no new dog yet

So, we're going to be away with our friends from Wednesday to Saturday and then Mimi will be with us Saturday night. What could be better?

So Bern called the folks who have Eric and told them we couldn't take him until next week if we wanted him and he wanted us. They couldn't do that because someone might take him this weekend and open up a space for a dog in a kill kennel.

That makes all the sense in the world. So, for now, no new dog.

We'll see.

I'm much more hesitant than Bern, but I follow her instincts over and over and they are seldom wrong.

We'll see.

Shadows

Like most people with dogs, we've dug out a run in the back yard, clearing it out snow after snow.

It is two circles--the first from the steps around to a tree and back. And at some point in this frigid, snowy winter, Bern broke through the snow at the top of the circle and dug out a smaller circle further out in the yard and down-hill slightly from the original circle.

The snow is considerably higher than the Puli's head and there are few places, because each snow narrows the path, that he can turn around. So, he goes in circles. But it is a God-send, this run, since it saves us from negotiating the walking conditions several times a day. He still gets a morning walk and Bern often takes him to the Canal though it is treacherous since the Town can't keep it cleared down to the pavement.

Last night, out on the deck while Bela was in his run, I thought Bern had expanded it again down to a spot under many evergreens where the snow is not as heavy. I admired her for that work since the snow is ice at this point in the winter.

Then, today, I saw clearly that the run was only the first two circles. I thought I'd been seeing things and wondered if I needed to go to 'the home' already.

Then tonight I went out again, as Bela went to pee, and realized what I thought was cleared areas were only shadows of the tree the first circle goes around.

You can't trust 'what you see' all the time. Shadows change things sometimes.

Shadows fall across our lives in many ways--both externally and internally. Shadows of the heart and mind and soul.

Everyone has to be aware of the shadows in their lives.

Facing the shadows and being aware of them will open up a lot....Really.

poems from a car wreck

Back in December of 2007, I was driving to do a Eucharist at the Episcopal Church at Yale. It was raining on I-91, but as soon as I took the exit I knew it was ice, being elevated. I crashed and the air bag broke my left arm in 6 pieces--3 is the radius and 3 in the ulna. I had surgery two days later and began physical therapy two days after that. But before that, I wrote two poems. Here they are--poems inspired by a broken arm. And both about my wife, Bern.


Bones

They are all inside us, everywhere, I've come to know.
They hold things together, keep things straight,
defy gravity and move our bodies right along.
Just like that...God bless them--bones.

Insects have an exoskeleton--wear their bones outside.
Ours, however, are inside, hiding among the mushy stuff--
muscles, flesh, tendons, blood vessels, organs and all.

So, when we break them--smash them, mash them,
splinter them all to hell, the mush and oatmeal
all inside flops around like a dying snake.

Science can redo them, but we need more
when we break our bones.
We need pillows and drinks of water and a gentle hand.

And that you gave me...
enough and more than enough.

Healing comes from within and without.
You have been my healer--
not just of bones but heart and mind as well.
Always.

jgb-12/20/07


MUSCLE MEMORY

Trying to type with a broken arm
in a one finger peck,
was the hardest thing I tried to do.
I'd figured out how to open child-proof pill bottles
and carry thing with one hand and a spint.
I could manage showering and dressing
and finally
putting on my socks.
One hand and a splint
works well enough.

But answering email opened me to something
I did not know that I did not know.

Touch typist since age 16,
I have no idea where the letters are
on a keyboard.

I've decades ago transferred all that
to muscle memory.
"A" is the little finger of my left hand--
but where is it
among the black keys with white letters?

I thought someone had come in and removed the ";"
from my computer until I thought to ask my right
hand where the semi-colon might be hiding out.
Oh, there!

Those speedy hunt and peckers, filling the page with type,
have not given over their memory
to the muscles of their hands.

What else have I come to do through muscle memory?
Trace the outlines of your face, my love?
Hold your hand? Watch you smile?
Observe your anger? Listen to you?

Let me break those bones and interrupt that memory
so that I can experience you all new,
without knowing where the keys are...
discovering you again....For the first time.

