Who Cares - What Matters
Sometimes we are so busy trying to mind our P’s and Q’s
that we actually miss the ABC’s
of Life and Living
until we look and yes,
hear them in a different
but not-to-be-forgotten-way. . .
Especially when we’re STOOGIN’
around. . .
Now about those
X
Y
and Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz’s
The Woods Are Lovely — But They’re Also Dark
I used to think I had Robert Frost figured out. . .
(I mean, come on, I was a hot-shot-I-know-everything poetry-poet-English major)
Frost was the safe poet.
The classroom poet.
The “two roads diverged” guy printed on posters in guidance offices.
Snow. Woods. Quiet reflections. Soft wisdom. . .
I didn’t dislike him.
I just didn’t think he had anything sharp enough to cut me.
Then I learned a little about what was behind the closed curtain of his life.
And I haven’t read him the same way since.
He buried four of his children.
F O U R. . .
One died at three years old.
One as an infant.
One at twenty-nine after childbirth.
One by suicide.
Another daughter struggled with severe mental illness.
His wife, Elinor Miriam White, endured loss after loss until her own body gave out.
And suddenly the poems didn’t feel like nature sketches.
They felt like someone breathing through pain.
When I read:
“The woods are lovely, dark and deep…”
I don’t hear or feel cozy winter anymore.
I hear that quiet temptation we don’t always talk about.
The temptation to stop.
To sit down in the snow of our own exhaustion.
To not keep pushing when life feels heavier than we expected,
like an avalanche that is anything but gentle snowman-like.
Maybe you know that feeling too.
Not dramatic. Not cinematic.
Just tired.
And then the line that follows:
“But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep.”
That doesn’t sound poetic to me anymore.
It sounds like a decision.
A choice to keep showing up.
And that hits differently when you realize the man writing it had already buried a child — and would bury more.
I used to treat “The Road Not Taken”
like a badge of independence.
Be bold.
Choose differently.
Take the path no one else takes. . .
But Frost wrote it with irony, partly inspired by his friend Edward Thomas, who constantly second-guessed his decisions.
The roads in the poem are described as nearly the same.
That undoes me a little.
Because I’ve spent so much time wondering if I chose the right road.
What if I had. . .
What if I hadn’t. . .
What if I’d been braver. . .
But maybe the power isn’t in choosing perfectly.
Maybe it’s in walking fully. . .
What moves me most isn’t just his grief.
It’s that he kept going.
Before success, he failed — at farming, at stability, at being recognized. He was nearly forty before his poetry truly took off. He moved his family to England out of equal parts desperation and hope.
I need that reminder.
Because sometimes I feel behind. Sometimes I feel late. Sometimes I feel like everyone else got the map earlier than I did.
And then I remember: timelines are illusions.
You can begin again at almost any age.
There’s a story about him standing at the inauguration of John F. Kennedy at eighty-six years old. The sun was too bright for him to read the poem he’d written.
So he set it aside and recited another from memory.
No panic. No apology. Just presence.
I think about that a lot.
Life will glare at you sometimes. The plan won’t work. The page will blur.
What do you do then?
You offer what you’ve carried inside you all along.
Learning the fuller truth about Frost hasn’t made me admire him in a distant, pedestal way.
It’s made me more honest with myself.
It’s made me ask:
Where am I tempted to stop?
Where am I romanticizing a different road instead of walking the one in front of me?
Where do I need to keep a promise — even quietly?
And maybe the bigger question:
How do I live in a way that inspires the people around me to reflect on their own woods?
Not by preaching.
Not by pretending life is easy.
But by being honest about the dark parts — and choosing to walk anyway.
Because maybe that’s what strength really looks like.
Not grand speeches.
Not perfect choices.
Just this:
The woods are lovely.
They are dark.
They are deep.
And still —
WE WALK. . .
we walk on and on and on and. . .
Sometimes. . .every so often, it feels that what is left behind isn’t anything that is good, if in fact, the remnants of what is left behind, seems like it’s anything but good, unless we rub our eyes, squint a little harder and look at it a different way and remember, what exactly brought it there in our lives to begin with. . .
So the next time that something seems stubbornly unremovable. . .blink once. . . blink twice. . . rub your eyes three times and take a look at it in a different way until you at least see it a little bit differently or. . .
Being willing to see a little bit differently in just a moment. . .
