Lover

About four years ago, I stuck a yellow post-it note on my white kitchen cupboard that read (in red ink), "Everyone, remember to love." It was meant as a reminder for my kids and myself. A lover is someone who is an affectionate and benevolent friend while a hater feels extreme enmity toward something or someone. Granted, sometimes enmity is warranted, but overall a love or graciousness toward others opens up friendship and opportunity. I believe it also heals us. We all have wounds or hurts. We all have an understanding of life that varies depending on our experiences and understanding. Still, I choose to be a lover.

As I prepare to leave those I love, I am cognizant that love travels wherever you go. So I will take it with me, but I ask that you, my friends and family, keep loving each other. Be a friend to those who need it.

Happy Birthday, Josiah!

i carry your heart with me(i carry it in
my heart)i am never without it(anywhere
i go you go,my dear; and whatever is done
by only me is your doing,my darling)


i fear no fate(for you are my fate,my sweet)
i want no world(for beautiful you are my world,my true)
and it's you are whatever a moon has always meant
and whatever a sun will always sing is you



here is the deepest secret nobody knows
(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud
and the sky of the sky of a tree called life;which grows
higher than the soul can hope or mind can hide)
and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart


i carry your heart(i carry it in my heart)

e e cummings

Happy quarter century, my son.

Explorer

"We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time."
T.S. Eliot "Little Gidding"


Africa calls me back. I want to dance and sing! This time my celebration will be tempered with mourning, not because I grieve the journey, but because I will see the face of sorrow. This face is the child who lost both parents to AIDS, the face of the woman dying without medication. These faces demand dignity and hope.

I have a new job. It will be to support an organization who knows this child and this woman and hasn't passed them by. I am humbled and ready. Until next year at this time, I will be preparing from a distance. Then Mozambique, here I come to join in the process of restoration already unfolding.