My legacy to my grandchildren will be a composite of words - my private library now at over five hundred books plus my own writings safely stored/backed-up to my PC/pocket flash drive. My granddaughter knows my password. She can lead the way into 'me' while learning my ways with reading. (There are now twelve versions of Scripture, for one thing . . .) You young-uns - build up the words around the Word for your progeny. It is an act of love that will not be able to be forgotten. In a big way, 'you' will always be with them. I remain your obedient servant, but God's first, Pristinus Sapienter (wljewell @mail.catholicexchange.com or ...yahoo.com) PS: And, I still had to open a second CE session to grab my sig to put here - bhodge? - bhickey?

Dear Beth, woman, wife and mother on her journey, There are so many passages in so many books that comfort a life-long sadness, which God has seen fit to have me live. My books less mean things as 'books' than they do little houses of passages. The various 'rooms' are often something, and yet too often nothing, to me. It seems to me the passages - the corridors to the rooms - are where I find the tiny but exquisite treasures that keep me ticking. You are 'on a journey', and who of is not? As I journey from one room to another of the author's edifice, in that traverse I encounter wonders. E.g., the Inferno is of one immense passage, of little for 'rooms' at all. Dante has calibrated life well, to note that it is a thing, nearly a distinct entity of the unique entity each of us is, of passages more than rooms. None of us has but one destination: the 'Kingdom of a room' of our eternal life or our miniscule cell of forever death. Alas, no one much listens to me - less and less as I age, it seems. I am 'yesterday's mashed potatoes', even as modern life leaves people with seemingly empty plates. They seem to be standing still, forgetting to journey, and waiting, rather than 'passaging' on. Even here at CE, I feel that you folks have to at least give a thought to 'hear' me, when you encounter my posts. And, I really, really, so very really, God so knows, need human contact. CE is sort of a consolation, a fill-in - though, grand ones, of those. For nearly a year now, God has been treating me to Himself for myself. He has made it His every work with me to make me all His. He has used my sad aloneness, and my crippling lonely depression, and in my physical decline, to find Him in every corner and shadow and instant and thought. He has less had me read, though my inclination is to read, than to write what it is that comes out of me with Him so Present. And, oh, I never knew I had in me what He has exposed of me. Just when I think the least of myself, He exposes wondrous graces He has given me, all along, and my words sing from my writing. I fall into less a funk now than a curious humility that wonders what He will bring out of me next. My spiritual director, who claims not to be, for lack of ‘training’ at it, wants me to write an apologetics in my style of off-handed wonder at what I find. He wants what he knows will happen – God will write with my mind, heart and spirit, and the results will be all so uniquely God’s and mine. It is like I am being 'self-Emmaus-ed' if you will. Our Lord and Master finds Himself and me and shows me - but less in the breaking of bread than in the brokenness of me. We 'passage' in books and in prayer and in thought, and His Sacrament is like some Eighth one that is my God, most specially, most my own. And, I know, I will die in one of those passages, but in His arms . . . The Spirit tells me that He will dance and sing, to have me Home. He will weep if I fail to get there. He weeps at every lost soul, for He only made each of us to love; and, if we don’t get Home, He can no longer love us as He wants. I will get Home, I assure you as our beloved Lord has assured me that He will get me there. My library and my writings are all I have to give. I can only hope that they lead my little family to go on 'passaging' to find treasures, to encounter God on the way, not thinking ever that they have 'arrived' or find much in waiting. Waiting can be done only as the child Samuel did it: ‘What next, my Lord?’ And, now, know that this letter goes into my files, that it is encountered, perhaps, some day by a wandering-in-the-passages grandchild. Then he or she can better know that there is only One with Whom to so passage. And, Grandpa did it! I remain your obedient servant, but God's first, Pristinus Sapienter (wljewell @mail.catholicexchange.com or ...yahoo.com)

([As we all have done at times, gk has a 'bi-buttoning' moment . . .]) Anything in particular that pleases your fancy - twice - here? I remain your obedient servant, but God's first, Pristinus Sapienter (wljewell @mail.catholicexchange.com or ...yahoo.com)

Inspired it is - the Spirit demands it, in noting 'Have I not left you bereft but this little else than Me?' Of Him, for Him, for His love and inspiration - I am bereft of but words of the Word. Conrad? Not yet - he's down the list a bit - would love your suggestions, though. I buy by the month - sometimes more than I can read - but I keep adding a bookcase every two years - BIG bookcases. My daughter, who will have the trust of these when I am gone for the sake of her children, herself, her friends, etc., just shakes her head. I remain your obedient servant, but God's first, Pristinus Sapienter (wljewell @catholicexchange.com or ... yahoo.com)

NoelFitz, though you don't seem to know it, you could be a very informative preacher - not calling to emotions, but to the cerebrum . . . The fact is, I have never been much of a social creature. Oh, Sharon taught me by getting me out that I could converse warmly and humorously. But, when I faced rejection, I had her there, my greatest fan, to give me that wondrous smile, and the hurt passed in her love. My fan club had to relocate, and give over allegiance to the Very One better than all of us . . . better, surely, than me. Then again, too, I don't take insults to my (and others) spirit and intelligence very well. I just camnot much abide un-reason and mal-reason, especially when tied to lack of faith. I seem to have a selection of gauntlets that I haul around that I may smack such an offender with, and toss it the ground in challenge. Shamelessly, I confess to psychically 'spitting in their face', as if insult can be 'cleansed' by insult. Bad, bad me. And, I find abuse of children fighting cause - I could conceivably kill an adult for hurting a child. Many don't seem to much like that attitude, either. I wear my heart on my sleeve for children, and that just is NOT what our culture wants, all too by and large. Even if accommodating of their children, the allegedly 'adult' parents want to be placed before their children. In the CE roundtable, I do meet delightfully 'fellow travelers' - real pilgrims searching for real truth following Christ, cross for Cross, love for Love. But, after all, it is a spiritual and intellectual gambit, not a close friendship. If thou doth smile as once the Lady Sharon did - I canst'nt see it, can I? I remain your obedient servant, but God's first, Pristinus Sapienter (wljewell @catholicexchange.com or ... yahoo.com)