The coughing people

Mimi is here--Chahoo, Chahay!

Mimi being here is a gift, a wonder, a joy.

She's here to buy a car because her new job requires one. She's the development officer for Jacob's Pillow and will have an apartment they're giving her in Stockbridge and she'll work in NYC much of the time.

Google Jacob's Pillow and watch the video there and you'll see how amazing they are and how lucky they are to find Mimi.

But since she's been here she's been coughing like Bern and I have for weeks. I'm blaming the cold air since any other blame would involve serious health issues.

But, even coughing, even having to go car shopping, even with all that, having Mimi here is so special that coughing is no problem.

Plus, she is the Puli's favorite person ever. Bela is besotted  that she's here, following her around, laying at her feet, full of the wonder that is Mimi.

And so are Bern and I. Having Mimi here is like it always is in our house on Cornwall Avenue, except better. Really, better.

That's my daughter, my princess, my love, who makes my perfect life even better than perfect.

Imagine that.

the trouble with numbers

March 8 is the 5th anniversary of Under the Castor Oil Tree. That week I'm going to re-post the 7 most viewed posts ever (actually there are 8 because two tied as 7th most viewed). There is no rhyme nor reason  to those posts, all which have had well over a hundred views. I can't figure out why they are, by far, the most viewed. Who knows?

I'll also post the first post--March 8, 2009.

Here's my problem, I'm currently at 845 or so posts. Maybe it's 855. I'd like to get to 900, for reasons beyond my understanding, by March 8.

Numbers are troubling. I worry about and ponder numbers a lot.

What difference would it make if I re-posted the 7 least viewed posts instead of the 7 (8) most viewed? Why would it matter if I got to 900 posts by the end of the first week of March?

More often than seems rational, I see on the variety of digital clocks in our house "4:17". Once every three weeks I wake up for a while at 4:17 a.m. Often I'm in the kitchen, where there are a plethora of digital clocks on all sorts of appliances, including our coffee maker, at 4:17 p.m.

It's my birthday April 17. So I ponder why 4:17 shows up so often.

I'm going to stop now, before you start thinking I'm weird or number obsessed. (Which I probably am since I'm always counting the number of toilet tissues I use after....Well, on second thought, you really don't want to know about that....)

Where I 'come from'

Back where I 'come from' the first thing you asked a stranger you'd just met is, exactly that, "where do you come from?"

Roots and geography and family tell us a lot more about a person than the question usually asked in New England upon meeting: "what do you do?"

The distinction is between 'doing' and 'being', between 'function' and 'ontology'.

I come down hard on the 'being' and 'ontology' side of the distinction.

Life, for most people, involves a desire to 'get to' something--the best job, the perfect portfolio, an ideal family...stuff like that.

I think the more productive, powerful and transforming thing is to 'Come From' somewhere.

"Getting to" what you long for is exhausting, never-ending and finally, a bit futile. So you get there, then what?

Entering life 'coming from' a commitment, a declaration, a way of being you involves almost no effort, creates 'what comes next' and is life-giving and affirming. 'Coming from' 'who you ARE' puts you in control instead of the circumstances of life.

I could say a lot more about all that, but I'd rather just invite you to ponder and consider the difference in a life that 'comes from' something and a life that is always seeking to 'get to' something.

Ponder that, please.

See where that leads you.

The poop patch....

I'm not going to complain about the additional foot of snow we got last night and today, but it does make it difficult to walk a dog--Cornwall Avenue has two inches of snow on it and most people haven't been able to clear their sidewalks 'again' today.

This morning I took him through a few inches of snow down to the driveway to the Congregational Church parking lot. When I took him an hour later (when he usually goes with Bern to the Canal) there was no evidence of our footprints from an hour before.

With help from neighbors who share our driveway and the guy next door with his Cadillac-level snow blower, we were dug out by 4. But when I took him out at 5, all the sidewalks that were a few inches this morning were unwalkable.

But Bern went out in the back yard with a shovel and made a run for him. She called it a 'Poop Patch' and he used it for its purpose.

When we're out he keeps looking at me as if for an explanation for the snow.

One place we walk is a bank parking lot down toward Rt. 10. Banks get plowed regularly, by the way.
Every time we're there he goes into a frenzy of running in circles and jumping on me. It's almost like he's saying, "ok, this is crazy, all this snow, so I'm going to be crazy too!"

