Scotch and Bourbon

At dinner tonight Chris and I were talking about the difference between Scotch and Bourbon.  She does not 'like' Whiskey in any of its incarnations.  We discussed how Whiskey is made, distilled and aged.  We talked about the differences between the distilling art of Kentucky and the Highlands.  Peat and oak fires, corn and barley, years and the right amount of years.  Yup, there's a lot to talk about.  She was actually interested.  And she wanted to know,  "What is the difference in the taste of the two?"
So, I pulled out my Macallan's 12 and my Maker's Mark.  A bit in two shot glasses.  She smelled them.  She tried a finger dipped and licked.  Not enough to get a good taste.  So, the tastes were made. 
She likes bourbon better. 
And if anybody wants to know why I love my wife, read this blog and consider all of the edges tested, the envelopes pushed, prejudices ignored, the willingness  allowing experience and analysis to create possibilities where before there was only judgment. 
That there is one enlightened human being. 
She's definitely a nasty woman. 
RESPECT, just a little bit, RESPECT.

Going to Church

I've been going to church for sixty eight years.  In other words, there wasn't a time I didn't.  For the last forty-one of those years I've been running the show.  So it's Transfiguration.  And I'm in the choir.  I like our church.  I like our pastor. 
It's still weird. 
But last Sunday I listened to the Pastoral Prayer, and I heard it. 
Weird it may be, but I'm very grateful for the discipline and the presence and the community.  Who knows?  I might get used to sitting in the choir loft.
Fat Chance.

Getting Involved

There are few things I love more about my retirement than setting my own schedule.  I get up just after sunrise and roam.  I accomplish all kinds of things during the day, most of the time more than I planned to.  But each and all are from an agenda defined by my own choice, at my own pace.  This is new. 
But now, I realize there are some things I want to do that do not operate in this manner.  Choir, social gatherings, working for a political candidate.  All of them are important, each in its own way.  All of them have to do with getting involved with people outside the borders of my property.  All of them demand that I take others into account, limiting and expanding my categories of acceptance and tolerance.  And all of them point beyond myself, my own agenda.
"Freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose."  Not.
Most of what I have been, most of what I have done, most of the places I've gone, and the things I've accomplished have been about other people, organizations, and agendas set to a large degree by others.  I realize that it is not wrong to spend time changing that kind of life style.  I need to be my own person.  I need to claim my own agenda.  I need to claim time and use it to be creative in ways I've never had the opportunity or energy. 
But my need is not the only priority for me or certainly for the world in which I live.  Our planet, our nation, and the state of our habitation cannot be guided or lifted by one person.  Even the Lord recruited a bunch of people to move in new directions.
This nation is having a season of self involvement, claiming me, myself, and I and the comfort thereof as the only priorities that matter.  That is small minded and tragically destructive.  I cannot hide from the political ugliness that runs like a sewer through our present tense.  I cannot pretend that my bonsai, my carpentry, my home development, my reading, my writing, my learning, or even working on a loving home is all I can do to help. 
I am in a different era of my life.  So what?  I have been given gifts that can help, and I need to utilize them.  I don't know how.  I don't know where.  But that can be addressed.  I need to be careful not to slug others with my new found freedom.  Social skills need to be belted on just like pants that don't have paint on them. 
I won't give up my fun and games.  This place is my palace.  It won't stay that way if I go traipsing around being important.  I need to be a good steward.  And I need to help bring us back out of the middle ages.  I don't think they're mutually exclusive. 
Besides, who says I can't have fun being a pain in the ass out there?

