Creatures behind our house

A few weeks ago, Bern swears that a deer ran though our yard. Jumped the very short fence and vast foliage in the back and then, after running through our back yard, jumped the waddle she's built to keep the dog in and ran out toward Cornwall Avenue. Going where? There's no woods anywhere in that direction. Maybe going to the Congregational Church or to St. Peter's. A Congregational deer or an Episcopalian deer, who knows?

And such distinctions don't much matter any more. Thomas Moore, who was a Roman Catholic priest (I always say 'Roman Catholic" since I am a "Catholic Christian" and don't want to be left out of the catholicity of it all) is offering a workshop at Wisdom House in Litchfield (run by the Sisters of Wisdom) about how to design your own spirituality, either inside or outside of an existing structure.

Which sort of makes distinctions like a Congregational deer or an Episcopal deer seem rather antiquated.

Then today, I came out on the deck while our pork roast was roasting, and Bern told me she'd seen the biggest yellow cat ever run through the open field behind our back yard. It was so big she thought it might be a bobcat.

She was still there when it ran into view again. I thought it might be a fox with a withered tale.

But our neighbor, Mark, who is a forester and can be trusted on all things wild and wondrous, told us it was a coyote, God help us all.

I said to Mark, "we're going back to nature in Cheshire".

And he replied, "not the worst thing I can think of...."

Me neither.

Something Evil this way comes....

I haven't been rabidly political for a while, so why not now?

There are so many issues I could address to address the insanity of the far right that it's hard to choose.

Immigration reform, work to mitigate climate change, taxes on the super-rich, the rebirth of unions, legal abortion, gay rights, health care, what to do about Iraq, student loan reform, closing Gitmo, on and on it goes.

But today I want to go off the scale left-wing about the very fact that nothing progressive will ever happen as long as the Republicans are in charge of the House of Representatives. Having the Presidency and, nominally, the Senate, makes no difference.

Nothing besides restoring the 19th century can happen with a Republican majority in the House.

My father was a staunch Republican. His heroes were folks like Everett Dirkson and Nelson Rockefeller. If my father could come back from the dead (and I'd like that--we have lots of unfinished business to deal with) he wouldn't recognize the current Republican Party at all. It would be a totally alien thing to him. He might even consider being a moderate Democrat (which is where he was on the scale back then as compared to now....)

I'm so sick of it I could scream.

But what would I scream?

What Country People know...

I was getting out of my car at St. Peter's, Cheshire for my Tuesday morning clergy group meeting when I honked up some mucus from my bronchial tubes and saw a friend of mine across the parking lot.

"I know what you're going to do," he said, delighted, "I grew up on a farm and you're about to spit...."

So, I spat.

Country people know about spitting and know how to blow their noses without anything to blow them in.

You put your thumb on the opposite hand from which nostril you're going to blow, bend over and blow, whipping away the last of the snot with the thumb you used to close the other nostril. Pretty impressive skill, I think.

Bern thinks it's disgusting. Apparently people from Hungary and Italy don't do that (though I bet they do, at least the men!)

Country people also know, wherever their 'country place' is, which direction is where. I'm not as good about it as most country folks, but if you ask me which was is South (or North or the other two) most of the time I can tell you even though I grew up in the mountains which made directions harder than for someone from Nebraska or Kansas.

Country people can also smell a coming rain and feel, on their faces, that snow will happen soon.

Country people don't mind the smell of dung or urine, it is actually comforting to them.

Country people don't get enough credit for all that and more besides.

Dew

I was looking at some old, old writing, typed on a typewriter of all things, a story about Richard Lucas and his cousin, Lizzy. Pretty bad stuff, all in all, but it meant something to me then, back when I wrote it.

The story is called "All Our World" and begins with a quote from Issa, who, I'll look up on the internet because I have no idea who he/she is but I must have known when I wrote this long ago story.

Anyhow, here's the quote: "Dew evaporates/and all our world/is dew...so dear, so fresh, so fleeting."

Whoever Issa  was, he/she nailed that one in a big way.

