Looking for meaning

It's something we all do, all of us,
look for the meaning of things,
seek out the 'truth', delve for 'purpose'.

And come up, from all that,
more often than not,
empty-handed and disappointed.

I have a book from college,
decades and decades ago now,
by John Ciardi, a literary critic,
entitled
How does a poem mean?

It's the only book I still have
from those idyllic, innocent
years of my late teens
and early twenties.
The only one I kept,
though I had a multitude
of books those days.

I was looking at it earlier tonight.
It does have some of my favorite
poetry between its covers--
but what drew me to it this day
was that remarkable title.

Not "What does a poem mean?"
But "How", not "what".

Maybe I am looking in all
the wrong places
for the very wrong thing.

Maybe I shouldn't be asking,
over and over, non-stop,
ad infinitum, "What?"
"What?" "What?" "What?"
"What does it mean???"

Thank you Professor Ciardi,
for the question I need:
not "what?" but "How?"
is meaning found.

"How?" is easier to sit with,
because you can sit with it.
"What?" sends you coursing off
down dead-ends,
blind alleys,
labyrinths of confusion.

"How does it mean?"

Now there's a place to sit and think,
and wonder and ponder,
and invite being perplexed.

Where is obvious.
When can be placed in time.
Who is often undeniable.
What, as always, is difficult.
How, though, there's something
to sit with and wonder about
and ponder till the cows come home,
whenever cows come home.

How does life mean?

Well worth a ponder or two....

"Back in the USSR"

I really don't know who reads these semi-meaningless ramblings I write (you'll see in a moment "why" I don't really know) so from time to time I'm astonished when I check the statistics about 'Under the Castor Oil Tree'.

(By the way, I wonder how many of you remember that Beatles song, 'Back in the USSR'?)

So, yesterday I had over 160 views of my blog.

I almost always have 50+ and sometimes, for reasons I sometimes understand--someone reads something and emails all their friends to read it too, for example--it's several hundred, but 160+ is a good day.

Here's the weird thing about that: yesterday 105 of those views were from Russia!

I get views from lots of places, but never before have that number of views been from anywhere except the USA.

My stats show me a map in various shades of Green to indicate where the views are from. Yesterday, Russia was the deep green I've never seen before for any country but my own.

Is Putin reading my Blog?

Should I be worried about the KGB (do they still exist? how could we know?).

One thing my statistics don't tell me is 'who' is reading 'what', so unless I want to go back and look at the page views for over 1700 posts, I don't know what is trending that day.

Hello. If you are back in the USSR and reading my blog, put a comment on this post to let me know why you're dropping in. (Unless, of course, you are the KGB and would have to kill me if you told me---in that case, please, please don't comment.....)!!!

Hey, by the way, I'm an almost socialist...communists don't offend me. OK?

OK???

Please....

Get scared. Get very, very scared.

I sat through the whole 75 or so minute acceptance speech by Donald Trump.

Why? You might ask, knowing me as a left-wing, semi-socialist Democrat.

Here's why: I wanted to get scared. I wanted to get very, very scared.

Trump is making late night comedians wealthy--but it is time to stop making fun of him and to begin being terrified by him.

This is a man that Facts Check constantly labels as 'pants on fire'! This is a man that described an America for over an hour that hovers between the zombie apocalypse and an alien invasion--an America that I do not and cannot recognize. This is a man for whom "the other"--whether Mexican judges or Muslim Americans or Black Lives Matter--are a deadly threat to 'the Real America' (another concept of his that I do not and cannot recognize).

And he is one day in November away from being President of the United States.

Know what was missing entirely from his too long speech? Humor.

Read or watch Hillary's campaign speeches and there are lots of laugh lines. President Obama is full of good humor. For Donald and his supporters there is nothing to laugh at unless it is the offensive nicknames he gives anyone who opposes him: "Little Marco", "lying Ted", "crooked Hillary" and, already, "corrupt Kaine".

