learning to fly

Jennifer Hornbeck, a seminarian I worked with at St. John's in Waterbury, sent me a quote from Patrick Overton that goes like this:

When we walk on the edge
of all the light we have
and step off into the unknown
we must believe
that one of two things will happen:
there will be something solid
for us to stand on
or
we will be taught to fly.

That, for me, is the essence of faith, of trust, of believing, of knowing--beyond all the evidence to the contrary--that God is in charge.

Flying is the ultimate answer to the problems of the world. Just soaring above the endless nonsense that passes for 'political debate' today. Winging above the social issues and the economic issues and trusting in a God who loves us, just as we are.

I was stacking wood today (just to let you know I do manual labor from time to time) from the tree and trimming from October. I got three free pallets and piled up a lot of tulip tree and horse chestnut wood.

"Work", actually physical labor, is a gift.

There is a story in Islamic lore of Jesus walking through the old city of Jerusalem and coming across the corpse of a dog, dead for quite a while, stinking to high heaven, decomposing in the street. All the disciples are disgusted and hurry ahead. But Jesus kneels by the dog, touches it's rapidly rotting body gently and says, "what beautiful teeth this dog had...."

Flying has something to do with recognizing the beauty and the nobility of everything in life. Even the teeth of a dead dog.

There is so much negativity in the public square these days. We need to fly above it and lean into the light, the hope, the beauty, the wonder, the holiness of life.

At least I think so, but what do I know? I don't know anything. I just ponder everything.

Amazing discovery that turns out to be obvious...

Last night I made an amazing discovery!

That then, after I told my wife about it, turns out to be obvious....

Let me back up a bit.

On our visits to Baltimore and our granddaughters visits with us, Bern has been playing Tic-Tac-Do with the 5 year old twins, Morgan and Emma. I don't play with them because, unlike Bern, I'd never let them win.

Under my laid-back, calm and patient facade is the heart of a person absolutely dedicated to competition and, most of all, WINNING....

But last night I had a little time (actually, I have a LOT of time since I'm retired) and I played Tic-Tac-Do about 25 times with myself. And my Amazing Discovery was that I could never, ever beat myself in the game. I was astonished. What a good player I must be that I could never beat myself!

So I told Bern all about my Amazing Discovery and she looked at me the way she looks at me when I leave the refrigerator door open while making a sandwich or trim my beard and wash the trimmings down the bathroom sink or reach up into my sweater to pull down the cuff of the shirt underneath when I could have merely held the cuff in my fingers while I put on the sweater. (There are lots of other examples about when Bern gives me the look she gave me when I told her, "I can't beat myself at tic-tac-do", but I spare you having to read about them.

Here's what she told me about my Amazing Discovery that I could never beat myself at Tic-Tac-Do, "Of course you can't. That's obvious. You always know what you are going to do."

She didn't say, "you'd have to be a moron AND an idiot to beat yourself at Tic-Tac-Do", but I did hear a faint echo of that though she didn't say it, being compassionate, to a degree, about my idiosyncratic way of being in the world.

Here's what I wonder now: could someone who has multiple personalities have one that could beat another at Tic-Tac-Do?

That's probably a "politically incorrect" question. But I have as much difficulty with that as I have with leaving the refrigerator door open....

Such a misplac'ed springtime afternoon

Years ago when I was a card carrying Romantic Poet, I wrote a sonnet that began like this:

When thus it comes upon a winter day,
Such a misplac'ed springtime afternoon....

I don't remember the rest of it, mercifully. I was probably 21 or so when I wrote it--lots of winter days and springtime afternoons ago. And at the time, I felt not a twinge of regret of writing "misplaced" as, "misplace'ed".

Historically bad poetry, let's face it, but I still have a soft spot for my Romantic Poet Era and have thought a lot about those words when the February mornings turn into early April afternoons these days.

My grandmother called this kind of weather, "pneumonia winter", because the warm afternoons and chill nights seem like a Pietra Dish (if that's how you spell it) for viruses. I know all sorts of people who have never-ending-colds and stomach flues and coughs. I, myself, don't know if my voice is going to work right when I talk since the weather has caused me to sound like Lauren Bacall after four scotches and a pack of Camels.

I'm sure the rest of my poem was a celebration of unexpected warmth and the juices that boil when that happened. Hey, I said I was a Romantic Poet back then!

