Time may not really heal, but it does provide distance

I found out today that the founder of the religious congregation of which I was a member died last year. I hadn't known that. I find myself less impacted by the news than I might have expected to be some years ago.

This, the man I knew as Nuestro Padre.

The man I came to realize I didn't know nearly as well as I had thought.

That chapter is closed now. Further revelations about his life have come to light. But they leave me with a detached sadness. Little else.

And, oddly enough, that itself saddens me. For there is a wellspring within me that is fed from my time in the congregation.

Nothing is perfect, neither perfectly good nor perfectly bad. No one is perfect, neither perfectly good nor perfectly bad. And yet, and yet...

There is a wellspring within me that is fed from my time in the congregation. Much that is good in me flows from that. Much of what is real.

It is strange to contemplate the flaw that existed at the core of who they are with detached sadness. I feel oddly rudderless.