The rain was heavy today. That's not to say it was heavy rainfall. It was heavy, as though the drops had been eating and not exercising, laying around on their couches for months watching football and drinking beer when there comes a knock on the door and they get up, grumbling and a little annoyed as they try to button their pants. The knocking gets more persistent. "Alright, alright," the fat droplets say, "hang on..." When they finally reach the door, the bell is now ringing and there's a shouting outside, an unfamiliar voice yelling, "EVERYBODY OUT!" while the lazy, plump plops shove a handful of chips in their pouty mouths and reach for the door...

That's the kind of drops that were falling today as we walked in the forest an hour's drive from our house into the Sierras. Those same drops, seconds after turning the knob were demanded out of their slums, falling helplessly alongside millions of others who had, apparently, enjoyed the same easy living until the knocking became unbearable. Heavy drops. My whole body became full of them, and heavier were my steps because of them.

The rain can do that to you. It can expose darkness and light. Some rain is silky and refines your joy. Todays rain was heavy and cold. Walking the forest road, spilled and pooled, puddles more like a loch with hidden dread, the water's weight in my coat, seeping to my skin called heaviness from my heart. It knocked incessantly and rousted me from the comfort of my own forgetfulness. That's fat rain if you're not being careful. 

This trail will be ten feet under snow in a few weeks. That first white sheet will start blur the lines between the large rocks that cobble the road. I won't be there. But if I was, perhaps that snow, pulled flake by flake from the clouds would be the peace that comes from the averaging that only deep snow can provide. Rain brings out your darkness or light. Snow is relief from pain and the silencing of critical voices and regrets. 

Summer Flu

A running nose in hunderd degree heat

Sweating and crawling, my skin is alien flesh

Plugged ears when the elevation shifts five feet or more

And the queasy growling under my naval

It's the summer flu

What did I eat?

Who do I know that can't get out of bed?

Who did I kiss?

What will I do as I toss in perspiration sheets?

These are the the mysteries of the summer flu

There's only one thing

To lay prone

And another thing, drink fluids

Starve your fever, or is it, feed it?

Every problem in the world 

Is in your body, unavoidable

In the summer flu

Nobody else cares, until you give it to them

Nobody remembers except to say, "ew, stand over there",

What it was like the last time

Their body contained every worldly problem

But they can't escape it, the hot, clingy, sticky, crawly 

Virus of the summer flu

Five minutes, an hour, then two

Half a day, then night, and still here

Still floating up and over into the night

And morning, it should be gone

Sniffling stuffed up sinus-jammed breathing

Or not

It's all over when you cough and rattle

The bass note serenade of the summer flu

--that's what it has been like these past three days. It occurred to me that I've only had one or two summer flu's. They are worse than the usual mid-winter bug in that they seem to be more reckless. Germs with bermuda shorts and hibachi's on vacation in my blood stream. Can't wait for them to pack up and go home. Perhaps this is what Oregonians think of us here in California as we invade during the mosquito months. I wonder...

The Stare-down

When the two faces met in the mirror, the one looking the other seen, there was a sudden recognition that something was missing. A longing for the way it used to be, not yesterday, nor last week or even anytime in the past year or two. But the longing was for anything unchanged in the mirror.

He looked at his face,  at the age spot just under his eye... the faint lines on his nose, the "smile wrinkles" around his eyes and gray hairs in his two day unshaven beard. These were all new, since the last time he really looked. That time, as best he could remember, was sometime in his early twenties. 

Then he looked in. Past the age spot, into the frame that was the wrinkles above his cheekbones, to the brown color and pupil floating on the white of his eyes. He ignored, for a moment, everything around them, and said to himself, "There. That's what's left of me. That's what has changed the least." Even though it wasn't true, for his ability to see close up and far away simultaneously is not what it was back then. Only the outward appearance of his vision was the same, and only that in the very center. 

He couldn't stay long, the seen was getting bored with being observed. So, he stepped back, satisfied for the moment that there was at least one thing left of him that quelled the longing for what used to be. It was not youthfulness, but innocence that escaped him this morning. And even that was not very easily seen. 

On his way to work, he counted the things that swept him away from his younger self. Each one, in itself, a complete story of its own. The sum of them, totaled together, was cause for grief and joy both. Each story, person, or event that eroded his innocence carried those two faces of their own. 

Each looked into the mirror at the other, one seeing, the other seen. Grief observed joy. They traded places. Joy looked grief deeply in the eye, past all the markings of a worrisome unforgiveness. And backed away slowly, for the moment, satisfied, and said, "There. That's what's left of me. That's what's changed the least..."

