worrying about Luke

Ok, I know I write too much about our creatures. But we love them so.

Maggie, the parakeet is listening to classical music right now--her favorite thing. We switched from WNPR to WSHU because the talk agitates her--and us too--I'm much calmer with Mozart and Bach than with endless political talk.

God knows what Bela, the Puli is up to. Tonight he grabbed one of Bern's socks from where she'd dropped it in the bedroom, took it to the TV room, shook it at her and ran, making her chase him to get it back. Then, just now, in the dark, he went off into the back yard and wouldn't come when I called him, making me search for the flashlight (he's so black--as black as midnight in a cypress swamp--that I can't see him in the dark) but then he came to the kitchen door and barked.

Luke, our cat, is, I now know, 13 years old. I know that because I asked Bern (linear time being a confounding thing to me) and she told me we got him when Mimi was 22 and now Mimi is 34 and (wonderful) and Luke wasn't a kitten but half grown when we found him at MEOW, a cat rescue place, so he's probably 13.

I've probably mentioned my affection for Lukey, not being naturally a cat person though we've had a lot of them over the years. I sleep later (except on Sundays) than Bern, so she lets him into our bedroom when she gets up and he curls up around my head. I wake up with a Maine Coon Cat on my head and a Puli against my legs. Not a bad way to wake up, by the way. Astonishing, actually. So I rub them both for a while before getting out of bed and going to the bathroom where I first draw Luke a glass of water before doing the other things people do in the  morning in the bathroom.

He drinks a great deal of water, which worries me, since many cats die of kidney disease. He hasn't been to a vet since MEOW had him. He's been an indoor cat and never sick. But now that I know he's 13, instead of 10 or 15, which were my two guesses being unstuck in linear time, I'm concerned.

I'd like to always wake up with a yellow Coon Cat around draped around my head. Maybe, if God is in his heaven, the afterlife will involve a yellow cat around your head in some way. I'd appreciate that kind of Eternity.

So now, I know, I'll start noticing even more how much water he drinks and checking that his nose is pink and that he seems energetic (he still is because when I came down the hallway to my little office to write this, Luke raced ahead of me, jumped up on the banister to the back stairs and laid on the table beside the table where my PC is for a while, rolling and showing me his belly.

The older I get, one of things I don't understand even less than I did, was how people without critters get along. Dogs and cats and birds, I know, intellectually, aren't everyone's cup of tea. But I love them so. I really do. They teach me so much about dependance and joy and love....

We once had a cat who lived to be 23. I hope Luke does and I hope, if he does, I'll still be spry enough to bury him beside our deck, with generations of creatures, with dignity....That would be good, I think....I believe....I know....

Going to see Mimi....

Tomorrow I'm going to see Mimi...and Tim, two of the people I love most in the world. I'll get on the train in New Haven at 9:27 or so and I'll be at Grand Central by 11 something and I'll find my way to the 4 or 5 train and ride to Brooklyn and be at their apartment on South Elliot by noon or so. I bring the stuff Mimi couldn't take home with her because she flew to Florida the day after Christmas and I'll take their Valentine's gifts (a bit early) that Bern takes so seriously and looks so hard for. Some of them hilarious and some touching. And I'll take them to lunch somewhere in Fort Green and we'll talk and laugh and be happy. What could be better than that? Then I'll ride the train back to New Haven at 4:34 or so and be home to my life.

(My whole life is like "going to see Mimi". I live in a house I love and we almost own outright--a couple of more years--with a dog and cat and bird {a gift from Mimi} and a woman who, in our latest marriage [we've had a few!] I love more than you can imagine, more, even, than I can imagine. And we have enough money and don't lock our doors and live in a wonderful town and read lots of books and cook good food and sleep soundly and don't worry or fret about much of anything. And I have two miraculous children--Josh and Mimi--and three astonishing grand-daughters--Morgan and Emma and Tegan--and two wonderful partners to those two children--Cathy and Tim. And, to my knowledge, I did absolutely nothing to deserve the life I love so much. I'm not particularly brave or strong or noble or even good. Yet my life has turned out so incredible, so well, so perfect, in many ways.)

I'm trying, these days, to live a life of total and eternal gratefulness. I don't pinch myself because I'm afraid I might wake up and things would be a mess. I teach at UConn and love it. I work in the Middlesex Area Cluster Ministry and love it. I  have good health, in spite of smoking and drinking white wine to a bit of excess. I have good friends who give me great joy. I dream dreams that either make me ponder or bring me an excess of joy. I do whatever I want whenever I want.

