In April I will have been retired from full time ministry for 3 years. How the time flies. But back then, before I retired, I had printouts of several dozen poems on a shelf of a window in the chapel of St. John's. That was because at daily noon day prayers--attended by two or three and sometimes more--we had given up on reading from the daily lectionary and read poems instead. Sometimes from well-known poets--Billy Collins was the favorite--and sometimes from obscure, unknown poets, like me.
When I left, I thought I got them all, but I believe I must have loaned some to people who never brought them back or left some there. For reasons beyond my ken, they all aren't on my computer, so for almost three years, I've been looking for a poem called "The Trouble with Finitude" without success. But then I discovered that I had included it in something else I'd written. I just discovered that today. So, I share it with you with the African saying, "these are my words, if they are a blessing to you, keep them well; and, if not, send them back to me with your blessing please...."
The Trouble with Finitude
I try, from time to time,
usually late at night or after one too many glasses of wind,
to consider my mortality.
(I have been led to believe
that such consideration is valuable
in a spiritual way.
God knows where I got that...
well, of course God knows,
I'm just not sure.)
But try as I might, I'm not adroit at such thoughts.
It seems to me that I have always been alive,
I don't remember not being alive.
I have no personal recollections
of when most of North America was covered by ice
or of the Bronze Age
or of the French Revolution
or the Black Sox scandal.
But I do know about all that through things I've read
and musicals I've see
and the History Channel.
I know intellectually that I';ve not always been alive,
but I don't know it, as they say
"in my gut'.
(What a strange phrase that is,
since I am sure that my 'gut'
is a totally dark part of my body,
awash with digestive fluids
and whatever remains of the chicken and peas
I had for dinner and strange compounds
moving inexorably--I hope--through my large
and small intestines.)
My problem is this:
I have no emotional connection to finitude.
All I know and feel is tangled up with being alive.
Dwelling on the certainty of my own death
is beyond my ken, outside my imagination,
much like trying to imagine
the vast expanse of interstellar space
when I live in Connecticut.
So, whenever someone suggests that
I consider my mortality,
I screw up my face and breathe deeply
pretending I am imagining the world
without me alive in it.
What I'm actually doing is remembering
things I seldom remember...
my father's smell, an old lover's face,
the feel of sand beneath my feet,
the taste of watermelon,
the sound of thunder rolling toward me
from miles away.
Perhaps when I come to die
(perish the thought!)
there will be a moment, an instant,
some flash of knowledge
or a stunning realization:
"Ah," I will say to myself,
just before oblivion sets in,
"this is finitude...."
Just something to ponder as we todder along toward that Mysterious Door that leads to whatever comes next....
Tuesday, March 5, 2013
Monday, March 4, 2013
She never ceases to surprise me....
I've been married to Bern since 1970. Jesus, that's 43 years!!!
We met when I was 17 and she was 14, if you can believe it, and have pretty much been an item of one kind or another since then. That makes it almost 49 years. What were we thinking? This kind of thing isn't supposed to happen any more....
But there is this: she never ceases to surprise me.
I've often told people I've had 5 or 6 marriages, they've just all been to the same woman. And we have carved out different eras, like geological strata, one covering the one before, but you can dig down through them and excavate pieces of previous marriages.
For example, about the surprises me part: she came home from the grocery store today with a bag of dry food for our Cat, Luke. It is, like the food our dog eats, very healthy. Luke has dry food always available and wet food of one kind or another twice a day. He can be finicky about food, but he weighs about 20 pounds, so he's not starving.
I stated the obvious. "Luke won't eat this stuff."
And Bern said, unpacking bags and putting things away, "well, if he doesn't want to eat, it's just as well that he doesn't eat something that's good for him...."
I've been thinking about that ever since. There is a kind of logic to her thinking....and then, well, the logic implodes.
She's the practical one and I'm the one wandering through life as if there must be a point to it all if I could only find it.
"If he doesn't eat, it's best he doesn't eat what's good for him" is something I've been unable, in the several hours since she said it, to get my head around.
Then SURPRISE and confusion and serendipity might just be what causes people to hang out together fro nearly half a century.
I'm pondering that for a bit....
We met when I was 17 and she was 14, if you can believe it, and have pretty much been an item of one kind or another since then. That makes it almost 49 years. What were we thinking? This kind of thing isn't supposed to happen any more....
But there is this: she never ceases to surprise me.
