finding home

“A man travels the world over in search of what he needs
and returns home to find it.”
George Augustus Moore

“Where we love is home, home that our feet may leave,
but not our hearts.”
Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr.

Maybe it’s just this time year…
You know the time…
The time of year when the shadows grow long as the sun dips below
the trees…
long before you’re ready for this uninvited guest known as darkness to come
calling.

All the while that sweet summer warmth is all but forgotten as the coming
winds have replaced such with an unforgiving chill.
A chill which finds its way through every tiny crevasse,
traveling fast and straight like an arrow piercing into bone.
Bones that now ache for any sort of comfort or relief from this
most unwelcomed guest.

Hot embers glow as spent ashes swirl while the movies
of a past, which now seems so long ago, play out like a silent film
rambling through one’s mind…
as everything now seems to simply take us back to when we were
who we use to be.

Time is all but replaced by an odd perspective…
a perspective that emerges rather surreally out the most melancholy of seasons.
That which was and that which has been, now comes to us like an old friend—
poignant, soothing, warming, embracing and oh so healing.

And thus we sit, watching the shadows lengthen as the sun fades–
afraid to face fears and battle past demons.
The universe seems to have silently collided into both past and present
sending us spiraling out of control.
All the while a most weary soul yearns and now aches…but what is that ache?
What is that—that which this soul so yearns for and most painfully seeks?

It is the yearning for home—

Home—the very place that no one ever told me you’d actually still be..
be there waiting…all these many many years.
Waiting for me.
Patiently waiting…waiting for me to come back…all in order that I
finally find my most restful rightful place…
Falling exhausted into arms that have longed to hold me…
falling back in that very space of love and peace and all that
this long awaited homecoming entails.

Thank you for welcoming me home…

For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord,
plans for welfare and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope.
Jeremiah 29:11

Graciousness appears to have died

“Win without boasting.
Lose without excuse.”
Albert Payson Terhune

“A man who called everyone a damn fool is like a man who damns the weather.
He only shows that he is not adapted to his environment,
not that the environment is wrong.”
Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.

(ghost crab who’s given up the ghost / Santa Rosa Beach, FL / Julie Cook / 2016)

We’re not a people accustomed to losing.
We don’t like to lose…
Who does?!
Nobody, that’s who!

We’re a people of winners.
We like winners.
Who doesn’t like a winner…
Nobody, that’s who!

Maybe we’re a little too accustomed to winning.
Maybe we’ve grown to expect it.
Maybe…just maybe…we’ve forgotten how to lose.
We’ve forgotten that in losing there must be graciousness…

Let’s look at a few things…

We love our sports teams.
We want them to win.
Some of us bet on them to win…
as in… betting money…
as in… betting big money.

Losers don’t make us money.
Some of us have been known to do bad things to make our teams win.
We have cheated, lied, twisted reality, conspired with others to do bad things.
We’ve been known to “fix” a game in order to win
We like to win at all costs…

Others of us get into fights when our teams lose.
We decide to fight those whose team beats our team.
We decide to beat the crap out of the opposing winning team’s fans.
We don’t lose well….

Look at our elections…

We like our candidates of choice to win.
We work for our candidates.
We campaign for our candidates.
We yell at other people who don’t support our candidate.
We call those who don’t support our candidates ugly names.
We get into fights with people who don’t support our candidate.
We vote for our candidates.
We get mad when they lose.
We decide not to accept the winner because our candidate should have won.
We contest the voting count.
We demand a re-count.
We demand a re-vote
We make up stories about the winning candidate to make him / her look bad.
We paint a really ugly picture to sway the results.
We lie, pay bad people money…
We want to win at all costs

Look at our primary elections…
There are a lot of people who don’t like a man like Donald Trump
He’s loud, obnoxious, brash, arrogant and troubling to most…
Maybe he’s not “president” material…
Yet he’s been voted into the top position.
He’s the presumptive nominee.
He earned the spot.
But those who don’t want him are mad.
As those who didn’t vote for him are doing and saying all sorts of things to stop him.
They want to ignore the majority of the other people who voted for him.
They want to say that everyone who voted for him is ignorant and racist and just wrong.
When did voting for a person of one’s choice become ignorant, racist and wrong?
We don’t like the voting to not go our way…

Look at the recent vote in Great Britain.
People voted.
The vote was to exit.
But those who lost the vote are mad.
They’ve decided that those who voted to exit are racist, ignorant, wrong.
It was put to a vote…
stay or go…
Go was chosen…
but now…
All those people who voted their choice to go, are now labeled as ignorant, racist and wrong.
We want a re-count.
We want to block the decision.
We don’t want to concede to the majority’s vote.
We want to do everything possible in order to turn the vote around to our vote, our choice.
We no longer believe in choice, or two sides
We will fight and call those who voted against our wishes ugly names.
We won’t accept anyone else’s opinion or right of choice because it is different from our own.

We forget that there are always two sides—
Winning and losing.
And sometimes we just have to live with losing….

Graciousness appears to have died….

But as you excel in everything—in faith, in speech, in knowledge, in all earnestness,
and in our love for you—see that you excel in this act of grace also.
2 Corinthians 8:7