This will be an odd entry.
The thing I didn't mention earlier about the episode with Coach DI was what happened after I got home. Because of going out to get checked out on the coaches' launch (which, by the way, we never did do, as someone had taken the gas can), I got home only shortly before T would normally have been heading up to bed.
He came over, sat with me while I ate my soup (homemade matzoh-ball soup is wonderful for taking the knots out of your stomach), listened to me, offered only useful suggestions, and that sparingly, and generally did his best imitation of The Perfect Husband. (The frightening thing is that part of it was him applying tactics from his latest management class on how to deal with upset people. Apparently, this one made sense.)
A little later yesterday evening, I was lying in bed thinking how good he'd been, and how grateful I was to have such a partner, and the following started coming into focus. This is the odd part I warned you about. I'm not terribly religious, or much into prayer. I believe very strongly in free will -- normally, I thank T directly for what he's done, rather than thanking Someone for him. This one, though, came to me; I didn't go looking for it, except to complete it. I wanted it to speak of the sublimity of a spiral nebula, the purity and power of the white horses of ocean spray, and the small miracle of love, and I doubt I've gotten all of that, and I think it may not be done yet. But, subject to change, here is:
Posted by dichroic at April 10, 2001 02:30 PM
Jubilate
Praise the One Who brought all to be.
Praise the Spirit Who spawned the uncountable universes.
Praise the Shekhina Whose thought set the cosmos expanding,
Praise the Builder Who laid the structure that from a single seed grew the galaxies in their crystalline brilliant complexity, spiral or barred or lenticular.
Praise the Mother who, self-fertilized, birthed the stars that brought forth Her grandchildren, the planets and their glory of rock and ice, of gas and spume and spray and life.
Praise the Artist, who brought about the beauty of the great and the small, of the nebulae and of the northern woods, of Luna's stark surface and of the lush life of a coral reef, of Neptune's brilliant blues and of the white surf that rides the waves.
Praise the Prime Mover Whose physical laws, set in motion, led to this place and this moment, where I and my beloved come together, at home in a small corner of a small planet (at the round earth's imagined corners) in a small galaxy on the edge of Somewhere.
Sing in praise.