It’s Father’s Day. It’s the Summer’s Solstice. It is the Fourth Sunday of Pentecost. It is the weekend after a very long week. It is just days after the shooting in Charleston. It is about five weeks after I set off on a new spiritual journey, where I’m still trying to get my bearings.

There is so much to write, and so little time.

I received Father’s day messages via Facebook from my two older daughters. My eldest has sent me a draft of a research proposal in World War II Era Japanese Gender Studies. I need to read it over a few more times and send a reply. My middle daughter has been posting pictures of the Tiny House, Big Art project she is working on in Massachusetts. I really need to write much more about that, something along the line of a twenty first century nexus of Internet Communications, Thoreau, Amish Barnraisings, life as art, and probably a few other themes. My youngest daughter is with me. Last night, we went out to an extended family dinner, and she ate much of the seafood appetizers. This afternoon, we went to the beach and stopped at a clam shack afterwards, where, again, she put a good dent in the seafood.

It made me think of a few years ago when the older girls went to Clearwater on Father’s day, after asking if I could come with them, or, if not, if we could celebrate Father’s Day on a different day. Research, Art, Seafood: Seeing my daughters do what they love, is the best Father’s Day present I could receive.

Yet all of this is against the context of what happened in Charleston. The church I go to is a very diverse church, from age, to economic status, to skin tone. It is part of what drew me to the church, a much broader view of what the Body of Christ really looks like.

The priest said, we need to talk about race. She talked about it in the context of our Baptismal vows. I am thinking about it in terms of the confession of sins, and Romeo and Juliet, but the Romeo and Juliet reference probably needs to wait until another blog post.

“By what we have left undone”. We have not done all that we can or should to end racism. “We have not loved our neighbors as ourselves”

I’m not sure what else I can or should be doing to end racism and I am searching for other ways to help all of us love ‘the other’, whether that otherness comes from skin tone, political ideology, sexual orientation, or any other things we use to divide us.

I’m not sure how this relates to the spiritual quest that I have set out on, around five weeks ago, but both are tied to better understanding the depth of love God has for each of us and calls on us to have for one another.

There is so much more I want to say, so much more we need to do, so much more to understand. But now, it is time for evening prayers, and rest.

Buen Camino