Not Important, Urgent

It has been a while since I've posted anything here. I've thought about it, worried about it. But something more urgent always seemed to demand my attention. Not important, mind you. Urgent. So much of life is like that. The really important things slip by while I'm rushing to take care of the most recent piece of urgent trivia. "Getting and spending, we lay waste our days..." lines recalled from Miss Sachs's English class at Wilmington Friends School. I have no idea where they came from, who the author was, but for some reason they have stuck with me over the years. I have managed to law waste a good many years in this manner. I have made false start after false start, only to get bogged down in detail or to succumb to one distraction or another. Meanwhile, my sister Betty, finding time on her hands after the death of her husband, began jotting down notes every day or so on whatever paper she had at hand. She wrote down whatever happened to be in her head -- something she remembered from childhood, a fragment of a poem she had committed to memory years ago, something she had written herself. She didn't try to assemble these bits and pieces into any kind of order or form. She just got them down on paper before she was distracted by some supposedly urgent matter or unproductive compulsion. I really admired her for what she was doing. Confined to an "assisted living facility" for the last decade of her life, she didn't have access to any wondrous electronic device like the Ipad on which this is being written. She didn't even have a typewriter. Half-blind, she struggled painfully with pen and paper to compile her thoughts and memories. She was an artist and a poet. She had lots of talent, but very little confidence. Why? She lived for many years in the shadow of her husband, a gifted architect and water colorist. And she reared two boys and a girl, sparing little time and energy for herself in her determination to give them a happier home than the one in which she (and I) grew up. As a child, there is no doubt in my mind that she felt forced to play second fiddle to her brilliant older brother. And as a teen-ager she assumed many of the responsibilities that would have been my mother's if she had been able. These included looking after me, a sickly child who came into the family's life more than 12 years after my youngest sibling. By the time her kids were grown and gone, my sister's self-confidence was worn to a nub. She struggled to paint, but little or nothing came of her efforts. If she wrote at all, she left nothing behind save the notebooks she compiled in her last years. In its way, it was a gallant effort that she made there in the snug little room that was her last home. As old age closes in, it isn't easy to capture memories of years past with any great confidence in their accuracy. Is that the way things really were? Or is it the way we wished they had been?

What I learned

What is the best thing I have ever learned about God? I learned 36 years ago that I have alcoholism, a chronic, frequently fatal disease that is incurable but manageable if I turn my life and will over to the care of God. The process of recovery continues day by day, and enriches my life immeasurably. It involves prayer, meditation, and a persistent attempt to practice principles of honesty, unselfishness and love in all my affairs. It works!

Stumbling, Deserting

The Wisdom of the Spirit

Image by Sam Ilić via Flickr

oremus Bible Browser : 1 Corinthians 2:1-13

"Because I do not hope to turn again.."

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Twenty-nine people in a snug classroom for the Tuesday night meeting at Christ Church. That's large for that group, which normally runs 12-15 or so. Didn't help our usual meeting room was preempted by the CC Outreach Committee, busy divvying up grants to deserving social-service agencies.



Today is Mag's birthdy, and she is on the phone right now talking to one of my (our) old fratenity brothers, Lee C. in Florida. This is our time of the year in Florida, too, but we are hanging around Wilmington waiting for a real-estate commission or two. From what we hear from friends and family down there, the winter has been difficult for them too. A temperature in the 30s there is like a temperatures in single digits here!



Today is also Ash Wednesday, marking the beginning of Lent, and we are off to a Choral Eucharist at CC in a few minutes. Rather than give something up for Lent, I've decided to commit to contributing something in this space every day. I need to discipline!



Seems like Lent is awfully early this year; didn't the famous Ash Wednesday storm that decimated the Delaware and Maryland beaches occur during or just before the Ides of March?

Thought for the Day?

oremus Bible Browser : Psalm 78:1-39: "39He remembered that they were but flesh,
a wind that passes and does not come again"

Daily Recovery Readings

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"A spiritual experience can be the realization that a life which once
seemed empty and devoid of meaning is now joyous and full. In my life
today, daily prayer and meditation, coupled with living the Twelve
Steps, has brought about an inner peace and feeling of belonging which
was missing when I was drinking."

A Little Clutter Sometimes Helps

A few decades ago, Jane Jacobs wrote a whole book on what amkes a city ticket. Not grandiose planning, she wrote, not vast, empty malls framed by express roads The life of great cities reflects al the clutter and confusion and sometimes purposeful activity of the people who live and work in them. You can get most anything you want in a great city, sometimes within easy walking distance.

I suppose it flatters Wilmington to call it a great city, or even what remains of a great city. It always felll a litle shy of that mark, even in the days (not too long ago) when more than 100,000 souls called it home, and not just during working hours. Its proximity to Philadelphia propably had something to do with that. The big hitters of business and culture, like the big ships on the Delaware, passed by on their way to Philadelphia.
Philadelphia had big-league teams like the Phillies and the Eagles; Wilmington had the Blue Rocks and the Clippers.

in reference to: Op-Ed Columnist - What Makes Cities Live - NYTimes.com (view on Google Sidewiki)

Daily Recovery Readings

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From the Daily Recovery Readings:
"I no longer try to escape life through alcoholism. Drinking
built up an unreal world for me and I tried to live in it.
But in the morning light the real world was back again and
facing it was harder than ever, because I had less resources
with which to meet it. Each attempt at escape weakened my
personality by the very attempt. Everyone knows that alcohol,
by relaxing inhibitions, permits a flight from reality.
Alcohol deadens the brain cells that preside over our highest
faculties and we are off to the unreal world of drunkenness.
A.A. taught me not to run away, but to face reality. Have I
given up trying to escape life?"

In my case, the escape into an unreal world fueled grandiose thinking and behavior, especially in the business world. I told people not to worry about me: I was "bulletproof." and could take dangerous risks with impunity/ That was the unreal world. The real world was very different.