The Caring Catalyst

Who Cares - What Matters

DON’T GET ON THE BUS

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There’s no time that I can’t remember that I haven’t been a writer. Now that has seldom been enough until very recently.  I didn’t want to go around telling people that I am a poet, especially when I was younger, but because my mom used to be an administrative secretary for the principal at our high school, she had access to a mimeograph  machine.  During my senior year in high school, I wrote a lot of poems and I wanted to make sure that I gave everyone, I mean everyone, good friends, family, not so close acquaintances,  a copy of all my great thoughts and beyond illustrious poems.  Even then, maybe especially then, I would be sending out my poems to magazines and journals in the hopes and belief that I certainly would be published and envied by the likes of Robert Frost, Mary Oliver, Billy Collins and John Updike.      .        .

Uhhhhhhhhh, obviously not to be. A few years ago after my parents died, and all their belongings were either picked up and skedaddled away to Goodwill and the City mission, I got a box of things that were left behind cards, report cards, and that mimeograph book of poetry that I didn’t even have a copy of from all those years of 1973.  It not only took me back to that senior year in high school, but to one of my first and favorite classes in college as an English major: CREATIVE WRITING  My professor,  DR. Peter Makuck, read my poetry and said that I “had a voice that needed to be shared.”  He proved it by giving me an  A  in the three creative writing classes that I took with him.  But I had another vision that I thought I couldn’t deviate from or incorporate, that of becoming a minister.  This, can’t-take-your-eye-off-the-prize goal also kept me from not additionally getting a teaching degree, also.          .          .

Now nearly 50 years of doing ministry, I found out that you could be more than one thing in doing just one thing which is why I’ve been a hospice chaplain for nearly 32 years as well as still being a parish pastor, at the current setting at North Royalton Christian Church now for 31 years.

I recently reread the poem that Charles Bukowski wrote called NIRVANA,  a poem that we studied in creative writing. I once again had that, “A-HA,” moment that I had back there when I was a 18-year-old kid.  It was a question that I just recently heard echoed from one of my favorite speakers named Neal Foard.  After hem, too,  read the poem, he shared the same thought and said the same things that I had  written in the margins of that crumpled up poem that was given to us on a, yes, mimeograph copy all the way back in my 1973 Creative Writing class of not only noticing, but not missing THE MAGIC by not “getting back on the Bus”   I still remember sitting in the circle of 8 others in that class on that Fall afternoon when Dr Makuck asked us about our comfort, of our ‘sure thing’ of our, ‘ I gotta do it. I should do it, and what would people think if I didn’t do it’ kind of life style.         .          .

All of these years later.          .          .and now reading this Bukowski’s poem again and sharing it with you:

NIRVANA

Not much chance
Completely cut loose from purposeHe was a young man ridingA bus through North CarolinaOn the way to somewhere and it began to snowAnd the bus stopped at aLittle cafe in the hillsAnd the passengers enteredAnd he sat at the counter withThe others and he ordered the food arrivedAnd the meal was particularly goodAnd the coffeeThe waitress was unlike the women he’d knownShe was unaffectedAnd there was a natural humorWhich came from herAnd the fry cook said crazy things and theDishwasher in back laughed a good, cleanPleasant laugh and the young man watched theSnow through the windowAnd he wanted to stay in that cafe foreverThe curious feeling swam through himThat everything was beautiful thereAnd it would always stay beautiful thereAnd then the bus driver told the passengersThat it was time to boardAnd the young man thoughtI’ll just stay here, I’ll just stay hereBut then he rose and he followedThe others into the busHe found his seat and he lookedAt the cafe through windowThen the bus moved off, down a curveDownward, out of the hillsThe young man looked straight forwardAnd he heard the other passengersSpeaking of other thingsOr they were reading or trying to sleepAnd they hadn’t noticed the magicAnd the young man put his headTo one side, closed his eyesAnd pretended to sleepThere was nothing else to do-Just to listen to the sound of the engineAnd the sound of the tires in the snow

.          .          .and now you’ve read the poem NIRVANA.          .          . read it again.          .          .

Seriously.          .         .Are you not screaming to that kid, “DON’T GET BACK ON THAT BUS!”

Or.         .         . or is it more after all these years, that Charles Bukowski through that poem is shouting to you, to that scared, gotta-play-it-safe KID  in you, “NOTICE THE MAGIC.     .      .DON’T GET BACK ON THAT BUS!”  

