Author Archives: P. F. Kapela

While getting the Walmart grocery order earlier today, Carol and I talked about getting various items which we would need in the coming days and weeks. We were “preparing.” In my youth the Boy Scouts prepared and trained us to be prepared, to be alert! In 1907, Baden-Powell, an English soldier, devised the Scout motto: Be […]

Always ready! Being prepared sets up for success. Growing up in the Midwest, my dad taught us to have a bag of either sand and/or cat litter in the trunk to get ready for ice and snow. Also, a blanket and some food! I would submit and suggest that this applies to our current situation […]

Our church is using a book “The Land Between” as the format for a sermon series and small discussions. “Being between” both expresses and challenges us to go “from” the past and go “to” the future. For a real and scary connection is seen in the “flyer” or “trapeze artist” who must let go of […]

I am getting “cabin fever” and wanting to do something else. The following from James Lee Burke in Creole Belle provide both context and wisdom. “My experience has been that when people are frightened and do not understand the historical changes taking place around them, they seek magic and power to solve their problems.” “Every […]

In this current time of “staying in place, there is the joy of holding hands with those with whom we are “in place,’ such is the case of Carol and me. Then there is pain of not touching others such as hugging grand kids. Yet, now I find my hands also reaching out to others […]

We have women our life. The first woman in our life gave us life! The next woman in our life now, our spouse, gives us love and so much more! Thanks to that woman in my life,Carol, I have started reading The Women of Easter. The author, Liz Curtis Higgs, writes elegantly, powerfully, and poignantly […]

These words can either presage more pain or prophesy helpful hope! In my experience a switch was triggered which turned on the light and dispelled the darkness. A tipping point overcame the gravity and gravitas of the past and rolled the ball forward. However each person envisions or names the “More” in life, the “More” […]

Grief I feel you. I fear you. When if I feel you Will I ever wake up? Will I be free from fearing of forgetting those that I miss. Embrace you, I fear While you are so near? Like a thundering, cloudy storm cloud You cover me like a shroud and a shawl. And yet […]

A wise person centuries ago wrote in Proverbs15:23”It is a wonderful thing to say the right thing at the right time.” In my younger years the words which blurted and often erupted were hardly wonderful. Being the product of a Catholic school, thanks to our nuns, I kept the confessional busy! But there was one […]

“How is your day going,” brings a smile on ZOOM when one participant asks that question and then listens, without interruption. Poet John Albert Holmes said, ‘It’s well to remember that the entire population of the universe, with one trifling exception, is composed of others.’ True compassion connects us to the grief of others. A […]