The weeping bride and her gentleman.

I guess I'm finally getting used to having a married son. Like I'm finally getting used to the idea that my hair is really receding. Blaise married Lindsey back there on the 28th. Of June. A hot day, sweltering actually, in the little church where they were wed. Our church. "My" church. I guess it's Blaise's home church, but not his church. He's living out of town, he and Lindsey are, in Pacific Grove. (Monterey, for those of us who don't always remember where "PG" is.) And so their church is the Anglican church there, (Anglican, because we all hate saying "Episcopalian"). 

They, and my receding hair, are becoming more obvious all the time by their absence. Lindsey cried hard the first night in their apartment, according to Blaise. Who could blame her. A blast through all the wedding arrangements, the emotions of having inbound families and expectations, then the ceremony and reception and the getaway to wedding night... The honeymoon and a quick stop to unwrap a couple hundred presents, all shiny and new and somehow up to now unnecessary, then the fourth of July with my family and finally the crossing of the threshold. As Blaise says, the kitchen was less than tidy when he left it to off and wed. 

So she cried. Hard. But my dear boy did maybe the first brilliant married man thing of hopefully thousands in the future. He made her dinner. And they watched a movie.

She was feeling homesick up to then. And this new thing, this was not feeling like home. But Blaise made it so. Dinner, lovingly made. Served up to his beloved. Followed by a cuddle on the couch through a 90 minute (+-) story, somebody else's story for the first time in weeks, perhaps. He fixed Lindsey up. 

And that's all you can ask at a time like that, isn't it? Exhaustion, change, stress, family, and loss after loss. Nothing like home, even one that you're growing into, when the smells of garlic and olive oil (or whatever he cooked that night) are all around you.

May God bless them through their love for each other, as they bring each other home, over and over. Which is just another way of saying, "better or for worse..." 

More... or Less... Lost

There's a place along the spectrum of lost and found 

Where I sit with my legs dangling over

It's breezy up here, and the spectrum, like all spectrums

Is not a very comfortable ledge

It's not meant for sittng

You're not supposed to dawdle

You're supposed to keep moving along the line

But I've just gotten tired of being more or less lost

So I've sat down to dangle my legs

It is, after all, my spectrum

I guess you just die one day and they'll say things about you

Things like, "Lately he'd been a little out of sorts." 

Another way of saying "more lost than usual"

Or things like, "He went around making people smile..." 

Another way of saying "more found than usual"

The measurable degrees of lost

Sitting on one of them now, with my heels sweeping the abyss

We could just move the end called "Found" over here

But I'd know better, like setting the clock ahead 15 minutes to avoid tardiness

More lost today I think, certainly more than two days ago

I can barely remember my own name

The numbing cold of the lost has set in

I know I should stand and walk to where the found are mingling

I can hear their laughter, sometimes pink, sometimes blue

And always a long ways off

"I was just there", I think to myself

"Where the found are sipping mango tea or Dr. Pepper"

Going means leaving something back

Becoming less lost is always such a hard bargain

Here in the cold, it's only the impostors who sit and stay too long

And such quiet company, the lull of the distance, the cold breeze

I'm now one of them, a long way from the oppressive freedom of having been found

Truly found

Where your heart beats on the outside of your chest

How I miss that weightlessness 

And stripping down to the skin

What am I doing with these fools here in the cold?

Today... just hanging my heels somewhere, more... or less... Lost.

Catch and release raccoons

A while back, my friend John and I devised a new concept in politically correct hunting lodges. Catch and release deer hunting. The whole premise wound around the idea of paintball guns and pesky deer. You can imagine, I'm sure, the rest.

Two nights ago, our back screen door into the big common room the kids fondly call the "playroom" was open and the raccoons slipped in unnoticed and made a very noticeable mess out of the cat food bag.  (we hardly use the cat food since our OUTDOOR cat became fond of the neighbors who now let the thing in the house when it's raining and pamper it with canned tuna. When they go on vacation they always come over to remind us about the cat saying, "could you remember to feed Rama?" Pffft. The mouse population is sure to rise.)

Well last night as Melinda was designing some banners for Blaise and Lindsey's wedding reception, I heard a scratch at the front door. I thought it was our prodigal cat. So I went to look. The stinking raccoons were tired of waiting to be fed, and, "heck" they figured, "last time one of those big flat things was there we just pushed and there was a bag of cat food."

So I got Dusty's paintball gun and, in my shorts, sprinkled cat food on the driveway, and hid out. I also changed my status on Facebook to read, "Lou is hunting raccoons with a paintball gun".

