I must be becoming a contemplative

OK, Ted told me today I hadn't blogged lately. So I will.

It started last night. While I was studying a website about the square mileage and population density of the states--don't ask, it's too long a story--I got this sudden message on my computer about a 'critical error'. The message stacked up message after message like a deck of cards. In just a moment I lost the internet. Then I noted that lots of my little icons had taken leave as well. I still had Solitaire and Hearts so I played awhile, imagining that somehow the Lord or Bill Gates would miraculously heal my computer.

Then I turned it off and turned it back on to realize all that was left was solitaire and hearts and the 'start' icon. So I played solitaire and went to watch the Yankee game, imagining that by some good fortune, all would be well with my computer in the morning.

When I turned it on today, my rotating screen saver of remarkable vistas of beautiful places was gone and my 'sticky notes' with a rough 'to do' list was all that was left besides hearts and solitaire and the 'start' icon.

So I played hearts--it pains me to admit that my addictive personality is focused on playing hearts these days.

Bern was going to talk with our friend John, who is my personal IT guy, the one who built my computer for me, so I told her to tell him I was down to games and 'start' and sticky notes.

He came up at 6 and started fooling with things that are as far from my ken as brain surgery and the string theory of physics and speaking Bulgarian. He allowed that it seemed pretty simple and he did computer magic for a ten minutes or so and then we had dinner while the computer (I guess) talked to itself and did things I neither understand or want to understand.

Then I went up to my office to watch the computer talk to itself and tell me in terse terms what it was talking to itself about while John and Bern stayed downstairs and talked. John is very smart and very funny. Bern prefers the company of smart people and I prefer the company of funny people so it is little wonder John is our good friend.

Finally, the computer finished its internal conversation and started windows. I got on line, I checked out the other things I use and John was about to leave when I clicked on my "libraries" icon and found it empty.

So he came back up and worked for 45 minutes or so restoring all the stuff in my libraries--photos, music, documents.

I watched him for a while and then did some other stuff and came back and watched him some more. He told me several times that he'd 'never seen anything like this before' and that he wasn't sure how, or if, he could fix it.

Here's what was MIA:

*family photos I'd stored...not a lot but some I love.

*a little music--I listen to NPR instead of music, so there wasn't much there either.

*My novel "The Igloo Factory", my fantasy novel "The Princess and the Sailor", my murder mystery "Murder on the Block".

*about 400 sermons and sermon outlines.

*notes for my novel "The Bananaman" which once was written but then lost and I've been trying to reconstruct.

*all my poetry

*all the stuff I've written for Bern for Christmas (She gives me some graphic art each year--collages, paintings, etc, she creates and I write her poems and stories...that's what we give each other for Christmas.

*all the letters I've written that I've saved.

*my folder about the Middlesex Cluster and my hours and mileage log

*my folder and class outlines for the courses I teach at U.Conn in Waterbury

Granted, lots of that stuff is in hard copy and wouldn't have been lost. But a significant amount of it--all the sermons and poems and Middlesex stuff and U.Conn stuff and the letters would be lost forever.

The good news is, John recovered all of it through clicks and key strokes I'll never understand.

The better news is, in the midst of all that stuff being lost, I was, as best as I can describe it, 'eerily calm', like I was watching something happening that had nothing to do with me, like I was detached and safe when a whole bunch of stuff that means a great deal to me was gone from this universe.

I even remember thinking, during the Lost time, "I should be upset and anxious and distracted". Instead, what I really felt was, "all will be well". Maybe it was my faith in John to recover all that stuff, maybe.

But maybe, after all this time, I am becoming a contemplative---fiercely 'involved' with the world and simultaneously 'detached' emotionally.

Something to ponder. Recently I have found myself able to be 'present' in important ways to what was going on around me, but to, at the same time, be able to have 'distance' from it all emotionally.

It's what I've always sought to be in my ministry and my life--"a non-anxious presence".

It seems to be coming naturally these days.

Ponder, I will. Reflect, I must. (As Yoda would say....)