Giving Thanks

There is so very much I have to thank God 

for sharing with me. 

Here, in no specific order, are a very few 

of God's blessings that I have received:

God, we offer you thanks and praise

for all the surprising graces which come to us,

for those that sustain our lives and those that change them:

for food, familiar diets, and startling new aromas and tastes;

for homes, places of steady surroundings, and settings for redemptive love;

for friendships, old friends who are willingly open in their affection and their correction, and new friends who remind us that your spirited presence still dwells within us and others;

for tasks to perform two actions which we do well and which give order to our days and tasks in which we fail which restore a needed humility to us;

for Jesus Christ,

and for all priced has done and will do for us…

In Christ’s name we pray.

Amen.

~ Reprinted from Book of Worship © 2002 by permission of the United Church of Christ Local Church Ministries, Worship and Education Ministry Team

 

Today (now yesterday)

I created this post at intervals throughout the day.

I sit here shirtless as I write this post. It’s almost 96° outside and over 80° inside. This morning I got quite ill from the heat. More about that later in this post.

Today is the 12^th day of June—a day that for three fourths of my life has been a high point of every year. It was on this date in 1971 that my oldest son, Nicholas Lawrence Temple III, was born in Würtzburg, Germany.

Marienburg fortress/castle, Wurtzberg, Germany with Main River in foreground

It was on this date in 1975 that my youngest son, Robert Lawrence Temple II, was born in Louisville, Kentucky.

Louisville night skyline from the Indiana shore of the Ohio River

I still celebrate this day, in a way, although not with the grandness that I once did, since now I am estranged—not by my desire—from both of my sons. Yesterday I created these graphic images that I posted on Facebook to celebrate Nick and Rob’s birthday:

I don’t expect a response.

Recently I have been reading books written by two giants of train-of-thought literature, HenryMiller and Jack Kerouac. I wonder if reading their words has in any way influenced my own writing—probably not since I am so attuned to punctuation that I have don’t think I could create a run on sentence even if I tried. I have discovered that there is quite a similarity between their styles perhaps because both Miller’s Tropic of Capricorn and Kerouac’s road novels are autobiographical nature, something I hope to address in a future blog post.

This morning things began extremely well. I awakened at my normal 3 AM and decided to get some chores done. Part of that was to drive all of the garbage down to the dempsty dumpster so that I could dispose of it before it got too hot. It really didn’t work out very well because it was already 2 o’clock when I started out. By the time I was at the dumpster and throwing the garbage bags into it the heat had me nauseated and gasping for breath. I ended up vomiting on myself on one of the new shirts that my mother sent me as a Father’s Day present since we both realize I shall receive no acknowledgment of Father’s Day from my sons.

One of the 4 shirts Mom sent me for Father's Day

At the moment any writing is difficult for me with this cat not only in my face but also trying to lick clean.  Little girl has been quite demanding recently—no matter where I am seems that she wants to be also. Maybe that has something to do with my discovering that her belly is quite hard and her nipples swollen so maybe the Kitty Kids population may explode soon!

I hope that you all had a good June 12 –i.e., yesterday.