Thirsty

Here's an extended tweet. Don called me on to more blogging, so I suppose I'll do it now while I have time. I'm alone at my parents' lake cabin, having just said goodbye to the last of the friends that came to hang out with me this weekend. There were up to 11 of us at one point, and most of us went to SJC around the same time. Some of us are married, some are dating, some are single. We did these sorts of gatherings more frequently a couple years ago and earlier, but life happened and I wasn't setting aside time to plan and do this. The weekend had already started Friday evening with a birthday party for Sheila at the Brewer's, fireworks at the POP community center, and meeting for drinks/snacks at a local restaurant afterwards. I probably caused it to adjourn a bit early since I wanted to get home to pack and be on the road by midnight, heading for Crooked Lake. I didn't make it there till about 1:30, and Theresa from Cincinnati was making the ni...

I'm reading a small book called The Uganda Blessing by Gus Zuehlke... We drove to Fort Portal, which is 250 miles west of Kampala, with Bishop Robert. On the way, we stopped at an upscale hotel and restaurant for lunch. After lunch, as we walked back to our SUV, we heard a man singing in the bar. The only words to the song wer, "I'm so lonely." He went on repeating that for five minutes. I was reminded of something Father John Dunne, CSC, once wrote about an African love song which has only three words; "I walk alone." Dunne speaks of the problem of loneliness which has become acute in our time. We have emerged as individuals, but have lost a sense of relatedness with others. We spend all our time and energy making sure that what we do is our own choice, our decision. This is too often accomplished at the cost of spending time and energy relating to others. In Uganda, one senses that peoples' sense of relatedness is still strong, but the lonelin...