Where would he go and why....?

Whenever our Puli dog
goes out in the back yard
the first thing he does
is check the push-in-the-ground fence
that separates the yard from the driveway.

Several times, he's found it down
and tried to run away.
Why and to where
has always fascinated me.

There is no better life
for Bela "out there".

We make his food:
ground turkey, sweet potatoes,
peas and celery and garlic,
green beans and blueberries,
cooked well and lovingly.

And we love him
like a rock.
Bern loves him so much
it makes me anxious
whenever he's with me
that something bad will
happen and she'll blame me
for his demise.

So, what is so attractive
about 'out there'?
Why would he run away?

Where would he go
and why? Is what I wonder.

Where would we 'run away'
to, if we only could?
And why?

What Tim and I talked about in the night....

I'm not sure how it started, my conversation with Tim, my daughter's fiancee, but since they've been together for years now, already my son-in-law: but it was a conversation about 'belief' and 'practice'.

I have come to understand, over my life, that 'belief' belongs in the same category as 'feelings' and that 'practice' involves a 'choice' we make.

I am convinced that we don't have 'feelings', 'feelings' have us.

The dumbest thing you can say to someone who is sad or angry or happy is 'don't be sad/angry/happy. Though I don't know why you'd tell someone to not be happy, it is as useless and vain as telling someone not to be 'sad' or 'angry'. We don't 'have' feelings, feelings 'have' us.

I've come to realize that 'belief' is a 'feeling'. On the other hand 'practice' is a 'choice'.

I told Tim what I ask couples that come to me wanting to be married. "Tell me why you want to be married," I say, "and there is only one wrong answer."

Invariably, most of them tell me they want to be married because they are 'in love'.

That is the one wrong answer about wanting to be married.

"Love", I explain to them, as painful as it is, is the wrong answer because 'love' is a 'feeling' and we don't 'have feelings', feelings 'have us'. Then I tell them about my wife of now almost 43 years (in a few days), but whenever I told them about how I love my wife, it is the same telling. "Sometimes," I tell those dew-wet, crazy 'in love' couples, "I can't wait to get home just to see her, just to be in the same room with her because I love her so much. And then," I go on, "I often wake up in the early morning and look at her sleeping and see the creases on her face from the pillow and hear her snorts of snoring and see a little saliva coming out of her mouth and smell her morning smell and think, who is this? What am I doing here with her? Shouldn't I be somewhere else?

Love is a feeling, an emotion, and cannot be relied upon because it comes and goes--believe me, it comes and goes as all feelings do. So 'Love' is a terrible reason to get married. It will pass...and come again...and pass again....

The reason to get married involves a 'choice'--deciding to 'choose' to live your life with this person, no matter what feelings show up. The reason to get married in to choose to be committed to the relationship, for better or worse, for richer for poorer, in sickness and in health.

I had an assistant Rector once who always said, "God is not a feeling."

She was right and right absolutely. And, it seems to me, 'belief' is much more a 'feeling' than a 'choice'.

Practice, on the other hand, is defiantly a 'choice' and not a 'feeling'.

I couldn't say the Nicene Creed if it didn't begin "WE believe". Because, depending on how I 'feel', I may or may not believe some of that stuff. But if it is a 'community' thing, if it is a WE believe thing, then I can be a part of that because someone in the community must 'believe' what we're saying together.

Some Jews, as I understand it, are 'practicing' Jews. That means they keep the laws and the traditions as opposed to 'ethnic Jews' or 'secular Jews', who are Jews by their DNA, but not by their 'practice'.

I would distinguish Christians in this way--there are 'believing Christians' and then there are 'practicing Christians'.

I am in the latter group. I'm convinced that my 'belief', like my feelings, come and go. But I know my 'practice' of Christianity is something I choose to do. Practice is a choice, not a feeling.

So, I 'practice' my faith, whether or not I 'believe' it or not. I tend to the prayers and the sacraments. I seek always to be generous, compassionate and truthful. I welcome strangers and contribute to the poor. I seek to avoid anger and violence and prejudice. I 'pray' by holding people and the world in my mind and heart. I observe the holy days of my faith.

I am 'committed' to Christ rather than 'believing in' Christ. My faith is a commitment rather than a 'belief'.

I stand for what I say--that I am a 'practicing Christian' rather than a 'believing Christian.' I'm not sure what 'believing' even means.

I choose to practice being a Christian. I'm never quite sure what I believe.

What I do is 'choose' to follow Jesus, as best I can.