I heard today about a dear friend who has decided to die with some grace and dignity and on his own terms rather than filled with tubes with anxious medical professionals crowding around him. Never mind the details, just know that he will almost certainly be dead before the First Sunday of Lent. And it is his choice to end it all this way. He could probably make it to Easter or even to summer dealing with the doctors. But, he told me when we talked on the phone today, he'd rather it be this way.

I feel that feeling in the back of the throat that you feel when tears are near just writing about this. I'm going to see him tomorrow. I'll take him communion. I'll offer to give his the prayers for the dying. I'll anoint him with oil. I'll listen to him and hold his hand too tightly and sit in my car for 10 minutes afterwards crying.

He's an odd old bird, prickly around the edges but soft as butter in August inside. A man of great commitments and 'as good as his word' and he was always even better than what he promised. He's a different generation than me--one of the 'Greatest Generation' while I'm just an early Baby Boomer with all the problems we've caused. There are things about him my coddled, privileged kind can never understand. A depth of soul, perhaps...a wondrous expansiveness that allowed him to live and breathe and have his being in the nexus of Need and Responsibility.

What a joy it was to be a part of his life. How I admire his decision. How I hope I'll have his courage when it comes my time to open that inscrutable door to 'what comes next'. How I both dread and look forward to our time tomorrow.

I learned long ago that it is a humbling and miraculous opportunity to sit by the side of one who will soon shuffle off this mortal coil. I am not unacquainted with death. Being a priest involves you intimately in the ironic blessing of traveling nearly THERE but pulling back with other sisters and brothers.

I learned all this on a February afternoon that might have set a record, it was so much like early spring. Somehow it is appropriate. My friend has chosen Spring over Winter. He moves on, impatiently.

I ponder what all that means. I retreat to my Castor Oil Tree and wonder whether to rail at God for losing yet another friend, or to thank the Holy One for the warmth....

Law-ed

For some reason, while walking the dog tonight, I thought about my childhood friend, Lloyd. (That's not his real name, but I chose it because I could do the same thing to it as I can do to his real name--pronounce it in Appalachian.) "Law-ed" or, more precisely "Law-ED" because Appalachian folks tend to accent the last syllable and go up on the end of a sentence. My name, for example, was "Gem-E". Like THAT....

Lloyd was a great kid. A bit shy, but not overly. Very smart, when you got him talking. A medium athlete, like most of us. A little smaller than average. But, in the end, he was the All Star, Super Hero kid of the kids I hung around with.

His mother taught third grade. I didn't have her as my teacher, but I knew, from going to Lloyd's house, that she thought the plural of you was 'you-ins'. But then, we all talked like that--Appalachian.

Nobody knew until it happened, but Lloyd's home-life was a nightmare. Apparently, for all his life, Lloyd's father, who was a little fellow like him, physically abused Lloyd. I don't know if there was anything sexual in the abuse, but back then, back there, we wouldn't have known how to speak to each other about so abominable a thing.

Anyhow, Lloyd had a baby sister. Much younger than him--6 or 7 years or so--and Lloyd had warned his father, when we were in high school, if he ever touched Lloyd's sister he would kill him.

Apparently, looking back, the warning didn't take and at some point Lloyd's father abused Lloyd's sister.

So Lloyd took his daddy's shotgun and shot his daddy dead as hell. Just like that.

I was in college when it happened and missed the trial and the verdict. Lloyd spent some time in a prison in West Virginia for manslaughter, but his sister and his mother were liberated from the abuse none of us knew about. I'm sure Lloyd thought it was a good deal--a little time in prison for freeing his family from a monster.

I don't know why I thought of Lloyd as I was walking the dog. I haven't thought of him in years. And the thing is, I grew up in such a calm, loving family that I can't imagine (and don't want to imagine) what Lloyd's childhood was like.

But I know this: Lloyd is one of my real-life heroes and I hope and pray he's alright these days.

Had I been in his shoes and his genes, I hope I'd have had his courage and his outrage. Really. No kidding.

Patterns

Dawn, morning, noon, afternoon, dusk, evening, night--over and over again.

Breakfast, lunch, dinner, late night snack. Over and again.

We live within patterns.

I was sitting in the front seat of my son's car with Emma and Morgan, my granddaughters, in the back seat, secure in child seats, while Josh went into Starbucks for an iced-tea on our way to church at the Cathedral of the Incarnation Baltimore last Sunday morning.