If you have a dog and live on the east coast, you might consider shoveling a poop patch of your own.

The Moon was out early today

It was 4:30 p.m. or so,
I was walking the dog
and putting out the garbage
and recycling stuff,
and there, up in the sky
in the north-east
was the moon.

I don't know why the moon was out.
I should know such things,
being pretty smart--above average,
at least.
It's something I'm sure, about
the position of the earth
in regard to the sun
on a bitterly cold day
in February
in Connecticut,
that caused the moon to show up
so early when it was still
daylight.

But then, as I was pondering
the scientific reason
for the moon's early arrival,
I was caught up in the fantasy
that, because the moon is so cold,
showing up in the afternoon
of a cold, cold day
might have something
to do with it.

Being partial,
as I am,
to the moon
(and its waxing and waning)
I imagined for a while,
walking the dog
and putting out the garbage,
that maybe the moon,
cold as it is,
likes to visit Connecticut
early on cold, cold,
cold days.

Just to check in with us
and see how we're doing
in the chill.

That pondering gave me joy
(freezing cold as I was!)
to imagine the moon,
like your favorite aunt,
was just checking in
to see how we were managing
with so much snow
and cold.

Thank you, moon....

A Place to be

I'd bet that everyone reading this has a favorite chair, a side of the bed they sleep on, somewhere they feel most comfortable. Things need to be 'just right' in the space we inhabit, in the place we 'be'.

The ante goes up when the space, the place is a holy place, a holy space--like a church.

I told two stories in my sermon on Sunday about holy places and holy spaces. I'll tell them to you as well.

First is M. In my first parish the baptismal font was in the back of the church. Back then I was much more into the rules and canons than I am now and I thought that since baptism was admission to communion rather than a requirement for entering the sanctuary that the font should be up front, near the altar. So, I moved it there.

Five years later, at my going away party at St. James, M. came up to me and told me, "I've forgiven you for moving the baptismal font." I almost said, "thanks for not worrying me about that for five years". Instead, being on my best behavior, I asked her why moving it was a problem for her. She told me that the font had been given by her parents in memorial to her grandparents and had always been at the back of the church.

At St. John's, where I was Rector for 21 years, K., who always sat in the second pew on the pulpit side suddenly stopped coming to church. She was an on-the-edge member, on disability with two teen age kids she was raising alone. I knew she sometimes came to the Soup Kitchen near the end of the month so I hung out until I saw her. I sat with her at her table and asked her why she'd disappeared.

"My pew got taken away," she told me. I was confused, but then I remembered that we had four baptismal Sundays a year with 8-12 baptisms and we'd just been through the Sunday after Easter (designed to have a good crowd on 'low Sunday') and Pentecost--both baptismal Sundays and the families of the children were spread over the first three rows of each side of the center aisle each time. So K's pew was 'taken away'.

She was a marginal person who thought many of the people at St. John's thought they were better than her. And, more damaging, she thought many of the people at St. John's were better than her. So to be displaced from her 'spot', her place, her space, was profoundly painful for her.

Of course, both of those stories--both M and K--were irrational.

But when we talk about our place to be, rationality is the last consideration.

Feelings about 'place' and 'space' are profoundly personal and emotional. And when that 'space' and 'place' is also considered 'holy', well, that just multiplies the feelings....

Ponder 'the space' you occupy for a bit and the 'place' you feel is holy.

Ponder and imagine what depths of the subconscious 'place' and 'space' occupies within your being.

I think you might be surprised by how important 'place' and 'space' are to you.

Human beings need to take up 'space' and need a 'place' to be. Just 'to be'.

Something I've posted before but need to again

This poem about 'Finitude'  has been here before. But I'm feeling close to all that a lot these days. I wrote a letter to Bern to be opened upon my death because I wanted to be in charge of my memorial service and to let her know all the details she'd have to deal with.

When I wrote this poem, I was much younger. There was irony and humor in it. But in the last few years (how the hell am I 66?) it races closer to the bone. So, here again is one of my favorite poems I've ever written.

The Trouble with Finitude

I try, from time to time,

usually late at night after one too many glasses of wine,

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.

Granted, I have no personal recollections

of when most of North America was covered by ice

or of the Bronze Age

or the French Revolution

or of the Black Sox scandal.

But I do know about all that through things I've read

and musicals I've seen

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 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

while living 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....”

jgb