Alms. Giving.

Alms. Giving.

I knew the facts, some of them, but I didn’t have the words. I was in a slough of despond so turgid, so void of promise of any kind, that it had taken my prized possession: my ability to speak my way towards wondering and being mystified. It was as if I’d invited people to watch me mutter. A good number of you were there, there in a way I couldn’t manage at the time.

The year since has been a steep stagger often. I’ve been learning the jittery semaphore of involuntary movement. I’ve been fingering the edges of a mind in incremental retreat. I’m properly having to decide over and over what genuine living requires and exacts and grants.

Degenerative sounds fatal, but isn’t.

Being an etymology fan, the word strikes me as worse than final or fatal. It’s more like unconjuring, unfashioning. Ungiving.  Ungiving might be the worst of it. It curls and caves you in on yourself.

Years ago I wrote that other people compromise one’s capacity for infinity. We are the visitation of limit upon each other.

Thanks to your quiet giving, the degeneration is interrupted, and I’ve found a few words.

I believe Dustin is back at his pine harvest.

Bless.

-Stephen Jenkinson
Founder of Orphan Wisdom

Greetings

I’ve been thinking about midlife crisis this morning. My father’s father died when I was ten and he was 61. This number stuck. No matter how many people live past this age, or don’t make it that far, in my mind, everyone dies at 61. So, by my unextinguished 10 year-old reckoning, I’m a ways past midlife, and a crisis has been delivered. Between the outrageous fire and your outrageous response, I sit.

One of the deputy fire chief’s questions was whether or not there was
insurance. The answer was ‘no’. And what a marvel to see in the next few days what there was instead. I hardly had time to be properly located in the devastation before I was overwhelmed by your emphatic insistence upon generosity and care. This is the kind of insurance I pray for in the world.

As of yet, I don’t have a plan, though I am gratefully well equipped
for a time when there may be a plan. I have heard your response for feet on the ground/ helping hands willingness for what may come. I will let you know when there is a vision. For now, I will be sitting in the crossroads, clipping pine.

My love and gratitude,
Dustin