Notes from the past few months: writing, current events, lunch with David, love letter, women, Henri Nouwen.
Photo: CK, CB, DK at Indian Rock. This is one of Berkeley’s magical places. It’s a 30 minute walk from home, then clamber up 60-70 feet on the rock, then the quiet, friendly voices one hears at this place.
I’ve been caught up in a writing project and the awful news of these days. These are days when principles and morals are under direct attack – as is democracy in America. I’m tuned in to quite a few news sources and I spend a lot of time reading and so on. It’s not an elevating activity!
The writing project is cleaning up and reformatting all my blog posts. There are about 350 posts, all with photos that require work to reformat. I’m making a book for David and one for Jean.
Several times a week I have lunch with David near his new office at UC Berkeley Law. For the past two years we’ve been meeting 3-4 times/week in The City, but now that he’s teaching part-time, we meet in Berkeley. From home I walk up about a block to the 7 bus stop on The Arlington. It’s a 20 minute ride to downtown Berkeley. Then I walk across campus, feeling grateful that I’m having lunch with my son and that I live in this magical university city. Talk about exciting! One of my regular stops is the Life Sciences building where I groove around the halls, absorbing the extravagant energy of this place.
Photo: Vote Peace (note flags at half mast for people murdered in synagogue)
When David and I finish lunch I walk back across campus, always including walking through Sproul Plaza, the birth of the Free
Speech Movement. Today, a man is holding his own peace vigil. Berkeley – Yeah!
A couple of days ago Jean received a beautifully affirming letter from Peter Winslow. It was a love letter to Jean and to her husband, David Leach. What a life!
When you hear the music ringing in your soul,
And the feeling in your heart just grows and grows.
The precious gift of each unrepeatable day.
Jean finished the 4th of a series on women. This one represents women in Bali. The others include Spain, Turkey, and Japan. This is the first of her art works that I’ve been around for from beginning to end. What a life!
Photo above right: Bali woman
I was in Dallas a few days ago. John and I were sitting in the front room where he saw a tattered piece of paper on the desk. “Do you want this?” he asked. Yes, I’ve carried it or had it in front of me for 40 years. It was an integral part of founding and directing hospice; it goes like this:
“When we honestly ask ourselves which person in our lives mean the most to us, we often find that it is those who, instead of giving advice, solutions, or cures, have chosen rather to share our pain and touch our wounds with a warm and tender hand. The friend who can be silent with us in a moment of despair or confusion, who can stay with us in an hour of grief and bereavement, who can tolerate not knowing, not curing, not healing and face with us the reality of our powerlessness, that is a friend who cares.”
Henri Nouwen, Out of Solitude: Three Meditations on the Christian Life
Photos above. Left John and “the girls.” Right: Phana and Bella. I helped Phana in the last year of her life. Countless journeys for chemo, other medical things, shopping, intense talks about the end of life, the meaning of life… BUT, here’s the truth of the matter: yes, I helped her, but she helped me at least as m
uch as I helped her. She gave me meaning and purpose when my world had crumbled after Leslie passed away. A young woman dying of cancer; an old man grieving for his beloved wife. What a partnership. What a life!
Lot of death these days. Chuck, Bryce, Miriam. It really is a hard road, daddy-o. Four of the men in the photo of my Bible study group have passed.
Photo left: Bible study;
I’m spending more time working in the garden: the Sungold tomatoes were brilliant, the strawberries were excellent, the herbs keep us in pesto, z’atar, etc., the herb is excellent (especially the Sour Diesel), and the flowers are spectacular. I’ve now ordered 50 bare root strawberry plants to be delivered in early spring.
Photo: Jean in front garden.
Still keeping on with the East Dallas Community Garden. A 70 unit apartment is springing up next door in the big vacant lot. The development bastards cut down the big pecan tree which shaded the selling area at the garden front, it was on our garden property. The garden still nurtures and feeds so many, and is an ongoing wonder, in spite of being in the way of city plans and greed. A place of peace thrives in the midst of increasing chaos, and I always feel grateful for my gardening friends, and that in a way we are fellow refugees, though pain, suffering, and personal risks have been worlds apart.
I feel more alive after I read you posts. Thank you.
P.S. I really like Jean’s Bali Woman.