Hasten the Coming

 

October 6, 2024

Sunday morning.

At home I planted the chrysanthemum plants that came in the box, cleared the deliveries off my porch and the mail out of the mailbox. It is not that far. It is not that far.

The drive from Asheville was complicated by the closing of the Pleasant Hill exit from I-85– the only one I know in Atlanta. I drove toward the city center at the right edge of ten lanes desperate to find an exit. Madame GPS led me through bush and briar but finally to Alpharetta.

Who should call to see if I was well but N, my sweet friend from long ago. He filled me in on the demise of classmates whom I knew were dead, but I lacked the grisly details. “The Deaths of Ellet High” could be a TV series. In our youth he was a better friend than I'd earned, and age has not changed that.

This will be the longest month of my life.  

A stern email comes from the Asheville Water Authority trying to correct rumors (which I helped spread) that part of the problem was slipshod construction and lazy maintenance in the past. I stand, if not corrected, silent.

Attended church at The Parish, a mission of the Anglican Church in America. It meets in an office building and at other times in people’s houses. The congregation is young, and child-oriented in a way that would exhaust and dismay the decorum of All Souls. So many handsome young fathers proved a distraction. I found the gathering uplifting, spiritual, the old message made more vibrant for being related in a different way. The phrase, “Hasten the Coming” plucked out of the litany moved me considerably.  Hasten the Coming. Make Straight the Way. Keep Watch from the High Places. They prayed especially for the victims of Hurricane Helene. How odd and unprecedented it is for me to be prayed for as the victim of an internationally known disaster, a waif and an orphan of the storm. It is an honor I don’t care for very much.

Sitting on the McLaughlin’s porch in the shade of an awning, content for the moment, wondering what to do with myself over the next few weeks.

Hasten the Coming

Make Straight the Way

Keep Watch from the High Places