Shame

I rarely launch into political issues. Studies have shown that our brains work in the same way when we’re discussing politics as they do when we’re cheering for our teams. In other words, though the Cowboys would never get my vote, I think we should put more thoughtful consideration into discussion of how our nation needs to be functioning than when we are hoping our team pounds another into the turf and screaming to that effect. I ask for prayers for our leaders, not because I approve of what they do, but because I think they need our prayers. I’ve led communities, dealing with different opinions, visions, attitudes, and personalities and I know that any kind of leader, if they are to be anything but exercising their egos must have compassion and a sense of service at the core of all that they do. Our nation was founded on a system of checks and balances that demand treating each other with respect and a sense of hope for reconciliation between differing opinions that would allow them to work with each other as citizens, honoring them even if we disagree with them. President Trump does not approach his job or the citizens of this nations with any sort of respect or a humility that might allow him to serve them. The recent speech he gave in Charlottesville made me ashamed to have him as the president of this country. I don’t think he understands what it means to be humble and I worry that his appeals to the worst attitudes of hate, and violence, and racism in our nation affirms these horrors and gives courage to those who would rather preach and teach and live by these attitudes than work to be a light of hope and freedom to the world. I am proud I am an American. I take the vision of the Declaration of Independence, the Bill of Rights, and the invitation to the world carved into the base of Lady Liberty very seriously. But this President does not disagree with my vision of our nation. He spits on it to be popular. He needs to face himself and what he is doing. This isn’t politics. This is evil. If there ever was a time to pray for our leaders it is now. Pray that our president develops a sense of shame about what he is doing.

Crab

Every year for the past 10 years we go back to our honeymoon. It’s a one bedroom apartment overlooking a beach in Carolina, Emerald Isle. We sit under an umbrella, reading, Chris does needle point. We swim, we walk, we pick up shells, we relax. When we were both working it was a life saver. Now we go on vacation from retirement. It’s a retreat from normality. I was working my way through a Jim Butcher novel, playing in the sand with my toes when I picked up movement to my left. Gulls come in to investigate sometimes. We call them dump ducks. Anything on the beach is a potential source of food, including us. But this wasn’t a gull. Looking over I saw a crab sauntering toward my big toe. These crabs live down in the sand. They have holes dug and they don’t stray too far from them. Dump ducks prey on them. They’re shy for understandable reasons. Yet here came this dude with his eyes up on their stalks, moving toward me as if I was a rock or a plant. I whispered to Chris, pointing to him, or her. By the time she saw him Crabby was within a few inches of my foot, coming on strong. I wiggled my toe, he stopped. Then he took off running across the beach, in crab fashion, that is sideways. These guys are quick, like Zoom. Crabby did a jackknife into one of his holes. I wondered what brought him so close. I think we were so peaceful that we were just a part of the environment. I like that. I think we need to spend more time on the beach, more time close to the nature that sustains and supports us. I hope he didn’t have nightmares of the rock that wiggled.

The Invitation

Yesterday Chris was having a few friends over to play cards. They play what I call ‘Hoof and Mouth.’ I don’t think that’s the real name, but I can remember it, so… Anyway it’s been raining lately, which sounds so lame compared to the Noah-esk deluges that have been falling, accompanied by active evidence of Seraphim and Cherubim (that’s Bible geek for Lightning and Thunder). The aforementioned card game gave me a deadline, which turned into a race to get the expanse mowed not only before the visitation but also to beat the next monsoon. I have a walk-behind mower, much to the dismay of anyone who hears of it. They get concerned and want to take an offering to get me a second hand ride mower. Why should I punish myself? More to their dismay, I inform them that I enjoy it. So, I was chasing the grass eating machine around the yard, sweating in the pre-deluge humidity and glancing at the growling clouds. When the rain came, we’d be bringing in the animals, two by two. I had to get the lawn mowed. A car pulled up to the curb, the driver waving at me with an envelope in her hand. She looked familiar, but it was hard to see through the deluge of sweat in my eyes. I shut off the mower and went over to her. “You look pooped.” I nodded. “Well, here’s your invitation, I hope you can come.” And off she went. I didn’t even look at it. Wasn’t time. I was on a deadline. Shoved the envelope in my back pocket and began chasing the mower again. I finished and ran the mower into the garage as a Cherubim slammed into my house, followed closely by the flash of a Seraphim and about 9 billion gallons of rain falling in 10 seconds. Timing is everything. I was in the house a few minutes when I remembered the invitation in my pocket. Chris opened it. A wedding in September. They’ve gotten to know us on our morning walks. She probably wants her invitation back after my bubbly speech of congratulations. Oh well, we’ll give them a nice gift. We’ll probably have to paddle to the church after we hack our way to the cars with a machete. The grass grows four feet a day when it rains like this. At least one yard’s mowed.

