I AM

Enjoying Wordsmith’s A.Word.A.Day put me onto delanceyplace.com with its daily item on who-knows-what that’s as relaxing to read as looking out the train window, always good for a moment's peaceful absence. Wordsmith’s daily word is good but forces me to think, including about how I might enjoy using the word and without making an ass of myself. However, in this week’s selections one word is prosaic, which makes me self-conscious, want to tuck it away under Harry’s cloak of invisibility so people don’t notice it and say about Tom+, “that’s the word.” I want to be humble, but I don’t especially want people realizing how humble I truly should be -- like the person who said, “I don’t have an inferiority complex, I really am inferior.”

After consulting with two trusted folks about places to go for directed silent retreats this summer, four fell out. One is on the shore of the Atlantic Ocean in Massachusetts and while not out of the question would have been more than a little trouble and expense getting there and back, and besides, I don’t want to go back to New England without Linda and Kristen, so scratched it. Next time I go to N.E. I mean to renew my love for Newport, Rhode Island where Linda and I started our life together and had two Navy tours, and also to connect again with Maine including the town to which my ancestor Andreas Wäller came from Germany in the eighteenth century. When Andreas came it was in Massachusetts and was called Broadbay, which rather romantically suited the geography and industry of sailing ships; now it's in Maine and called Waldoboro, which is the very essence of prosaic.

Anyway, another is the Jesuit center at Spring Hill College in Mobile, so that’s where I’m going first and will be this Sunday when people say at church, “Oh, you got rid of that nut Weller, eh? Good job!”

No, he’ll be back; he’ll just be away hoping to find out what God thinks of him. Or is that blasphemy? Does God think, or just out and out know? Or in terms of Exodus 3, does God simply BE? The questions about God are good even if there are no answers.

εἰρήνῃ ὑμῖν

which is to say, Peace to you.

TW+