My bare feet dangle just above Goddess' head. She is content and still, not asleep but relaxed.
The sun is just beginning to crown the Palm Tree with the oyster face, coconut bra and grass skirt and it is going to be a brilliant day.
It is Monday and I sit preparing for work on the beloved back deck. There is lot for me to accomplish but there are a couple of things about this day that already excite me. There is just the simple beauty of the morning.
Since I left the mad unrelenting need of creating and maintaining Union Mission, my work days now begin doing this. There is time for long drawn out thoughts, prayers, listening to birds sing, watching how the sun moves a tiny bit closer south this time of year.
I'll linger here now whereas I used to dive into Mondays as though from a high dive board in the deep end of a swimming pool with only a foot of water in it. That was intense ... this is serene.
The work remains the same, just in a much different way and on a much grander scale.
At Union Mission I was in the forefront of everything. I worked to push others to the forefront but most remained timid about it so I was the one who always ... "out there." I learned many wonderful things and the skill set is certainly unique because of it but ... I also discovered how lonely it is to be the one ... "out there" ... all of the time. And I learned how much it can cost you too.
My dear friend Shirley tells me that when I walk Goddess to the sad little holy dock it is much different from the way that I used to. Back then it was as if the weight of the world was my shoulders all of the time and no matter how much I smiled ... my face was sad.
She tells me that I am lighter now. I linger. My eyes dance. She joins Goddess and I for walks and she scolds me on the things that I write ... some of the words I use ... I am no longer ... guarded.
I laugh. "To hell with being guarded! I'm going to be me. I'm going to say what I want to say. It's not my problem if other people have a problem with me. I've had that my whole life."
I'm also no longer at the forefront but am a happy background player. On Friday night we all gathered around the television set to watch the famous Dr. Jim Withers on the CBS Nightly News. He is a doctor who has made the streets of Pittsburgh his office ... seeking out and finding people nobody wants to treat. Years later the city's street homeless population is less than half of what it used to be.
My work is helping him take it world wide.
I look at my own city of Savannah where a decade ago we were the first in the United States to cut a homeless population in half. Today is back to where it was and the street homeless population is growing daily.
It's odd.
But it's not my problem anymore.
Today my work is staffing a movement. Back then it was making a city I love a better place ... and we did. Then your time passes ... and it is somebody else's time to manage ... and you have to let it go.
So this morning, sitting with the sun in my eyes and Goddess nudging me for a walk ... I'm trying to figure out how to write a check in Chinese ... to a group of students in Peeking who got the International Rotary Club to give them money to start a Street Medicine program in a Communist country that doesn't believe it has people living on the streets.
Though I haven't met them yet, I've grown to love these students. They refuse to sit on the sidelines and wait on the world to change. They are determined to change it themselves ... in spite of Communist rule.
Next on the list of things to do is to help the famous Dr. Withers get into Moscow so we can help the soon-to-be-famous Dr. Gleb Glinka continue her remarkable work.
As I write this, I hear the large cargo ships coming in to the mouth of the Savannah River to make their ways from around the world ... many with Chinese writing on them ... to the Georgia Ports Authority.
I stare at the Palm Tree dancing in the sun and hope they are bring some good ideas for Savannah ... which seems to be exporting all of theirs.