How could anyone deserve all that?

I don't, I know. I don't 'deserve' it. It is a gift from God or wherever that I can neither deserve or earn...I long ago quit trying to earn it!

So, what to do with all that? Ponder it, certainly. Be profoundly thankful, that goes without saying. And get up tomorrow and go see Mimi and Tim and ride the train and read a book and have a good lunch and deliver gifts and be with people I love so much it hollows me out so I can be filled up anew in their presence.

Just that. And, if it doesn't seem too presumptuous or arrogant, pray for all those who don't have my life, that they might. That they might....

I was just talking with Bern about our life. The way she put it is this: "it's all right". Most people worry, she said, that 'things won't be all right'. And for us, they are.

I've quit fretting about why my life is so good (there's no reason, really, so why fret about it?) And I don't, any longer, feel guilty about being joyful and fulfilled. Something about 'grace' in there. But I realize I am profoundly blessed and know that blessedness will give me the strength to deal with things when they aren't alright, which will happen, I surely know.

But for now, all I'm thinking of is going to see Mimi and the wondrous joy of all that, and how eternally thankful I am.

Something to ponder: living a life of eternal thankfulness....

the beetle in our bathroom

OK, after my rather elongated navel-gazing last post, I realized what I was trying to say is encapsulated in a poem by a woman I think named Elsie Langstrom called "Song to my other self". Neither of which--her name or the poems name--I could find anywhere on line. But today, I realized where I read it: in a book called Our Many Selves. So, I went to Amazon and found the book and ordered it, paying for express shipping, so I hope to share that poem with you soon.

After all that and a trip to the Y where I walked for 2 miles on a treadmill and read a book called The Beautiful Mystery, which is really good, I came home to take a shower.

When I opened the shower, there was a beetle in the middle of the floor in the shower. I'd seen him a couple of days before and wanted to keep him going so I put him in the sink while I took a shower. After my shower, I put him on the floor (it could be a female beetle, I realize) but he/she wandered off toward a little hole in the wall. A house built in 1850 has lots of places beetles can squeeze through.

But, after all, what is a beetle doing in our bathroom when it it 8 degrees outside? Where did he come from and what's the chance she could stay alive until spring? I don't even know how long beetles live. And, by the way, I'm not even sure it's a beetle. It's about an inch long and has a triangular head and a square body--but, not knowing what it is (and knowing it's not a roach of any kind) I wanted to give it a fighting chance. How did he/she get in the shower--the door is always shut when it isn't being used...?

Lot's of thing to ponder about this bug that has ended up, on the coldest day of the winter, in our bathroom. Well, if you were a bug and were in our house, which we keep at 65 degrees, I guess one of the bathrooms would be the best bet where there might be some steam and an electric heater for taking showers. So s/he is showing some intelligence.

It is very cold. When I went to bed last night the thermometer on our back porch read 6. When I got up it was 4. I don't think it got above 12 all day. (All those are Fahrenheit, by the way, though the Celsius reading make it sound better.)

I just went downstairs and had a cigarette and saw it was 4 degree (-21 Celsius) so the Celsius readings don't sound better at all! Which reminds me that I'm personally glad that the US never accepted Celsius and Metrics. It never made sense to me and I'm gratified that it is only +4 rather than -21 right now. And the Australian tennis Open, which I watch from time to time since Bern watches it pretty much all the time, records the miles per hour of serves in the metric system, which makes less than no sense.

But I was writing about the cold. I don't  mind the cold nearly as much as I did when I was younger. When I was younger, I loved heat. People would say when it was 92 or so (which honors heat better than saying it's 34 degrees Celsius) "Is it hot enough for you?" And I would answer, "Hell no! And I'd like a little more humidity!" When I was young, I loved to sweat and steam.

But now, as I'm a senior citizen (I got 15% off a pair of jeans today at Bob's because it was Wednesday and I'm over 55...) it's no big deal to go out in 4 F/-21 C to have a cigarette. I even say a little longer to look at Jupiter and the moon with just a hat and a wool sweater.

So, it seems to me, I'm not a typical elder person. I wouldn't live in Florida for a million dollars (well,maybe $1,000,000 but not by choice). I'd move further north though Connecticut suits me fine. Not so hot as some places and colder than many.