Brenda who, with Jeff went to get Chaney in Italy, uses Facebook to brag about all the great food and historical stuff their seeing, read my post and couldn't help but post there. It went likd this:

Hunting raccoons, with a paintball gun nonetheless....now that's fun! Any luck?"

To which I responded: 

"The damn things have thrashed the catfood, the garbage and last night they were scratching at my front door, like the cat does. I go out there to see what it is... a raccoon!. So. I got Dusty's paintball gun and sat in the shadows on the deck with a spread of catfood on the driveway... nothing, until this morning when I found the catfood gone and a note asking for fish. It was taped to a poloroid of me hunched behind the barbecue.

I need to be more proactive I think. The door scared them away."

And Brenda again:

"Florence is great! ...  Chaney got all teary when she saw the Pieta by Mike. She had been studying this piece and school and was thoroughly flabbergasted seeing it up close and personnel."

Just goes to show you that as cool as catch and release raccoon hunting might be, there's always some friend in Europe with a better story. It seems a long ways away, the romance of hand carved marble and frescos, not to mention outdoor cafes and gelato. Soon enough though, my friend, with whom I sat for hours las fall waiting for a turkey to present himself as a fat target, will be home. He'll probably be carrying some extra weight from all the fresh pasta, which is a perfect alibi for hiding on the porch with glow in the dark spheres and CO2 tanks... 

Atheism: Cave Canum

Dusty applauded an April post by an atheist blogger he's become, apparently, enamored with. The antetheos posted about being open minded. You can see it here:

I don't want to lose my response to what I think might be a bit of under-thought on the part of the blogger, so I'm inserting it here for safe keeping:

"Beware of Dog"

Being rather new to this idea of "no theos", please forgive me if I ask questions that have been unquestionably accepted by rational thinkers, or well enough documented in this or other blogs. You, I think would agree that public opinion is among the least of the proofs. You've said as much in refusing, as we all should do, to accept opinion or another's word as complete, or whole evidence. So I thank you for the freedom to consider your opinion here as same weight as Billy Nascar, St. Augustine or a midlevel potato farmer. I'm happy to say, we all of us dead or alive, have produced moments of brilliance.

Am I right to draw from this post, that open mindedness is an important value to which I, as an atheist must cling? You have several themes running through, but it might me help to stick to only one, for "I am a bear of very little brain."

Tell me if I have the gist of your view right: An open mind is a desirable thing. A closed mind to be avoided. So far, so good. I'm strongly considering atheism already, open-mindedness is the only way to fly if we're to give and take, fully, in these short years incorpus.

Thank you again, for leading us by your example. I think I can trust you to give me the best atheism has to offer. So, by your post, a good atheist "should" agree that evidence must live up to several criteria, some pretty strict boundaries. Can you help me here? I was just about to join you, valuing open-mindedness as much as you do. But, these words seem a bit restrictive. Here they are again:

"convincing" "irrefutable" "logical" "consistent with the reality we know" "practical" "sensible" "possible" "rational"

I'm trying for as much common ground as I can get here. Let's imagine that a religious mystic describes his faith. You'll require "convincing, irrefutable logic". But when he starts, we atheists will have a problem with reality we all, including him, "know". His faith is "practical" to him and he would say "sensible" or why would he bet his lifestyle upon it. But if you're not convinced of his "proofs" because they don't meet your very specific "rationality", I'm afraid I might hear you declare "Impossible!!!"

So as one who is in total agreement with you on the importance of remaining open, my question is simply, "Is not this atheism, both narrow, and closed?" After all... your mission, if you'll allow, is wonderfully described in a single word. I wish I had a single word mission. That word: Atheist. "No Theism" as you say. Sounds a bit more rigid than you originally promoted above.

I greatly desire peer respect, in the end. After all, we both have our moments of brilliance. I fear we're starting off on the wrong foot. Could you clarify this one, what looks to me to be, blind spot? In this one post you've alienated those who can't meet your subjective, albeit narrow rules, and have devalued our beloved openness by your title which says "I'm closed to theism". If it were on a business card, I'd know your name and that you value closedness. Maybe we're expecting too much of an open mind. In that case let's search for some other common ground, something we can agree is valuable (even though To Value requires a faith in yet another thing we can't quite prove...)

Thanks in advance for your gentle response, I am but a potential disciple, with a deep lack of experience in such an obvious (as you put it) need for exclusively rational thinking.

All the best,

To the Anthropologists!

Here's a picture of me today, just for the record. Since this blog, any blog really, is a sort of time capsule that one day will be trod by very bored anthropologists, I thought I might make their life a little easier. To you future scientists, this is what it's like when you've moved out of your office here in the early 2000's, after a series of smallerizing events in a start up. 