Condensation

This morning the windows are covered with water, condensed from the humidity around us, probably close to 100%. I wonder how it can be so wet and not be raining or under water. Nemo would feel at home. Beads run down the panes, small rivers and their tributaries. Plants are wearing jewelry, celebrating. The ground as wet as from a storm. Yet when I walk, I don’t gather jewels. Plowing through the watered air, I leave it behind. My warmth vaccinates me from gathering the water that surrounds me. Such an intricate dance of temperatures and humidity. It creates the clouds, the storms, the hurricanes. As intricate as a butterfly’s wing. Each bit and part finding a fit with another and creating a wonder on the window pane.

Coffee

Coming downstairs in the morning’s dark hours, when dawn is still a suggestion on the horizon, opens the house in a way no other hour allows. There is an intimacy then, an aloneness that is not lonely. Only the mocking bird sings then and the street is still empty. Then I make my coffee, a latte. And I contemplate the universe.

Asking for Directions

As you might have noticed there have been no posts in the last few days.  That’s because yours truly has been sunk in the mire of technological difficulty.  I pushed a wrong button and lost contact with my blog.  Thanks to my friend Ted and my son Benjamin, I found my way back. 

To tell you the truth, I felt ripped off.  And slightly paranoid.  My experience with computers has not been stellar, more like black holish (I get near them and am sucked in while being smushed by their power).  My son told me that they are dumb machines, capable of doing all kinds of things, but as with any machine, you turn the wrong widget, it reacts badly.  He told me to keep pounding (I don’t think he used that word, but it sounds good to me) on them until they give you what you want or you throw them through a window and start over.  He also said that you have to defend yourself against their seemingly whimsical reactions.  Save, Save, Save. 

So, I’m taking some steps to do just that. 

But in the midst of all the fireworks and gesticulations, I discovered again that the best asset to have in the midst of a problem is a friend. 

So, thanks to Ted and Benjamin. 

Blessings be upon you.

Isn’t Hypocrisy Fun?

 

To the north of our house is a gazebo, about 12 by 12, roofed, electrified, cement floor.  It’s a lovely place to sit in the shade during the heat of the day.  It’s a wonderful place to put your feet up after working, or a place to have a drink, whether you’re smoking a cigar or not. 

Today as I sat there considering a toad who was working his way under the table that supported my feet, a wasp, black, nipped in the middle, stinger hanging out the back came to rest on my shoe. 

Bees are part of God’s plan.  Wasps are one of Lucifer’s additions to the plan.  Bees sting at the cost of their lives, so rarely do so.  Wasps sting if they have a bad hair day.  They punish the closest bit of protoplasm for the barometric pressure.  They are builders, they make paper and mud homes to raise more nasty little black terrors. 

And here was one of the devil spawn on my shoe.  Then another came buzzing down to join his compatriot.  Oh goody two of them, communicating about how to torment other beings, having a meeting right there.  They took off together, flew in tight formation up through the rafters up to the roof beams to a clump of vines, where there was a formation of other living nasties crawling and buzzing there.  It was a headquarters for a network of assassins!

The logical reaction to such a discovery is to go to the garage and find some sort of chemical that would destroy them.  I mean, I hate ‘em .  I kill ‘em right?  That’s logical. 

Large but.  There is nothing logical about killing.  There is nothing logical about putting chemicals into the environment that poison things.  I mean, this is not inside our house.  This is part of the great outdoors.  They were here before we got here.  Where do I get off treating them like they have no right to life?

I wouldn’t be surprised if there were Native Americans in our family tree.  Maybe it’s the Druid thing.  Who knows?  But in spite of my difficulties with killing we’ve got a problem.  If they nest up there, we can’t rest in peace.  It’s like Orcs setting up a nest next to my Elven home.  Ain’t happenin’. 

Ok, no chemicals.  But water is natural, isn’t it?  So, I moved the cushions, got the hose with the best pressure, made sure there were no kinks in it, set the controller on ‘power wash’, and blasted the living crap out of the headquarters.

Call me a nasty non-environmentally aware idiot, or call me a hypocrite, why didn’t I use poison?  Go ahead, call me names.  But this is the best I can do to make deals with my better angels and my demons.  The wasps can build in my trees, down by the creek, just not here. 

I wish I could talk wasp.  I could explain the whole thing to them.  I doubt they’d appreciate my argument.  They’d sue me after they stung me.  And then they’d laugh.  I wonder what a wasp laugh sounds like.

Comments

 

I just found a page of comments, buried in the behind the scenes stuff for the Blog.  People have been actually saying things about what I write!  I thought I was just sending my impressions and ideas out into a cyber reality without bumping into anything. 

The page says ‘no comments.’  It hides what they say.  I wonder if that’s to protect me, or to give me control of what gets displayed.  I tried to move the comments I found onto the page, but no such luck.  I’ll have to get a more cyberly capable person to help.

But to all you folk who have commented, thank you.  You’re very kind.  Now, how do I communicate back?  I’ll have to ask about that too.

A Rose

 

I sent information for the bulletin to a church where I’m preaching.  They wanted a short Biography for me.  It took me over an hour to put something together and then I had to call Chris, who’s visiting her mother, to put it into any kind of order that didn’t sound like a badly cooked egg.  Even with the grace and glory she was able to add, it sounded like an obituary. 

