Saints

Tell me now, tell me honestly,



does that look like a sea that would rise up and hurt anyone? and the question is almost rhetorical, isn't it, because the answer is certainly not, the answer is what a lovely, innocent, harmless, peaceful sea; 

and sure enough, here we are enjoying our hurrication, with only whisper of wind and sound of surf lapping almost silently against its white sand beach seventeen and more stories down - - and more because the first three or four floors are given over to garage. 

And here we are up and early on one of the best Sunday mornings of the year as Time changes back from CDT to CST and magically gifts us an extra hour to snuggle warmly, it ain't five o'clock as my mind sensed, waking me up for the day, it's only four o'clock, go back to sleep or doze an extra hour, you've earned it. Earned it simply by staying alive to this day.

Again to annually remember and celebrate, my mind goes back to 1957, a cold autumn Sunday morning in Newport, Rhode Island, Officer Candidate Weller, sir, 22 years old and on the edge of a new life, pulling the cover back up to enjoy the once a year extra hour in bed. In that same but sixty-one years older mind, what I think I'd like right now is to return and again be enjoying this Time on Narragansett Bay and letting the mind wander instead of so focused on this latter day new life. What will change, is changing, who will move away temporarily but not return, what will in Time be where that tree was, why, driving in my beloved home town am I suddenly lost and don't know where the hell I am because the mind was depending subconsciously on landmarks, trees, signs, fences, buildings, traffic lights that I've suddenly realized are gone and I'm lost. In my subconscious is a map of Panama City that's no longer valid because a tree is gone that I never even realized was there. What's more permanent than a centuries old tree, for chrissakes? 

This is hard, and getting harder: surprised at eighty-three and slower than the survivors around me to join the optimists club of all shall be well and all shall be well and all manner of things shall be well. Even so, All Saints Day

Come, come, ye saints, no toil nor labor fear;
But with joy wend your way.
Though hard to you this journey may appear,
Grace shall be as your day.
Tis better far for us to strive
Our useless cares from us to drive;
Do this, and joy your hearts will swell -
All is well! All is well!


Even so, Come, Lord Jesus. Maranatha. Quickly come.

T