Whatever you have there in the future, I hope it includes the same ability we have today to bounce back after personal economic ruin. In fact it is a poverty of luck. But as you can see, this placid day in Grass Valley, CA in May, there is no global warming, or cooling. Just global downsizing in my little world. I now work from the deck whenever possible. Soon it will be too hot again. Followed by too cold. Somewhere in there, all that really matters, is my whole work world fits in my backpack.

Hope this one little puzzle piece helps you to know how it was today, at least in this little wooded place. (FWIW, just across the canyon, I'm hearing large earth moving equipment. I think some rich bastard just bought the top of the hill over there and is carving a swath out of the forest so he can see the creek.) When you read this, out there 100 years from now, Google "Little Way" and see if you can see any trees. Probably just concrete across the creek.

Blessed are the Meek

Marcia Haley is one of my favorite people. She's angelic in some ways. Something happened to her when she was a young girl to slow her intellectual development. I don't know what it was, I've only known her for the past eight or ten years and so what was "lost" in that episode doesn't occur to me. All I know is that this sweet woman from a prominent family in our church never misses the opportunity to find me every Sunday morning for a hug and a kiss and to give Blaise and Dusty her best. She's often wearing an alb and is the most reliable acolyte or chalice bearer at the 10:30 service.

During the Gospel reading at Trinity, an acolyte will take the cross (a 6 foot tall pole with hand-carved cross at the top) to the center aisle somewhere around a third of the way back. When the cross passes at the processional or recessional and Gospel reading, it is customary to bow, indicating our own insignificance in the presence of the Christ resurrected.

Dusty's first morning as acolyte many years ago was unforgettable. He made it in carrying the cross just fine. It was at the Gospel reading when, as usual, he was followed to the center aisle by a chalice bearer carrying the Bible, and then the Deacon whose privilege it is to perform the reading. Only Dusty didn't stop a third of the way down the aisle. He, not able to see behind him, carried the cross all the way to the back of the church and out the door. The Bible and deacon stopped in the correct place. When Dusty finally turned around, Deacon Dave, a mountain of a man, smiled and gestured for him to come back. Dusty at his best.

Two years ago, many insignificant things started to loom large in the eyes my faith. I began to notice small nuances. And one of those was, and still is, Marcia.

I see her walking through town alone, from time to time. She walks because she cannot drive. I think she takes care of herself pretty well, doing her own shopping and preparing meals. I would guess her to be in her fifties now. We all know people like her. They don't fit very well into our view of "productive" society. We've placed such a high value on accomplishments and personal bests. By many standards, Marcia has little value. She has a quiet and simple sense of humor. I've never heard her argue the finer points of theology, but she did confess to me after my accident that she had prayed for me "all the time". I'd wager, those were prayers God was most happy to receive. In fact that first day back in church after six weeks in the trauma unit plus several more at home, is hard for me to remember. One thing that stands out is Marcia Haley hugging me over and over, and when she finally let go, I saw she was crying.

But the smallest thing is something I can't shake very well. It is when Marcia carries the cross. At the processional, when the cross leads her past me, I bow. At the Gospel reading, leading the Bible and the deacon, I bow again. And as the whole gang, acolytes, chalice bearers, deacon, lector, and finally priests make their way to the narthex, they are led by the cross, borne by Marcia Haley. Blink and you'll miss it. There are so many layers of meaning in it.

The least of these, redeemed by the most powerful reminder in the building, the Cross. She stands, made mighty, because of the cross. All around the room, as she walks by, important lawyers and businessmen, retired and visiting priests, intellectual giants and educated scholars... all of them, to the man and woman... bows. Marcia Haley, whom I see walking into town is merely Marcia Haley. But put the cross in her hands, and she is the most scandalously powerful person in the building. Of course nobody is bowing to her. Nor does anyone bow to the object, as if it were an idol. We are bowing to what is behind both. Sometimes I nearly gasp at the thought of it.

The very idea that this meek woman would hold such a precious thing. And why shouldn't she?! That's the point. We are, everyone of us, unworthy and castoffs without that cross. We bow to the idea of it...and paradoxically, at the same time, the reality of Christ. Why shouldn't we hold the idea of, and therefore the reality of each person as precious. And that picture, is the greatest image of Grace, like a living breathing icon, that I've ever known.

The angels have so often been portrayed as messengers. And there's that side of Marcia. The Sunday morning hug and her kiss on my cheek, her respectful "good morning Mr. Douros", and her almost shy departure at the end of it all makes me wonder why I don't bow when I see her on the street.

