On the news today, they reported the President Jimmy Carter is being put on hospice care. For me, it feels like an auspicious moment in my life. He was sworn in as President in 1976. I was only four years old. I don’t remember everything from when I was a toddler, but I do remember some things. The election of President Carter was one of them. It’s silly, but one of the main reasons I remember it so well it is one of the few times in my life when the person I hoped would be elected President actually was elected President.
The news reported all of President Carter’s accomplishments and how he truly made the world a better place. I appreciate that about him. As I think about his life, it seems like he had his feet and his heart so firmly on this Earth. I think to be able to do massive accomplishments or atrocities in life, a person might need that.
I don’t really want to compare myself, but the abuse I suffered and the way I already felt gave me this feeling of disconnection from the world. I care about my brothers and sisters. I realize that I am connected to them and want to be able to connect them, but at the same time, I feel like they are firmly rooted to the Earth and I feel like it’s all a beautiful journey. My body is like a boat and the world and my life are like a river. That river is constantly changing and who I really am isn’t the vessel that carries me down the river, but what the vessel carries.
I just had this amazing weird thought of a river boat flowing into an ocean and the waves breaking it up into a million pieces. I wonder if that is what death is like. My boat just gets so old that it falls apart and breaks down into a million little pieces. The being on the vessel goes back into what it was before the journey began.
I pray for peace for Jimmy Carter’s family and thank God for his life.
My faith saved me. May God’s peace reside in all of our hearts.