I don't know about you, but for my whole life, the only people who felt they had to give ugly nicknames to others were school playground bullies....Well, that fits.

Is Hillary Clinton a perfect candidate? Of course not. There aren't any of those. But she has been America's First Lady, the Senator of one of the largest states in the country and Secretary of State. What is Donald's resume? Chapter 11 expert, failed football league leader, failed Trump University creator, thrice married, Reality show Bully.

Some of my best friends have this Hillary-thing. They just have to get over that and get scared...very, very scared.

OK, the emails. Two of George W. Bush's Secretaries of State did exactly the same thing. Colin Powell, who I profoundly respect as a good and decent man, even deleted thousands of his government email. Condeleesa Rice, who got an undeserved reputation, did exactly what Powell before her and Hillary after her did. Was there a grunt or a whimper from Republicans about Powell and Rice? Well, no. Why not? They weren't Hillary!!!

The hatred of Hillary is almost as blatant as the Hatred of President Obama, and nearly as despicable. According to their enemies, if Jesus came again and embraced either Hillary or Barack, those folks would become atheists.

I don't hate Trump, I fear him.

And you should to.

I don't usually get so blunt, but here's the choice: a presidential ticket that includes a pathological lying narcissist  and a governor who is so Right Wing he opposed the right to choose for women, equality for the GLBTQ community, Planned Parenthood and would put into law the right for people to discriminate versus a woman uniquely qualified to be President and a Senator who is generally regarded, even by Republicans, as fair, open, flexible and engaging.

Go ponder that choice.

And be very, very scared if the choice isn't obvious.

Heat

In years gone by, people would say, on days like today, "hot enough for you?" And I'd reply, honestly, "Not nearly! And more humidity too!"

I used to love the heat. No more, beloved.

Many older folks I know are always complaining about the chill. Not me, never again.

Any time I went out today I wanted to faint away or lay down and die. My dog, luckily, feels the same way about the heat, so he 'gets busy' and we go back to where it's cooler.

I wonder what flipped in me. I really did relish the heat in years gone by. I loved to be sweaty and press glasses of ice water against my face. Now I want to live in 68 degrees always.

I've even embraced the cold after, what is it, 27 years, in New England. There are always more clothes to put on in winter. In summer, to stay legal, you have to keep one layer on even if you'd like to shed your skin....

One thing though that is wondrous about summer: we have a half-bath on the first floor of our house. It was an add on about forty years ago and the exhaust has about a 5 foot trip to the outside. Every year birds, I think they are swifts, nest at the end of the exhaust pipe. It doesn't blow hard enough to disturb them and when you sit on the toilet you can hear them singing. Not a bad way to (excuse my language) 'take a dump'...to bird song....

Our Baby's birthday

Today Mimi turned 38. How on earth can our youngest child be 38?

We talked with her on the phone just now. She is not only 38, she is 8 1/2 months pregnant with our 4th granddaughter "Ellie".

Mimi's real name is Jeremy Johanna. Named for her god-mothers, one of whom, Jeremy, was a Sister of Mercy. I intended to call her JJ but all that changed because for the first 6 months of her life, she was the worst baby in the history of babies! She cried and arched for about 5 of those 6 months and our son, Joshua, would sing to her, "Jere-mimi-mimi-mimi..." trying to calm her. So, she became our 'screaming Mimi' and when, at 6 months, her brain flipped and she became the best baby in the history of babies, she was already and irrevocably, "Mimi".

Ellie will actually be "Elliot" though she and Tim toyed with Elenore for a while.

Mimi has been a golden one--so kind and so understanding and so easy to be with. She and Tim have gone to Oak Island, North Carolina with us for the past 5 or 6 Septembers. Having them around is like being surrounded by grace. We've put off the vacation until after the middle of September this year in case they'll feel up to coming with Ellie. I pray they will. John Anderson and Sherry Ellis go with us and I hope Tim and Mimi will be able to come and say, "here's the baby, she's yours until we leave."

