Most progress happens in degrees

   so when disaster happens it can seem like overwhelming setback. 

"We're sticking together

  until we find Jesus," one older lady explained of her friend clutching her arm.  "Getting closer Gladys," she said real loud.  We were at a State Fair and grounded in the smells but feeling ephemeral too as people were streaming to and fro. "Glad you're okay," our radiantly beautiful mother said to the older of the older ladies, one white and one black, two peas in a pod just the same.  We were still real young and could picture the women walking like that all the way to heaven.  In fact, except for the cussers and drunks, we could picture all of us Americans sticking together like at a fair and getting to heaven right from Michigan.

  There were dramatic examples of human behavior everywhere.  My mom and her mom had only recently "reunited" after young mother time away with new family and she was a nervous wreck about seeming perfect.  Twenty minutes of ideal then one of us six kids would blow it.  She countered getting flustered with some pre-worked out sterness that seemed funny until she stuck with it.

  "You're acting like a negro!" One brother stood up on the round and round train and yelled at his country cousin.

  "You mean nigger," the country cousin yelled back.

  Our mother made way over to the attendant.  "WE DON'T TALK THAT WAY," she said to the craning necked boys as they went around.  "Stop the train," she ordered. 

  "No can do chief." 

  "I'll just wait right here then." 

  Round and round went the train and the boys looking.  When the attendant slowed it and slowed it to a perfect stop and they got off, mama whipped a bar of soap out of her purse and brushed it on both their lips.  Crying.  Mama explained, words make people cry too.

  Seemed like an hour or two later the country cousin's mom came storming up to a pile of us all over a bench.  "What's the big idea making my boy cry?" 

  "They were both being ugly." 

  "You come all the way from New York to judge us?" 

  Mom's mouth dropped and she blushed scarlet red and tears blew up like a steaming pot and she shook her head noooooo.  Her lip quivered and she choppily said, "We, just, we don't talk like that." 

  "Weeell mebbee we do."

  "I just, hadn't thought of that, just, Dad, their Dad, we're working really hard not to talk bad about people." 

  "In public," one of the sisters said. 

  Our mother turned purple.  "I'm sorry!"

  The third sister pushed one of her kids at mama but didn't let go of her.  "I'll let you soap up mine." A weak laugh.  "We don't talk bad about people in the country Sis.  But we don't think about everything and try to be perfect neither." 

  "We're far from perfect." Mama put her tired head in her hands.  "But we try.  Gotta try to be better." 

  "We TRY!" One of the six said.  Smiles at the spark of rally then.  And a chanting bunch onto more rides.

One thing we did....

   The impetus was in a fight with the deadweight and the vacuum.  

  Don't make it personal, someone snarled. 

  We were keeping the lines moving. 

  Bitterness about politics turned into sour stomach and stifled gripes about aches and pains.  There was a cooling of fever to belong.  Institutions reconsidered how we "onboard" and based on "data" how should we hire for this season? 

  The season was Let Us Americans Impose Some Sanity.  The wildest in fashion and flagrance groaned boring.  Be that as it may a practical person held up the towline, We'd be more efficient without so many temper tantrums.  Nobody alive in the earliest 1990s was or wanted to be considered "a child".  Innocence itself was under hardcore fire.  It being so brought out the reserves of kindness and where it didn't group grouped to form assessment and intervention if necessary.  A whole category of humanizing words and concepts had to be merged with (and sometimes flung at) machinery.  

  Amongst tradespeople there was concerted effort to bring in younger people--not to be slaves--to fight vanishing tradition.  An incredible loss of knowledge was accruing much faster than profits and that paired in a doomsday way with a lack of capital amongst the masses.  Keep doing this 'til we're there was an impromptu motto that stuck in the mind near having been shown once or twice.  All age groups   

For his mercy endures forever

   Growing up there was no shortage of world stuff to become aware of and daily decisions to be made.  It was such a profound relief to drag all the stress and worry to Catholic Church on Sunday.  Just reaching the goal of one hour with God, no interruptions, was accomplishment.  The fact that others too came from all around to worship, praise, give thanks, and participate in the Sacraments made what could be curious very okay and even more interesting.  Learning the whys of church ways lifted the mindheart out of a state of boredom and humdrum.  Knowing that hundreds of people had been sheltering faith and strengthening the ways of the church made history feel alive.  And even when there were issues and tensions between people, there was the chance to lay all that down at the altar or leave it in a back pew.  The church being itself was a steady to peoples' warp.  And as we went through stuff alone and as groups getting back to church was proof that God is a constant.

Dig deep

   Sometimes the disappointment and bitterness of life is like a weight dragging a group to the bottom.  Sometimes it's just an anchor of reality. 

