Birthday Girl

This morning's walk 1.7 miles, time the day is over probably three miles, not bad for a struggling octogenarian. Why struggling? Well in part wondering why life is still good to me and for me at this ancient age when for so many neighbors, friends and loved ones it comes to an end long before they get this far. Well, one reason I've seen is their lifetime of smoking.  

Here in my large, wonderful office at the church. I have sort of a mini-kitchen, including a bar-type sink, but for some reason the water's no longer working this morning. Still, enough in the coffee reservoir to brew a cuppa. The neatness is coming together bit by bit, but still lots to do before it's home again. 

My first project on arriving has been to reconnect and light off the old desktop computer that I used in here for some years. Sure enough, it still works perfectly, an old Gateway that I bought for my mother years ago but brought here after mama died in 2011 two months after her 99th birthday. I basically started using it in 2012 when I was Summer Priest while the rector was on sabbatical and I was here every day. That summer was when I started assembling the 10:30 Sunday morning bulletin as a complete worship service found entirely in the bulletin. I'd started doing that during my five years 2004-2009 as priest at St Thomas by the Sea, Laguna Beach because guests and newcomers often expressed frustration about having to balance a bulletin and a prayerbook and a hymnal, so I assembled it all in one place, and made it larger than usual print size for elderly and one younger woman who struggled to read with her weak vision. When the opportunity arose, I started doing it here at HNEC, where my product has been greatly improved since I gave up doing it myself, as I recall, after my JanFeb 2017 sabbatical. I always enjoyed fooling with liturgy, and it was fun. Liturgy is Art, or at least, it's a palette of paints, a handful of brushes and an empty canvas. My last semester at seminary was in residence at VTS, Alexandria, Virginia and, filling up my schedule with electives to get up enough credits to graduate, I took a freewheeling seminar called "Liturgy As Art" and found in fact that liturgy is the perfect medium for imaginative priests, and most satisfying.

Exploring into what Mama had on this old Gateway computer, I opened her file of pictures and found a photograph, undated, of Caroline, whose birthday is today. Tass may know how old she was, Mama has it labeled "Caroline's new haircut". Namesake, she's Papa's girl and I'm thinking about her all day, hoping that this 17th birthday when she's a high school senior about to graduate, will signal the next season of a wonderful, happy life. My advice: as a creator in the full image of God, throughout life, you yourself have to bring your own happiness into being, nobody will ever serve it to you.

Retrospectively, how have I done with my own life's happiness? And how are you doing so far?