Getting Sick

A friend of mine, who was one of the most intelligent and classy women I ever knew had a needle point cushion on her couch.  "Screw the Golden Years" 
A lot of our time in these years is occupied by coping with the wondrous machines we've been given, breaking down.  Our joints, our teeth, our eyes, our innards all seem to fall apart.  The doctor that trimmed up my knee last month told me that I had very little wear and tear considering the good times I'd had.  Great doc.  So much comfort that was.  He did good work.  If you need a referral, be in touch.
I do not begrudge my body having limitations. I have used it unmercifully and at this juncture, I appreciate every mile, every double diamond, every broad reach, every tackle, every scrum, every lay up, every lunge, parry, stop thrust and point.  I've also loved every paragraph read and written, every meal savored, every hand held, and nail pounded.  I give thanks that I've been so healthy for so long.
But this state of affairs didn't come gradually.  I retired in July and I'm scheduling my second surgery in February.  Did Social Security send out a memo to my body, "Break down now?" 
I'm very glad these doctors can do so much with so much less side effect, but it still is a bit strange to be discussing things like getting used to side effects. 
So my gratitude is all mixed up with anxiety and grumpiness.  And I assume it is just the beginning of  this time of life. 
I'm very grateful I've had a few challenges along the way.  Once you've been told some of these dire 'could be's' you kind of get used to down shifting and leave the trembling for later.  And I've had a few of these.  I'm also grateful for all the wise and witty folk who taught me so much as they faced their own challenges and allowed me to share the journeys with them. As we journeyed they opened a whole country of realities and honesty and faith to me that I will never forget. 
I am also very grateful for the faith that I offered to so many along the way.  The deep dark valleys that I shared and the light of faith I carried for them is for me now.  Makes it a little less dark and puts the whole thing in a better perspective when you've got a light shining.
Yup.  I'm grateful.
But don't get me wrong, it's still a pain in the ass and assorted other zones.
So here we go again.

Creating a Home

This process of creating my own home, separate and distinct from my role as pastor, is a strange and wondrous territory.  Born and raised in the Pastor's house, a certified PK (preacher's kid), I've never lived in a house that didn't belong to the church, let alone was separate from the systole and diastole of church life.  Our life here is our own.  A few people have told me that I would miss the relationships and responsibility that have to do with the pastor's role.  I would say not.  Any more than I missed college or graduate school, and the roles and relationships that were engendered by that time of my life.
I do think that I have detected in myself some of the symptoms of Post Traumatic Stress.  Years of hyper vigilance, confronting and managing conflict, death, mental issues, and loss begin to create a callus on the  psyche that is hard to dump.  It creates emotional habits that don't necessarily match the time and the day and situation.  Trained to identify such tendencies and helping others to cope and climb past them, it has been fascinating to see them in myself and come to grips with them and their sources. 
One of my New Year's resolutions is to embrace a devotional life in its new context. 
This I consider a challenge that will help me as I live my life in this new world. 
This ain't Kansas anymore, Toto.
Welcome to OZ.

Retired Angel

It's been a while....
A lot has gone under the metaphoric bridge.  Geographic differences, role differences, stress differences, lots under the bridge.
We're all in this business of living while the river runs.  So much changes and yet, too often we stand and watch with the same expectancy and anxiety.  Our position on the bridge seems the only thing that remains the same.  But the mirror and all else around us reminds us that we are no more constant than that river that carries all of life past, bits and pieces washed from other times and places, other perspectives, other hopes and dreams, done and gone. 
It sounds so dark and hopeless.  On the contrary.  In this new place I feel new sense of life.  I am not standing passive, watching life roll by.  Rather here, past the times of grinding labor and responsibility I find a freedom that I really did not expect.  Who knew?
I see myself and my place in this wonderland of living much more clearly.  Perhaps less grandiose, perhaps less bound and bordered, perhaps with more of a sense of mortality, perhaps a little more philosophic, and definitely a lot more humble.
It's good to be here.
So, it's been a while.
Let's see what comes up...

Refugees

 

 

I was listening to the ongoing tragedy of the movements of people, fleeing from and to.  From the horror of poverty and war to uncertain destinations defined only by less of both.  Theirs is the only hope.  We who are secure in our safety and security and wealth have little hope of doing much about this except shake our heads at the efforts of those between the sources of the flow and its destination.  These countries a bit better than the hells from which those fleeing come, have reached their limits.  They are building walls, shutting down railways, they have made being a refugee illegal and helping them equally punishable. 

I was wondering why I should be thinking that if only each of us could take one family into our own homes...  It occurred to me that I come by such sentiments honestly.  In the 1950’s when I was a small boy, a family came to stay with us from Hungary.  They were fleeing the failure of the revolution there, walking across minefields to seek something else, something safe.  I asked my father why they were coming to live with us.  He opened the Bible and read me the 25^th chapter of Matthew.  “Mercy is our business, David.”  It was that simple. 

I’m afraid nothing about this is simple.  There is no indication that happy endings necessarily go along with the strategies recommended by Jesus.  There is only the indication that to be about such business, to allow mercy to be our normality is to be changed by that same normality.  And to limit it is to remain secure behind our walls and status and excuses.  And if we pay attention to the lessons of history, there is no security there.  It’s that simple.

What’s our business?