  Political fighting to the death of some things (spend, spend, spend) always brings people through phases of teamwork-able.  And we've gotten through some extremes in terms of my way or.... 

  Sometimes a third party resolution really works to everyone's advantage and sometimes no reslution is the only way out of a death grip.  Very often some alternative to an absolute end is possible.

I've seen stranger outfits.

   Must be gear that was in the medieval closet.

  But seriously, there is criticism because the Pope gets accused of participating in other religions for his necessary diplomacy role.  People similarly accused anthropologists of doing witchcraft when observing, um, hard to describe ceremony and ritual.  It is a primary commandment for the Judeo-Christian God/people...no worshipping other gods like buddhas and money.  It's central to the agreement.

  What I thought of today is how Jesus intervened on further violence in the garden where he got arrested.  A disciple tried to physically stop that.  A sword was drawn, an ear cut off, then Jesus knelt and healed the wound.  Forgiveness. Not a simple definition but a key.

  Key to God's message--Love.  Forgiveness is key to love. Jesus performed forgiving humanity for all that was happening even as he was mired in all of humanity's misunderstanding and chaos. 

  None of us is Jesus.  Or an Apostle.  And all "church" has struggled with the poetry of religion, but not the commitment/devotion to God and the Way.

"You called her

   Kids of their own now.  Kids with kids even.  Our basic survival impulses put us in good stead.  Somebody turned on the dimmer-controlled light fixture and lowered the lights as the last of the dinner plates were put in the sink.  

  Young peoples' favorite topic-- love, and how it happened.

  Lifelong friends "roast" the couples that stuck with each other.  Somehow the boundaries of what's okay to say and what pushes buttons and is not okay to say, somehow these things have been worked out over time. 

  A sip of wine.  A sip of mocktail.  "Gee, not sure why.  Remember when you called her an egg basket?"  Eyerolls.  "I did?" 

  "Called her an egg basket.  And when I asked her if that was, you know, offensive, she was like, Should it be?" Quiet laughs.

  "All of us...getting to know each other.  And so different." The gray hair looks like spray paint on a twenty-something. 

  "I wonder how those wealthy elites in Japan reminisce about their AI airquote"women"?" 

  "Egg baskets?" 

  "That was an association.  My understanding of English and America wasn't great yet." 

  "I don't know about eggs or chips but real-feeling skin and insides."

  "So much for talking about love." 

  "It'll come around." 

  "I think quickly; and I'll tie in love of country." 

  "Professor lecture?" 

  "Never." 

  "Did I really call her an egg basket?" 

  "Yeah, Muscle, ya did." 

  "So, communism right?"

  "Cha, gotta love it.  But that was when she and I got to know each other better." 

  "And?" 

  "I realized how, totally, oppressive the world was being ON love." 

  "That's right!  You were like a love mid-wife for a while." 

  "In communism, there's no freewill." 

  "Because there we were like ships in the night, all of us, now I see you, now I don't, but there's still something there." 

  "No freewill.  No soul." 

  "The mothers and grandmothers were the counterweight to full tilt." 

  Glasses raised.  "Because they knew.  They KNEW." 

  "No soul, so it's a perfect match for AI." 

  "And, ours knew about war.  And love.  And love and war." 

  A few people left drinks on table and moved into the sitting area.  Nobody with shoes on so feet everywhere okay. 

  "How did people know?  They were in love?" 

  "I'll do the dishes." 

  "You know, there's in love and finding out you love." 

  "And divorce." 

  "And just being loving." 

  "And walls." 

  "And,

  "I went through this whole process 

  "With everyone?" 

  "Ah, no, yes, sort of, not the whole process with everyone, no." 

  "Whole process tied to caring for people professionally." 

  "Did people your age wonder about soul?" 

  "Fer sure." 

  "There was a period for us when, like, whenever somebody got shot 

  "With guns?" 

  Nodding.  "Yeah, like, well okay, like as we were getting more passionate about our service work that was so much like love 

  "Except for the money." 

  "So much like, like our lives were turning into a novel." 

  "Then you knew you were at war?" 

  "We knew in degrees and fronts colliding." 

  "Cha.  I often knew by not being able to write." 

  "Because of writer's block?" 

  "Flummuxed?" 

  "Because 

  "Dishes done.  Whataye miss?" 

  "Some of us stayed peace warriors." 

  A dish towel being folded and placed on top of a coffee table book.  Entre vous? 

  "Who got shot?" 

  "War wounds?" 

  "Frame it up for me." 

  "Volleyball anyone?" 

  We slide in and out of old formations.  Sans names of course.  

  

  "It was a camp day.  There was "no money to pay anyone".

  "I'd had one meatball to eat for three days." 

  "People were gnoshing on leather and wooing the few mountain plants." 

  "That was when an ambulance partner stumble walked into a neutral zone site."