It’s OK, you know,  for you to have a passion that you have, for you to acknowledge what makes your heartbeat like a war drum waiting to go into battle, and then to follow it or at least not squash or squelch it, because after all, you really don’t have a purpose in life, you have PURPOSES.  MEANINGS,  DESTINIES  REASONS,  They are all gloriously PLURAL!  Your heart was created to live as many of them as you possibly can, not just for the fulfillment of your life, but oh yeah, for the betterment of someone else’s.          .         .

BA-BA-BA-BOOM

NOW, EXCUSE ME.          .          .
I’ve got a got a Bus,
N          O          T
b o a r d

JUST A MOMENT: DESTRUCTION TO CONSTRUCTION

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There are experiences none of us sign up to share, or to have one of those happen-to-be-total-destruction-utter-elimination-teardownS, where you feel mangled, jangled and never to be new-fangled.      .      .Discarded.          .          .

No one ever wants to feel like this and yet in just a moment, we know what makes us feel exactly like that because we’ve had an experience like that. We’ve had multiple experiences like that. You may be going through an experience like that right now when you feel totally destroyed, utterly discarded and unusable.

But in just a moment, we also know what it means to be, no pun intended, under construction.          .          .

To be built up again.  We know what feeds us; we know what’s sustains us. We know what makes us better. Right now, in just a moment, we know what brings flame to our wick. We know what enlightens us and in just a moment, even when we feel totally unconstructed, we know what builds us up and we know in just a moment, what we do to build up another when they feel under total destruction.

(But do we.      .     .will we.         .          .)

A WALK FOR PEACE

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This song is lovingly dedicated to the monks who walk for peace, compassion, and harmony. Their quiet footsteps remind us of mindfulness, kindness, and unity.

On October 25, 2025, 19 Buddhist monks based in Fort Worth, Texas, started a “Walk for Peace” that would take them on a 2,300 mile, 108 day journey to Washington, DC. With no fanfare, signs or calls to action – just one step after another –  the walk ended on February 10, 2026 at the Washington National Cathedral. Along the route that crossed ten states, supported by volunteers and community members and accompanied by Aloka the Peace Dog, the monks demonstrated that peace already lives in each of our hearts and minds, and that to access our own peace, we must practice loving kindness, compassion, hope and unity.


So as the world whirls around us let us
MONK UP
and walk a little more
and worry a little
l   e   s   s
and worry less
with One Another.    .      .

THE GRIEF OF LOVING

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He was C.S. Lewis. Oxford don. Christian apologist. Author of Narnia. A man who could explain love with surgical precision but had never truly felt it tear him apart.

For decades, he lived in his head. Books and debates. Pipes and lectures. He had friendships—kept polite, intellectually stimulating, emotionally distant. He believed himself too old, too settled, too armored for the chaos of romantic love.

Then Joy Davidman wrote him a letter.

She was everything that should have repelled him. American. Divorced. A former atheist who’d converted—not through philosophy, but through raw spiritual crisis. A poet. A mother of two boys. Sharp. Fearless. The kind of woman who didn’t soften her opinions for men’s comfort.

He replied out of courtesy.

Courtesy became correspondence. Correspondence became friendship. And friendship became something that terrified the man who’d spent his life analyzing the human soul without ever fully exposing his own.

When her visa expired and Britain prepared to deport her, he offered marriage. But only on paper. A legal convenience. Nothing more. He told himself it was charity. An act of Christian duty.

Then the doctors gave her months to live.

Cancer. Bone. Spreading fast.

And facing her death, this man who’d lectured thousands about divine love finally understood what it meant to be shattered by human love.
He married her again—this time before God. Not for paperwork. Not for companionship. For love. The love he’d locked away since childhood. The vulnerability he’d spent sixty years avoiding.

They were granted a miracle: three years of remission. Three years of walking together. Laughing. Debating. Simply being alive in each other’s presence. He later called it “a feast after years of famine.”

She made him more human than he’d ever allowed himself to be.

Then the cancer returned.

On her final night, she whispered: “You made me happy.”

And to the chaplain: “I am at peace with God.”

She was gone by evening.

The grief nearly killed him. The scholar who’d written confidently about suffering now found himself drowning in it. So he did the only thing he knew how to do.

He wrote.

Not theology this time. Not apologetics. But raw, unfiltered anguish—questioning everything, clawing through darkness, searching for meaning in the wreckage of the greatest love he’d ever known.