How do we communicate to others about ourselves?  That, I surmise is something of an art.  But to do it in a paragraph, a few sentences, taking into account the context, then, even art begins to falter.  The listing of educational degrees earned doesn’t say a word about learning.  To speak of years of work says nothing of the people, the accomplishments, the pain, or the joy rolled into those years. 

I was mowing the lawn yesterday.  Just within the verge of a bed of orange and red Canna Lilies, a climbing rose works its way up through a Crepe Myrtle.  I didn’t plant it.  It’s all the way over by the creek.  But there it was, reaching toward the light.  One perfect bloom, deep red, full, petal after petal rested among all the foliage.   I had to stop, though rain could be coming at any minute, I had to stop.

How many roses bloom, unnoticed?  How many bits and pieces of our lives, revelations, epiphanies of glory and beauty go unrecorded, unlisted, unknown by any but ourselves?  That rose will bloom for years, allowing me to remember a moment of heat and sweat, and the smell of mown grass, and the clouds pregnant with thunder and rain.  Yet it will never make my bio. 

Perhaps if I put that there, instead of my degrees, they’d know me better.  But then they’d think I was some kind of nut.  Well?

I’ve got to go back and visit it today.

The Attic

 

Storage space is a rare commodity in our home.  As a result, we’ve poked around trying to find places to appropriately sock away stuff.  We have two attics here.  One is through a closet (reminds me a bit of Narnia).  That’s where we put luggage and off season clothes.  It’s awkward but it’s easy to get to. 

The other one is larger, but it’s something of a pain to access.  I have to wedge a step ladder in front of the washing machine, pop an unhinged hatch up into the space and climb into the oven or refrigerator depending on the season.  Insulation abounds, no floor to cover it.  Lots of space but not lots of usable space.  What floor is afforded has already received the Christmas debris.  So, I’m putting in a floor. 

It doesn’t sound difficult, but it’s awkward to say the least.  As I get pieces of plywood cut to fit through the hatch, fitted and ooched into place screwing them down with the driver I also brought up, being careful to stay balanced on the rafters (a bit of a slip could put my foot through the ceiling) all the while dripping on whatever I’m doing, then I have more floor from which to work.  Oh, and I have to be careful not to fall through the hatch.  Chris has warned me I’ll dent the washing machine. There is hope.  But the present tense is tense, and drippy.  Anything to be stored up there should be stuff that we don’t need weekly. 

I guess we all have attics.  Places where we put things, memories, joys, fears, hobbies, relationships that we want to keep, but we don’t access them too often.  We can’t keep everything.  Then we’d never be able to appreciate things, we’d only keep them.  Some people like to keep life stripped down to bare walls and floors.  Why keep stuff?  My life tends to have more to it than bare walls and floors.  I like to do more than function.  Everything I keep is about a story, a person, a glory, and almost every bit and piece is valued.  We are still getting rid of stuff.  But I hope that we never strip our lives down to function and only that. 

As I get more floor laid, I kind of like the space, hot though it may be.  Attics are interesting.  The bones of the house are visible.  The how’s of the structure are there to see.  We’ve got a good house.  The heating guy said it’s tight.  He spends a lot of time in attics. 

I’ve got a few pieces cut.  Time to visit our home’s bones. 

Novels

 

Novels are different than essays or even short stories.  I’ve got three novels that I’m working on right now.  Two of them are in re-writes, and one is just beginning.  The amount of focus and organization necessary to tame these beasts is a whole different discipline. 

But as I write them I get to submerge into another dimension of life, creating characters that breathe and act according to personalities that sprout in my head and then claim a life of their own.  That’s where the organization and focus comes in.  If they are to live as characters that allow ‘a willing suspension of disbelief’ (Samuel Taylor Coleridge) their attitudes and dreams and fears and actions need to be grounded in that which has gone before and as they come in contact with others the dance that is created must step to the themes of the story as well as the interaction of the characters and the environment. 

See what I mean?  Getting going is the most difficult.  It’s like raising a kid.  Who are these people going to be?  From where do they come?  How do they think and react?  And what is their story?  Once they start walking, it’s a lot like a child.  They teeter along and then they run.  It’s the initial stages where the false starts and falls take place.

So, next time you read a book, take a moment to embrace the work and passion that it took to gather all of this together and allow it to tell its story.  It’s quite a journey.

The 4th

 

A couple churches wanted me to preach this past Sunday, but I said no.  The choir director at Chris’ congregation was putting together a men’s chorus to help celebrate Independence Sunday.  That’s right up there with Pentecost, right?

I have a hard time with putting on a patriotic show in church.  That’s God’s place.  Why are we waving a flag?  Aren’t we on God’s turf?

We were given satin bow ties to wear.  Stars and Stripes.  My dog Sam used to growl in his chest.  It was more of a rumble.  I think I rumbled when I put on that tie.  But I did and we sang some good harmony to “Eternal Father Strong to Save.” 

The preacher said that he liked the 4^th.  But it wasn’t a country or a flag that made us patriotic.  It was an idea, the idea that those crazy people (I added crazy) put together in the Declaration in 1776.  He read a good chunk of it and the hair came up on the back of my neck. 

