This is one of the few cards that I wrote who and what the card is for directly on the card. Most of the others are not personalized. They can be recycled.
That makes what happened to this card a bit odd. Joe is a business man some fifteen years beyond retirement age, the oldest person I know and I value his friendship, who for some reason keeps right on working anyway. He lives in Arizona and owns property even farther away. I overheard somebody else say he makes one call a day. Hardly worth the trouble of getting dressed up for, but that's what he does. A few years back he took in a younger man who was having a rough time. I overheard another conversation that referred to the habit as "broken bird syndrome" and I wish I hadn't overheard that. I thought in that moment, you always do have some cute way of summing up serious things, trivializing them. I'm sure the guy who accepted Joe's help wouldn't appreciate knowing that is how people viewed him and talk about him. The young man died. Joe said going through his things following his death this card along with a few others I sent Joe over years were among the young man's belongings. For some reason he took them without telling Joe. Such an odd way of getting them back. Such an odd story all around.
More photos here, larger, and more words.
3 comments:
The young man treasured them, taking them in hopes of happiness by proxy.
As the catholics say, 'it's a mystery.'
Happiness by proxy. Is that anything like sloppy seconds?
Ooh, that was crude. Chip probably won't appreciate it. Pogo?....ya never know.
He told them another parable: “The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed, which a man took and planted in his field. Though it is the smallest of all seeds, yet when it grows, it is the largest of garden plants and becomes a tree, so that the birds come and perch in its branches.”
Birds use all kinds of found and gathered objects to build nests for themselves and broken birds have their own methods of getting needs met and obtaining material.
The greatness of a parable is the way it will show up over and over in different forms, with at least five versions showing up here, in a book as seed, a card as expression and gift, and the lives touched as a result, there and here.
Firsts, seconds, thirds, and fourths on down the line as another seed and another tree forms, and the birds come to perch in the branches. Sloppy or otherwise, that's how it goes, with process and result both being part of the mystery.
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