Leisure to Process Loss and Life and 2022 Prayers for Deck and Dock

As I entered last summer, offering you my 2021 edition of “Prayers for Deck & Dock” I think I was hoping for more freedom to be with family and friends, opportunities to travel or dine out – not considering that summer would bring sorrow with sunshine. By early August two friends died suddenly within 10 days of each other.

Since that time two more good friends of long standing also died this year so processing grief and loss has been part of my prayer journey. When my friend Bill Smith died in January, I remembered a picture of him from my 65th birthday party. It’s just over 10 years since that party. As I scanned the photos from that day, I was startled to see the smiling faces of at least 8 friends who couldn’t have been at my 75th.  I have been aware of an accumulation of losses, but these photos focused my mind on the grief process and my response to it.

 “I’ve come to understand that the pain of a wound or a loss is over as soon as it happens.  What follows is the pain of getting well”. (Richard Wagamese, What Comes From Spirit). That is the heading for some journal pages I began earlier this year to go on the “getting well” road. Some losses have hurt more deeply than others, but they are all painful in their own way. Some were like brothers to me and the loss feels like that.

But as I have spent time remembering lost friends, I have found a treasure house of gift and benefit from what each one gave to my life and our community of friends. It’s gone from sorrow to gratitude, and I don’t try to do comparative analysis of depth of loss.

In the maelstrom of activity and emotional fragmentation we are all experiencing it is hard to get perspective and deal with joys and sorrow, success and loss. That is why my focus on the 2022 “Prayers for Deck & Dock” is leisure. It isn’t crosswords or wordle, not jet skis or golf, not resorts and restaurants – which are fun and a change of pace but often keep us from slowing down enough to listen to what the Spirit might be saying in our inner self- our being.

It’s only as I’ve been leisurely remembering each of my friends that the loss has been tempered by the joy of remembering why they were such gifts to me and our circles of friendship. I still think of some in particular and know that we had laughed about aging together but don’t have the opportunity.

But the memory of the years we did share become joyful reminders that each friendship is a gift from God and they most deeply connected for me when we were connecting together with the Divine.

We don’t know what this summer will bring but finding some leisure that connects us with the eternal and gives us larger perspective on our lives and our world is very important for our health on all levels. We can lose ourselves in squeezing every moment out of vacation in food, drink, activity and lose the opportunity to not even feel that obligation – just doing nothing so the God who loves us can speak.

We offer this latest printable edition of “Prayers for Deck & Dock” as a doorway to the leisure that allows you to reflect more deeply on your life and relationships. Thanks for your continued support of this little work of friendship. I am thankful for the many ways you create memories for leisurely gratitude.

 Wishing you some holy leisure,

Norm

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