We were looking at a strip mall--a very Yuppie strip mall--and I reminded the girls that we had all been at the Italian restaurant just in front of us.

"Remember," I said, "when we were there Tegan" (the 5 year old twins 2 year old sister)"got so upset that the adults had to take turns being outside with her. Remember that?"

Emma said, "So Mommy and Daddy and you and Grandma kept coming out to be with Tegan?"

"Yes," I said, "just like that."

"That was a 'pattern'," she said.

I was astonished that she's said that. "So, what's a 'pattern', Emma?"

"It's when something happens the same way over and over," she told me.

Just then Morgan said, "Did Daddy bring a snack for church?" The Cathedral is very wonderful about children--they eat, color, read, play video games on their parents' smart phones and eat snacks after they come back from Sunday School at the Peace and nobody minds.

"Daddy always forgets to bring the snack," Morgan said.

"He remembered this time," I said, because the snack bag was between my feet.

"So," I said to Emma, "Daddy broke the pattern."

She thought for a moment. "Yes, he did," she said.

Patterns are how we live...the better to break them, I'd say.

Going to Church with Emma and Morgan

I went to the Cathedral with my son, Josh, and my twin granddaughters, Emma and Morgan, on Sunday.

O.C.S.

I suffer from OCS. I don't know if it is in the diagnostics of psychologists, but it should be.

Our friend, John Anderson came to dinner tonight and before we ate John and Bern were talking about all the rules they lived under as children when in someone else's house. There were all sorts of restrictions about 'not opening anyone's refrigerator without permission' and 'never entering a bedroom in someone's house'--stuff that sounded like Sanskrit to me because I suffer from OCS,

Both Bern and John have siblings (Bern is the youngest of 3, John the oldest of 4) so life showed up for them a lot differently than it did for me.

People with OCS will not only open strangers' refrigerators, they will open their medicine cabinets and their closets. Sufferers of OCS have no boundaries. Our mantra is "What Mine is Mine and What's Yours is Mine."

Only Child Syndrome is a remarkable affliction. Only Children are all like every other 'only child' but they have little to nothing in common with people who have brothers and sisters. We are not like You, just believe it.

Imagine, unless you are an Only Child, what life would have been like if you never had to fight anyone over a toy or share a room or wear hand-me-downs or see some younger brother wearing your old clothes or never had to scream "leave me alone!" to a sibling or had to fight about where to sit to watch TV or ride in the car or never had an older sibling pinch you or a younger sibling turn you in for pinching and never, ever, not once, had to share things.

Well, I know you can't imagine all that any more than I can imagine pecking orders or 'sharing' or having someone else taking up your space and hogging stuff.

I often, often have to hear people discuss their siblings. Rarely am I jealous or envious. Mostly, I'm just confused. I have always romanticized about having brothers and sisters...until I hear a normal kid, with brothers or sisters or both, talk about what it was like.

The most common question I get from people with siblings is this: "weren't you 'lonely'?"

Here's the thing, if you've never had other siblings that you might from time to time be separated from, "loneliness" has no meaning whatsoever. I truly have no connection with either 'loneliness' or 'boredom'. I know people get what they called 'bored', but I have no intellectual or emotional category equivalent to 'boredom'. For me, it simply doesn't exist. I am perfectly happy to entertain myself because I've always had to and don't know what the option would look like.

As I told you earlier: Only Children Are Not Like You.

Lots of it, realistically--this OCS stuff, is not good. I had to bury my parents alone. No one is there to tell me if my memories of childhood are accurate or wildly mistaken. I'm nobody's Uncle--and I would be a great Uncle, I believe. I have no nieces or nephews to be the crazy Uncle Jim for.

My mother had 4 siblings who lived and 2 who died in childhood. (Ernest and Leon, the two that died, were part of my childhood as well as the uncle and aunts who I grew up with.) My father had 3 brothers and a sister. So I had aunts and uncles aplenty and first cousins forever.

But I never had a brother or a sister. I simply am not equipped to know what that would be like, not in a million years.

We have two children and I never figured out the whole sibling thing. Not for a moment.

OCS has some wondrous ramifications. And some noxious side-effects.

It is what it is.

But Only Children (unless you're one) are Not like you....