Thomas Jefferson was nuts.  He had so much to lose.  Most of them did.  But they all signed it.  They put their names on that parchment and reached out beyond sense and logic into a dream. 

I’m an American.  I’m not continental.  That’s a GPS coordinate.  I’m part of this same dream.  I’ll wrassel with folks about how to celebrate it, but I’m just as proud of my country, maybe more so, than people who don’t approve of my politics.  And that’s their right and privilege.  I believe in the dream that those crazy guys reached for and I will go on believing in it in spite of our feeble efforts to add or detract (that’s from another dreamer).  Maybe I need to be a bit more humble and climb down off my high horse once in a while. 

So, whoopee do!  Happy Birthday USA.  I’m going to Bar B Q tomorrow and put out the flag and I think I’ll read the Declaration.  Some good stuff in there.

But please don’t make me wear that stupid tie in worship.  Satin?  Oh please.

 

Silence

 

It’s early.  It’s Saturday.  It’s fourth of July weekend.  Even the birds are quiet.  Maybe they get time off too.  The angel clock in the living room is doing its thing, making sure there are some sounds.  But quiet rules. 

I’ve been in the woods when there were moments like this, rare moments.  Living things move, and they tend to make noise.  The wind in the trees makes noise.   At the shore there is the systole and diastole of the surf, and all the players in the gull league.  They’re called Laughing Gulls for a reason.

Sound is the norm of life. 

They say there is no sound in space.  You need atmosphere to carry the waves.  Here on these islands of rock, within envelopes of air, sound tells of movement and life.  So this moment is a startling exception.  I can appreciate it as such, but it’s strange, alien.

I’ve been in church sanctuaries that felt like this.  The atmosphere is other, different than the norm.  There is a sense of presence in it.  Without all the distractions, there behind it all.  Something, without shape, in the silence.

There, a mocking bird decided to hold forth.  I don’t know if I’m relieved or disappointed.  I think I’m grateful to be alive.

Waving

 

She drove off down the street like she was going to the grocery store.  Her list said she’d packed everything in the suitcases, had her bag of shoes, her computer was in the back seat with her pillow, the small cooler was on the passenger seat floor, and her snacks were above it in easy reach.  She even remembered her phone charger.  That one would have gotten by me.  When I kissed her I told her to come back.  She said I could count on it, so I started, “One, two …”  The first thing I’ll tell her when she returns will be, “…five million, eight hundred thirty-two thousand, seven hundred forty-five.”  That’s before I give her the rose.  Hey, we have our traditions. 

I know, it’s only seventeen days.  The important word in that sentence is ‘only.’  It’s a word that is marinated in relativity.  It’s been a long time since we weren’t together most of the time.  And this business of absence makes the heart grow fonder is a bunch of hooey.  It’s strange.  It’s a little scary.  It’s painful. 

So I stood there and waved.    

Not One of the Crowd

 

Harry Dowdy joined the church in Shrewsbury when he was in his eighties.  He showed up with his wife, his love Beezie, and told me after that first visit that he was a refugee from the nearby big church where he couldn’t stand the theology being preached anymore and I had nailed it, for him. 

Being a sheep stealer was never on my agenda.  The probability being that if they were difficult to please in church A, they probably would have a hard time in church B.  I thanked him for his review and warned him that he should hang around a while before making any decisions about transferring.  He smiled into my eyes.  I don’t know if that makes any sense to you, but that’s what he did.  It’s rare.  He nodded and I felt that something had just happened.  He and his wife were in the next new members’ class.

Harry was a great guy.  I relaxed around him.  He had me out to his house about once a month for lunch, he’d cook.  Nothing fancy, but the conversation was amazing.  We played golf now and then, nine holes.  He’d choose the nine he wanted to play.  With him I didn’t get better scores but I had a great time.  My shots tended to go longer, that included over the green.  He told me I’d be a good golfer if I could curb my enthusiasm.  He wasn’t sure if that was worth a better score.

He loved Beezie.  She died a couple of years into our relationship but was limited physically and cognitively before that.  There was no doubt in his mind that she was a gift given by God to him that he didn’t deserve.  It helped him understand Grace.  One of the women’s circles, fellowship groups, did a reception after her funeral.  He gave them a substantial gift.  They told him they had made Beezie an honorary member of the circle, so he came to their meeting and joined the circle.  I don’t think he was looking for a date.

He gave me a book he liked, Daily Dose of Knowledge, Brilliant Thoughts.  It’s 365 quotes from everybody anybody can think of, covering just about anything anybody can think of.  I’ve used it ever since.  It’s one of those books that you start looking something up and end reading 20 pages.  The book reminds me of Harry.  Our conversations always went beyond any initial issue.

I found a quote from Harry’s book that I used in today’s sermon.  Edith Sitwell said, “I am patient with stupidity, but not with those who are proud of it.”  It spoke in harmony with the scriptures from which I was preaching, and it spoke articulately to so much that is going on in this day and age, and it reminded me of a single human being who never even considered being insignificant, or being proud of prejudice of any flavor.