I have no idea, from time to time, what I 'believe' about Jesus.

"Being a Christian" to me, has much more to do with what I choose to practice than what I may or may not feel or believe at any moment in time.

PRACTICE, for me, is much more important that BELIEF. Every time, always. PRACTICE is who we BE. 'Belief' is what we think we feel.

Being always trumps 'feeling', so far as I can tell.

But that's just me.

And that is what Tim and I talked about in the night on Oak Island in North Carolina last week. A place blessed to be beautiful and wondrous and, in the dark, a place for deep conversation.

Here, again...

We're home again, jiggidy-jig....

As I grow older, I become, more and more, a 'homebody'. I just spent a glorious week with one of my children and her fiancee and Bern and two of my best friends in the world on a beach that is wondrous and practically empty, with gulls and Pelicans and birds aplenty and with more good food than anyone deserves and reading 6 books. What could be better, I ask you?

Being home is the answer. Being with our cat and parakeet, who a neighbor child looked after while we were gone, and our dog who I rescued and liberated from the kennel this afternoon. Familiar things give me quiet joy. Home again, home again, juggidy-jig....

I love this house we've lived in since 1989, when Josh was 14 and Mimi was 11. Long gone now, the two of them, and Bern and I live on here. 23 years and counting, surrounded by animals late and quick and by our 'stuff', which has become like skin to me.

A mystical sojourn on Oak Island with some of the people we love most in the world. What could be better than that?

Well, maybe being home with Maggie singing and Luke rubbing against you and Bela home with us and the almost unbearable and also enchanting familiarity of 95 Cornwall Avenue.

I love being home, being 'here' again, after being 'there'.

I will sleep tonight the sleep of the dead and the innocent and wake in the morning to those so-familiar sights and sounds and smells and comfort of 'being Home'.

Being 'home' is about as good as it gets in my mind and heart and soul....

Beach Magic

Oak Island, NC Friday

Last day at the beach. We'll start home tomorrow before noon--Tim and Mimi to Raleigh to catch their flight to NYC; Bern, John, Sherry and I in the Land Rover going to x-143 off I 95 to spend the night just north of Fredricksburg, VA. Last day is quiet, people feverishly finishing books, trying to eat everything in the refrigerator, feeling wistful. I remember spending three weeks and a couple of times a month on this island. My dream would be two weeks next year. Maybe Jack, Sherry's husband will be retired by then and can come with us. Even if Tim and Mimi could only stay one week, it would be great. Maybe even Josh, Cathy and our granddaughters could come for part of the first week and Mimi and Tim for the second. That's what I'd like anyway, but the girls would have to come the first week so we'd have a week to rest up and recover!

This morning there was a moment of beach magic.

Tim and Mimi were out in the calm ocean (yesterday afternoon it was knocking people down but this morning it was like a big lake) when one of the ubiquitous pelicans came crash diving not 5 feet from them. When it bobbed to the surface it looked at Tim and Mimi and Tim and Mimi looked at it.

The huge bird came nearer and stopped, then Tim and Mimi moved toward the bird.

John and I were in the gazebo, watching.

The meet and greet went on for over five minutes until Mimi started to try to get on the ocean side of the bird and it flew away, flapping its wondrous wings.

You don't get close to pelicans, they being to noble to traffic with humans. But there for over 5 minutes, Mimi and Tim could have reached out and touched the bird (though they had better sense that to try that!) Tim was who called it 'beach magic'. Mimi just was amazed at how wierd pelicans are up close.

At one point John picked up one of the dozen or so devices we have with us that will take a picture.

Then he put it down.

"This will be much better in our memories than in a photograph," he said.

And he was right.

Still there

Today, the next to last day, things get fragmented. Tim took Mimi to Yoga and then they bought the 'big fish'--two red snappers. John drove his Land Rover around for an hour or so. Bern made the stuffing for the snappers. I read and read. Sherry's niece and grand-niece came to pick her up and she went to Southport with them for several hours. Tim and Mimi and Sherry got into the roughest surf we've had and Tim helped Sherry avoid drowning. Then we ate the big fish and now everyone but Bern and I am watching Family Guy in the living room while Bern watches the US Open Tennis in our bedroom and I type this.

The problem is this: a week is not enough. When Josh and Mimi were young we'd come to Oak Island for at least three weeks and several times for a month. That's enough time to get into Beach Time and stay on it, lost in linear time, often not knowing what day it is, or what week.

