Samhain Christmas Moon
Holiseason. Well underway. Two important holiseason gifts with a day of each other. (see post above for the second.)
Tom Crane, who flies the skies a lot, used some frequent flier miles to come out to Evergreen for lunch with me yesterday. We ate at the Willow Creek restaurant across Upper Bearcreek Drive from Evergreen Lake. It was, of course, a great feeling to see this long time friend and his willingness to trade his Saturday for lunch 900 miles from home made it even more special.
(Tom, on the far left, at an end of our 2015 retreat breakfast in Ely, Minnesota.)
It was, in the best sense, an ordinary lunch. We covered children, wives, parents, friends in the Woolly Mammoths and what Tom called an unusual number of infrastructure projects. This last referred to sleep studies, blood pressure measurement, a new furnace and a.c. unit at his house, a split pipe in the shower fixture, my prostate cancer, various arthritic ailments, hearing aids, our new boiler, kitchen and our still ongoing attempt to install the generator.
We’ve been friends now for over 25 years, meeting in the Woolly Mammoths where we’ve spent twice monthly meetings and annual retreats together over all that time. The nature of our meetings have been intimate and personally revealing, the length of our time together adding group history to personal history.
Both of us sense that we don’t have time to replicate that kind of intimacy with others, the third phase has its inexorability. It means we need to go the extra 900 miles to retain and maintain what we’ve created.
Thanks, Tom, for the gift of your presence.
