Today, on my 69th birthday, these words to me from a reader I've met through this blog, who inspires me constantly by her lived witness to the beatitudes, touch my heart deeply:
You are on this planet to learn and to teach. I am so grateful for having found you and you have encouraged me even when I knew you were discouraged about all that is going on.
It's possible to feel old, used up, thrown away — and to feel those things all the more when one is a member or a maligned minority group and experiences, along with a spouse, repeated acts of prejudice and outright brutality from employers and others around oneself.
Words like this, birthday words, count all the more for those reasons.
The photo: three of my mother's sisters, Margaret, Billie, and Kat (holding me) with friend Suzanne on the left, 1950 in Hot Springs, Arkansas.
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