Amor Ergo Sum

  We went to a 60th birthday party of a dear friend last week. Twenty of us were there, and we were all commissioned to either write a poem celebrating our friendship and love of our friend or tell some story revealing his personality.  It was a wonderful evening and underlined for me the importance of friends as an extended family. We have that connection where age differences from toddlers to septenagerians (viva septenagarianism!!!) are nonexistent and compassion and acceptance are the order of the day every day.  No, it is not a utopia, but we embrace the collective WE.
     Poems were wonderful, stories were great even if you did not know the birthday boy.  Dinner superb. Laughter---life’s cure-all--- sustained and almost ribald.
     Let me leave you with one thing. A quote from Bill Coffin, former chaplain of Yale University.

    “Descartes said Cogito ergo sum --- I think therefore I am.
                         But I prefer
        Amor ergo sum    ---  I love therefore I am.”

                                                          W. S. Coffin
That about says it all.
Ciao, Ray