The time has come to put my Praying in the Harvest blog aside and start anew. PitH will remain linked to this, so if you want to have a read and see a few critter pictures there, feel free.
I am in my 61st year and living a sort of frugal, semi-retired life.
It seems to me that much of my adult life has been informed by an almost perverse need to take the long way around and to turn down many dead ends and no-thru-roads. Not to say that I think this is a bad thing to observe when looking back; just a commentary on how not having my shit together has informed much of who I am.
Now, entering into my golden years, I find myself less inclined than in earlier days to wander and butterfly about, never quite knowing if I am lost or if where I am is just a place that I am, for the moment, not recognizing.
Something else that has come to me over the past fifteen years is commitment. Apart from being always committed to my kids, I have had a very flexible definition of the word's application in my life. Don't get me wrong, I was deeply committed to all three of my wives, until I wasn't. I was deeply committed to schools and relationships and cars and stuff, but if was mostly a transitory commitment. (see, ...butterfly about..., above)
Somehow, despite all of the bad habits and shallow relationships that have been a part of my life, I have come to a place where relationships have developed and commitments have grown that now seem to govern my daily existence. This is new for me, increasing year by year since about 2009. (the relationships increasing...the commitments growing)
Much of the joy that I get from life seems to have begun to enter into my existence when my last two children, Jessie and Alley, were born in '88 and '90. I was no prize as a husband after the sixth year of marriage, but took the greatest pleasure from the simplest acts of fatherhood.
That has been a constant as the girls have grown up and grown away. No matter how far away they move, or how involved their lives become, they both seem to be moved to reach out to me, as I do to them. Lest this sound too perfect, I will say that I have a son, born in '75, whom I seldom speak to, rarely see and who haunts my mind in worries and fears that I seem powerless to engage. I pray for him, and for myself, and for our relationship, but those prayers seem banal and self-serving when I am not prepared to bring him more fully into my life.
Getting on with relationships. In '98 The girls mom and I separated and in due course were divorced. Patty was a wonderful woman and a fine mother, though I was hardly fit as a husband. In 2002, on Thanksgiving Day, she died. Our girls came to live with me in Maple Ridge and life carried on.
When Pat was diagnosed with cancer, I began to attend church again for the first time in nearly thirty-five years. The girls were baptized and later confirmed and became a part of the fabric of our church, St. Georges, Anglican, in Maple Ridge. I found the church to be a stable ritual in my week that anchored the increasingly less stable elements of my work life. As years passed I began, almost against my will, certainly against my nature, to forge relationships within our church and later within our community. Those relationships led to my being called to give of myself in time to our community and later to a sense of being called to minister within our Parish in the servant ministry of deacon.
That journey, only just begun, is what most of this blog will be about...I think.
I invite you to join with me as I follow this path, wherever it may lead.
I am in my 61st year and living a sort of frugal, semi-retired life.
It seems to me that much of my adult life has been informed by an almost perverse need to take the long way around and to turn down many dead ends and no-thru-roads. Not to say that I think this is a bad thing to observe when looking back; just a commentary on how not having my shit together has informed much of who I am.
Now, entering into my golden years, I find myself less inclined than in earlier days to wander and butterfly about, never quite knowing if I am lost or if where I am is just a place that I am, for the moment, not recognizing.
Something else that has come to me over the past fifteen years is commitment. Apart from being always committed to my kids, I have had a very flexible definition of the word's application in my life. Don't get me wrong, I was deeply committed to all three of my wives, until I wasn't. I was deeply committed to schools and relationships and cars and stuff, but if was mostly a transitory commitment. (see, ...butterfly about..., above)
Somehow, despite all of the bad habits and shallow relationships that have been a part of my life, I have come to a place where relationships have developed and commitments have grown that now seem to govern my daily existence. This is new for me, increasing year by year since about 2009. (the relationships increasing...the commitments growing)
Much of the joy that I get from life seems to have begun to enter into my existence when my last two children, Jessie and Alley, were born in '88 and '90. I was no prize as a husband after the sixth year of marriage, but took the greatest pleasure from the simplest acts of fatherhood.
That has been a constant as the girls have grown up and grown away. No matter how far away they move, or how involved their lives become, they both seem to be moved to reach out to me, as I do to them. Lest this sound too perfect, I will say that I have a son, born in '75, whom I seldom speak to, rarely see and who haunts my mind in worries and fears that I seem powerless to engage. I pray for him, and for myself, and for our relationship, but those prayers seem banal and self-serving when I am not prepared to bring him more fully into my life.
Getting on with relationships. In '98 The girls mom and I separated and in due course were divorced. Patty was a wonderful woman and a fine mother, though I was hardly fit as a husband. In 2002, on Thanksgiving Day, she died. Our girls came to live with me in Maple Ridge and life carried on.
When Pat was diagnosed with cancer, I began to attend church again for the first time in nearly thirty-five years. The girls were baptized and later confirmed and became a part of the fabric of our church, St. Georges, Anglican, in Maple Ridge. I found the church to be a stable ritual in my week that anchored the increasingly less stable elements of my work life. As years passed I began, almost against my will, certainly against my nature, to forge relationships within our church and later within our community. Those relationships led to my being called to give of myself in time to our community and later to a sense of being called to minister within our Parish in the servant ministry of deacon.
That journey, only just begun, is what most of this blog will be about...I think.
I invite you to join with me as I follow this path, wherever it may lead.
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