I grew up in an apartment in Anawalt, WV that didn't have central heat. We had a warm morning stove in the living room and a wood/coal stove in the kitchen. But both were 25 feet or so from my room. So it got cold during the winter. I would turn my electric blanket up so high that when I woke up in the morning, my pajamas would be pressed. And our bathroom wasn't heated at all except by a kerosene heater that covered your wet body with little black dots when you got out of the bathtub--no showers in my childhood. So, I was cold a lot back then.

But now, 65 degrees seems pretty warm (and I have lots of hats and sweaters) so the cold, I suppose, just isn't as big a deal as it was earlier in my life. I've even started calling it 'brisk', the way real New Englanders  do (though I'll never be, really, one of them). I actually like the cold better than the heat, so go figure.

But I'm still pondering the very existence of that bug I call a beetle. I'm glad to keep rescuing him, but what in creation is he doing in our bathroom?

Pondering my emotions

Recently I was somewhere and one of the other people there was truly annoying me. Nothing they were doing or saying had any inherent annoyance factor in them. But I felt myself getting agitated and anxious. I wanted to say something (which would have been inappropriate and wrong given the circumstances) or I wanted to escape (which wasn't rational either).

An hour or so later I found myself in my car with a 40 minute drive ahead of me and decided to ponder the emotions I had felt. I wanted to unwrap what was going on inside me. I wanted to understand, in some way, the feelings I had experienced in those moments. What was it that was annoying and agitating me so much without any rational reason?

I long ago came to believe that we don't 'have feelings'--Feelings 'have us'. My emotions and feelings, I've come to understand over the years, are autonomous things that rush in and seize or embrace me. A feeling of love and wonder 'embraces' me. Feelings like I had that day and like embarrassment or anger, 'seize' me and hold on for dear life. (Just remember when someone you cared about was sad or mad or afraid. Then remember how you saying "don't be sad/mad/afraid" seemed to help things....) No 'feelings' I believe, or inherently 'good' or 'bad'. That's  just what we judge and call them. Fear, for example, is as morally neutral as awe. My feelings come and go. I can neither bid them come or command them to leave.

Feeling are in an existential way. I'm not my feelings. I am merely embraced or seized by my emotions. Who I am is the being experiencing the feelings and emotions. They don't define me anymore than I control and manipulate them. They are like autonomous things that I encounter during my life. And there is more value in pondering them than in reacting to them.

And, perhaps the best way to react to the feelings--whichever they are (the ones I judge 'bad' and resist or the ones I judge 'good' and enjoy)--would be to embrace them, whether they embrace me or seize me. Sort of like holding a crying child in the latter case or holding a loving child in the former case. Sort of like holding myself whatever I'm feeling....

You know, I just re-read all this and think I've gone too far to fast.

This is the way I deal with emotions (at least the ones I find unpleasant) but reading this makes me sound like a mad man of sorts.

Here's the truth, cutting to the chase, what I most often find is so about people who annoy or upset me is that I am either reacting to some part of me I don't quite embrace that I see in them or reacting to something in me that I truly embrace that I find contradicted by them.

Does any of this make any sense?

Since I'm not sure, I'm leaving it there.

(By the way, what I figured out about the guy who annoyed me was that he is a lot like me but doesn't agree with me. He was acting out his formality and conservatism the way I act out my informality and liberalism. So, in a technical term, he PISSED ME OFF. That simple. I saw my own obsession with the way I want to be perceived mirrored and backward in him. I don't know, that seems sort of valuable to know to me....But like I said, I'm leaving it there....)

The Moon, the Moon....

I was just out with the bad dog to 'go bathroom', which is what I tell him this last trip outside of the day since it's after 10:30 p.m.

Today was a great day for me. I watched Obama--TV for hours and thrilled to the day of his second inauguration.

At some point Bern said (and I agree), "I'm glad we lived long enough to have a President we could really love...."

So, my political leanings are not a secret  (if they've ever been!!!)

And out with the bad dog in the Arctic air that is moving into New England, I saw the moon, draped in haze and clouds, no other lights visible in the sky, no stars, no Jupiter, that has been brilliant the last few nights, about a third through its waning, it was so mysterious and veiled and beautiful that I took it as a sign for our future.

Mysterious, veiled and beautiful.

I'm not sure what that means, but I am so pumped up from this Martin Luther King holiday and Barack's inauguration that I believe it might just be true.

The Future: mysterious, veiled and beautiful. 

Much to be desired. Much to be longed for. Much to lean into.

I want to lean into such a future, for me, for you, for all of us.

