Below, my assistant is checking out my Loner Leica camera. One day, he might pick it up and take a picture. He sure likes to be in them.
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I don’t really qualify to be a tough guy like some of the very macho guys I see on the news or running the government. They seem to be much more popular than I ever was. And if you call cruelty tough, they are much tougher.
I’m too old to be a fierce fighter, I’m still not sure who or what God is, and I don’t presume one is on my team and making the killing of people holy.
The pundits talk about killing as if it were as dramatic as riding a bus. The talk is all about the strategy of planning to kill, little about doing it.
Thank God for the Pope. Today I thought how strange it is for a 78-year-old man like me to be on a small farm in upstate New York, still writing every day, taking pictures, and taking pride in my love of peace. Life is full of mystery and crisis, that’s the name of it.
I like the new definition of aging I wrote about yesterday, about aging with some pride and describing my farm: “…at long last, I’m living the self I have been becoming all my life – an oasis of serenity in a world gone sour on age, the very acme of life.”
Senators and Presidents will never ask me for my opinion; I’m grateful for that, and also for the many thousands of people who have been reading me for a while and who still put up with my musings
You will never see me on a talk show or a yet another podcast. I am nothing but lucky .
I talk to flowers and trees, donkeys, dogs, and a mystical cat, a wife I love more by the day, and they all do is talk back to me, along with a great audience.
I don’t know many older adults who love war. Maybe those genes die out.
They’ve seen and heard too much of it. Back to my flowers, life is strange, but I’m grateful for them We often see the warriors talk about their wars We rarely see the victims They say children suffer the worst .
I think veterans may suffer more .
Of course, they both suffer, and instintly forgotten others.
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you *are* a fierce fighter…..but for truth and love. That is worth a lot. And what on earth is the photo of the yellow and deep purple things that look like fern fronds? Wow!
Susan M
Sunflowers and thnx
When I go for a walk, work on a remote piece of land with a little sleeping shed, clear a fallen tree at home, I take in, too often, how endurance and strength has been lost over time…and then I think, “What Would Jon Do”: Gratitude for what I can do, have learned, richness of relationships, deeper and deepening connection with the earth and her beauty, pleasure in crafts and learning…
And I think and reflect and meditate on all of the good that has attended my years, and, at least for awhile, contentment finds me.
Beautiful message Steven, thanks.