a time of reflection and remembering lessons

it is not really early -,
but the house is still and quiet.
Soon it will be bustling with activity and distractions
as the two men i call brothers,
(for brothers they are in spirit, not in blood),
will waken.
5 years now,
a life time ago,
that operation caused havoc on my life,
forcing me to reshape my priorities
and see what was truly important.
5 years ago is the time i "lost" cognizance and at least 2 years of memories.
Oh, but what i gained!
Those lessons are many times challenged
and i face the revoking of them,
but no matter what,
i will stay true to them.
People who come into my life are invited into my "family",
which extends beyond the 2 men i live with.
We are many time dysfunctional
and selfish
and forget our purpose in this world,
but we hold each other up
and try to re-remind each other
to hold fast.
We fail, we fumble
and this is not different than any other human on this planet
or any other family.
In the end,
we stick together
and hold on despite the difficulties around us.
The invitation to join this family, is not given lightly,
but it is given and many times rejected,
to the loss of those who reject.
No claim of perfection,
nor of perfect knowledge,
but one of commitment and love.

the heart of life

it happened still again,
i had thoughts, feelings about something,
and with my words i was at a loss.
this is common for me, not unusual.
Thee are things i feel and see
and they are outside the boundries of description with mere words.

This frustrates those around me
for in my attempt to share the indescribable
i create something that is not what i had in my heart.

the normal process in human life is that tension is created,
anger,
confusion.
So much to misunderstand.
I strggle,
they struggle,
this does not look good.

But long ago, i had found the answer.
The thing that difuses all of this,
the creates a better place...
for forgiving wrongs imagined and real
releases our hearts.
Only one need to start this
for it is by far more infections than the worst flu.
It will spread
and what would have been meant for harn,
is turned to good.

relationships

David - some what disabled,
with brain trauma from birth,
lives as part of our spiritual community, in our household.
As in all relationships, things are not always perfect,
but there is commitment to stick together.
To me, it is better than a marraige and as some one noted, probably the reason why i have never married.
But it is not tht simple, so i will digress a moment and explain, that i would have, if
I had found some one to share my life and values
(there were two such people, who both died of disease early in life).
Now back to the story:
Early on, we had a teaching (and one i think i learned),

 

A joy shared is twice the joy,

a burden shared is half the burden.

So at this time, i am sharing Dave's burden,
as he has shared mine many times.
There will be times again of joy,
and fun
and even play.
That is how to live life, to take every thing that is given and thrown at us
and share it.

That is the life i live, there is nothing like it in the world.

the issue of fear

i have a dear friend in another state,
a member of out long lasting community,
who is facing a serious operation on his heart.
I have known him 35 years
 and tonight he spoke of being afraid,
three days out from the operation.
This i understand -
much too vividly,
i remember being so afraid before my operation
that i could not even speak of being afraid.
I believe that he is in a better place because he knows his fear and i told him so.
And so i also belive there is hope
that whatever the outcome,
he will be olay and i told him this also.
And because he is a person of faith,
i believe that God has for him what is best for him
and i told him so.
This is all from my own experience...
it is the best i have to give.

A question of why not

I do not think i have done any recent posts on the way i live
and the woman in the window had some questions and i feel i should answer in a post.
When I was young, I was always curious, always searching.
I did not think i had the answers, but i wanted them.
I was, in reality, lonely also, looking, for some answers to things in my heart, that did not fit in my brain.
In college, i encountered a group of people, who did not have all the answers either, but were not lonely.
The spiritual base was and is Christianity, but there was no exclusivity involved and they lived a "shared life".
They were connected to a rather large Episcopal church and out reach in Houston and i was fascinated and drawn.
They helped people by being together, but it was an aside, being together was first and reaching out a natural outcome.
That fit.
We shared living space. meals, heartaches and joys.
As i was completing college, they were planning to move up to New England, they had received an invitation by another Episcopal church (and they were from this area) and had all the doors they thought would never open, open for them to come up.
They invited me.
Living this way is never easy, everything gets in the way.
You are with people like a close nit family, squabbling, laughing, crying and going on,
In our household, there are four guys, 1 is mentally disabled and he is a "guest" as much as anyone could be, but engages to the extent of his ability.
Another had damage to his brain from birth and while he carries the titled "disabled", there are times he is more able than i.
There is John, who does not have the labeled "disabled", but like me, has some limitations.
We try to put everything into a basket and some how ,we seem to come up with more than we put in.
We share meals, books , papers, TV shows, movies, chores, cooking,discussions, politics and our hearts.
We share the house expenses.
We do not all think the same or have the same views on almost anything, except that we should be together.
There are other houses that are part of this community and we get together when we can, weekly at the very least.
We have our outside friends, our own politics and our own spiritual beliefs.
It is unimportant that we think alike and probably better, but it is important to respect each other.
We bump in to each other, get angry, even sometimes yell.  We keep trying to go further in our hearts and learn something each day.
We collectively are not celibate, John has a girl friend and i have many friends, David's gift is with animals and Eric loves politics.
We get along and each day is something new.

Fire

There are reasons for the way i live,
a communal, spiritual, shared lifestyle
that few understand, but most seem to respect.
This evening, John comes down the stairs, declaring, "something is burning".
We look around the house and decide that it is out side.
When we open the door, our neighbors car across the street is on fire,
there are other people looking from outside,
but we react.
David, our most limited member, calls 911.
John, grabs two of the many fire extinguishers he has around the house,
I switch the sprinkler hose with a jet hose.
John puts out the fire,
I cool the car so it will not re catch on fire.
The fire department arrives, pries open the hood and insures no more fire will occur,
They find the damage has not spread.
Of course the neighbors car is totaled,
but there was a wood fence,
a pine tree
and a lot of electrical wires that did not get involved.

Of course i had to fall once getting the hose ready, but it was of no import.
No one got hurt, the fire did not spread.