On beginning my 82nd year.

I received a number of greetings on Feb. 1, my 82^nd birthday.

One was a funny take on Lao Tzu: “Yung No Mo.”  Another was from a good and equally old friend on the phone. We reminisced about the good times and shared a sense of diminishments, from hearing loss, vision loss, leg loss, no more skiing!  Finally a beautiful care from my Sister-in-law who’s into her 90s and living in Switzerland.  It depicts a flock of migratory birds already heading north through, she says, Colorado.  She notes that the natural world stays its course and urges me to stay my course this coming year, writing, fathering and grandfathering, husbanding, doing all this with grace and contentment.  Beautiful sentiments.

My own take, so far, is “ain’t never down this road before.”  What should I fear, what expect, what hope for, and the like…?  And, yes, I don’t know, since I never been here before.

So first, I don’t want to live too much longer – as into mid- 90s like my sister-in-law.  But do want do enjoy more wine and roses and other escapes into reading, viewing, and fantasy. Of course, as the beautiful Italian song suggests, “Que sera, sera.”

My master Lynch continually instructs us that we must live through time, through all its stages and phases, and not try to somehow (impossibly) flee from time’s challenges and changes, joys and rigors.

He urges that one of the ways human faith (as hope and love) deals with time is by understanding its great ironies.  Especially, as the good Jesuit says, the ironies embodied in Jesus’ life.  Born poor, teaching in the boonies, entering Jerusalem on a donkey and eventually crowned with thorns and put to a political criminal’s death.  Just dwell a bit on the ironic form of this supposed to be savior.  And then the resurrection, his and the promise of our own.  Just imagine that, or try to. 

Ironic though it seems, given my want of energy, both physical and mental and spiritual, I will try to continue to write.

And I hope to continue to read, both good stuff and escapes. 

I just sent off to a second publisher my edited readings of several of Master Lynch’s manuscripts – one never published in any form – what he entitled “A Book of Admiration” and subtitled “A Prose Poem on the forms of Salvation”.  I really want to get this published someplace because it is a wonderful re-thinking of the doctrine of Salvation.  He wants all of us to pay less attention to “Big ‘S’ Salvation” and more to all the little forms of salvation (real salvation or healing or wholeness) which we experience whenever we are caught up in or graced with a moment of admiration.  Admiring a person, a scene in nature, a writing, some form of drama or writing, the little children whose skipping hope we (thankfully) see all over the place. 

I’ve entitled this edited work, along with some of Lynch’s shorter essay, “A Good Taste of the World” since that’s what moments of admiration, small “s”, actually are.  Experiencing, really tasting, some of the many goods of the world.  And thereby, since they are mutually inclusive tastes (what Lynch calls the “two pearls of great price” promised in the Gospels) – a good taste of the world brings with it a good taste of our own selves.

And with Ukraine and Gaza and environmental catastrophe and desperate migrants and starving children – there is certainly much reason NOT to experience much good taste of the world.

Yet we are continually saved from such despairing tastes by the many good tastes admiration brings us. 

Admiration does not lead us to escape harsh realities, but to find even there the goodness which somehow prevails beneath or within such evils.  That, I believe, is the meaning of the Christian doctrine about God’s goodness ad omnipotence and omnipresence – the great Mystery which we call “G.O.D.”

Just a bit of rambling here since I continue to enjoy the good high of weed, and hope to (moderately of course) during this 82^nd journey.

So far, my health holds, with too many increasing diminishments – in mind as well as body. 

I still have the joy of remembering faces, but rarely remembering names.  Of neighbors, former students and colleagues. 

I just had a beer sitting in the sun on the patio of a nearby restaurant.  Thinking of each passerby as made in the image of God.  Believing that “this” (these folks, the shining sun, the buildings old and new, the immigrant family that approached me asking for money for food…) as the body of Christ. Really, God’s good presence hic et nunc. 

Hope I have many occasions for such seeing throughout the coming year.

Enough already. 

May you experience joy and hope aplenty during this year of our Lord 2024.  Even as you face all the evils, wars and hatreds and the like which will plague our path.

Ad Multos Annos.