If you're lucky there are times in life when you find yourself as a part of a tight, loving group of friends who border on family. Some are predictable while others leave you scratching your head wondering where they came from.
Still others you would have bet your life on to always be there for you are nowhere near. But the group is bound together for the common good, normally facing similar issues, and there is this natural familiarity and sharing.
When it happens, it is a good time in life.
This is such a time for me
After years of public living when everyone wanted to be my friend ... followed by their mass exodus ... leaving a handful of unpredictable characters ... then others showed up out of the blue ... and by the time summer got here ... we were having a moveable feast.
After "a long cold lonely winter", the summer has been a constant celebration of friends who love and rely on one another with more passion that I could have ever imagined.
Hemingway wrote, "But you knew there would always be the spring, as you knew the river would flow again after it was frozen. When the cold rains kept on and killed the spring, it was as though a young person had died for no reason."
Like most that he wrote, I like these words that capture both the despair and hope that life can be. I've had both the last several years and I am the first to confess that hopes coming true is far better.
Back when I was at Union Mission I wanted to set clear values for the sad, broken people who came there. I framed a large poster of a wealthy man dressed to the nines, with his foot propped on the front bumper of a Rolls Royce holding a glass of wine. Underneath in bold white letters were the words "POVERTY SUCKS!"
It was the first thing that everybody saw when they checked in.
The Board of Directors and some others gave me grief about it but I thought it the best way to convey that Union Mission wasn't a final destination but a place to take inventory.
"She's living a shitty life, but she still has hope," my dearest friend said of another friend recently.
It's a simpler way of saying what Hemingway said.
"Here is the world. Beautiful and terrible things will happen. Don't be afraid" (Frederick Buerchner ... my favorite author ever).
So after a couple of years of walking through the valley of the shadow of death ... I find myself in life again.
I've been constantly comforted by my friends. I've been to table after table of feasts. My cups have runneth over (thank you Cheryl Sadowski). Rods, staffs and oils have been ... party themes. We haven't pulled out the sheep yet but you never know with these wonderful, exhilarating, crazy carnival of friends. It could happen.
And last night I laid down in bed ... which may as well have been green pastures ... the still waters of the ocean only blocks away ... I was comforted ... my soul is restored.
Surely goodness and mercy will follow.
And I want to dwell here ... forever.
