Younger Self Counsels Older Self

Each Moment Worthy (1981)

Churches are forever cleaning out their closets.  As soon as a closet is emptied, it begins to fill--now something, then something--until, after several years, stuff fills the closet and it is emptied anew. 

A new administration in a hospital, so I was once told, paints the lobby to indicate change, as well as assert authority.  I wonder if new ministers clean out closets for similar reasons. [I found a stack of your old books in a closet, the recent email read.  Do you want them?]

A small cardboard box arrived this morning, The Vermont Country Store stenciled on its side.  [My immediate response:  Someone sending me a gift from Vermont? Now who would do that?]  The box contained copies of three different chapbooks of poetic meditations I assembled during my five and a half year tenure at my first Church half a lifetime ago.  Yes, half a life time ago, when I was in my early thirties and the mimeograph machine had not yet  replaced the photocopier.  How utterly antique.

I glanced through my favorite collection (1981) of the three and encountered my younger self with wonder and satisfaction.  I was starting out then, yet most of the 31 poetic meditations were good.  I still claim a few today, including one I titled “Always a Beginning.” 

Always there is a beginning —
  a new day,
  a new month,
  a new season,
  a new year.

Forever the old passes away
  and newness emerges
  from the richness that was.

Nothing is ever lost
  in the many changes
  time brings.

What was, in some way,
  will be,
  though changed in form.

Know this:
This moment is a beginning
  and our lives,
  individually and together,
  are full of richness, of freshness,
  of hope and of promise.

When I read this, 1^st among the 31, I drifted in the imaginative realm of time. My younger self spoke across three decades to my older self.  My younger counsel was apropos, as my older self faces the final quarter of life marked by a great transition of retirement.

I'm always amused when I get what I need, not knowing I needed it in the first place.  Thank you, younger self.