But just a week means by Thursday people are dreading going home--or longing too (like Bern and I longing to get home to our Puli)--so we start to fragment. Just protecting our identity and longing to keep the community together.

Tim and I had a late night conversation about 'belief' vs. 'practice', which I'll write a lot about when I get home and have the time and have my Puli dog with me....

One more day and then the drive home for Sherry, John, Bern and me. Tim and Mimi will fly our of Raleigh to NYC on Saturday. We'll all be home on Sunday, hopefully early enough to get Bela out of the kennel....

See you later.

being there

It's 5:30 p.m. on Wednesday. Tim is reading on a chair in the living room. Sherry was on the couch reading until just now when she went to check on the butter beans she grew in New Haven and brought to the beach for us to eat. We won't eat them tonight. John is cooking tonight, something involving ham and beans and yellow grits. Mimi and Bern are down in the Gazebo, reading. I was reading until I took out this laptop John gave me and began writing this blog. John, who read most of the day, is taking a nap. There is ice-tea, gin and tonics and white wine being consumed as people read.

Not much going on. And that is pretty much what is going on in the house with the amusing name 'Andromeda Strand' on East Beach Road on Long Beach on Oak Island. Five of us went into Southport for lunch at the Southport Provision Company which has a boat charter service and 'advise' as well as a restaurant right on the water in open air. Conch fritters, onion rings, tuna sandwiches, crab cake sandwiches, steamed clams, potato salad and cucumber salad were consumed along with John's incongruous hamburger, along with beer. Mimi, Sherry  and Bern went to Yoga this morning and John and I went to breakfast--biscuits and sausage gravy and grits for me. Tim slept in.

Other than that, reading and conversation and laughter and irony and humor and a great deal of silence when people are reading, which is almost constantly. I'm on my 4th book in 4 days--The Cuckoo's Calling which J.K. Rowling (think Harry Potter) wrote under the pseudonym Robert Galbraith. Very good. People occasionally go bob in the surf or look for shells or don't.

Not a lot of 'doing' going on.

The ocean waxes and wanes and purrs. The birds fly up and down and stop to eat. We can see a mile in either direction and right now, in that two miles, there are maybe 30 people to be seen. On the beach, not much going on....At the Andromeda Stand, more 'being' than 'doing'....

"Being" is what makes it 'being there...'

There...

We arrived (John, Sherry, Bern and me) on  Saturday (after the two days in Travel Hell and John's Land Rover) about 4 pm, Mimi and Tim flew to Raleigh and got here about 5.

Since then (it's Tuesday noon now) it's pretty much what I said it would be: lots of laughter and the gentle teasing of love; lots and lots of good food and great weather; white wine, boutique beer and white wine; all of us sleeping well and reading at least a book a day; and birds, lots and lots of birds.

I watched this morning from the gazebo half-way between the deck and the steps down to beach level while 60 or70 gulls of several types lined up in double file to stare out to sea from the water's edge. They're still there several hours later, patient and hopeful as early Christians facing into the rising sun to see if today is the day the Lord returns. I don't know what they're doing. I may go down to the ocean in a while to see if they fly away and then come back for whatever conference or meeting or workshop they are attending.

Besides several species of gulls, there are grackles, sandpipers, swirling terns, tiny seabirds that feed on the cochinos the waves bring in and run back to dry when the next wave arrives. And pigeons, I don't remember so many pigeons on Oak Island before. They seem to be nesting in the roof of the gazebo. If you're quiet you can hear the young pigeons rustling above your head. (Pigeons, I happen to know, stay in the nest months longer than any other bird--until they're almost grown. Which, by the way, is why you never see baby pigeons....)

In the marshes north of the beach--Long Beach is a south facing beach, so if you're staring out to sea you should imagine the Caribbean rather than Europe--there are the herons and other long-legged, long-necked, graceful birds.

And then there are the pelicans, confederation after confederation of them. Oak Island is a major breeding ground for Brown Pelicans and they soar and dive and fly in breathless formations up and down the beach with what seems to be some Grand Purpose in mind. I love the pelicans, so grave and serious, so acrobatic and adept--their shadows proceeding or following them up the beach in their group flights. (Since it is a south facing beach the sun moves down the beach from east to west, never shining in your face as you look toward the Bahamas.)

Tim, Mimi and Sherry just got back from buying shrimp, fish (and if I correctly identify the other bags from Fruit and Brew) an abundance of alcoholic items.

I best go, since the quiet time always ends when people return from foraging (hunter-gatherers with credit cards are we....)