Family, Faith, Politics, and Perception: Finding the Pathways of Love

 It's been quite a month.

I entered the past several weeks beginning what I've called my "medical marathon," a series of blood tests, MRIs, X-rays, C-scans, and exams that, finally, thank God, led to cardiac, brain, kidney (and assorted gut companions) being cleared for healthy futures.

For this 72-year-old grandpa, I now can look forward to my wife Barbara's long-delayed retirement being reality. 

However, reality brings new challenges: how to deal with, plan for, and pay for long-awaited time together . . . at home, on the road in our RV, and, in finding ways to now explore beauty around us, in us, and among our families of both blood, adoption and spirit.

We're making a good start. But perfection being a mortal illusion, of course not all of these challenges will be, or are being met easily.

What's married life, though, without learning new ways to communicate, to love, to realize that our "golden years" will stir issues only addressed with respect each other, and our freedom to independent expression and practice?

Faith, for example. I left our joint Protestant Evangelical upbringing eight years ago. I thought, in those first years as a newly baptized Eastern Orthodox Christian, that eventually wife and family might join that journey, too.

Hasn't happened, and I've accepted that it may not. Faith has become a confusing, I admit somewhat lonely, continuum for me. Oh, not just in terms of that denominational one I learned about in college sociology classes, but of a tricky trek along metaphysical and philosophical forks in the cosmic road?

Nonetheless, acceptance and respect, seems to rule this particular familial microcosm of perception, belief, doubt, and practice. Love is the catalyst; and only God, who I have been taught is Love eternal that is beyond comprehension, knows the hearts of each and all.

To varying degrees, Faith has become a matter for avoidance at family get-togethers and conversations, whether in person or on phone calls and chats. Same with Politics.

It all come down to Truth. That is a real thing to me, but I know perceiving it is never complete.

A lifetime mulling what IT is has only brought a plethora of presumptions ranging from mildly nuanced to as diametrically opposed as in that ancient parable about the blind men describing their first meeting with an elephant.

And so it goes.

For me, Orthodox Saint Gabriel of Georgia gives a nudge onto the right path. 

You live your journey, he says, in loving non-judgment of others; if your "light" shines and loved ones, friends, and strangers ask ... you share through example, and answers that don't devolve into argument and ego-driven debates. 

We need to remember, Saint Gabriel suggested, that "In the Last Days a man will be saved by love, humility and kindness. 

"Kindness will open the gates of heaven; humility will leaded one into heaven; a man whose heart is filled with love will see God.

'This is my last will and testament: raise your prayers for everyone; your prayers will love mountains.

Love each other."

I'm trying, Gabe.