Harry refused to be stupid.  He paid attention to every day, considering its issues and those who spoke to them as vital input for the banquet of every day.  Its courses were compassion, humility, and self-giving love.  His spirit thrived on the diet.

He died in 2015.  He wanted a funeral that was in harmony with Beezie’s.  I use the bulletin of the service as a book mark for the book of Brilliant Thoughts.  There are three pictures included, Harry and Beezie dancing the jitterbug on the front cover, in the center, a family mob with the two of them sitting at the front, the mob was their fault after all, and on the back cover was the two of them, holding hands walking away down a beach. 

I miss Harry, as I miss so many with whom I have had the privilege of sharing parts of the journey.  But he is here with me, smiling into my eyes. 

 

 

 

Rumble and Thud

Rumble and Thud

It’s been sunny all day.  We went swimming.  This afternoon the heat and the humidity made it an effort to work in the sun.  The sun set with wind coming in from the North.  The flashes came like headlights turning into our driveway, flickering for a moment and then gone to shine somewhere else.  The first rumble shook the glasses in the breakfront, taking away all question.  It rolled across the street, a party that wasn’t paying attention to the sound regulations.  The rumble had a movement to it, a roll that brought it down hill, out of the anvils up above.  But there was no roll or movement at its end.  Only a thud, a slammed door that made a point of power and finality. 

Now comes the rain.

Stiff Upper Lip

 

During the normal weather of the summer, that is sun, heat, and rain every couple of days, the grass of my lawn grows rapidly.  More than a week between cutting and it’s beginning to look like I do when I try to stretch a haircut to six weeks.  Shaggy.  Lately we’ve had a stretch of rain, lotsa rain.  A few days of lotsa rain.  The lawn reacted.  My grandfather would want to bring out the bailer and get the hay ready for bailing.  The forecast listed cloudy with no rain until the afternoon.  Time to fuel up the mower.

Trying to start a habit of being good to myself, I usually split the mowing into two sessions on two days.  Age, heat, push, pull, yada, yada, yada.  But considering the monsoon that had descended upon us, if I got a four hour window, get it done.  When I finished the first half, I chugged some lemonade, wrapped a wet tea towel around my neck and went back out into the 90 degree, 85 percent humidity. 

It was getting hard to see through all the sweat pouring down my face, and I had to push the chattering mower close to one of the big pine trees on that side of the yard.  The cone was one of the tight ones, it hadn’t opened yet.  Picked up by the rotary blade, the cone was flung at the tree that had dropped it, bounced back, and hit me in the mouth.  It felt like a sucker punch from an offended boyfriend, or someone who you just beat on a layup, for the seventh time.   Sometimes they take you by surprise, sometimes they’re embarrassing for the one throwing the punch.  This was the former kind.  I thought maybe I was hallucinating from overheating or dehydration.  But the blood in my mouth made me stop to make sure I hadn’t lost a tooth.  Immediately my upper lip swelled up as if to prove that I better watch running that noisy thing near the tree’s roots, his turf and all.  Or it could have been, I better watch running that noisy thing near her kids.  Either way, I had a fat lip.

I shook my head, restarted the mower, and finished the job.  The bleeding had stopped, but I still had a golf ball above my upper teeth to prove I had lost the fight.  As I was putting the offensive mower away, I wondered why nature doesn’t hit back more often.  Maybe it does, but people don’t give the trees or the raccoons or the squirrels credit for the assault.  We don’t give nature credit for having power. (Global warming isn’t real right?) Maybe I need to let the yard know I’m just giving it a haircut, no harm intended.  In the old days, our ancestors talked to the spirits of the trees and the sea and the animals.  Hey, it’s only polite.  After all they were here first.  Where do we get off messing around with their back yard?

Gotta remember that next time I gas up the mower. 

Being Famous

 

The other day someone asked me how they could find my blog.  I told them to just look up my name, I was sure it would be listed.  They got back to me to tell me all kinds of things about yours truly that they found.  “You’re famous!” 

It made me wonder about that title.  Surely the meaning now is vastly different than it used to be.  Anything we do is immediately recorded and released onto the web, making us well know rather quickly.  But are we well known?  Or is the nature of the things we’ve done apt to put our names out there? 

I have a friend who does his best to get his name into anything he can.  He figures the best way to remain anonymous in this digital age is to stand in a snow storm of trivia.  According to his theory, the ones who truly stand out are the ones who are off the grid.  I think he wears an aluminum hat.

Before the net created the tropical storm of information that lifts simple sand high into the atmosphere, it took something of significance to make a dent in ‘being known.’  You might have been a big fish in the puddle of your world, but the major tributaries won’t pick you up.  Being known took some major water pressure.  Now, piddles make news.  Enough piddles, you’re known.  But by whom?  And for what?

When I preached last Sunday, the congregation wanted to know what to call me.  Chris and I smiled and started making a list of things people have called me.  David, Rev, The Rev, Pastor, Pastor David, Pastor Dave, Mac, Rev Mac … The list went on for a while.  It made me realize how many roles and resulting titles I have assumed.  But that doesn’t make me famous.  That makes me busy.  Are they synonymous? 

