Twilight Twitches

Dear Family,
Tomorrow is my birthday. (80 at 9:45 a.m. EDT) Just send prayers! I excerpted (stole) the following from Matthew Kelly’s new book, Life is Messy. I am giving you the book for Christmas, but apropos of age, it’s an interesting approach Annie found.

Three Appointments
We are all required to keep three appointments: with self, with God, and the inevitable appointment with death. We may avoid, delay, resist, ignore, and otherwise pretend that these appointments are not on our schedule. It matters not. Life brings about these appointments whether we think we are ready or not.

Dear Family,
Annie and I just got off the phone with Mary Wood, reviewing our fiscal 2020-2021 financial re¬port. Thank God for Mary who translates accountese into English for me. As soon as we have dotted the “t’s” and crossed the “i’s” we will get it out to you. First in line will be the faithful whose generosity keeps the lights on.

The Olympics are offering me numbers that are far more interesting than finances. These Olympians are truly remarkable. Sometimes when the TV coverage includes pieces about the backgrounds of some of the competitors, it makes their feats even more remarkable... ordinary people made extraordi¬nary by striving for exceptional outcomes in nothing less than heroic ways.

Single-minded focus propels them to leap, swim, hurl, run, flip and all the other skills involved in the 46 sports that are part of Tokyo Olympics 2020.

Dear Family,
I have a new special prayer intention. I pray that those of you who need to renew your driver licenses may be spared the in-person process. For some reason, which I never figured out, I couldn’t do it by mail as I usually did. I think it has something to do with my age. Maybe they need visible proof that I was still capable of independent movement.

Anyway Dr. Lang certified my sight and off I went. First, one hour outside the office. I stupidly went at 11:30 so you can image the heat. We all wound around hoping for the A.C. Then inside three more hours. The people who work there are all very nice. Still, you have no idea how much I kept praying, “O Lord, please let them call F701.” Is that how you feel waiting for your Bingo number to be called?

Dear Family,
PS JUST HEARD. OUR BUILDING IS SOUND!!!

That’s how I ended last week’s Twitch. I think maybe the folks in the condos might have heard my sigh of relief. As I was finishing the Twitch the engineer told us we were okay. All we need to do is put down a little mesh and concrete mixture to smooth out the cracks. That will happen soon.

As those extraordinary rescue workers continued their search on the rubble in Surfside, I couldn’t help but be a little distracted about cracks in buildings, especially our building.