June 20, 2023- I had lunch with a good friend, in a restaurant run by another good friend. This was the high point of a day that was intentionally low key. I needed to regroup, after the intensity of the camps and yesterday’s clean-up, and spending an hour or so with Akuura was a good way to relax. It’s been a while, due to my being busy with camp, so we covered a lot of ground. Emileigh, as always, was solicitous, while being low key-just a delightful young lady.

That brings me to the whole matter of “friend” vs. “acquaintance”. In tonight’s Zoom call, a session of the ongoing “Copper 2 Gold” series on Race Unity, a few people made a strong case for being discerning, in using the term “friend”. I have a different take. I consider people friends, even if we barely know one another, if I sense that they have my best interests at heart, and are kind, overall, to other people as well. “Acquaintance” is a term with which I have a hard time, mainly because people I trusted, in the past, have referred to me as such, in a standoffish and negative way. Having felt like an outsider, too often in the past, I use the term in my own speech to refer to those I meet once or twice, like a clerk in a store that I don’t frequent.

Spring has come to an end, and with it, the academic year of 2022-23; the Bellemont camp season; my tenure as Study Circle Coordinator, in Prescott Cluster (area)- a Baha’i volunteer position, which rotates every five or six years; and the intense phase of my weight reduction program (202-38= 164). What Spring sprung was a keener sense of self-worth and a better ability to help others, without putting myself behind the Eight Ball.

Now comes summer-much of it to be spent here at Home Base, or within a day’s drive. It’ll be refreshing to be around for the Fourth of July and another friend’s milestone birthday. Of course, a drive up north will take up two weeks in the latter part of July and the end of summer will find me back east, for Mom’s latest milestone. In between, barring Red Cross emergencies, I will be here in the place that the gracious Divine has set aside for my well-being.