic which has really never ended illustrates that we are indeed ‘all in the same boat on a stormy sea and we owe each other a terrible loyalty.’ Humility comes with pain and loss. It is a terrible lesson and an affront to our dignity and personhood. We see our mortality and the diminishment of who we thought that we were and aids us in laying aside trivial pursuits.

So many on our planet don’t have enough to eat and nowhere to lay their head. Unseen and unheard and seemingly forgotten they look to the upwardly mobile as having perhaps done something right…although that right has somehow eluded them.

Children’s suffering is unconscionable. How can a loving God allow this to occur? I have no answer. How is St. Jude Children’s Hospital full of angels who are devasting cancer. Only when I see the precious healthcare workers bringing hope and comfort to these little ones do I somewhat understand a loving God?

We know it when we see it. The unjust scourge of life and its vagaries on the most innocent. We hope for a better day.

‘Then came Jesus forth, wearing the crown of thorns, and the purple robe. And Pilate saith unto them, Behold the Man! When the chief priests therefore saw him, they cried out, saying. Crucify him, crucify him. Pilate saith unto them, Take ye him, and crucify him: for I find no fault in him.’

‘They have pierced my hands and my feet’ and I can count all my bones.’

Suffering can only be accepted through faith. A faith that we are part of a master plan…

‘And he said unto Jesus. Lord, remember me when thou comest into thy kingdom.’

Time flies when you are having fun. I still refer to the house I live in as ‘The New House.’ Sunday we will have been here for 23 years. Where did the time go?

I vividly recall driving to our address in Carbondale after a 12-hour shift at SIUC and parking in the driveway to ponder our new house…in the dark. I was driving my recently deceased step-father’s vintage Lincoln Continental car…a car that he had wanted all of his life…and I was smoking a big cigar. I thought that perhaps we had purchased a mansion when I compared it to our four-room dwelling. Now do not be dismayed the New House was far from a mansion and I no longer smoke cigars in the vehicles I own…but it was such a dramatic change for our little family which then included my Mom that it seemed like it at the time.

The idea of living in a new century took some time to get accustomed to. I often read of folks who were born in one century and died in the next and wondered how that must have felt…I never thought that I was one of those people.

I was so poor when MJ and I married that I felt like an outsider looking in the windows of prosperity. I watched while others flourished while I worked 16-hour days and had nearly nothing to show for it. I hoped there was a better future for my new bride…and by God’s grace, there was.

It seemed almost immediately after our move on March 10, 2001…9/11 occurred. I feared as did we all what type of century we were embarking on. My thoughts were consumed with my duties at work as the Superintendent of Building Services and the responsibilities that it contained. I had nearly 10 years to go before retirement.

The teens went by rapidly as we were able to take 4 trips to Europe and renew our lifelong friendship with Margo and Jeff. Europe fascinated me and I hope to return.

Aaron and Jonathon became adults in the New House. MJ and I are so proud of both of them and we are together often.

The pandemic came and altered all of our lives. It was a scary time and many people succumbed to the disease. The world changed for all of us.

I took up my desired hobby of writing and have stayed dedicated to it for 12 years. Few hobbies have afforded me more joy and satisfaction. One of my good blogger friends told me that I have a gift…of which I am humbled and quite sure that I do not.

When I think of 30 years ago I assume I am thinking of the 70s…instead of 94. The 90s were a time of transition for me moving from Assistant Superintendent to Superintendent. The leadership position gave me the wonderful opportunity to offer jobs that are careers and to do so to people who had been shut out of opportunities. Nothing was more exciting or fulfilling to me than this honor of facilitating an open door to such talent and ability.

Church and church government intrigues me. Church provides hope for those without hope in today’s elitist society. The poor, the marginalized, and those with no voice have a voice in the Church if it follows Christ’s teachings. If the church is looking for members…open your doors to those who have had doors slammed in their faces…

We purchased a pool table the first year we lived in the New House. It had been a dream of mine since I was a child in Eldorado. I received a miniature pool table for Christmas one year and spent countless hours playing pool on its tiny felt top. Later my friend Dennis would visit the local Pool Hall and enjoy a few games on the regulation-size tables.