That book became A Grief Observed—one of the most honest meditations on loss ever written.

C.S. Lewis spent six decades protecting himself from pain.

Joy Davidman taught him that some things are worth the breaking.

And sometimes, the most profound transformation comes from finally letting down the walls we’ve spent a lifetime building.

YES.              .              .YES.            .             .Valentine’s Day is over and most if not all of its goods have been sold for 50-75% off already

P       R      O      V       I      N      G
that
G R I E F
doesn’t exist without
L
O
V
E
which is always priceless
and never ON SALE
but always FREE
(if freely given)

JUST A MOMENT: THE GRIT OF OUR GRIT

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It doesn’t matter if you’re religious or not, the universal truth is the universal truth, which is from dust we come and to dust we return; it’s not a new revelation that we’ve known where we came from and we know where we’re going to  return,  but it’s the NOW;  it’s THE MOMENT  that lets us know there’s so many moments in our lives; lifetimes within lifetimes,  which define us, and more, lets us know we have a grit about us that’s much stronger than any ash or speck of dust that’s ever challenged us.

GUILTY:  I wrote this poem weeks before Ash Wednesday, as a matter fact, because I was having an Ash Wednesday Moment where I felt just about as low as a speck of dirt and even less meaningful. We live Ash Wednesday moments almost on a daily basis because we don’t live in a perfect world and we certainly are not perfect people. And yet, and yet, look at how much we can accomplish by being more than just a mere speck of dust that we ever seem day by day to be returning. So, rise up and let the wind take you where it may, and as it does, leave your smudge, your mark along the way.      .      .      .

Bits of grit
the Wind
scatters us
where it will
as we travel
to destinations
not yet GPSable
but have waited
an Eternity
to welcome every
irritating speck
of us
Home
(however we define it)
(wherever we find it)
or it unearths

OUR POWER
IS FOUND 
BY RECOGNIZING 
THAT AS MERE SPECKS 
WE ARE NOT A PART OF A MOUNTAIN
BUT THE MOUNTAIN IS A PART OF
U S

AMERICA NEEDS NEIGHBORS LIKE YOU

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There were so many commercials a week ago during the Super Bowl; some of them really funny and most very creatively done with and without AI

Did you have a favorite?  I knew immediately, this one from Refin/Rocket Mortgage, was going to be mine.

Yes, as the title suggests: AMERICA NEEDS NEIGHBORS LIKE YOU and the question that keeps bouncing around in my gray matter is: DO THEY REALLY NEED A NEIGHBOR LIKE ME?

THERE IS LOVE

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In the fall of 1969, Paul Stookey received a request he couldn’t refuse.

His bandmate and close friend Peter Yarrow was getting married to Mary Beth McCarthy. Peter asked Paul if he would write a song to bless the ceremony.

Stookey immediately said yes. But privately, he knew this wouldn’t be his song to write.

A few days before the wedding, Stookey retreated to the small basement studio in his Connecticut home. He tuned his 12-string guitar, sat in silence, and prayed.

“Lord,” he asked, “nothing would bless this wedding ceremony more than Your presence. How would You manifest Yourself?”

Then he picked up a pencil and began to write.

For the next hour, lyrics poured through him. He didn’t feel like he was composing — he felt like he was transcribing. The words spoke of love, commitment, and the sacred presence that emerges when two people join their lives together.

“He is now to be among you at the calling of your hearts…”

When Stookey finished, he had something he had never created before: a prayer disguised as folk music.

On October 18, 1969, at St. Mary’s Catholic Church in Willmar, Minnesota, Stookey stood before the congregation as best man and sang the song for the first time. It was meant to be a private gift — a blessing for two people he loved.
He assumed it would never be performed again.

But weeks later, at a Peter, Paul and Mary concert, Peter leaned over and made a request. His wife was in the audience. Would Paul sing the song for her?

Paul hesitated. “I couldn’t do that,” he said. “It was just for your wedding.”
Peter asked again.

So Paul stepped to the microphone and sang. The audience went still. Something in that simple melody — earnest, vulnerable, unpolished — touched people in ways Stookey hadn’t anticipated.

He kept singing it. And people kept asking for it.

When Peter, Paul and Mary disbanded in 1970, Stookey recorded the song for his solo debut album. “Wedding Song (There Is Love)” was released as a single in 1971. It reached number 24 on the Billboard Hot 100 and number 3 on the Easy Listening chart.

But here’s what made the story extraordinary.

