Sunday, early
A picture, I've been trying to get a decent picture of the just past midnight weather, a low-hanging cloud blotting out the top several stories of high-rise condo buildings across St Andrews Bay on Thomas Drive, as seen from 7H porch this early Sunday.
But the picture keeps being blurry. Okay, I'm 88 and may not be perfectly still, but there it is, eerie, even ominous in our 98% humidity, wind 10 mph from the South, cloudy and 100% chance of rain. For finishing up the first third of December, the temperature is 69°F and it doesn't feel at all like winter or Christmas is coming.
We've been planning and shifting furniture around here in 7H. Anticipating shipment and arrival of our new adjustable bed, we'll move Joe's sofa bed, it's actually classified as a chair bed, from my study/office/den out here into the living room, and our queen sized bed into the s/o/d as a more comfortable guest bed for Joe's visits. Our son Joe, Urban Joseph Peters Weller, born in Jacksonville, Florida and named to honor Linda's father, Joe currently lives in Louisville, Kentucky, where he works as an engineer with a company there. He's due down, to arrive at ECP next Sunday late afternoon after dark, too late for us to drive, so Kristen may be picking him up at the airport, or maybe an Uber.
Busy week coming up, beginning with two six-monthlys, Dermatology at 8 o'clock Monday morning and Dentist at 8 o'clock Tuesday morning. I'm working at it to keep from getting frantic about the calendar and schedules and things to do before whatever whenever; as I've written here before, experiencing that we tire quickly and easily at this age, and alertness/awareness wears down before we realize it, so Caution is the word, we try to limit activities to one thing a day, but it doesn't always work out.
There's a helluva lot more to extreme old aging than I ever realized. There was a line in some film, "I have to remember, I'm not eighty-two anymore." A comic line in the movie, it's brings a laugh when you're twenty-seven or sixty-three, but when you're eighty-eight it's not so funny after all.
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What am I? Uneasy. Guilty: conscience sitting on my shoulder whispering in my ear that I worry about not being able to find the strings of lights for the Christmas tree, when I don't know whether Khaled is okay in Gaza, or someone's child in Hamas captivity as a hostage is safe (of course, they're not, and I can't do anything about it except feel guilty as a human being for how we treat each other, like warring anthills when the great expanse of the Universe is out there). We, earth with humanity, have been described as an experiment that failed. I'm so sad about it. Something innate in us that was released, metaphorically, in the story about the Lord God coming into the Garden asking the man, "Where are you?"
Where are we? Confused, because we've lost our innocence, we have become aware and therefore accountable, and ashamed.
Still animals with all the crocodilian nature, now having eaten the apple, we are also like God: no longer oblivious. It hurts.
That's where we are.
What was released? Our sense of the infinite. Our awareness of ourselves.
Slowly, I'm realizing that there's nothing to be done about how we are. It just didn't work out. I wonder what/how/whether the Creator has had better results on other planets, in other galaxies? Other universes.
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Anyway, enough. Yesterday's wrap-up for Father Rohr's meditation week impressed me. See what you think:
Awe and Amazement
December 3–December 8, 2023
Sunday
I believe the basic, primal, foundational religious intuition is a moment of awe and wonder.
—Richard Rohr
Monday
Moments of awe and wonder are the only solid foundation for the entire religious instinct and journey.
—Richard Rohr
Tuesday
The contemplative stance that flows out of radical amazement catches us up in love—the Love that is the Creator of all that is, the Holy Mystery that never ceases to amaze, never ceases to lavish love in us, on us, around us.
—Judy Cannato
Wednesday
Awe is more than an emotion; it is a way of understanding, insight into a meaning greater than ourselves. The beginning of awe is wonder, and the beginning of wisdom is awe.
—Abraham Joshua Heschel
Thursday
Wonder requires a person not to forget themselves but to feel themselves so acutely that their connectedness to every created thing comes into focus. In sacred awe, we are a part of the story.
—Cole Arthur Riley
Friday
To be alive is to look up at the stars on a dark night and to feel the beyond-words awe of space in its vastness. To be alive is to look down from a mountaintop on a bright, clear day and to feel the wonder that can only be expressed in “oh” or “wow” or maybe “hallelujah.”
—Brian McLaren