<html><head><meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"></head><body dir="auto">I saw ths on Facebook. <a href="https://www.facebook.com/646603406/posts/10162962326713407/?app=fbl">https://www.facebook.com/646603406/posts/10162962326713407/?app=fbl</a><br id="lineBreakAtBeginningOfSignature"><div dir="ltr"><span style="font-size: 13pt;">Jim Wiegel</span><br><div>
<p class="p1"><span class="s1" style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">“…the long work<br>
of turning their lives<br>
into a celebration<br>
is not easy. Come </span><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0); font-size: 19pt;">and let us talk</span><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0); font-size: 19pt;">“. </span></p><p class="p1"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0); font-size: 19pt;">The Sunflowers. Mary Oliver</span></p></div></div><div dir="ltr"><br><blockquote type="cite">On Sep 12, 2025, at 4:53 PM, Jack and Louise Ballard via OE <oe@lists.wedgeblade.net> wrote:<br><br></blockquote></div><blockquote type="cite"><div dir="ltr"><meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"><meta name="Generator" content="Microsoft Word 15 (filtered medium)"><style>@font-face { font-family: "Cambria Math"; }
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</o:shapelayout></xml><![endif]--><div class="WordSection1"><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:"Arial",sans-serif;color:#1F497D">Dear Phyllis,<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:"Arial",sans-serif;color:#1F497D">I, too, was very touched by your poetry. Such a gift you have given us. Maybe at just the right moment.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:"Arial",sans-serif;color:#1F497D"><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:"Arial",sans-serif;color:#1F497D">You and Len have both blessed our lives through the years. We send you love and prayers and care. Hugs, too.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:"Arial",sans-serif;color:#1F497D"><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:"Arial",sans-serif;color:#1F497D">Journey on, dear ones.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:"Arial",sans-serif;color:#1F497D">Louise Ballard<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:"Arial",sans-serif;color:#1F497D"><o:p> </o:p></span></p><div><div style="border:none;border-top:solid #E1E1E1 1.0pt;padding:3.0pt 0in 0in 0in"><p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif">From:</span></b><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif"> OE <oe-bounces@lists.wedgeblade.net> <b>On Behalf Of </b>Phyllis Hockley via OE<br><b>Sent:</b> Friday, September 12, 2025 11:38 AM<br><b>To:</b> Mari Crocker via OE <oe@lists.wedgeblade.net><br><b>Cc:</b> Phyllis Hockley <phyllish@efn.org><br><b>Subject:</b> Re: [Oe List ...] Another offering<o:p></o:p></span></p></div></div><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p><div><p>Thanks, Marilyn,<o:p></o:p></p><p>Hope things are going well for you. Len is on hospice. 16 years of Parkinsons is catching up.<o:p></o:p></p><p>We are in Assisted Living so have lots of care.<o:p></o:p></p><p>Peace, Hope and Love,<o:p></o:p></p><p>Phyllis <o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p></div><div><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p></div><div><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p></div><div><p class="MsoNormal">On 9/10/2025 7:35 PM, Mari Crocker via OE wrote:<o:p></o:p></p></div><blockquote style="margin-top:5.0pt;margin-bottom:5.0pt"><p class="MsoNormal">Thank you, Phyllis. Marilyn<o:p></o:p></p><div><p class="MsoNormal"><br><br><o:p></o:p></p><blockquote style="margin-top:5.0pt;margin-bottom:5.0pt"><div><p class="MsoNormal">On Sep 10, 2025, at 3:05 PM, Phyllis Hockley via OE <a href="mailto:oe@lists.wedgeblade.net"><oe@lists.wedgeblade.net></a> wrote:<o:p></o:p></p></div><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p><div><div><div><p class="MsoNormal">Reading about the deep power of connection I remembered a morning when in meditation I felt this deep connection to sacred earth and grabbed a pencil and begin to write my thinking. This came out. A little ditty of what I was sensing.<o:p></o:p></p></div><div><p class="MsoNormal" align="center" style="mso-margin-top-alt:auto;text-align:center"><b><span style="font-family:"Cambria",serif">Connection</span></b><o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" align="center" style="mso-margin-top-alt:auto;text-align:center"><span style="font-family:"Cambria",serif">The whole earth is sacred, and our connecting is key.</span><o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" align="center" style="mso-margin-top-alt:auto;text-align:center"><span style="font-family:"Cambria",serif">And it’s the best way I know to help you and me.</span><o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" align="center" style="mso-margin-top-alt:auto;text-align:center"><span style="font-family:"Cambria",serif">For when we’re connected, then deeply we care.