Lotsa questions.  Not many answers.  But I’ll tell you this:  I ain’t famous.  But that’s only according to me, and what do I know.  I’m just a retired old fart from North Carolina.  

 

Glory Days

 

“It’s a weapon, not a sword.” The first words my coach said to a bunch of nervous adolescent boys put us back a step.  He was the only one holding the ‘weapon’ we were itching to get our hands on.  But there was a long way to go before thirty inches of steel was put at our disposal. 

I guess the past does get clearer as we age.  That was decades ago.  Those practices seem vivid as I pick up my foil today.  Learning to move my hands and feet.  Learning to lunge and parry.  Learning to hold and control this tool of the sport with fingers instead of fist, see?  Clear lessons.

There’s a competitive fencing club here.  I’m going down tonight to see what’s up.  I’ll be taking my mask and glove and weapon.  I’m wondering if, in this modern day, the disciplines that were foundational to my sport are still taught.  I’m wondering if the coaches are as tough as mine were.  I’m wondering what role this rusty blade will play here and now. 

This is a different weapon.  My first lessons were with a French grip.  I moved to a Modified Belgian.  That was stolen with the rest of my equipment.  It was like losing a child.  I got this one a few years ago on a whim.  It’s new, without experiences, without scratches, without bruises and blood, not one win or loss.  I feel a bit the same way.  All that experience, all that work and pain and joy, all that losing and winning seems to belong to someone else.  I’m covered with scratches and dings, I’ve lost and won all kinds of things, but now I feel like a kid again.  All that experience, knowledge, and skill is gone. 

Days and years add things to us and at the same time take things away.  I remember an insane confidence then, and I remember a terrible insecurity.  I remember hearing my name announced for the first match in the finals of the Mid Atlantic Conference finals and being sure that they’d made a mistake.  I couldn’t have made the finals.  I guess all our life is like that, a bouillabaisse of insecurity and confidence, neither extreme taking into account the potentials or the limitations of the moment.  

But the best times are those when we look over the edge of now and step, even when it feels like a grand canyon looms.  What’s to lose except an opportunity to experience a moment of life?  Another memory to consider as we remember the Glory Days.

Pasta Olio

 

Having been born in Bloomfield and spent most of my life in New Jersey, it’s no wonder one of our children is an Italian teacher.  Part of what it means to live in North Jersey or the environs of New York City is to know what ‘real food’ is like.  To experience Italian is to eat and to be passionate about it.  

To know Italian food is to know pasta.  Pasta goes way beyond spaghetti and red sauce (or gravy, depending on the region of Italy being represented by the cook).  To recite a litany of sauces and dishes is to go through a scrap book of the palate, a journey on which I have been fortunate to be spoiled by some amazing cooks, sitting down at their tables, most often kitchen, and having a hard time getting up.  At the core of all this Italian food is Pasta.

One of the most elegant and knowledgeable gentlemen I’ve ever had the pleasure of knowing told me that Pasta Olio is the most basic and the most easily messed up approach to this foundation of good food.  If he had never been to a restaurant (he meant an Italian restaurant, of course), he would simply order a plate of this arrangement of the basics of Italian life, pasta, olive oil, and garlic.  If the establishment did a good job, it was worthy of his business.  If not, he’d wait for new management,  Pasta Olio being the litmus for good food.  He looked great in a tux too.

Chris asked me what I wanted for Fathers’ Day dinner.  We had pan seared scallops, tomato and cucumber salad with fresh basil, and Pasta Olio.  I’ll be coming back here.

 

    

Back in the Saddle Again

 

I don’t know why I get anxious.  The dude said, “Be not anxious.”  It’s a commandment.  So why should I do this to myself?  Hey, the shepherds and a few dozen others were told by the angels, “Be not afraid.”  It’s not quite the same thing.  I’m not really worried about what the people will think.  Reviews stopped being that important a while ago.  It’s more like I know what’s possible, and I gear up for it.   

In any case, I was in charge again and it felt right.  The hardest part was the benediction.  So, I told them the story of the benediction at Shrewsbury on the last day, how they schlepped Chris up to stand next to me and the congregation said the benediction to us.  Telling the story today helped me get through the moment with a sense of honesty and intimacy.

I truly don’t feel in charge.  It’s like being in charge of keeping an avalanche moving, or catching a wave.  That’s not something someone accomplishes, it’s more a facilitation, a getting yourself into the right place to allow the potential to become kinetic.

It’s a wonderful place to be.  And I’ll be there again next week.

Here Goes Something

 

I’m preaching today.  No big deal, right?  Not.  Always a very big deal.  But it has valences that are different. 

I’m preaching on compassion.  Appropriate, no?

Need

 

It was 100 degrees yesterday afternoon.  The cumulous clouds built mountain ranges creating canyons of white shadowed by the grey potential of thunder storms.  Our creek was down to a trickle.  I was pulling grass from a flower bed, replanting it in bare spots of the lawn.  A black eyed Susan came along with one clump and I separated it out, making a place with the trowel in another bed.  They spread you know.  The trowel slipped in easily, but when I lifted it, dust rose above the mulch.