I've often told people I've had 5 or 6 marriages, they've just all been to the same woman. And we have carved out different eras, like geological strata, one covering the one before, but you can dig down through them and excavate pieces of previous marriages.
For example, about the surprises me part: she came home from the grocery store today with a bag of dry food for our Cat, Luke. It is, like the food our dog eats, very healthy. Luke has dry food always available and wet food of one kind or another twice a day. He can be finicky about food, but he weighs about 20 pounds, so he's not starving.
I stated the obvious. "Luke won't eat this stuff."
And Bern said, unpacking bags and putting things away, "well, if he doesn't want to eat, it's just as well that he doesn't eat something that's good for him...."
I've been thinking about that ever since. There is a kind of logic to her thinking....and then, well, the logic implodes.
She's the practical one and I'm the one wandering through life as if there must be a point to it all if I could only find it.
"If he doesn't eat, it's best he doesn't eat what's good for him" is something I've been unable, in the several hours since she said it, to get my head around.
Then SURPRISE and confusion and serendipity might just be what causes people to hang out together fro nearly half a century.
I'm pondering that for a bit....
Sunday, March 3, 2013
3 hours is a bit of time
OK, if you read this blog (and you wouldn't be reading it if you weren't reading it now....) you need to know that the time the blog says I wrote something is three hours earlier than I really did.
I thought it was off, but I just posted a blog at 8:16 pm and the time on the blog said 5:16 pm.
Although I'm normally unstuck in linear time, it seems to me the blog page should at least be able to get the time right. How am I to know whether other things are wrong? Any misspelling is the fault of the blog, as well as violations of William Strunk Jr.'s and E.B. White's The Elements of Style, which I actually possess a copy of. (Oops, ending a sentence with a preposition! Blog-Spot did that!)
I don't often look at it, because I practically memorized it, being an English Major and all that. And I'd just assumed it was the copy from my university years. But I picked it up and discovered it is the Property of the Town of Cheshire. The last name on the checkout list is my very own son, Josh Bradley, written in a script that is his alone and can neither be imitated or understood unless you happen to be his father.
So Josh stole The Elements of Style from Cheshire High School. Well, if you're going to turn to a life of crime, what's better, shooting someone, selling drugs or stealing a book to improve your writing style?
God bless him. Because of his theft I have a copy of the book that was my constant companion for 4 years during the late 60's as I wrote essays on Shakespeare's plays, Thomas Wolfe's novels and the poetry of almost everyone. That's my boy....
It's now 8:29 p.m. but you'll be told, inaccurately, that I posted this at 5:29 pm.
Just remember that.
I thought it was off, but I just posted a blog at 8:16 pm and the time on the blog said 5:16 pm.
Although I'm normally unstuck in linear time, it seems to me the blog page should at least be able to get the time right. How am I to know whether other things are wrong? Any misspelling is the fault of the blog, as well as violations of William Strunk Jr.'s and E.B. White's The Elements of Style, which I actually possess a copy of. (Oops, ending a sentence with a preposition! Blog-Spot did that!)
I don't often look at it, because I practically memorized it, being an English Major and all that. And I'd just assumed it was the copy from my university years. But I picked it up and discovered it is the Property of the Town of Cheshire. The last name on the checkout list is my very own son, Josh Bradley, written in a script that is his alone and can neither be imitated or understood unless you happen to be his father.
So Josh stole The Elements of Style from Cheshire High School. Well, if you're going to turn to a life of crime, what's better, shooting someone, selling drugs or stealing a book to improve your writing style?
God bless him. Because of his theft I have a copy of the book that was my constant companion for 4 years during the late 60's as I wrote essays on Shakespeare's plays, Thomas Wolfe's novels and the poetry of almost everyone. That's my boy....
It's now 8:29 p.m. but you'll be told, inaccurately, that I posted this at 5:29 pm.
Just remember that.
Earlier this afternoon
snow was spitting from
an almost totally blue sky.
such things happen,
I suppose,
just in the
nature of things.
I am constantly amazed
and amused
by the natural world.
there is a blue heron
that seems to live in the canal
down the hill from our house.
he seems oddly misplaced
to me,
but just to see him move
and watch the grace
he walks with
is worth a trip
down the hill
to the canal.
and on Route 9,
around Middletown and further south,
there are large birds circling,
that I imagine
to be hawks
and, from time to time,
chickens on the side of the road
around exits 10 and 9.
chickens, for goodness sake.
Someone from Killingworth
told me they'd seen them too--
the chickens.
we didn't talk about the hawks.
an almost totally blue sky.
such things happen,
I suppose,
just in the
nature of things.
