04/25/2022 Lynn Murphy Mark I got plenty of nothin’ When I set out to write a brief piece I usually have a direction in which to go. A random thought made of an idea bubbles up and I start writing. However, I’ve never started writing with a blank mind, so this is a grand experiment. …
04/22/2022. Lynn Murphy Mark The Gig is up What I’ve seen of Puerto Rico is lovely. We’re staying in a friend’s condo on the 11th floor, a block from the beach. There is a balcony from which there is an ocean view. Well, there would be a full overlook if it weren’t for the multistory …
04/23/2022 Lynn Murphy Mark Airport reverie. San Juan airport – check. Someday I’ll make a list of the airports I’ve visited in the last 72 years. There are a lot of them that I can remember and probably some I’ve forgotten. This “odyssey” started in November of 1949 from New York City to Mexico City. …
04/24/2022 Lynn Murphy Mark All grown up The last few days with my daughter, Jackie, were absolute mother’s bliss. She is just beginning the voyage into her forties, while I remember times when she only came up to my waist, or when I carried her baby self with such love and tenderness that I could …
04/17/2022 Lynn Murphy Mark His birth was a miracle, but much easier for me to grasp than what we celebrate today. A baby is born under peculiar circumstances; a star shines steadily to guide poor local shepherds and foreign magicians to see him and his parents. This I can understand. Like Mary, I have gone …
04/16/2022 Lynn Murphy Mark This is the most mysterious of days leading to Easter. In my opinion, anyway. What happened in the darkness of the tomb? What kind of power was building in that dry, quiet space? When did the atoms that were Jesus’s still form transform and transition to light and a different kind …
04/15/2022 Lynn Murphy Mark Approaching the end of Holy Week I wonder what kind of Christian I am. The whole week has slipped by without much notice. Except first thing in the morning, when I start my day with Richard Rohr’s meditations. Every day this week he reminded me that love of God shone through the bravery …
04/14/2022 Lynn Murphy Mark Next week I will board an airplane and travel to someplace I have never seen before. Since I grew up overseas, this will be one more trip in a long series that started when I was six weeks old. The year was 1949 and we flew to Mexico City for my …
04/12/2022 Lynn Murphy Mark Today and yesterday. No sunshine. Not a glimmer of blue sky. Only flat, gray clouds from here to everywhere. As I sit at my desk and look outside, even the birds are hiding and the squirrels are nowhere to be seen. St. Louis winters have plenty of days like this one. …
04/10/2022 Lynn Murphy Mark Today I will connect with a friend that I have known since 1972 – that’s one half of a century! At the time, I was a student nurse working weekends as an aide on the locked psychiatric ward at Deaconess Hospital. The Viet Nam war was going on and there were …
04/08/2022 Lynn Murphy Mark April 7, 2022, might have been opening day for Major League Baseball, but a more important opening day happened in the senate chamber in Washington, D.C. . Before the teams put on their uniforms and grabbed their gear to start the road to hopeful victories, a modest, brilliant jurist put on …
04/07/2022 Lynn Murphy Mark Is there anything more exciting than the first Cardinals game of the season played at Busch Stadium? I won’t be there in person, but I will be stationed in front of the television with some popcorn and a coke zero. Three Cardinals icons will be playing: Adam Wainwright pitching, Yadier Molina …
04/06/2022 Lynn Murphy Mark Most Friday evenings we can be found with our friend Donna. We get together for dinner and a movie weekly. Most of the time we go to Donna’s house because she is still a working woman and we try to make things as simple as possible for her. Dinner is carry-out, …
04/03/2022 Lynn Murphy Mark First comes Aretha Franklin. She is at the top of my musical pyramid and has been for decades. When she died I was bereft. I watched most of her 8 hour funeral and cried through a lot of it. Just the thought that her energy has now taken a different form …
04/02/2022 Lynn Murphy Mark A friend recently sent me an article from the newspaper titled, “If you can’t say something nice…”. Having heard that saying before, I automatically finished it, “don’t say anything at all.”. I read the article with great interest – first to find out if I need to stop cursing, which is …
03/31/2022 Lynn Murphy Mark Writing about the inner workings of 12 Step recovery meetings is a delicate business. Regardless of the type of addiction addressed, the word “Anonymous” appears in the name of each 12 Step group. There are traditions that govern the ability to speak (write) freely about what happens in a group meeting, …
03/29/2022 Lynn Murphy Mark Today is one of my days to work. I call it going to work, but really it is going to perform a service for someone whose life is in flux. I usually have 27 clients at any given time, all of them hoping for the granting of an immigration benefit to …
03/27/2022 Lynn Murphy Mark After I settled in to my job as a middle school nurse, my boss broke the news to me that I was in charge of Sex Ed for all three grades. There was a curriculum, there were guest speakers, and my role was to teach a couple of sessions during the …
03/26/2022 Lynn Murphy Mark Yesterday I was introduced by NPR to a musician named Ruth Slenczynska. She is a classical pianist, still playing at the age of 97. One of her teachers was Sergei Rachmaninov, who met her when she was 7, took her as a pupil, and told her her fingers were like cooked …
03/24/2022 Lynn Murphy Mark I’m new at this blog business, but I am having fun learning! I think this could only happen in my retirement days. Yesterday I had lunch with three other retirees and we talked about the phenomenon of how retirement unrolls. When formal career/work is behind us, time passes like this: at …
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