Recently, I posted some thoughts about the past year. Life changed quite a bit during 2023, with a move from Michigan to Wisconsin, going from living alone to living in a communal setting, and from living in a different state than my sons to living less than an hour’s drive from each. I wrote in the earlier post about the household where I live, my relationships, my new city, and my new church. There are some additional things of note about the past year that I’ll write about in this post.

There’s been a change my prayer life. One resident at Barnabas House, where I live, had prayed the Liturgy of the Hours morning and evening for about a year before my arrival, and had tried to get others in the house to join him, with limited success. The Liturgy of the Hours (also known as the Divine Office) has ancient roots, going back to the prayers that St. Benedict developed for his monasteries. Each day, both the morning and evening prayers consist  of a couple Psalms, a canticle from elsewhere in scripture, a brief New Testament reading, the song of Zechariah (morning) or the Magnificat (evening), and some additional petitions concluding with the Lord’s Prayer. Since March I’ve joined in those prayers. Most days three of us pray the Liturgy together. In the past I had included psalms in my prayers, but never to this extent and never using such a formal liturgical structure. This type of prayer requires intentionality, focus, and the willingness to surrender control over the manner in which I pray. I’ve found that spoken liturgical praying keeps me engaged in prayer and attentive to the presence of God more consistently than I would be otherwise.

I still work part-time, seeing a handful of clients every week on a teletherapy platform. I still find it rewarding to help people deal with their emotional struggles. I also bought a duplex six blocks from where I live. One unit was rented when I bought it. I decided to move my furniture and household goods from storage into the other unit. That entailed a trip to St. Louis to rent a U-Haul, load up all the household furnishings I had in storage there, and bring everything to Milwaukee. My intent was to rent that unit out short-term. There’s a nurse who has a three-month contract with a local hospital that is supposed to move in the vacant unit tomorrow. The house needed some repairs, so owning it has been a rather expensive proposition so far. It’s also taken a fair amount of time on my part. Hopefully the finances will work out okay in the long run. I’ve enjoyed doing some minor repairs, arranging furniture, and getting the apartment ready to be occupied.

I have time to read or listen to audiobooks. At the house three of us read and discussed Tolkien’s “The Hobbit” and C.S. Lewis’ “The Great Divorce” together. I also applied for and got to take part in a number of online reading groups through The Catherine Project, which hosts online discussions each centered around significant works of literature. The books I’ve read and discussed there are Kierkegaard’s “Philosophical Fragments,” Dante’s “The New Life,” George Eliot’s “Middlemarch,” and Hannah Arendt’s “The Human Condition.” Reading with a group makes it easier to keep motivated, and I’ve really appreciated the opportunity to have serious literary and philosophical discussions with people who read carefully and think critically. I think my intellectual life is in decent shape.

I also have been physically active. I go to the gym and, when the weather is decent, jog or bike. When biking, I usually ride 10 minutes to a trail, then ride another 10 minutes down to a park alongside the Milwaukee lakefront. I eventually get to a path that goes alongside Lake Michigan and faces towards the downtown skyscrapers for about a quarter-mile, then circle around go back along the same route. The picture above was taken from the lakeside path. I really like seeing the lake in its various moods, When I jog, I head over to a nearby park and climb the hill there (the site of the city reservoir for 125 years until it was taken out of service and filled in with dirt about 20 years ago). There’s a great view of downtown, with the lake in the distance. Here’s a poem I wrote this past summer about jogging up that hill:

The hill once held a lake from which the thirsty city drank. 

Finally decrepit, it was filled with dirt, flattened at the top, 

and inlaid with paths. Pedestrians now walk where water was. 



Near dawn on Saturday, I jog through empty streets to the bottom 

of the hill, deciding that it’s worth expending breath and effort 

making the ascent. A minute, and I’m above the city, looking down. 

Treetops bloom below; in the distance buildings jut assuredly, 

commerce and cars abated to an understated murmur. 



I wonder whether God comes here to sit and watch, remembering 

generations which, synchronic with the reservoir, served the city 

well but now, like its remains, are resting underneath the soil.

As might be evident from the above, writing poetry is another way I spend my time. I write a poem every week. I did that for several years before and after the beginning of the 21^st century, and have done it again for the past 5 years. I hadn’t looked back at the poems I’ve written over the years until about six months ago, when I decided to review what I had in my files. I appreciated hearing my voice from across the years—what I had observed about life, nature, and people. I ended up selecting almost a hundred poems to put in a book I self-published. It’s titled Among the Fallen Trees: Poems of Midlife, and is available for purchase through Barnes & Noble at https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/book/1144456264?ean=9798855665468.

I haven’t traveled much this year. My dog Zoe is old, and I don’t want to leave her for long in the care of others. I did manage to fly to Florida two weeks ago to visit my sister Mary and her husband, who spend four months of the year in Inverness. I have gone to Chicago by train three times, mostly to go to the Art Institute of Chicago. I really enjoyed an exhibition of works by Van Gogh, George Seurat, and other avant-garde artists who painted in the Paris suburbs around 1880. I’ve gone to Grand Rapids a few times, staying with a cousin and getting together with friends.

My most interesting trip was unexpected. My sixteen-year-old grandson was supposed to go during June on an intensive three-day tour of the battlefield at Gettysburg planned by his other grandfather. Ten days beforehand “Grandpa Pete” was injured in a fall and unable to travel. I filled in at the last minute. It was great spending the time with Theo. I have never been particularly interested in military history, but I came away thinking that all Americans should have more than casual exposure to the Civil War. The tour guide lived and breathed Civil War history. He walked us (literally!) through each day of the battle, showing us where significant engagements took place and explaining all the ways that the battle could have gone differently were it not for a pertinent insight by one or another of the generals, the folly of leaders who didn’t know how to lead, or the heroism of ordinary men. I got the merest glimpse of the scale of the battle and the magnitude of the destruction. What tremendous sacrifice and determination it took to preserve the Union!

So, that’s a summary of my year. I may seem busy, but most days go by at a leisurely pace. Still, it’s a pretty full life. In some ways it seems unreal. How many people in their mid-70s live in a house with a bunch of single adults whose median age is less than 40? How many get to have communal prayer morning and evening? How many can see their children and grandchildren frequently? I’m surprised, and grateful. Each night, we pray Mary’s great canticle of praise from Luke 2, which includes the lines “The almighty has done great things for me, and holy is his name.” I can’t claim to have experienced great things, but, like her, I am deeply appreciative for what God has done for me.