</span><o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" align="center" style="mso-margin-top-alt:auto;text-align:center"><span style="font-family:"Cambria",serif">Slaughtering elephants for tusks, almost too much to bear.</span><o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" align="center" style="mso-margin-top-alt:auto;text-align:center"><span style="font-family:"Cambria",serif"> And how we treat earth’s creatures, as the sacred they are, </span><o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" align="center" style="mso-margin-top-alt:auto;text-align:center"><span style="font-family:"Cambria",serif">Will change things completely both near and afar.</span><o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" align="center" style="mso-margin-top-alt:auto;text-align:center"><span style="font-family:"Cambria",serif">And if the guy that is hungry is sacred too,</span><o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" align="center" style="mso-margin-top-alt:auto;text-align:center"><span style="font-family:"Cambria",serif">I better think about feeding him, isn’t that true?</span><o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" align="center" style="mso-margin-top-alt:auto;text-align:center"><span style="font-family:"Cambria",serif">When I see all life as sacred, and my connection is there.</span><o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" align="center" style="mso-margin-top-alt:auto;text-align:center"><span style="font-family:"Cambria",serif">My love is overflowing and I know how to care.</span><o:p></o:p></p><div><p class="MsoNormal"> <o:p></o:p></p></div><p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto">On 9/7/2025 6:27 PM, James Wiegel via OE wrote:<o:p></o:p></p></div><blockquote style="margin-top:5.0pt;margin-bottom:5.0pt"><div><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:"Tahoma",sans-serif"></span> <o:p></o:p></p><div><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:"Tahoma",sans-serif"></span> Thanks, Milan. An abrupt ending. <o:p></o:p></p><div><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p></div><div><p class="MsoNormal">I ran across this from W. H. Auden last week. I think it is somehow related . . .<o:p></o:p></p></div><div><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p></div><div><div><p class="MsoNormal"><span class="s1"><span style="font-size:15.5pt;font-family:"UICTFontTextStyleBody",serif">What we used to mean by fellowhood</span></span><span style="font-size:15.5pt"><o:p></o:p></span></p></div><div><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:15.5pt"><o:p> </o:p></span></p></div><div><p class="MsoNormal"><span class="s1"><span style="font-size:15.5pt;font-family:"UICTFontTextStyleBody",serif">"One fine summer night in June 1933 l was sitting on a lawn after dinner with three colleagues, two women and one man. We liked each other well enough but we were certainly not intimate friends, nor had any one of us a sexual interest in another. Incidentally, we had not drunk any alcohol. We were talking casually about everyday matters when, quite suddenly and unexpectedly, something happened. I felt myself invaded by a power which, though I consented to it, was irresistible and certainly not mine. For the first time in my life I knew exactly — because, thanks to the power, I was doing it - what it means to love one's neighbor as oneself. I was also certain, though the conversation continued to be perfectly ordinary, that my three colleagues were having the same experience. (In the case of one of them, I was later able to confirm this.) My personal feelings towards them were unchanged - they were still colleagues, not intimate friends — but I felt their existence as themselves to be of infinite value and rejoiced in it.</span></span><span style="font-size:15.5pt"><o:p></o:p></span></p></div><div><p class="MsoNormal"><span class="s1"><span style="font-size:15.5pt;font-family:"UICTFontTextStyleBody",serif">I recalled with shame the many occasions on which I had been spiteful, snobbish, selfish, but the immediate joy was greater than the shame, for 1 knew that, so long as I was possessed by this spirit, it would be literally impossible for me deliberately to injure another human being. I also knew that the power would, of course, be withdrawn sooner or later and that, when it did, my greed and self-regard would return. The experience lasted at its full intensity for about two hours when we said good-night to each other and went to bed. When I awoke the next morning, it was still present, though weaker, and it did not vanish completely for two days or so. The memory of the experience has not prevented me from making use of others, grossly and often, but it has made it much more difficult for me to deceive myself about what I am up to when I do. And among the various factors which several years later brought me back to the Christian faith in which I had been brought up, the memory of this experience and asking myself what it could mean was one of the most crucial, though, at the time it occurred, I thought I had done with Christianity for good."