I am constantly amazed
and amused
by the natural world.
there is a blue heron
that seems to live in the canal
down the hill from our house.
he seems oddly misplaced
to me,
but just to see him move
and watch the grace
he walks with
is worth a trip
down the hill
to the canal.
and on Route 9,
around Middletown and further south,
there are large birds circling,
that I imagine
to be hawks
and, from time to time,
chickens on the side of the road
around exits 10 and 9.
chickens, for goodness sake.
Someone from Killingworth
told me they'd seen them too--
the chickens.
we didn't talk about the hawks.
Saturday, March 2, 2013
Math magic
OK, try this: take the two digits of your age--mine are 6 and 5--add them together and subtract them from your age...65-11=54. Five plus four is nine.
Try your age and do what I said and see if you come up with nine. Far as I can tell it works for anyone 10 (1+0=1 subtracted from 10 equals 9) From 10 on it works 99-18 equals 81. 8+1=9.
If you live beyond 99, I'm not sure if it works. But if you do, God bless you....
Try your age and do what I said and see if you come up with nine. Far as I can tell it works for anyone 10 (1+0=1 subtracted from 10 equals 9) From 10 on it works 99-18 equals 81. 8+1=9.
If you live beyond 99, I'm not sure if it works. But if you do, God bless you....
Somewhere I mentioned a poem...
In some blog or another I mentioned a poem that would explain whatever I was writing about better than I was doing. Right now, I don't remember much about what I was saying in that post, but I have found the poem!
(Which reminds me of what Robert Browning said to a woman at a party that asked him what a particular line in one of his poems meant: "When I wrote that, madam," he said, "only God and Robert Browning knew what it meant....Now, only God knows....)
So, for what it's worth, here's the poem I couldn't find that day when I was writing about what only God knows now....
SONG TO MY OTHER SELF
Over the years I have caught glimpses of you
in the mirror, wicked;
in a sudden stridency of my own voice, hav
heard you mock me;
in the tightening of my muscles, felt the pull
of your anger and the whine
of your greed twist my countenance, felt your
indifference blank my face when pity was called for.
You are there, lurking under every kind act I do,
ready to defeat me.
Lately, rather than drop the lid of my shock
over your intrusion,
I have looked for you with new eyes
opened to your tricks, but more,
opened to your rootedness in life.
Come, I open my arms to you, once dread stranger.
Come, as a friend I would welcome you to stretch your apartments
within me from the cramped to comforting size.
Thus I would disarm you. For I have recently learned,
learned looking straight into your eyes:
The Holiness of God is everywhere.
--Elsie Landstrom
(Which reminds me of what Robert Browning said to a woman at a party that asked him what a particular line in one of his poems meant: "When I wrote that, madam," he said, "only God and Robert Browning knew what it meant....Now, only God knows....)
So, for what it's worth, here's the poem I couldn't find that day when I was writing about what only God knows now....
SONG TO MY OTHER SELF
Over the years I have caught glimpses of you
in the mirror, wicked;
in a sudden stridency of my own voice, hav
heard you mock me;
in the tightening of my muscles, felt the pull
of your anger and the whine
of your greed twist my countenance, felt your
indifference blank my face when pity was called for.
You are there, lurking under every kind act I do,
ready to defeat me.
Lately, rather than drop the lid of my shock
over your intrusion,
I have looked for you with new eyes
opened to your tricks, but more,
opened to your rootedness in life.
Come, I open my arms to you, once dread stranger.
Come, as a friend I would welcome you to stretch your apartments
within me from the cramped to comforting size.
Thus I would disarm you. For I have recently learned,
learned looking straight into your eyes:
The Holiness of God is everywhere.
--Elsie Landstrom
Friday, March 1, 2013
Movies and other stuff
I don't get the problem everyone had with Seth what's-his-name at the Oscars. I thought he was funny. 'Course I do like adolescent kinds of humor....
I watched the whole Oscar show because I love movies. I told someone the other day I watched the whole thing in real time and they looked at me like I should be in a padded cell.
My three favorite movies of last year were, in order Silver Linings Playbook, Argo and Lincoln so I had a great time watching the Oscars. And though Seth what's-his-name was tasteless and vulgar, I thought he was funny. 'Course my granddaughters and I think farts and 'poopie' as an adjective (as in 'poopie face' or 'poopie mouth') are funny.
