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At my age, and in my medical condition, I think I have good reason to believe this is late stage is also the last stage or phase of my earthly existemce, and that God's mercy embodied and bestowed by His Son, my Savior, is preparing me for that eventual departure; wbenever it comes, and I do not fear it.  I realize that what I am about to write may be too dull for most readers, but I want to preserve it on the record, and the best site for that is PostPoems.

From time to time, I review my past, attempting to find a pattern in it---especially in what was the most momentous continuous period of my life, the period that ran from Monday, October 13th, 1975 through Sunday, January 2nd, 1977.  

When I was in third and fourth grade, we had a specific period, each day, that was devoted to spelling lessons and vocabulary expansion.  And, in each week, two tests were given:  a trial test on Wednesday, and a final test on Friday.  Those who scored perfectly, or one hundred percent, on Wednesday were not required to take that weeks final on Friday.  (I do not mean to brag, but I rarely took a Friday final test.)

I now realize that this late stage, however short or long it proves to be, is like the Friday finals, and the period of my past that has meant so much to me is like the Wedbesday trial test.  I did not score perfectly on the trial test:  there are several failures, or manifestations of my naive immaturity, during that time.  I know a little better this time around.

Another pattern also obtains, and I will describe it here.  That period October 13th, 1975, through January 2nd, 1977, can be divided into three phases.  The first phase, October 13th, 1975 through September 8th, 1976 represents only itself; it is the period of time when my thought patterns, at least as far as I could discern them then seemed to be forming on their own.  I was able, for the first time in my entire life, realize that I had an identity that was not an adjunct of my parents' and did not depend upon them for validation.  Ths identity was, then, called Starwatcher; now it is named J-Called.

The next period, September 9th through November 23rd, 1976 corresponds, the period of my first term at college, corresponds to my mundane life after I graduated, from June, 1980 through and up to the appearance of this present medical affliction on November 29th of 2019.  My first term at college required radical adjustment, as did my working career and the mundane life I lived in this world up until Thanksgiving day, November 28th, 2019.  Not all of my experience of that first term at college was unpleasant; some of it was very delightful.  Some of it was excruciating---the separation from my best friend (called, in my poems, J-Wave, because our mundane names are actually similar), the separation from the community of c.b. channel 22 in our local vicinity; and separation from my very loyal Cocker Spaniel, Monica.  Tha period at college culminated in the four days I spent reading Pasternak's novel, Doctor Zhivago, which, as a film I first saw in 1970 and in the novel I read at the end of that first collegiate term, was my first introduction to the Orthodox Church and its Faith.  

The remaining period, November 23rd, 1976 (that date's evening) through the afternoon of January 2, 1977, represents this present, and what I believe to be the last, stage of my life.  In that period, I was amazed to return to my home town after approximately ten weeks' absence, to find out that those most precious aspects of my life remained untouched and unsevered by the separation:  my friendship with J-Wave; the preservation of my handle and identity on channel 22 (although, during my absence, some kid attempted to approriate my handle for his own use and was met, each time he attempted to speak, with the dreaded dead key until, after numerous dead keys, he withdrew from the channel altogether); and the canine love and loyalty of my dog, Monica.  And I realize, in this present time, how many aspects of my life can last right up until the moment I depart.  And, just as that original period (considered as one phase and not in its three parts) was a pre-test, which I failed, so this present phase, during which I write this, is a kind of final test in which I can demonstrate, by living correctly, what I have learned.

I will add one thing.  During much of my life, even after I beczme a Christian on January 9thm 1994, I had a kind of problem with the Fatherhood of God, because the concept of Fatherhood reminded me too much of my own parents.  Also, many of the people with whom I worshipped were a little enamored with the wrath of God, and with the attitude toward sinners they ascribed to Him.  And of course, there was always that idea that Jesus died on the cross to appease His Father.  That is why I love the theology of the Orthodox Faith that emphasizes God's love for humankind (like is stated in John 3:16 that the self-righteous repeat so often they no longer recognize its meaning), and that Jesus died into death in order to shatter it, and therefore to shatter its hold on me, rather than as a mere appeasement to a wrathful God.  

J-Called