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truth

Travelling: Family & The Kentucky State Fair

When Rich and I left Rod and Trish, we headed east out of Missouri towards St. Louis.  Rich wanted us to see the “Archway to the West” and as we rode I-64 I was able to get some decent shots of the archway and the St. Louis skyline.  Then we crossed the state border into Illinois going almost halfway across to spend the night in Mount Vernon.  We attended Mass in the lovely church of St. Mary’s on Saturday 27 August which left us free to have a small lie-in on the Sunday before making tracks for Louisville, KY and Richard’s family.

Like most of the days on this trip, God blessed us with perfect weather for riding as we finished crossing the state of Illinois, clipped the bottom of Indiana, and rode into the blue grass state of Kentucky.  I could feel Richard’s excitement mounting as we rode closer to “home”.  The plan was to head to his sister Rose’s home, unpack the bike, then head over to the Kentucky State Fair with Rose, her husband Ronnie, and their kids, Megan and Kalin, to meet up with another sister, Robin, and her daughter, Brittany, and his brother, Robert and his wife, Sylvie, and their son, Patrick.  Wow, what a reunion!!  I had not seen some of these folks since Thanksgiving 2004!

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We spent several fun hours at the fair. I found some great HOT dip mixes and some wonderfully decadent fudge, while Richard ate a Krispy Kreme hamburger?????? (yes, that was a hamburger between two doughnuts!!), and later he could not resist trying some “fried Koolaid”. While some of the others went to a concert they had booked to see, Rich and I strolled around the rides for a while. We had fun tempting the “guess your age” guy who made my day and gave me a “prize” after guessing me to be 15 years younger than I amSmile. Whether he was being truthful or gallant in his guessing I’m not sure, but I was happy. Then the tiredness of the ride hit in and we headed home to get a good night’s rest. We needed to get our beauty sleep because the next day we were putting on a Bar-b-q for the family and even more people were coming.

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So on Monday we went shopping then got busy cooking and preparing food. By 4pm yet another sister, Rhonda, arrived with her daughter, Ginny, followed shortly afterward by Rich’s step-Mom Ruth, his step-brother Ryan and his step-sister Rachel and her husband Michael with his son in tow. The crowd was rounded out when Robin got there with her son Dustin, and finally we were able to tuck into all that good food. A little later, as we rested full tummies, Kalin took Dustin and they went to pick up Brittany and her girlfriend who had been attending a school sport meet-up. By that time we were ready for some dessert and enjoyed some wonderful concoction that Sylvie had made.

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Our final day in Louisville, Rich went to get his (final?? who knows) tattoo in honor of his retirement. Of his eight tattoos, Lucky in Louisville has created 5 of them. This one he actually created around a small existing one of a dolphin that Rich had done in Washington, DC some years ago. Lucky extended the water/wave line under the dolphin , then added the letters USN over the top of everything with a sunrise and the year Rich entered the Navy at one end, and a sunset with his retirement year at the other. It’s really beautiful.

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That evening we hooked up with Rose and Ronnie and the kids, Robin, and Richard’s old school friend and partner-in-crime, Fonda with his wife Sherry. We had a great meal and wonderful socializing at a very good Mexican restaurant, where we all ate a bit too much because the food was great!.

Next day, Wednesday 31 August, it was time to load up our faithful Harley, say our farewells, and hit the road again as we headed towards North Carolina.  It had been a good visit with family and hopefully it won’t be so long before we see each other again.

Shared Wisdom: A Rush of Words

I just love it when I come upon a wealth of wise sayings and quotations.  In the last seven days I have received a rush of wise words.  They have come from many disparate places: a car bumper sticker, a friend’s home, a special workshop given by a dynamic speaker – Fr. Larry Richards from Pennsylvania, and, because of a piece of research work that I did, from the internet.  I have collected so many of them that I will spread them over a few postings.  Here is the first batch.