I’d decided not to water because of predicted thunder storms, to come from the grand canyons sliding by above.  But by the time I saw the puff of dust, it was two or three in the afternoon and the blue between the clouds seemed on the ascendency.  I looked again at the plants and saw a droop to them.  The morning glory leaves were curled down on themselves, the elephant ears were bowing to the ruling sun.  In spite of the experts’ opinion it was time to water. 

It made me wonder how often we don’t really pay attention to the need that surrounds us.  We may even read about some expert’s opinion, riddled with statistics without ever noticing any specific puff of dust rising from the parching need calling to us to do some small thing that might ameliorate a bit of the drought weighing down our world. 

And how often do we ignore our own need, letting our fatigue and loneliness, our frustration and sense of entrapment dry out our lives until there isn’t a bloom to be seen.  We have all sorts of good excuses, ignoring the simple truth that if we don’t do something about our own back yard there is no one who will.

There may come the desired showers, but in the midst of such need, are we not doing damage rather than participating in a blessing, could we not be instruments of grace and reasons for thanksgiving?

It took a good two hours to give everything a good soaking.  But I was happier for it.  I’m sure if plants might express relief, they would have.  When I woke this morning the ground was soaked.  The rain had come.  Did I waste my time?  How is it ever a waste to let compassion have its way?

Backwards

 

I was looking at my blog, reading back into the past.  It’s a bit like archeology, the present is on the surface, the past is buried back there, underneath.  That part of it makes sense.  What doesn’t is that you come to the conclusion of the story before you get to the first chapter.  It’s backwards.

Having been reading books for a number of decades, I’ve gotten used to beginnings being at the beginning, where you start, the first page.  When I open this thing, I’m at the end, which has come to be as a result of that which went before. 

When I get a conversation emailed to me, it’s in this same bassackwards order.  So I have to become a detective, ignoring that which is on the surface, in the now, at least for the moment, going back to where this conversation started, finding the place where it stopped being a conversation and became a misunderstanding, which caused the wreckage dated today.

Considering conversations as symptomatic of the health of relationships, what cruises around on the surface can point to patterns and symptoms of what has been going on in the past.  But rarely do digital conversations reveal much of anything about the user of the machine, and when two or more users begin bouncing around, supposedly communicating about a specific subject, you’re involved in a bar fight. 

If you’ve never had such an experience, good.  But to make the metaphor stick, you get hit by friends and enemies alike, whether you give two hoots about the original cause of the fight or not; there’s no chance of making it to the door without getting assaulted just for being there, and there’s less chance of drinking the beer you paid for.

Which all goes to say, not much, except I can’t seem to get used to the way things work on these machines.  In other words, I’m backwards.  Took me long enough to get to that.  I should have put it at the beginning.  Oh, I did.  Maybe I am getting the hang of it.

Important Stuff

 

This morning at the end of our walk, a neighbor shut down his lawn mower and came to the curb.  We talked about getting the mowing done before it rained.  We talked about his twelve hour shift.  We talked about the long weekend he was getting and the good times he was going to have with his kids.  We talked about which ones had already gotten out of school and which one was finished tomorrow.  He asked about my knee. 

In other words we meandered around discovering nothing important, solving no problem.  It occurred to me that if we didn’t do our own yard work, we’d never have had that conversation.  Yeah, but we’d probably be making more money.  Yeah, but we wouldn’t have neighbors.  We’d have people whose addresses were close to ours numerically, people that we saw driving by on their way to we don’t know where. 

A lot of us are busy.  A lot of us have important things to do with our time.  But we don’t have the time to shoot the bull with the guy down the street.  We rarely see him.  We only communicate with people who are important to us.  People we work with.  People who share our ‘quality’ time at the gym or in our cycling club or at church.  We talk to them about our shared prejudices. 

I don’t know what my neighbor believes.  I don’t know if he goes to church or what party he votes for.  I do know that his father was a contractor and left all his tools to his only son.  And I know that if I need anything, or any help with anything, not important stuff, just things like plumbing or fixing he has the tool and he’ll come over and show me how to use it while he’s telling me a story about his father and his kids and his wife, if it’s a good day.

Maybe I’m old fashioned, but I think that’s what makes a community, a neighborhood.  And I think that’s important stuff.

Blue Skies

 

Carolina Blue…  It’s hard to think of being here without a sky that is almost hard to believe.  Day after day it settles into your soul, offering a setting for the sun with no blemish.  I heard that they built the sound stages here because the weather is fair almost all the time.  I’d disagree.  It’s not fair, it’s excellent.  The flowers bloom even without good soil.  It has to be that sky. 

I remember when I first moved to San Francisco, the weather was so clear all the time that the first time it rained, I danced in it.  I was so used to storms that it was anxiety provoking to live without them. 

