Bird Droppings November 10, 2009
A searcher myself

“I will probably be a searcher until I die and hopefully death itself will only be another adventure. To live any other way seems impossible. If anything has changed over the years, and it has, I only feel more confident now about what I wrote then. I am far more aware of the power that guides each of us along the way, and provides us with the insights and people we need for our journey. There are, indeed, men and women too gentle to live among wolves and only when joined with them will life offer the searcher, step by step, all that is good and beautiful. Life becomes not a confused struggle or pointless pain, but an evolving mosaic masterpiece of the person we were destined to become.” James Kavanaugh, Preface from Too Gentle to Live Among Wolves

It has been several years so since I was reintroduced to James Kavanaugh. Kavanaugh was a former priest though as I find myself you can not say former. The church may use former but it is difficult to shed the inner light that took you to that point in your life’s journey. I was standing in line at the county tag office trying to put finality on my old Isuzu Trooper and get a tag for my wife’s car. Our tags ran out on my birthday a week ago and living in our county I do not need an emissions check although I am sure it is coming.
I recall a county over a few years back when I had to get a tune up and such to finally get had a clean bill of health although I wonder at times about how that works when a garage says you are approved and recommends new plugs wires etc. So I am standing in line and in front of me a woman is standing waiting as well. This woman is holding a three ring binder and chapter seventeen is open which I tend to read anything I see and so here I am in line reading over this unknown persons shoulder. Medieval Monasticism and Mysticism was the chapter, a bit deep for a tag line in my county even though it is a somewhat educated county. At some point I raise the question, a bit deep for a tag line and she turns around saying she is studying church history.
We begin a short discussion I mention I had been to seminary probably why the reading intrigued me. Turns out she is a church organist for an Episcopal church and she knows my former boss and former Arch Bishop of Atlanta. She is searching and comments on how the church developed its thought. I commented on how seminary pushed me further from religion than drew me in. A comment was made about how man created religion and I recommended an author to her William Edelen. She offered Bishop Sprong a very controversial Episcopal pastor and one I had read several books previously.
As I thought of the poet James Kavanaugh came to mind as I drove home legal now with a current tag. It has been many years since a psychic yes somewhere along the way I ran into a psychic of all things. The comment was made to me that I am a searcher and an explorer. Then I reread this passage from James Kavanaugh and realized so often in my discontent it is a just a piece of a greater picture, a journey, a searching for the trail as I go through life.
Many years ago when hiking along the Appalachian trail in North Carolina we were walking late at night and wanted to get off the road a bit before we settled in and the trail was crystal clear as we walked leading us deeper into the mountains to where we needed to be. So often life is this way we are where we need to be at this moment. About six years ago I met a fellow actually quite a fellow by the way, Dr. James Sutton. Dr. Sutton is a psychologist who specializing in Oppositional Defiant Disorder, ODD and Conduct Disorder, CD. These are labels given to children who seem to not get along very well with anybody and most often adults.
When I met Dr. Sutton at that time this was only a piece in my puzzle although if and when my first book gets published Dr. Sutton has done the forward for me. However that is not the point I was getting too. A few years back one of our para-pros came up to me excited and smiling ear to ear. She was returning several of Dr. Suttons books she had borrowed it seems her son is ODD and I had emailed Dr. Sutton and he offered his personal email for communication. However my friend sent for another book detailing how to work with her son literally and miracle of miracles it was working. She said their lives had been changed.
I often write about the journey not that meeting Dr. Sutton several years ago and further communications many times since has not been meaningful to me personally but it has offered hope now to another person and family. The pieces fall in place my meeting Dr. Sutton may have been for this family not just for me. The journey continues as the mosaic pieces each unique each sometimes meaningless without the whole fall into place piece by piece and come together.
I am a searcher and a wanderer always looking for answers in a world full of questions. I received an email yesterday from a dear friend passing along a forwarded sign from a store. “Unattended children will be given an espresso and a free puppy”. I thought to my own M&M machine or skittles feeding sugar to all of my students before they go to other teachers. Sort of juicing up the ADHD so to say. My friend offered a piece of a favorite of mine although I wonder at times who would name there child Ralph Waldo.

“Finish each day and be done with it. You have done what you could; some blunders and absurdities have crept in; forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day; you shall begin it serenely and with too high a spirit to be encumbered with your old nonsense.” Ralph Waldo Emerson

As we work with our mosaic that is our life we should use restickable cement so pieces can be changed if need be. It may be that one day what is real today is not real tomorrow. Although I do like the Emerson thought; maybe to be done with it and move on might work as well. So many journeys and pieces as I wander today. Peace my friends and hopefully one day soon it will be. Please keep all in harms way on your mind and in your hearts and so I continue my searching, looking, wondering, and pondering another day.
namaste
bird