Below is a poem I wrote on her 30th birthday. She was in Japan with the American Ballet Theater and it was the only birthday we didn't either have her with us or talk with her.

Bless her, my baby girl....

                      

                      

                          PHOTOS OF MIMI

 

The house is full of pictures of her.

In some of them, she is a tiny, chubby baby.

In others, she is a little girl possessed.

In one she gains speed, running

down a hill in front of my father's house,

her tongue out, her blonde hair flying,

her small arms churning

like the wind.

In another, taken the same day,

she is solemn, not looking at the camera,

considering something out of the frame,

unsmiling, gazing at the future perhaps.

 

She grows through the pictures—though they are random

on the walls and shelves, so she doesn't grow evenly.

A beautiful, awkward teen, smiling in spite of braces,

her jeans decorated in ink, a hole at the knees,

her shoes half-tied, embarrassed, I think, by the camera.

There is a sagging Jack-O-Lantern at her side,

smiling a smile as crooked as her own.

 

A whole group pictures when she was finishing

high school—a lovely, wistful, long-haired girl

exploding gracefully into life and what comes next.

 

I love the photo from her college graduation,

the four of us, this little family, her brother posing,

Mimi—short-hair and sun-glasses—smiling.

Just the four of us, a tiny clan, so different and distinct,

frozen in time on a mountain in Vermont, timeless, eternal.

 

I walked around the house today, looking for her visage--

bride's maid at Josh's wedding, clowning in a hotel doorway,

holding one niece or another with her boyfriend

(she natural, laughing, Morgan content on her lap,

Tim is a bit anxious and Emma is pulling away from him),

sitting on our back deck at an age I can't remember

when her hair was a color not found in nature,

and she is, as always glancing away from the camera,

playing on the beach as a toddler, sandy, nude,

hands in the sand, staring backward through her legs

(a photo a camera shy person would hate later on!)

 

I made my circuit, stopping before each photograph,

amazed at the memories that leaped out of the frames

and enthralled me.

Amazed more that such a beautiful child and woman

could have lived with me so long

and left imprints on my heart so deep.

 

She is half-a-world away.

In a land I can only faintly imagine.

I will not talk with her today—her nativity day.

I cannot even remember, as I gaze at photos,

if it is today or tomorrow in Japan.

Or yesterday.

 

Then there is the photo I love most.

It is pinned to the cork board beside my desk,

where I sit and write.

 

She is framed in a glass doorway. Her hair is long.

I can't remember how old she way—in college, perhaps--

and beyond the door you see, fully lit, dunes of Nantucket.

Mimi is in shadow, almost a silhouette cut from dark paper,

in full profile. Only the back of her hair is in sunlight,

shining, translucent, moving in the wind.

 

I love that picture because it is Mimi stepping through the

Door of Life, moving away from the infant shots,

the little girl, the teenaged child,

moving into life beyond me...half a world away.

All grown and still, all new....

 

jgb/July 21, 2008

Enough is enough

You might have noticed I've resisted blogging about the Republican National Convention. It has taken an act of will.

Chris Christie's "guilty" speech about Hillary Clinton and the chant, "lock her up! lock her up!" was bad enough but nothing compared to Al Baldasaro's comments.

Baldasaro a delegate to the convention from New Hampshire said that Hillary should be 'put on the firing line' and 'shot for treason'. That was after he called her 'a piece of garbage'.

The Republican rhetoric about Hillary has been horrendous through the whole thing. Trump's supporters seem to think tearing down Hillary is more a more promising strategy than being positive about Donald. Which might be realistic since I can think of almost nothing 'positive' about Trump except that his kids seem to have grown up sort of normal (if being wealthy is ever normal) and his third wife is beautiful (and such an admirer of Michelle Obama that she uses Michelle's words!)

But, it seemed to me that suggesting a public figure be executed by a firing squad went beyond the pale.