Maybe age has offered me a new peace.  I don’t need the pushes and pulls of storms to provide a rhythm in my living.  Each day does that with its rising and setting.  There is enough there to allow me the space that change offers.

Maybe this is a place of peace.  Smiles seem to come easier here.  I know it drives some crazy, all this pleasantness.  I’m sorry for them.  Personally I’ll accept it, this peace beneath the Carolina sky.

Pudgy Fingers

 

On Sunday, during our morning walk, picking up trash ejected from cars, by people whose time and energy is too vital to take their beer cans, cigarette packs, burger wrappers and bags, and in this case, Kentucky Fried Chicken boxes complete with uneaten wings and biscuits (inhale), I noticed that some ants had found the ejected food stuffs and were making a picnic of it. 

I threw the wings and biscuits into the bushes to allow the picnic to continue and crumpled up the box and paper.  It was in the crumpling stage that I noticed the wee beasties were injecting fire into my hands.  Thus the name fire ants. 

If any of you have never had an encounter with this specific brand of the insect kingdom, don’t even think about comparing it to any other experience.  When I was in Ethiopia, I walked through a column of army ants because I was a dumb American who was half asleep at that obscene hour of the morning.  The rest of the work crew considered my dance rather entertaining as I tangoed across the work site, ending up in the concrete mixing trough.  Those dudes take out chunks of flesh.  The ants I mean.

But I will assert that the tune of pain accompanying my sashay into the concrete cannot be compared to the blooming agony that spread across my hands as I crumpled the Colonel’s packaging.  These little red nasties don’t bite, they sting.  Remember, fire?

We went to the ballet that evening, dolled up and happy to see Tchaikovsky’s  fantasy of Sleeping Beauty swooping around the stage.  I sat there feeling my left hand and a few fingers of my right slowly expanding, and watched blisters mark where the fire had been injected.

I guess it’s only fair, I messed up their picnic.  But I think it’s a rather extreme reaction.  If they do this for KFC wings and a biscuit, I think we should consider enlisting them as a weapon of mass destruction.    

Sorting

 

Every time I see a job that needs doing, I develop an enthusiasm for it based on the ideas I have for moving it along, making it happen, and in the process helping to lift the world (to quote my son Benjamin).  The church is my fishing hole.  After spending my life watching real good fishermen and women work here and having decades of my own experience, and having a few gifts to begin with, I know where the big ones lie up on a hot afternoon.  I know what kind of bait works.  I know how long to let them chew on the hook before a twitch sets it (I don’t fish anymore but the metaphor seems appropriate).  So when someone wants to make a job happen in the church, I automatically begin planning the excursion.  I have a good idea how to come home with dinner. 

There’s a problem with this.  Though I can make things work, it takes energy, intelligence, imagination, and love to do so.  And the question rises, is this what I am called to do?  I can do it, but is this where I should be spending my energy?  Then the guilts set in.  Who am I to determine that? 

I’m beginning to think that I am supposed to have something to say in that determination.  I’m beginning to see that the gifts that I’ve been given are in my keeping and I am to be a steward of those gifts, a manager.  If I’m taking on all comers until I run out of time, steam, and resources, am I being a good steward?

I hate to say this but I think I have to sort the possibilities and that includes saying no to some things that I know I can do. 

It’s an interesting place to be in life.  I think I’ll climb the willow next to the pond and consider the options. 

 

Equipment

I need a calendar.

Trying to keep track

 

The Beast is home from the hospital, purring like a maroon leviathan (I realize they don’t purr, gurgle?  bubble?).  It was a minor fix.  Little part, general breakdown, quick fix.  So, with relief I attended presbytery today.  People are beginning to say hello and know me.  I’ve got three preaching gigs this and next month.  Someone asked me if I’d be interested in a new position opening….

I’ve got a feeling things are going to start coming hot and heavy.  It’s been nice to be able to take things as they come, without being worried about getting slammed if something slides by.  Deadlines are friends I haven’t seen in a while.  Responsibilities that don’t have to do with my trees and flowers and lawn and tomato plants are strangers. 

Am I going to become unretired? 

I do worry about the headaches.  My doctors said move away from stress.  So I changed my address.  I guess you can’t move away from a life style.  You’ve got to change your approach to living.  Easier said than done when it’s a habit developed over 45 years.  But I have learned some things over this season of being fallow. 

I’ve learned to spend time being creative every day.

I’ve learned to take a nap when I need one.

I’ve learned to write and read at least three projects and books at the same time. 

I’ve learned that I like our new hometown and our neighborhood.

I’ve learned that I’m pretty good at being a partner with my wife.

I’ve learned we’re good at creating a beautiful home (an ongoing job).

I’ve learned that I’m happier when I’m getting my hands dirty and that I can actually fix, build, and grow things (lots to learn).

I’ve learned how much life has to offer when I’m willing to take advantage of the opportunities.

I’ve learned that I don’t have to live in the eye of a hurricane.

See?  Even a thick head can learn.  Now, let’s see if I can keep all that in mind, keep learning, and do some ministry without blowing a fuse.  Little part, general breakdown.

The general idea is to 'Keep on Truckin'