Things I learn walking my dog

This morning I walked my dog, Bela (who is a bad dog we love ultimately), down on the old Canal Greenway and we were assaulted by the songs of a myriad of birds, more birds than I've heard since September.

Even Bela stopped several times and listened. It was a concerto that sounded to me a lot like Spring.

I hope they didn't come back too soon, for their sakes. I don't want birds whose timing was off to die on a February Connecticut night. But, for my sake, I hope their centuries of DNA told them right and soon all the birds will be back. I've missed them. I lean toward Spring....

Then, at 5:30 or so, when night was coming on hard--though later each day by a few minutes (God bless the tilting of the earth back toward the sun in the Northern Hemisphere)--I walked Bela down on Main Street, hoping he'd do his business somewhere close to the huge house of the bad man who used to live across the street from us and yelled, unmercifully, at his kids. I'd have picked it up, but I don't like that man and like that Bela often poops near his house. (Once, a few years ago, he came out when I was walking Bela and yelled at me. He yelled something like this: "Your dog always urinates and defecates near my house! I want that stopped! My children smell it in their rooms!) Nevermind that I had a plastic grocery bag in my pocket and nevermind that picked up dog defecation and un-picked up dog urination couldn't possibly be smelled on the second floor of his house. And never mind that I heard him yell equally irrational things at his kids when they lived across the street. Never mind all that--who in the hell says "defecates' and 'urinates' when they are angry and yelling???

If he has enough self-restraint to not say "shits and pisses" when he's yelling, why doesn't he have enough self-restraint not to yell at a neighbor or his kids? Go figure....

We walked down toward the Town Hall and three of the Tea Party guys who are there several drive times a week were in front of Town Hall.

They had three signs.

One said, FACE IT, OBAMA IS A SOCIALIST!

Well, I voted for Obama before and will again. I'm a 'yellow dog democrat', but believe you me, our President is not a 'socialist'. I actually wish he was. He's a moderate Democrat, much more moderate than me. I can't for the life of me understand that sign or why someone would write it or hold it.

The second said, EXTREMISM IN THE CAUSE OF FREEDOM IS NO VICE. That's a quote from Barry Goldwater. I was a devotee of Barry Goldwater when I was 17 years old. I was a convinced conservative back then. I even spray painted AUH2O on several public buildings, which meant I could have been arrested for vandalism except my father's two brothers owned most of the little town where I lived and being a Bradley was license to deface.

Then I heard Barry Goldwater promised to privatize the Tennessee Valley Authority, a government entity that provided cheap electric power for a vast swath of Appalachia. That he thought a private company would be as generous as the government had been woke me up.

That's when I grew up and became a Liberal.

I didn't mind the Goldwater quote at all. I actually believe it, just not the way the Tea Party guys do.

The last sign said: HONK IF YOU HATE GOVERNMENT

Bela and I stood there for 10 minutes or so, watching the three old guys (all of which, I imagine, haven't sent back their Social Security checks or torn up their Medicare cards!) try to hold three signs and two American flags between them.

It was drive time and Cheshire's two major industries are Garden Centers and traffic--mostly on Route 10--Main Street to natives--so Bela and I waited and watched and listened.

Only 4 cars honked in 10 minutes out of several hundred that passed by. An unscientific poll at best. But it gave me faith.

Then, here's the awful thing. The three guys left, gathering their flags and signs and I watched them go. They had parked in the parking lot of Town Hall!!!!

Wait a frigging minute! If you "hate government" and yet you stand on Town property and park in a Town Hall parking lot, isn't that a bit hypocritical. Do you hate the ground you stand on and the parking lot you use? The Town of Cheshire is, last time I looked, a organ of GOVERNMENT, that hated, reviled thing. When people 'honk' do you want the sidewalk to disappear and your cars to fall into a black hole because both are 'government property'?

Don't ever try to tell me, not ever, never in anyway, that IRONY isn't writ large in the world we live in.....

And I, for one, am glad about that.

Irony makes the world go 'round so far as I can see....

Honk if you love IRONY.....

stacking wood

Did I tell you I've been stacking wood? Of course I did to impress you that I have physical prowess as well as intelligence and great good looks. (I can also cook....)

So, I stacked a lot more wood today and I feel like what we used to say back home--'homemade s***". Of course, when you ponder if for a bit, absolutely all s*** is 'homemade' in a very direct way. So, what we used to say we felt like when we felt awful really doesn't make much sense since there is, so far as I know, no "store bought s***" around anywhere. Wouldn't find much of a market, I'd imagine....

I hurt all over--well, actually my eyes and ears and head don't hurt, or my teeth and tongue for that matter....but most of the muscle tissue (or what passes for muscle tissue on my body) aches like hell....

I shuffle along like a guy in the nursing home. Sitting down isn't bad, but getting up or going down into a 'sit' is awful.

Back home (boy, I must be in West Virginia in my heart tonight!) we used to joke that even though a girl wasn't very attractive, she could "carry much wood"....Well, it was funny back then to adolescent boys, but now it screams "sexism" like your foot just caught on fire.

So, there's still more wood to stack...we had a tree down, our neighbor's tree fell on our yard and we got the wood from that, and the guys trimmed the old horse chestnut tree so next storm, the limbs don't fall off and go into our neighbor's roof. Lots of wood.

I guess you might say that how I hurt is 'good for the soul', reminding me that I am frail and sinful and, beyond that, out of shape. A momento mori of sorts.

Good for the soul, you might say.

All I can say is "I feel like homemade..." well, you know all that.

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.