I just read on line that the Secret Service is talking with Baldasaro. Last I knew, threatening someone like Hillary was against the law.

The rest of the stuff (almost all of it) that made me a little sick that's come out of the last three days...I'll just stick to my act of will and let it lie there. (I know 'lay' is the word, but 'lie' just fits....)

Am I that out of line?

In my sermon on Sunday, I apologized to the congregation and to David, who was being baptized for the Collect of the Day. ('Collect' is Episcopal-speak for a prayer....also, the entryway to the church is the 'narthex' and the basement is the 'undercroft'--go figure Anglicans!)

Here it is: the collect for the Sunday closest to July 20...

Almighty God, the fountain of all wisdom, you know our necessities before we ask and our ignorance in asking; Have compassion on our weakness and mercifully give us those things  which for our unworthiness we dare not, and for our blindness we cannot ask; through the worthiness of your Son Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.

OK, in one prayer (sorry, 'collect') we are calling ourselves "ignorant, weak, unworthy and blind". And we prayed that prayer on a day when David IV (and the other three were all there!) was being 'marked as Christ's own forever' and declared both a child of God and a member of Christ's Body.

It is times like that which cause me to think Christianity is schizophrenic! On a day we declare David and ourselves "marked as Christ's own" and, indeed, Christ's Body in this world we decide that we are, as Marcus Aurelius (not a Christian, a Stoic) said: 'a bag of bones and foul smell'.

Ignorant, weak, unworthy and blind are hardly attributes of "Christ's Body in this world". And certainly far, far, far short of the Bible's assertion that we are created 'in the image and likeness of God'.

So, which will it be? God's beloved or pond scum? The Body of Christ or miserable, nasty, sinful, awful creatures?

So I told the group I go to on Tuesday mornings about my apology and read them the collect to prove my point. They'd all heard it since 3 of them were priests and the 4th is an every-Sunday worshiper.

And to my utter dismay, none of them were offended at all by the collect. They even seemed to agree with it. I became so irrational that I really could do very little except sputter in exasperation and utter four-letter words....

I just assumed they, like me, thought of human beings (much less Christians) as beloved 'children of God'. Can I be that out of line? I'm not stupid. I can't miss the incredible evil of the world. But I simply assume that 'evil' is a perversion of who we really are.

I have known for some decades that my heresy of choice is Pelagionism. Pelagious was British but taught his theology in Rome in the late 4th and early 5th centuries. What he taught was rather simple (if condemned by 5 or 6 church councils and St. Augustine!). It went like this: human beings were born with the same free will and moral choices as Adam before the Fall. Humans could choose to do 'the right thing' without Divine intervention. The concept of 'original sin' was rejected by Pelagious.

I reject it too. I told David IV's parents that God loved David IV as much before he was baptized and God would love him after  he was baptized. We are not 'born sinful' in my theology.

(By the way: since you're going to be a heretic anyway, CHOOSE your heresy carefully. I start my classes in Gnostic Christianity at UConn by saying, "How many of you are heretics?" Only a brave soul or two might giggle and raise their hands. Then I ask, "How many of you believe in the Immortality of the Soul?" Every time either all or almost all raise their hands. "So," I tell them, "read the Nicene Creed. We believe in the 'resurrection of the body', not 'the immortality of the soul'. You're all heretics!")

More and more these days, I find that I'm outside the 'orthodox' box. I've never much wanted to be 'inside' it, but I'm often struck by how 'out of line' I am.

I still think that's a terrible Collect!

Some of the Episcopal Church's collects are wonderful in their wisdom and guidance. My favorite is the Collect for Good Friday. Listen: Almighty God, we pray you graciously to behold this your family, for whom our Lord Christ was willing to be betrayed, and given into the hands of sinners, and to suffer death upon the cross.....

Now that's something to hang your Pelagion hat on: we are God's 'family' and Jesus was willing to die for us.  That's the humanity I'm a part of. Part of the Family. Worth dying for. Know what I mean?

Am I that out of line?