Of Poems and Powerball

--One of the winning Powerball tickets was sold in Florida.  My spouse bought some tickets in Florida.  I have not looked up the precise location of the sale.  In some ways it's fun to dream. 

--But the work still must be done, whether I am worth my current bank accounts or Powerball winnings.  My true worth is measured in other ways:  was I kind?  Did I write?  Did I lend my talents to the world of light or the world of darkness?

--And so, I went back through my blog posts, looking for inspiration for a poem.  In this post, I came across this sentence:   "I'm going to write one of my Jesus in the world poems at the rate of one per week (for an example of this kind of poem of mine, see this blog post)."

--How often did I do this after returning from the September women's retreat?  Precisely never.  So I've added it to my list of what I hope to accomplish this year.

--And this morning, I wrote a poem about Jesus coming to the holiday cookie swap.  No need for multiplying of food at a cookie swap.  What other miracles might Jesus perform?

--For 2016, I'm keeping a paper log book with weekly updates.  I'm hoping that this form of journaling will help keep me on track.

--I have a poem on the Via Negativa site; go here to see it.  It's another poem inspired by both recent events and the story adjacent to the Epiphany story, the fleeing of Mary, Joseph, and Jesus to Egypt to escape the murderous intentions of King Herod.  Here's my favorite chunk of the poem:

Others rely on maps or GPS devices,
but we travel with a different
sort of celestial directions.

--When you're done with the poem, scroll down to notice that I've created an avatar.  I used the gravatar site, and it was remarkably easy.  I was impressed with myself all out of proportion to the amount of difficulty in the task.

--Here we are at dawn's first light, albeit cloud-covered--no news crews are camped out at my curb.  I'm guessing we didn't win.

--So let me submit some work to journals while reading periods are still open.  The work must be done.