Holy Land
Today was one of contact with friends from many parts of my life. This morning I collected my food from Share, a community food program, at the Catholic Church where I used to work as a youth minister. There I met a number of elderly members of the Church who volunteer with the Share program at this church.
A friend I had originally met at the church was having a slide show at the Catholic seminary where she works of a recent visit of the Holy Land, Palestine and Israel she had made with a group. Watching her digital pictures of Holy Land on the screen reminded me of a pilgrimage to the Holy Land that I made in the 90’s. I took many pictures, in those days, non digital slides, and meant to make them in a slide show. But shortly afterward slides were out of fashion and digital cameras and pictures took over. I meant to change the slides into digital images and do a presentation on the web like I have done with other journeys like to Guatemala or India. But I never did and her presentation made me want to do it now. But there are so many other things to do first.
On the way back from the Holy Land presentation I stopped at the house of my friend Tegan, the wiki master for this web site and many others. Tegan and her husband showed me around their expanding garden in the backyard. They have a decent backyard with great southern sun exposure and a few gutter spouts that make a good source of rain water for the garden. This experience made me want to get back to work on my own gardens, which is a priority but I did not get to today.
Tonight I received an email from a friend since the 70’s, who with his wife moved to Texas for the winter months. This friend has a unique way of looking at the world, a a lateral thinking approach to life. He solves problems with unique and creative ways of looking at things, not necessarily the logical way. In the email tonight he looked at some problems I am facing, like heating my unheated sun room, and came up with some unique ideas, like using “incandescent bulbs and leaving them on a lot.”
All three encounters with friends, the friend presenting the pictures of the Holy Land, Tegan and her husband in their garden, and the letter from my old friend in Texas, left me a better person with a deeper appreciation of life. Together with my contact with my wife and adult son, both friends, and a few phone calls with friends and encounters while I was grocery shopping, they made my day full. Some years ago in this Diary of a Woman I wrote about Salad Bowl Friends. Using this metaphor I can say today I had a wonderful salad bowl day.
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