Life seems endless from time to time, in the moment, but, like our world, life is dew...so dear, so fresh, so fleeting.

Whatever happened to typewriters? The story is typed on several different kinds of paper--some typing paper, other lined paper torn from a notebook, and, finally, some on a thin, yellow paper I remember using once but I couldn't tell you when.

It seems like I've been alive a long time sometimes. But, at other times, it seems but a heartbeat.

Dew. It's all like dew...so dear, so fresh, so fleeting.

I love the dew, though, as a retired guy, I'm seldom up early enough to feel it on my ankles as I walk through the grass. But there's something almost holy about dew--how it welcomes the day so sweetly.

I'm going now to look up Issa and see what else he/she had to say that worth pondering....

Father's Day

I've never given much weight to Father's Day or Mother's Day--Hallmark Card Holidays as far as I can tell. But in my childhood, people wore carnations on both days to church, red if your Mother/Father was alive, white if they were dead.

Big deal in the mountains. But I've always objected to them insinuating themselves onto a Sunday.

Today is father's day. I was still at Emmanuel, Killingworth, drinking coffee and eating a bagel with cream cheese, when my son called me on my cell phone. We talked and I talked to the three granddaughters he and Cathy have given me. Morgan told me she'd drawn me a dragon for Father's Day. Emma said they'd been playing and having a good time. Tegan, the 4 year old, said, unexpectedly, "Gampaw, it's good to hear your voice". Who knows where she got that.

Josh and I talked about The Goldfinch, a novel by Donna Tartt that everyone in my nuclear family has now read and loved.

Then, as I was getting ready to cook dinner (Sea Scallops, brochilinni and wild rice--it was Father's Day but I was cooking (Bern tells me every year, 'you're not MY father') but I was cooking what I wanted, Mimi called. (If I was on death row and had to choose a final meal, it would include Sea Scallops.)

She's up in the Berkshires because it's the 'season'  for Jacob's Pillow, where she is the Development Officer. She also lives in Brooklyn with Tim, her fiancee and boyfriend for 12 years or so. But during the season, she's in the Berkshires, shaking hands and raising money. Tim works for LinkedIn, whatever that is..., and can spend a lot of time up with Mimi during June-August, when's she tied down in Massachusetts. 

Josh asked me 'what I was doing today' and I told him, "waiting for you and Mimi to call".

That's really all that matters to me on Father's Day, to hear from the two people in the Universe that qualify me to be called a 'father'.

They are both so great. A lawyer and a development officer, both making much more money than I ever did, both solid citizens and extremely sane and loveable.

So, my day was made, talking to each of them and talking to 'the girls' (which is what we call our granddaughters).

Just right. Nothing left out. Wondrous.

I love them so much. They are both so great. Bern and I did something right, whether we knew it or not....

Happy father's day to everyone who 'is' a father or has one--which means everyone....

Sometimes, a long way away

I've been having major problems with my computer for almost a week.

I lost Firefox, my highway to the Internet.

I had to call AOL three times to get back my email. Which allowed me to get to this blog.

I couldn't read any of my documents--stuff I've written and stored, a thousand documents at least, tens of thousands of pages.

What is amazing is how anxious and panicked I've been about all that.

And here's the truth: sometimes, a long way away from here, either in the past or future, none of that matters much at all.

*If I didn't answer email, people would eventually start calling me on the phone, which is one step closer to personal.

*If I couldn't get on the Internet, I could go buy a New York Times and know what's going on.

*If I couldn't get on this blog, I would miss it and, hopefully, others would as well. But nobody would die. (That's Bern's ultimate reaction to anything upsetting: "did anyone die?" she'll ask. And since nobody did...what's the upset about? It'll be alright...eventually.)

*If I couldn't read any of my documents ever again, well, I could write new ones over time.

I rail about people who are wedded to their smart phones. And yet, here I was, fretting extensively about my computer problems. I can't carry it around with me in my hand, but I am more wedded to it than I imagined.