We are almost 1/4 through our new century. What will happen in the next 24 years?

I listened to the President say that there was a time he was told that he was too young and now he is told that he is too old. Such is the rollercoaster of life and its magnificent ride…

I watched an intriguing movie last night called Mercy Road. In the movie, a visibly upset man was driving his truck at night and something traumatic had obviously occurred. His cell phone was ringing constantly; he took some calls while others did not. He took one from ‘Unknown’, and the caller spoke in a dulcet and pleasing voice. The driver had semi-regular bouts of screaming and beating the steering wheel of the vehicle and seemed to be on the edge of an emotional cliff. He had seen a photo of his daughter being sexually abused by her stepfather and had subsequently gone to the house of his ex-wife, daughter, and stepfather and murdered the stepfather. His bizarre journey was to find his daughter. Unknown assured him that if he followed his instructions he would reveal where his daughter was and that he could rescue her before she ran out of oxygen. The screaming man on the verge of going over the edge follows the instructions of the seemingly rational caller with the answers needed and at the end of the movie he is killed and his daughter is in the back seat of his truck.

Unknown’s ethereal voice told the daughter that it had been a pleasure to know her and he had enjoyed doing business with her as she smiled.

So it goes…we listen to what appears to be the voice of reason, calmness, and certainty while we drive headlong toward destruction. We are hearers of both the inner voice and of those to whom we listen. It is easy to succumb to an oily and skilled speaker.

Whether it be a habit that harms us, an attitude that is counterproductive to our success…or thoughts from others that we already believe and want to be reinforced…we like to listen to the banal voice of evil.

When a leader tells us to listen only to them and that they have the answer to our problems…watch out. Easy answers are usually wrong. We play the lottery and we take another drink of courage from our favorite vodka or our physician has prescribed a pill for our troubles…yet we have no peace.

Often I was exhorted to make things easier on myself when I was a manager/administrator at Southern Illinois University. I was advised that no one put the extra hours in that I did. After having my staff greatly reduced I was assured that the buildings ‘should’ be dirtier. I was told I need not offer opportunities to people who require extra effort and training.

Have you ever seen a cartoon of a person who has a little angel sitting on the shoulder of a questioning person and a little devil sitting on the other? Or perhaps the hiker who comes to a fork in the road and sees a luxurious green and pleasant trail and the other choice is full of rock and boulders and obstructions of all kinds…

The most memorable and frightening depiction of the devil was a movie that I saw many years ago where a little girl was bouncing a ball as a man and wife were driving a dark foreboding road. She had the look of innocence and love until the last scene where the couple had a car wreck and…and she was now bouncing the man’s head…

‘This is one intense hike,’ Billy B said as he wiped the sweat from his brow. ‘I see a clearing ahead where we can have our picnic lunch,’ he added.

‘I am reluctant to admit that I saw an old man pass us at the beginning of the trail and he just passed me again at the end of our journey,’ Chet said with some amazement as to how the OM could achieve such a mysterious two-time appearance when there was no foreseeable manner that he could have circled around the difficult trail and reappeared at the end of it.

‘His look was dour and he seemed preoccupied with his thoughts, Neva J said as she took the Merlot out of the picnic basket. ‘He looked a bit like my Dad Charles but that could not be possible as Dad has been dead for many years,’ she noted with a quizzical look in her eyes.

‘Have you ever experienced something in a new place and with people who you have never met and yet felt strangely like you had been there before and that you knew the people,’ Jane asked? ‘I visited Oxford and the Pubs as well as the University and felt the strangest sensation when I was in the University Libray that I had been there before,’ Jane went on to say.

‘Roger said just before he died that it had all been one big hoax…meaning life,’ Billy B said. ‘Is it a glitch in a simulation that produces de ja vu and repeating of meeting the same Old Man…or is it an alternate universe bleeding through our veil of reality,’ Billy B asked in earnest.

‘Welcome fellow travelers…please enjoy your lunch before I show you where you really are…look into the mirror and we will begin our enlightened discovery,’ he said with a smile and a wink…

‘You know it has been said that eye hath not seen nor ear heard what God hath prepared for them who love him…come and see your Heaven…Neva J take my hand…