12/21/07 jgb

Eric, not Julia, maybe....

Bern and I talked on the phone today with the woman in Tennessee who is fostering Julia Roberts, the dog Bern thought would, maybe, be our second dog. She was remarkably frank and told us Julia probably should be an 'only dog' since she is jealous of Mary, her dog, and lunges at Mary from time to time. Bela, our Puli, is a very protective creature and would react badly to lunging.

But Catherine, this woman in Tennessee, who is fostering 12 dogs at this time, 11 of which live in an enclosed kennel her husband built for her obsession of saving dogs from 'kill kennels' down there, told us about a dog she fostered for a while, a Standard Puddle/Scottish Terrier mix named Eric Roberts (not related to Julia) who is already being fostered in CT.

I wasn't really on board about another dog until I heard her tell us about Eric. So Bern emailed the CT contact and told her we were interested and on Friday, weather permitting, we'll go to Southbury to meet him. We can't take him until week after next since we're going to Sandwich with Jack and Sherry and John for three days next week.

But I'm finally excited.

It will mean we have to go get a King sized mattress for the frame we already have so two dogs can sleep with us. Exciting times.....

(There are crashes from time to time--huge ice cycles falling on our porch roofs. I like those sounds...Spring is creeping nearer....)

It will be '40' soon....

Back in 2000-2001, I visited most of my class from Virginia Seminary, interviewed them about a whole range of things, and wrote a great deal about that experience.

Unfortunately, I have none of that on my computer and can't just copy it into a blog.

But I've been reading it and want to share some of it with you.

The reason I did it was that it was the year and year after of our 25th anniversary of graduation. A quarter of a century into ministry, we were. And this year will be the 40th anniversary of our leaving Virginia Seminary and encountering the world as priests.

So, I'm going to type some of it in for blogs in the weeks to follow.

But it will take me a while unless I can find someone to scan it onto a disc and I can simply copy and paste.

What I've been reading is moving to me.

I hope it will be to you as well.

Most everyone I interviewed was still in active ministry and it was a turning point in the life of the church, back as the century changed. Good stuff.

Look for it....

another dog? Lions and Tigers and Bears, oh no!

We may be getting another dog. Bern found a rescue group in Southington and they have a poodle mix named Julia Roberts, of all things.

She would be near Bela in size and is a year old. She looks as  much like Bela--black and hairy--as any dog not a Puli could.

Bern said, when I asked her if Bela would accept her, "she looks like him, so he would."

I waited three beats until she realized: "oh, Bela doesn't know what he looks like, huh?"

Duh.

I'm on a web site searching for Poodle mixes within a hundred miles. Over the last couple of years, they've sent me dozens of possibilities. The problem is, they require a home visit and once they met--if not gotten bitten--by Bela, they'd never let us have a dog....

This place may not have that requirement and the truth is, Bela likes all the dogs that have come to visit us: Josh and Cathy's dogs and John Anderson's dogs and even a dog a friend brought by one day who was much bigger than him. And he loves Sophie who lives down the street and we see from time to time on his morning walk. They sniff and jump and pee for each other every time.

So, it might work. I'm more hesitant than Bern about it all because people have told me adding a second dog is three times as much work.

But with a name like Julia Roberts, who could resist?

I'll let you know what happens.

8047

I was giving my friend, Charles, a hard time about Sudoku, if that's how you spell it, last week.

Then, I realized I've played 8047 games of Hearts on my computer. 8047. And I've won 4132 of them--50%!

I even keep track of my games on paper. I play until someone--me or West or North or South--wins 7 games and that's a set. And I play 7 sets at a time. I haven't lost a set in weeks, months--which is why I keep doing it...I like to win.

Maybe I should give up Hearts for Lent. It would be a real challenge. But, what the hell, we're already two weeks into Lent and I don't want to give it up.

Maybe I should stop when I get to 10,000 games. That would seem a good time to give it up.

But, I most likely won't.

I enjoy it and why should one stop doing what they enjoy and gives them pleasure?

Charles, buy some more Sudoku books--you deserve it....