From To 'Had She Said Yes'

Welcome is your kind, loving, warm and sincere reply. I had fallen, in the cold light of day, to confusion regarding all my intentions towards you. Fearing that in my honesty I would have potentially caused you distress. Learning in the process that I am more imperfectly flawed in my self than I had previously thought. I too have a longing to bond, to unite as one with another, secretly impossible by perception until now. Thanks to you and god. Add others living or dead I trust and consult hourly in the walk.

We are wed by sincere sharing, and for now that is wonderful. What will come next, on my side, is governed by my will that you be for yourself the kindness I have seen you so freely give to others. We, equally, have spread our seeds of kindness upon infertile ground; loving those who are incapable of loving themselves. I know this true of myself, formerly, and intuit it you. So much seems lost in the mechanics of life, expectations and failures to be the ideal. What, in turn, is impossible since we can never fulfill the all required and fall, as failures knowing it impossible. Failure being the better teacher than success.

Failure is no shame. Since by, and from it, we arise, renewed, going on. Keeping the formerly beloved in our regard without resentment but willing their highest good always potential in themselves.

Apprehending that we, at that time, possibly never, could or would, be adequate to the task. Yet as in me, so I sense in you. We love as children--unconditionally. Until the gift we give becomes catalyst for pain or shame in the beloved. Oddly it seems we have become partner in their crimes against themselves, their addiction to avoidance; where they find peace for a time; pleasure not joy.

In time I have come to define them as the living dead. Unwilling to do for themselves what they must. While clinging to what was: preserved, stale, a stain unchanging--apprehensive of change. We cannot save a drowning soul for in that we can drown with them.

Some of us wander across the stage of life until the mid point when it occurs to ask; is this all there is? Most, at that point of no return, gather more of prior success as happiness having no other ambition. While the fewer turn and face entropy, stasis and engage the enemy of life: status quo. Everything is in change, either expanding or contracting. Forgive, please, my sense of God as change; not fixed and immutable; an idol. Perhaps this not the venue for such a sentimental opinion?

We can change nothing but ourselves, in the process becoming free to give and grow something new. Be creative instead of slaves to what was. The tuition is very high, this divine school of hard knocks. All are unique and precious, even the sleepers who do awaken sometimes. If not now when they die. For now this is my imperfect sense growing minute-by-minute, attempting to find my job description, written in my heart's core.

I will close here and go on to something more personal to “Had She Said Yes.” To whom I may, or may not, recommend this. I will not use or abuse anyone as I was abused and abused myself in order to survive.

Discovered: I may as well have been writing this to my former self.

Above all things be true to yourself.

130427 14:52 From To 'Had She Said Yes'

© 2013 by Jack Spratt – All Rights Reserved

administrators?

Administrators talk more than do anything, in the process disabling the doers. Those who walk the walk.

It is generally suggest that America is a Meritocracy wherein one can rise from obscurity and/or humble origin achieving something ideally noble like service to others. The problem, as I see and experience it, is that the obverse is reality; they merely, by and large, serve themselves. Advocate celebration of their evil abuse of power. Aggrandizing and richly award themselves at the expense of the servers and served.

I spent the previous three years volunteering at hospice. Where like, visiting Jesus in prison or in other extreme circumstance, lending a cup of water or comfort was enough. I wasn't too shabby about doing that. Much less becoming a legend in my own mind. The service was humbling and one I learned to pray that I had the dignity to serve and be received.

Since the initial days of being a photojournalist coupled with the illness and death of my children, I have grown a willingness to work for charity; another word for love. Becoming intimate, by intuition and curiosity, acquainted with the administrators. In the process learning much about myself and, life and death, in general.

One remarkable aspect about service, secular or religious as practiced; there are hundreds of ordinary people doing extraordinary things for zip income, acclaim or acknowledgment. In the trenches while administrators, our (fearless) leaders, strut and preen their specious pride acting noble/notable fraudulently.

Being a “people person” intuitive and experienced, now adding energy/force to my other perceptions: thinking, feeling and sensing; daily, methodically and deliberately. I am, was and will always be both, innocent as a dove and as nice as a coral snake in your breast pocket; lethal.

At hospice at some point it was requested of me that I take “portraits” of fellow volunteers. Many of whom I'd come to know via random encounters. We would share why we were there and had become more than acquaintances. When people ask me who I am, what I've done, I used to mention working freelance for The New York Times, soon after that: I am the parent of two dead children and one missing in action; ancient history on both counts. . . . All my griefs, sorrows and regrets resolved thanks be to god and M and hospice.

In retrospect I would rather have not had what happened. The resulting slide show was like elevator music; something in the background of a volunteer Christmas party. However the process of collecting the images was to me final vindication of all my ambitions slain when my son was diagnosed with cancer.

I was, and remain, grateful for the experience. As I was for the opportunity to serve others in more significant ways. Due to grief tendered by the administration I left; over copyright, who owned the “property”? Ownership of copyright is something of a joke when dealing with digital images.

I suggest the presence of an interlocutor in my life; awake and asleep. I am not alone in this, by historical reference. A lifetime impression of being unworthy of love, much less life itself, it has been difficult for me to credit or validate being the recipient of what I will call/claim as grace. I could as easily die this moment fulfilled. All that I begged, or prayed for, is given, received and I what attempt to pass forward. Do not be offended but know I now sense my address to those in living death unaware of dying. Who like myself, once, lived lives of quiet desperation.

The dream from which I have recently awakened was one of conflict, suggested in my too long preamble. My ambition is that you forget me and always remember your true, and best by God's will, self. No art, craft or other enterprise has ever given me such joy as this I do now: write.

Scarcely do I remember from day-to-day the day before, dying each night, reborn the next now. Happily alone, never lonely. I am by nature, nurture and choice, now, solitary and recognize I must fight to keep that liberty. The freedom to apprehend the vast fields of wisdom I receive daily and struggle to incarnate.

To close, it seems the most frantic, fanatic, zealous administration hides behind a mask of pretense. Its fear; no fame, providence or dying anonymous. Power and force are signs of addiction not health.

“Freedom and justice cannot be parceled out in pieces to suit political convenience.” - Coretta Scott King

http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Wikiquote:Quote_of_the_day/April#27

130427 00:40 MDT administrators

© 2013 by Jack Spratt – All Rights Reserved