 

“God does not love us if we change; God loves us so that we can change.”                                                              (Fr. Richard Rohr)

 

“It is easy in the world to live after the world’s opinion; it is easy in solitude to live after our own; but the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude.”                                                                                         (Ralph Waldo Emerson)

 

“No man is rich enough that he can buy back his past.”                                                                                        (Oscar Wilde)

 

“When the spiritual, mental, and emotional bodies are healthy, the physical body manifests health and becomes more vibrant, too.  Our smiles, our eyes, our posture, and even our skin, which is the largest organ in the body and most sensitive to energy, send off a positive, attractive energy.  This is part of the realignment process and will naturally affect your relationships, too.”                                                                      (Sierra Bender)

 

“Your love for God is only as great as the love you have for the person you love the least.”                                        (Dorothy Day)

 

“Clouds come into my life, no longer to carry rain or usher storm, but to add color to my sunset sky.”                           (Rabindranath Tagore)

 

“They came to sit and dangle their feet off the edge of the world and after a while they forgot everything but the good and true things they would do some day.”
                                                                                                                                                                 (Brian Andreas)

 

“I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”          (Maya Angelou)

 

“The fact that I can plant a seed and it  becomes a flower, share a bit of knowledge and it becomes another’s, smile at someone and receive a smile in return, are to me continual spiritual exercises.”                                                                                                                  (Leo Buscaglia)

 

“It is  not because things are difficult that we do  not dare, it is because we do not dare that they are difficult.”           (Seneca)

 

And the last one for today is, in my opinion, superb:   

 

“Show up.  Tell the truth.  Be very alert.  Expect nothing.”                                                                          (A car bumper sticker)

 

And just think, there are more to followSmile.

Spiritual Growth: The Two Sides Of Life

It is Sunday morning and I am sitting in my lanai.  I relished a short lie-in this morning after our trip home yesterday afternoon, unpacking and sorting out clothes and getting them washed and put away. It is good to be home in familiar surroundings.  We had a great week in Orlando and it was good to be away from the usual routines.  But it’s always lovely to come home.

It is a gorgeous day.  Another one of those sparkling “Princess Di” days.  The sun is shining brilliantly from a clear blue sky and there is a slight breeze sighing through the pine trees out back.  Everything is gently moving and I can see all the individual needles on the pine trees fluttering in the breeze and shimmering in the sunlight.

I sit back in my chair and breathe in the soft, warm air.  Yes, it’s warm here in sunny Florida at the end of NovemberSmile, although I hear that temperatures are going to dip down later on this week.  In the meantime, I am enjoying this “Indian summer” and feel very happy and content.  In fact my heart is full joy right now as I look at the beauty that God has placed right here in my back yard.

I notice that the small brown birds, I believe they are sparrows, are back again as they pass through on their way to who-knows-where and they are clustering on the feeders.  There’s a flash of red as a colorful cardinal claims his place and the sparrows flutter away until he is done.  I can hear the squirrels barking in the trees as they playfully, or maybe not, fuss at each other. Mokka, our cat, sits in the sun, her tail slowly swishing as she thinks her cat-thoughts about the birds.

But even as I am aware of the joy that I feel I am also aware that there is sadness punching and poking at my heart.  It feels as though one ventricle is full of joy and the other is full of sadness.  My life is blessed in so many ways and I am truly grateful for that.  Yet I have a longing for a healed relationship with my sister who I miss so very much, and another longing for a happy, satisfying relationship with my daughter who I also miss very much.

And I am reminded of one of my favorite authors, Kahlil Gibran, who, when asked in his book The Prophet to speak about Joy and Sorrow, responds with these wise and wonderful words of wisdom:

“Your joy is your sorrow unmasked.
And the selfsame well from which your laughter rises was oftentimes filled with your tears.”…………..

“Is not the cup that holds your wine the very cup that was burned in the potter’s oven?”……………

“When you are sorrowful, look again in your heart, and you shall see that in truth you are weeping for that which has been your delight.”………..


”Together they come [Joy and Sorrow], and when one sits alone with you at your board, remember that the other is asleep upon your bed.”

 

And so hangs the balance of all life.  One moment we are in joy, and the next we are in sorrow.  And sometimes we carry them together.  And I can only learn to surrender to what is, to accept the gift of my emotions no matter what they are.  As a character in the movie Shirley Valentine said, “If I can feel it means I am alive.”

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