Sunday, November 8, 2026
A poem I wrote this weekend, after witnessing the event described at the school where I work.
SAINTS AMONG US
God Within Us
Lord, let me be like Saint Elizabeth.
No, not the mother of John,
but Saint Elizabeth of Fourth Grade,
who came upon a younger girl
eating lunch alone while classmates
visited and laughed at a table nearby,
and Elizabeth confronted them all, saying
“Can’t one of you sit with her? Please?”
And the miracle required for sainthood
was that first one girl and then two more
picked up their lunch trays
and moved to join the lonely girl
while Elizabeth skipped away
and the angels rejoiced.
On Sunday mornings I weigh myself, and as of today have lost 60 pounds. It took me 19 months. Slow and consistent. I lost the first 30 pounds by eating less and moving more after a doctor at the Cleveland Clinic gave me a “come to Jesus” talk. After that initial success I hit a plateau, and so began to badger my doctor and appeal insurance denials until I got on a GLP-1 medication (Zepbound). I subsequently lost another 30 pounds and remain on a GLP-1 maintenance dose. It’s not easy, but it’s also not impossible.
Losing weight, once beyond our youth,
is like stopping a Great Lakes freighter
after it has started down the channel;
it takes forever to reverse the propellers
and begin to move slowly
back towards open water.
My book, SLOW RIVERS (ISBN 979-8-218-43822-7), can be ordered through your local bookstore or online via bookshop.org, where one can specify a particular bookstore to benefit from the purchase. You will also find Slow Rivers on Amazon, and I am grateful to those who buy it there, but does Jeff Bezos really need the money?
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Joseph Neely, all rights reserved.
