Desiderata

Investiture and the beginning of novitiate are in ten days. The road trip to California begins in five days. A few desires, great and small, for the last few days in Kansas:

1. To eat at a local restaurant in Hays this weekend.

2. To see a little rain relieve the thirst of the land.

3. To call Rep. Tim Huelskamp, who represents Kansas' 1st congressional district, which includes Victoria, and denounce the actions he took in the House to make deeper cuts to an already-weakened food stamp program.

4. To be a little more patient with everybody. To examine what lies beneath the feelings of anger whenever they arise.

5. To meditate, really meditate, when in chapel, and to remember that spiritual reading or theological reading, good things though they are, can and should be done at times other than meditation time in chapel.

6. To have one or two more video calls with family and friends before departure.

7. To send a few more letters. It would be good presently to get more into the habit of snail mail.

8. To welcome fraternal distractions, and not to scheme for the purpose of avoiding them. To become aware of when I am so plotting.

9. To bake something, even though I have no more kitchen duties in Kansas. Maybe something snackworthy for the road?

10. To write more poems, prayers, and songs ... especially more songs. The tap from which that kind of expression flows turned off about two years ago and has dripped with rarity. But with the song that came to me this week and a new phase of life beginning at the end of the next, I can feel a hand turning. Who knows but that to show you what novitiate is like, I will have to do it lyric by lyric and verse-chorus-verse.

11. To pray for anyone, everyone who asks for my prayers. I mean, really to do it. Also: to give thanks for the people who pray for me.

12. To sleep, perchance to dream: and not to be disturbed by what I dream, and not to dismiss out of hand what rises up from below and beyond my conscious. After all, dreams and visions are what come when God pours out the Spirit upon our flesh. Help me, God, to know the meaning of my dreams, and show me the way through them.