October 02, 2023 – A

We live in the service of corrections
and adjustments
all the way to the grave.

Each situation as it arises
presents us with new opportunities
to amend, modify and reform
our batting stance
or our pitching motion,
to tweak our golf swing
or the ratio of seasonings in the soup.

Experience produces alterations
and improvements in our behavior.

The old is always passing away
and behold the new is always coming into play.

Ideally that is the way.

Too often, we settle into 
doing things the way we have always
done them,
seeing the results
as they have always appeared to us.
Never learning what is to be learned,
and "forty years of experience
turns into one year of experience
repeated forty times."

How do we wake up in a world
where being woke is detestable 
and contemptible--
and everybody does it 
the way somebody else says
it ought to be done,
always and forever,
no variations allowed?

Sometimes, Jesus raised the dead,
as was the case with Lazarus,
and, sometimes, Jesus left the dead
to bury the dead,
learning situation by situation
how to respond to the moment at hand
with the best he had to offer
out of his own original nature
and the virtues/characteristics
that were his to work with from birth.

His legacy is ours to share:
"Be who you are,
do what is yours to do
with what you have to work with
in all situations and circumstances
as best you can,
then step back
and let nature take its course--
and, if you can improve on that,
by all means, do so!"

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