</span></span><span style="font-size:15.5pt"><o:p></o:p></span></p></div><div><p class="MsoNormal"><span class="s1"><span style="font-size:15.5pt;font-family:"UICTFontTextStyleBody",serif">~ W. H. Auden, from his Introduction to</span></span><span style="font-size:15.5pt"><o:p></o:p></span></p></div><div><p class="MsoNormal"><span class="s1"><span style="font-size:15.5pt;font-family:"UICTFontTextStyleBody",serif">'The Protestant Mystics',</span></span><span style="font-size:15.5pt"><o:p></o:p></span></p></div><div><p class="MsoNormal"><span class="s1"><span style="font-size:15.5pt;font-family:"UICTFontTextStyleBody",serif">", edited by</span></span><span style="font-size:15.5pt"><o:p></o:p></span></p></div><div><p class="MsoNormal"><span class="s1"><span style="font-size:15.5pt;font-family:"UICTFontTextStyleBody",serif">Anne Freemantle</span></span><span style="font-size:15.5pt"><o:p></o:p></span></p></div><div><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:13.0pt">Jim Wiegel</span><o:p></o:p></p><div><p class="p1"><span class="s1">“We are all time travelers journeying into the future. But let us make that future a place we want to visit. “ </span><span style="font-size:13.0pt">Stephen Hawking</span><o:p></o:p></p></div></div><div><p class="MsoNormal"><br><br><o:p></o:p></p><blockquote style="margin-top:5.0pt;margin-bottom:5.0pt"><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:12.0pt">On Sep 6, 2025, at 5:37<span style="font-family:"Arial",sans-serif"> </span>PM, Milan Hamilton via OE <a href="mailto:oe@lists.wedgeblade.net"><oe@lists.wedgeblade.net></a> wrote:<o:p></o:p></p></blockquote></div><blockquote style="margin-top:5.0pt;margin-bottom:5.0pt"><div><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:"Tahoma",sans-serif"></span> <o:p></o:p></p><div><div><p class="MsoNormal">My writing group, the Joslyn Joy Writers ( a bunch of seniors who meet weekly to share what they are writing. They thought this one was worthy so I am putting it out there. The assignment for the week was to write about the "Land of the Lonesome" but I took a liberty and wrote six "Haikus in the Land of the Lonely" and then put it to a simple tune and added my voice. We have to continue in poetry and song what we can't say any other way these days.<o:p></o:p></p></div><div><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p></div><div><p class="MsoNormal"><a href="https://youtu.be/Mq_uTYpDr28">https://youtu.be/Mq_uTYpDr28</a><o:p></o:p></p></div><div><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p></div><div><p class="MsoNormal">Mellow Milan Hamilton<o:p></o:p></p></div><div><div><div><p class="MsoNormal">80 North Center Street<o:p></o:p></p></div><div><p class="MsoNormal">Redlands, CA 92373<o:p></o:p></p></div><div><p class="MsoNormal">Phone: (909) 943-1667<o:p></o:p></p></div><div><p class="MsoNormal">email: <a href="mailto:mellowmilan2@gmail.com" target="_blank">mellowmilan2@gmail.com</a><o:p></o:p></p></div></div></div></div><p class="MsoNormal">_______________________________________________<br>OE mailing list<br><a href="mailto:OE@lists.wedgeblade.net">OE@lists.wedgeblade.net</a><br><a href="http://lists.wedgeblade.net/listinfo.cgi/oe-wedgeblade.net">http://lists.wedgeblade.net/listinfo.cgi/oe-wedgeblade.net</a><o:p></o:p></p></div></blockquote></div></div></div><p class="MsoNormal"><br><br><o:p></o:p></p><pre>_______________________________________________<o:p></o:p></pre><pre>OE mailing list<o:p></o:p></pre><pre><a href="mailto:OE@lists.wedgeblade.net">OE@lists.wedgeblade.net</a><o:p></o:p></pre><pre><a href="http://lists.wedgeblade.net/listinfo.cgi/oe-wedgeblade.net">http://lists.wedgeblade.net/listinfo.cgi/oe-wedgeblade.net</a><o:p></o:p></pre></blockquote><p><o:p> </o:p></p></div><p class="MsoNormal">_______________________________________________<br>OE mailing list<br><a href="mailto:OE@lists.wedgeblade.net">OE@lists.wedgeblade.net</a><br><a href="http://lists.wedgeblade.net/listinfo.cgi/oe-wedgeblade.net">http://lists.wedgeblade.net/listinfo.cgi/oe-wedgeblade.net</a><o:p></o:p></p></div></blockquote></div><p class="MsoNormal"><br><br><br><o:p></o:p></p><pre>_______________________________________________<o:p></o:p></pre><pre>OE mailing list<o:p></o:p></pre><pre><a href="mailto:OE@lists.wedgeblade.net">OE@lists.wedgeblade.net</a><o:p></o:p></pre><pre><a href="http://lists.wedgeblade.net/listinfo.cgi/oe-wedgeblade.net">http://lists.wedgeblade.net/listinfo.cgi/oe-wedgeblade.net</a><o:p></o:p></pre></blockquote><p><o:p> </o:p></p></div><span>_______________________________________________</span><br><span>OE mailing list</span><br><span>OE@lists.wedgeblade.net</span><br><span>http://lists.wedgeblade.net/listinfo.cgi/oe-wedgeblade.net</span><br></div></blockquote></body></html>