And who knows you just might see a Snowman
who wanted to be seen
in just another way
before he went another way. . .
What would you say to your seven-year-old self? Play more? Don’t yell so loud? How about ‘stay weird’… as one nine year old puts it. As we move through our lives, our many experiences, mistakes and accomplishments shape how we live in the world. Hindsight is an amazing thing, and the ability to look back and consider what we could have done is a bitter-sweet feeling, as there’s no reliving the past. We can, however, shape our future. As part of CBC Radio One’s farewell video from WireTap, people from all walks of life offer their sage advice to their younger selves. This light hearted, touching and insightful video is all about hindsight. ‘Dear 53 year old, it’s never too late to try something new’. ‘Dear 85 year old, indulge your sweet tooth.’ Want to know what advice a 93 year old would give? Take a look. . .
And now the bestest advice of all:
Y O U R S
What advice have you to not only your younger
S E V L E S
but to the magnificent future
Y O U
Ok, here’s the Truth of my TRUTH. . .Uhhh. . . I never have a shortage of words. I always have something to say ask Erin she’ll tell you I talk even in my sleep, but sometimes even though I have a lot to say there’s a lot more going on in my mind that I don’t say and even more in my heart that I can’t say so every once in a while, I run across something that says it much better than I can and when I find that at a moment that I’m not even looking for it, I share it~~ENJOY or at least reflect, especially as the world feels a little shattered. . .
Me: Hey God. God: Hello, My love. Me: The world is completely out of control! God: I know. It's such an adventure, right? Me: No! It's like being on a runaway train! I need to feel like I am in control of my life. God: You want to be in control? Me: Yes! God: You are living on a spinning wet rock of a planet that resides next to a constantly exploding fireball in the middle of an ever-expanding universe that is filled with mysteries beyond your wildest imagination. Me: Um, okay.... God: And on this planet that you are hurtling through the great expanse in - you are coexisting with billions of other people who have free-will and their own experiences that shape their perspectives and beliefs. Me: Yeah...? God: And while all this is going on your soul is residing in a physical body that is such a miracle of delicate engineering that at any given moment could produce its last heartbeat. Me: Right... God: What is it about your existence that you think you have any control of? Me: Um… God: Come on - you know the answer to this. What can you control? Me: How kind I am to people? God: Yep and one other thing. Me: What's that? God: How kind you are to yourself. Aside from that - most of everything else is a bit outside of your design. Me: This is a bit terrifying... God: All great adventures are! **** ~ john roedel
Art by Valery Rybakow Sometimes when SOMEBODY else says something it's good to PAUSE LISTEN and SHAREThank you, John Roedel for being a special SOMEBODY
We are so much more than just a metaphor or some fancy beautiful analogy. We are the real deal. . .well most of the time; being that real deal means getting, well, REAL HONEST and being even somewhat honest, it’s a valid question: WHAT FILLS US YOUR CUP?
What is worth sharing. . . Now?
We all want to say that it’s KINDNESS
COMPASSION
JOY
LOVE
THAT IT IS LOVE. . .
But we also know that sometimes THAT CUP is filled with some pretty bitter tasting stuff and yeah, we drank it and sometimes we spit it out and yeah, sometimes that’s what overflows from us, too. . .
That’s kind of what we share. . . the difference.
What do you share and what are you intentional about sharing?
Yuppers~~in just a moment we not only know ~~WE DO
So when the rest if the world is asking the proverbial,
“WHAT’S IN YOUR WALLET?”
maybe it should be wondering a ditch deeper:
WHAT’S IN YOUR CUP
And more importantly. . .
WHAT ARE YOU SHARING
Most people have a negative image of graffiti and “tagging.” However, there are a group of grandmas and a few grandpas in Lisbon, Portugal, who are encouraged to create street art through workshops given by an organization called Lata 65. This video is a tribute to one of the “crew.” Meet Luísa Cortesão, a graffiti grandma who never let age impede her imaginative spirit
As we age we seem to act and feel that what we have to say, what we have to show dims as much as the LIGHT we once have but feel or or have been told are fading. . .that maybe our MATTER just doesn’t MATTER anymore. . .
Q U E S T I O N
How are you making your
M A R K
on the world. . . ?
The world is a big canvas
that is begging for the
A R T
only you can bring
BRING IT
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
. . .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
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. . .)
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. . .