Stookey refused to claim authorship.

He believed the song had been given to him, not created by him. So he established the Public Domain Foundation to receive every royalty the song would ever generate. He kept nothing.

Over the decades, that foundation has distributed more than two million dollars to charities around the world — soup kitchens, hospitals, children’s programs, and causes Stookey will never meet.

“Wedding Song” has since been performed at countless weddings across America. It has been covered by Petula Clark, Captain & Tennille, Mary MacGregor, and dozens of others. It has become, by some measures, the most requested modern wedding song in the country.

And Paul Stookey has never taken a dime.

When asked about the song years later, Stookey kept it simple.

“Into every songwriter’s life comes a song, the source of which cannot be explained by personal experience.”

He wrote it in an hour. He gave it away forever.

Sometimes the most powerful gifts are the ones we don’t keep.

#ThereIsLove #GiveItAway
~Lovely USA
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WAIT.            .            .WHAT.            .            .              ?

What does this have to do with Friday the 13th or, oh yeah, Valentine’s Day tomorrow.              .              .             ?

Uhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.            .            .NOT ONE THING.              .           .(but an immeasurable MANY THINGS, huh?)

JUST A MOMENT: DO YOU GET MY DRIFT?

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The phrase “do you get my drift?” means “Do you understand the general idea, insinuation, or implication of what I’m saying, even if I haven’t explicitly stated it?”. It’s a way to ask if someone has followed your train of thought or grasped the underlying meaning of your words.

Here’s a little about its origin:

•  Early 16th Century: The word “drift” in this context began to be used figuratively to mean the general course, tenor, or intention of speech or writing. This sense of “drift” is recorded as early as 1526.

•  Connection to “Drive”: The word “drift” itself has roots in “drive,” which in the 13th century had meanings related to moving something with force or proceeding with a definite intention. This sense of intentional direction informed the meaning of “drift”.

•  Later Nautical Influence: While some sources suggest a nautical origin (sailors understanding ocean currents ), this seems to have come later. The idea of a ship “drifting” (moving in a particular direction even if not explicitly steered) later reinforced the idiom’s meaning of understanding an underlying direction or intention.

IN JUST A MOMENT we know this WAY, WAY  different than a snow drift, right?  But,  the question is, do we always mean something other than what we say or how about this:  “I know what I’m saying but I have no idea what you’re hearing.          .          .

MEANINGS, both what is meant and what is understood and then our reactions to both, well.       .       . in just a moment, we certainly know the differences don’t we, no explanations necessary?   but just for the fun of it.           .           . DO YOU GET MY DRIFT

N E I G H B O R

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Without a doubt, these are strange times right now aren’t they?

Maybe we’ve been asking the wrong questions, especially lately. . . .

Maybe it is not so much:
WHO IS MY NEIGHBOR?
as it
WHO’S NOT MY NEIGHBOR?
or easier still:
WON’T YOU BE MY NEIGHBOR?  
And I mean, come on .            .           .
when Lady Gaga poses the question
how could you not answer it
and just as much in a powerful way
as she asks it.            .            .
but even more so as
Mr. Rogers
has wanted it to be answered.          .          .
(By.    .    .FOR.       .       .Each   of   US)

PROTECTIVE MONSTERS

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PROTECTIVE MONSTERS

The sharp icicles
drolled sharply from the gutter
like angry teeth
waiting for the dark
to shadow them from devouring
all that you unknowingly fear the most
Or maybe to growl back
all you lovingly cherish and protect               
the best
Protective Monsters
so that sleeping well                                 
comes as a gift                                              
ripped opened gladly
because of these
Guardians of my past
Preservers of my presence
Shielders of my yet to be’s.

Nature has a way of showing us what we don’t always recognize, sometimes Season by Season.     .      .

These magnificent STALACTiTES of Ice always reminded me as a kid (and now again) of MONSTER TEETH and to chase my fear away when I’d wake up in the middle of the night and see these ferocious fangs outside of my bedroom window.  I’d chase my fearful thoughts away by thinking if they were in fact, MONSTER TEETH, maybe they weren’t hear to chew me up but to eat away anything that would dare approach me or my family.         .         .

Protective Monsters
so that sleeping well                                 
comes as a gift                                              
ripped opened gladly
because of these
GUARDIANS OF MY PAST

PRESERVERS OF MY PRESENCE

SHIELDERS OF MY YET TO BE’S

 

Professional Speaker, Author, Assurance Man