A Sentimental Journey at Starbucks

I just want to say that I've never appreciated more the ability to plop down in a comfortable chair with soft lighting, good jazz music, and a cup of chai AND be able to have free internet service so I can work and not be lonely ... thank you, Starbucks.

I've just come from looking at a couple of assisted living facilities for my father, who may eventually need that ... if he can, in fact, recover enough from his current medical crisis to move there.  It's too early to tell, but he's not doing so well in terms of kidney failure and mental recovery from the strokes he has had --- and he's still on a nasal feeding tube because of swallowing difficulty and related respiratory issues.

The facilities were both beautiful, immaculate, and extremely expensive.  We'll see what we can do.

This post is really just a gratitude post to all the people I meet on a daily basis who cheerfully and thoughtfully contribute to my life and the lives of my loved ones.  To the doctors, nurses, and other staff at North Fulton Regional Hospital ... to the eldercare advisor, Valerie Morse, at A Place for Mom, to the owners and caretakers at the assisted living facilities who welcome me in and take me on pleasant tours and offer me kindness... to the staff at Starbucks, who give a lot of pleasure for about minimum wage.

God bless all of them...

and playing now, "Gonna take a sentimental journey... a sentimental journey home."Sentimental Journey by Doris Day

Tamara

Entering the New Year on Birds' Wings

Owls and other birds are on my mind this morning.
Proud or timid, flying, perching, nesting, or falling from the sky,
they all demonstrate the work of a Holy Spirit,
looking, finding, interceding between man and the Being
who lives in a vast space man fears he cannot reach,

 it being so high and removed
from the steady earth on which we gather here,
always looking up.

This new year, too, we will go on seeking the face of
that God, and depending on intercessors who caw
and cheep and cry out in hunger or victory with all of us lowly beings,
and who sometimes sing like angels and even fly.