So, my friend John came today and everything is back in order. But I've decided I spend too much time with my computer. I'm going to cut back. Check e-mails ever day or so rather than four times a day. Buy the New York Times and get my news in print. Not worry if I don't blog for a day or so. Compose sermons from scratch instead of reading old ones in my documents for ideas.

Sometimes, a long way away from my computer seems to be a good thing. A good thing indeed.

An Eschatological Laundry List

Sheldon B. Kopp wrote a book that has influenced me more than anything besides the Mastery Foundation's work, my theological studies and, most of all, my family.

The book is called If You Meet The Buddha On the Road, Kill Him! It is subtitled, "The Pilgrimage of Psychotherapy Patients" and is called, below Dr. Kopp's name, "A fresh, realistic approach to altering one's destiny and accepting the responsibility that grows with freedom".

I gave away most of my books a few years ago. Many went to the library at St. James, Higganum. Others went to friends. What I kept was some volumes of The New Interpreter's Bible, all my books of poetry, including How Does a Poem Mean? by John Ciardi, which I've had since my Junior year of college, A Canticle for Leibowitz. a novel by Walter Miller, a handful of Biblical commentaries and The Elements of Style (third edition) by Strunk and White, which I've had since 1980. A few other random things, but not much else. I use the Cheshire Library these days, almost never buying books (except for the 'Hunger Games' trilogy and how many ever volumes there are in the 'Game of Thrones' series.)

And I kept "If you meet.....", well worn and brown on all the edges.

I don't read the whole thing anymore, but every few weeks I read what comes at the very end, which Kopp calls: 'An Eschatological Laundry List: A partial register of the 927 (or is it 928?) Eternal Truths'.

I'd like to share that list with you now.


1.     This is it!
2.     There are no hidden meanings.
3.     You can't get there from here, and besides there's no place else to go.
4.     We are already dying, and we will be dead a long time.
5.     Nothing lasts.
6.     There is no way of getting all you want.
7.     You can't have anything unless you let go of it.
8.     Your only get to keep what you give away.
9.     There is no particular reason why you lost out on some things.
10.    The world is not necessarily just. Being good often does not pay off and there is no
         compensation for misfortune.
11.    You have a responsibility to do your best nonetheless.
12.    It is a random universe to which we bring meaning.
13.    You don't really control anything.
14.    You can't make anyone love you.
15.    No one is any stronger or any weaker than anyone else.
16.    Everyone is, in his/her own way, vulnerable.
17.    There are no great persons.
18.    If you have a hero, look again: you have diminished yourself in some way.
19.    Everyone lies, cheats, pretends (yes, you too, and most certainly I myself).
20.    All evil is potential vitality in need of transformation.
21.   All of you is worth something, if you will only own it.
22.   Progress is an illusion.
23.   Evil can be displaced but never eradicated, as all solutions breed new problems.
24.   Yet it is necessary to keep on struggling toward solutions.
25.   Childhood is a nightmare.
26.   But it is so very hard to be an on-your-own, take-care-of-yourself-cause-there-is-no one else
        to-do-it-for-you grown-up.
27.   Each of us is ultimately alone.
28.   The most important things, each person must do for themselves.
29.   Love is not enough, but it sure helps.
30.   We have only ourselves, and one another. That may not be much, but that's all there is.
31.   How strange, that so often, it all seems worth it.
32.   We must live within the ambiguity of partial freedom, partial power, and partial knowledge.
33.   All important decisions must be made on the basis of insufficient data.
34.   Yet we are responsible for everything we do.
35.    No excuses will be accepted.
36.    You can run, but you can't hide.
37.    It is most important to run out of scapegoats.
38.    We must learn the power of living with our helplessness.
39.    The only victory lies in surrender to oneself.
40.    All of the significant battles are wages within the self.
41.    You are free to do whatever you like. You need only face the consequences.
42.    What do you know...for sure...anyway?
43.    Learn to forgive yourself, again and again and again and again....

If that's not enough to ponder under your own Castor Oil Tree for like forever, what is?

Wisdom from 1972 to ponder.