Today I saw what will surely make my top 5 movies of 2013--The Quartet directed by Dustin Hoffman and staring a whole bunch of British stars including Maggie Smith who should get a nomination. I can't say enough good about The Quartet so I'll just give you the categories I think it should get awards for: acting (Maggie and three or four others would make my list), sound track (it takes place in a Home for Retired Musicians so there is music throughout), directing, cinematography (incredible interior and exterior stuff), film editing (with all the music and different camera angles it must have been a nightmare for editing) and final credits (Oh, I know there's no award for the credits, but their should be and this movie should be nominated.) If you saw Argo you will remember the credits included pictures of the actors beside the real life person they played. In Quartet, it seems that many of the people in the home were, in fact, retired musicians so during the credits--when the Quartet is finally heard--there were pictures of the actors along side of pictures of them as young musicians....Just great....
So, if you see it, stay for the credits....
On another note: did you know you can major in Equine Management at Post University in Waterbury? I saw it on one of those highway billboards that changes--you know what I mean--different message every 15 seconds or so.
The billboard showed a show horse jumping. What the hell is Equine Management and why would you need a degree to do it?
And why aren't those signs that change against the law? I almost wreck when I pass one trying to see as many versions as possible....
And when I went to Plainville to see The Quartet (because it wasn't playing anywhere nearer) I noticed a Taco Bell/Long Johns Silver's across the road from where the Multiplex was. So tell me, who dreams up these fast food marriages? Does Taco Bell and Long John Silver's occur to you in the same thought--if they occur to you at all? I honestly didn't know that there was a Long John Silver's anywhere in godless New England. I'll have to go to Plainville again soon.
Finally, my poopie-face granddaughters could do a better job in Congress (they are 6, 6 and 3) than the people somebody out there elected. The 'sequester' is here, beloved. The drop-dead most stupid law ever passed--passed because it was so drop-dead stupid that even Morgan, Emma and Tegan would have done something to stop it from happening. The inmates are in charge of the asylum--which should be the name of the House and Senate....
I watched the whole Oscar show because I love movies. I told someone the other day I watched the whole thing in real time and they looked at me like I should be in a padded cell.
My three favorite movies of last year were, in order Silver Linings Playbook, Argo and Lincoln so I had a great time watching the Oscars. And though Seth what's-his-name was tasteless and vulgar, I thought he was funny. 'Course my granddaughters and I think farts and 'poopie' as an adjective (as in 'poopie face' or 'poopie mouth') are funny.
Today I saw what will surely make my top 5 movies of 2013--The Quartet directed by Dustin Hoffman and staring a whole bunch of British stars including Maggie Smith who should get a nomination. I can't say enough good about The Quartet so I'll just give you the categories I think it should get awards for: acting (Maggie and three or four others would make my list), sound track (it takes place in a Home for Retired Musicians so there is music throughout), directing, cinematography (incredible interior and exterior stuff), film editing (with all the music and different camera angles it must have been a nightmare for editing) and final credits (Oh, I know there's no award for the credits, but their should be and this movie should be nominated.) If you saw Argo you will remember the credits included pictures of the actors beside the real life person they played. In Quartet, it seems that many of the people in the home were, in fact, retired musicians so during the credits--when the Quartet is finally heard--there were pictures of the actors along side of pictures of them as young musicians....Just great....
So, if you see it, stay for the credits....
On another note: did you know you can major in Equine Management at Post University in Waterbury? I saw it on one of those highway billboards that changes--you know what I mean--different message every 15 seconds or so.
The billboard showed a show horse jumping. What the hell is Equine Management and why would you need a degree to do it?
And why aren't those signs that change against the law? I almost wreck when I pass one trying to see as many versions as possible....
And when I went to Plainville to see The Quartet (because it wasn't playing anywhere nearer) I noticed a Taco Bell/Long Johns Silver's across the road from where the Multiplex was. So tell me, who dreams up these fast food marriages? Does Taco Bell and Long John Silver's occur to you in the same thought--if they occur to you at all? I honestly didn't know that there was a Long John Silver's anywhere in godless New England. I'll have to go to Plainville again soon.
Finally, my poopie-face granddaughters could do a better job in Congress (they are 6, 6 and 3) than the people somebody out there elected. The 'sequester' is here, beloved. The drop-dead most stupid law ever passed--passed because it was so drop-dead stupid that even Morgan, Emma and Tegan would have done something to stop it from happening. The inmates are in charge of the asylum--which should be the name of the House and Senate....
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)