Ponder that possibility.

Lean into that Possibility.

Long for it.

Stan the Man

Stan Musial, who played 22 years for the St. Louis Cardinals died today. (Nevermind that I assumed he died years ago, it was just today and he was 92.)

Stan Musial was the reason I wanted to be left-handed all through my childhood. Stan the Man was left handed and his batting stance was so weird that I tried for years to emulate it. He crouched and had his legs close together and his arms near his body and when the pitch came he 'uncoiled' and hit it a mile.

I grew up watching him and Ted Williams on the Baseball game of the week with Dizzy Dean as the announcer. They were the two best left-handed hitters, in my mind, of all time.

Ted died years ago and had his body frozen to be thawed out when it would be possible to live again.

Stan was normal as hell--as normal as Ted was odd. Just a normal guy who could hit the hell out of a baseball.

Ted played 19 years (missing three years in the height of his talent by serving in WWII) Who knows what he would have done if he'd played those years.

Here were some of their records.

Ted       Stan         
19          22    years played
2292    3026   hits
521        475  home runs
1839    1951  Runs batted in

Stan had many more doubles (725) and triples (177) than Ted.

And they both played their whole careers for the same team (Cardinals and Red Sox), something very rare these days.

Stan the Man was a part of my childhood and one of purest hitters ever. He never struck out more than 50 times in any year. Good players today strike out 100 times and think nothing of it.

The Man could play.

I'm sorry I didn't realize he was still alive. I'm sorry he's dead.

We won't see his kind anytime soon....

'Course, if you don't like baseball, I've just wasted your time....

Somewhere over Western Pennsylvania

WARNING...WARNING...HAS REFERENCES TO BODILY WASTE! THE FAINTHEARTED SHOULD TURN BACK



It's 8:13 p.m. and I should be on a plane from Philadelphia to San Francisco by now, probably west of Pittsburgh. And I'm not.

My week long trip to San Francisco would have included a Board Meeting and School Builders Meeting of the Mastery Foundation, worship at Gregory of Nissa church and a three day program called "Music that makes a community". All of which I looked forward to greatly, along with the possibility of meeting with Jen Hornbeck, the last of 32 seminarians I supervised and one of the best.

Fred, my friend, had volunteered to drive me to Bradley Airport, which would have been a good conversation about life and the church and how the two are really not the same. He was an hour and a half from coming by to get me. My bag was packed and my Puli dog had been staring at it for most of the afternoon knowing bags are not good news. He even barked at it for a while, expressing his anxiety and distress. When I knew I wasn't going, I took the bag and the Puli upstairs and unpacked while he laid on the bed. He calmed down after that.

So, here's what happened. At about one p.m. I went to the bathroom and had blood in my urine. I drank copious amounts of water and discovered after a couple of quarts, that I had blood clots as well as blood.

This is not unusual. The radiology I had after having my prostate removed 6 or 7 years ago, scarred my bladder. So, every few months this happens. Just scar tissue slothing off and going the only way it has to go. The doctors tell me it will just continue to happen, drink more water than makes good sense and hope it clears up in a day or two. However, it can cause a urinary blockage--which has happened twice, one of which meant a three day stay in hospital as the pumped about a hundred gallons of saline solution into my bladder and back out which, not unsurprisingly, required not one but two tubes up my you know what. Not pleasant, let me tell you.

So, when it happens--and it happened the last time less than a month ago (it will become more frequent, the doctors tell me, as I age)--I begin to drown myself with fluids and pee about every 15 minutes. If I'm lucky, it clears up in a couple of days or sooner. But if I'm not, the whole thing could shut down and I'd have to go to the ER.

Didn't seem to be a situation conducive to getting on an airplane. I would have had to get the cabin attendants to bring me fluids on a constant basis and would have had to go to the bathroom around 40 times between Hartford and San Francisco. So, my heart breaking, I had to call Ann, the head of the Mastery Foundation, and Michael, the guy I'd be staying with in San Mateo and the airline and my urologist. I was feeling cowardly and guilty about not going, but Michael is a prostate cancer survivor like me and has had experience with this kind of thing and told me I was doing the right thing.

One good thing is that I won't miss Bern and the creatures for a week, I'll see the NFL playoffs and the Inauguration.and not miss a week of writing here.

But I am disappointed. But peeing blood clots in an airplane bathroom (you can't control where the damn things go!) would have made it look like a slasher film.....I know, more than you needed to know.....