[Magdalen] Life's blessings

[James Oppenheimer-Crawford]

Your post brought back a host of memories I try not to deal with anymore.
Acceptance is very hard when something I've set my heart on, and have
worked toward for years is denied. I've come to try to have more charitable
feelings for the person who made a decision that I not proceed, and then
sent me a brief canned letter to that regard, but just recently a
conversation turned to it again, and I found myself still hurt, angry, and
humiliated.

We do our best. Perhaps some matters are so important and powerful for us
that true acceptance only happens in that place where we shall know even as
we are known.

Why is it, I've wondered, that some students always just seem to float
placidly and easily through the process, while others struggle each day
just to keep going? I guess it's just grace.

May you find peace. And even acceptance.

James W. Oppenheimer-Crawford
*“A life is like a garden. Perfect moments can be had, but not preserved,
except in memory. LLAP**”  -- *Leonard Nimoy

On Thu, Oct 20, 2016 at 2:22 PM, Marion Thompson <marionwhitevale at gmail.com>
wrote:

> The last day or so has brought news of deaths, some closer than others,
> one being our student spiritual adviser at Trinity, a fine elderly man who
> was firmly in my corner and even wrote to the Bishop to protest my
> rejection.  Anyway,   these things raise the ghosts.  So this morning
> seeing on FB that a classmate will be an assessor at ACPO pressed my
> buttons, even as I was lifting her in prayer.  I have an awful lot of
> unfinished business tucked away behind my defences and this one got past me.
>
> What a blessing then, to be toddling along to the Rectory for Morning
> Prayer, a new introduction, just the three of us at this point, and HAVING
> to carry on regardless of snotty nose and tears which overflowed unbidden.
> The best medicine.   I am beyond grateful for the presence of our priest
> and his partner, and the twist in life that has brought me to this.
>
> Marion, a pilgrim   ... todayt my sail I lift ....
>
>