Rainy Mourning Morning.

Rainy morning. Sipping van coffee. Thinking grateful thoughts. No leaks in roof. Bad tooth a week gone. Resting body if not mind. Life's caretaking of driven being.

Then. Out of blue reminder. Montreal Massacre. Tears at silence. Critical to my sensibilty: lessons unacknowledged then and for three decades since.

More repugnant this avoidance negation of glaring truth. Red elephant in head room.

Do others not see? Cannot be! Can it?

Then. Something like a spiritual hug appears. Perspective tentatively regained. A poem. Author not heard of til now. Speaking straight to soul.

Surprised, not surprised on learning a Quaker. Was only philosophy younger me knew of that could in good conscience align with - if forced to. Again.

Only if forced though. Til that transpired - no interest in aligning with others' preconceived notions.

Morning world.

Mourning whirled.

Then. Jeanne Lohmann's ‘Praise What Comes' -

Surprising as unplanned kisses, all you haven't deserved of days and solitude, your body's immoderate good health that lets you work in many kinds of weather.

Praise talk with just about anyone.

And quiet intervals, books that are your food and your hunger; nightfall and walks before sleep.

Praising these for practice, perhaps you will come at last to praise grief and the wrongs you never intended.

At the end there may be no answers and only a few very simple questions: did I love, finish my task in the world?

Learn at least one of the many names of God?

At the intersections, the boundaries where one life began and another ended, the jumping-off places between fear and possibility, at the ragged edges of pain, did I catch the smallest glimpse of the holy?

[ed: time will tell. give it that...]