All of this has caused me to look around a lot more on Sunday mornings. There's meaning in almost every one of Christopher's gestures. Even individual cuts of stained glass in each panel can carry a whole biblical truth. Certain candles. The incense. Hundreds of details in each icon. The carefully chosen words of the Nicene Creed. (Even down to specific phrases). All of it layered full of meaning. At the end of a service I've taken away a single morsel that will feed my soul for weeks. That's where Marcia and I have so much in common. Those massive truths go on without us both. It's when we take hold of any one of them, and especially the cross, that our esteem goes beyond anything humanly measurable.

March the Eighteenth

A little thought will show you how vastly your own happiness depends on the way other people bear themselves toward you...

Turn the idea around, and remember that just so much you are adding to the pleasure or the misery of other people's days. And this is the half of the matter which you can control. Whether any particular day shall bring to you more of happiness or of suffering is largely beyond your power to determine. Whether each day of your life shall give happiness or suffering rests with yourself.

George S. Merriam

Semper Referendum

The phrase Christopher used this morning in his brief sermon (Palm Sunday's sermon is always short with the long Gospel reading. It's one of those, "'nuff said" kinda scriptures), was "semper referendum". He interpreted that to mean, "Always in need of reform". 

Funny but that's almost another one of those, 'nuff said kinda things too. He was talking about our baptisms and how one is really enough, as is stated in the Nicene Creed. It's enough, but not the thing that saves us. An anecdote Christopher used (and has used before) was the story of an old holy monk who lay on his death bed. His lips were moving and as his disciples came close and asked him what he was saying, he replied, "I'm asking Christ to give me a little more time to repent." Astonished, they remarked to him about what a holy man he is and asked why he, of all people would need to repent. He said, "oh, I have not even begun to repent".

Always... and everyone of us, in need of reform. Yes, one baptism for the forgiveness of sins; the sacrament, "an outward sign of an inward grace..." as the definition goes. It is constant reform, though that will define us in the end. The returning to the communion table, and in our private times with Christ, those are the things that change us. Referendum. 

If anything the act of baptism is the thing that acknowledges that we are not unlike everybody else. That nothing, really is different, one of us to another. Baptism marks the inward grace. It isn't until years of maturity sinks into us that we have any hope that reform inside will actually show up on the outside.

I am alone in this, yet another inward grace the outward sign of which is communion. The forest deep and dark, with silent footsteps behind the trees. Hissing smirks of my own demons who would rather I forgot my baptism along with my daily routine of seeking God. Perhaps it is that I have been given a little more time to repent. Or just to know the truth of being reformed. Either way, I'm happy that I'm not unlike you, reader. Be it void or warm light, only inward grace can complete the equation of a sacrament. 

Looking Into the Shallows of Space

I met one of the early designers of Google Earth last week. The application that has mapped all the dirt on the planet now includes views from our terrestrial P.O.V into the depths of space, (now available online as google.com/sky). Or maybe we're at the depths and most directions outward are the "shallows". The point is, with the use of photos gathered from the Hubble Space Telescope we can now see galaxies billions of light years away. And we see them through the perspective of our present point in the universe.

Robin, the Google cartographer, started with a zoomed in snap of a galaxy that looked like a dusky oval in the center of the screen. He described that this point (that looked about the same size as the word "point" in this blog), was something like over 100 million light years thick. One hundred years, traveling at the speed of light from the dot over the "i" to the bottom of the "p". In that galaxy, there are millions of stars, billions of planets and other objects. He said that our own galaxy, the Milky Way, was about a tenth the size of the one we were observing.

Then he did something I have done on the flat National Geographic map of the universe. He zoomed out.

As the huge "point" sized galaxy shrunk down until it was not even visible, just a part of the black, and stars filled the sky (the stars of our own galaxy), I remembered that outside that cloud of white dots, there are billions of other galaxies. Trillions of stars, and gazillions of planets and other orbitals.

Not only do you wonder about how we could be so terra-centric that we'd think aliens would come to visit us here, but even more impossibilities rise to the surface. Like, what business did the Creator of the Universe have here among us in the form of Jesus? And even more potent, why do I think my thoughts and deeds matter one ounce compared to that immensity?

I don't know. I do know that God is purported to be infinite, and all the "omni's", including the big one, "Omnipotent". I've only experienced omnipotence once, when Blaise was a 5 year old, and playing with his friend. They were doing what boys do, some war game, this time in outer space. They made laser sounds and blew up each other's bases, and soon there was an argument, "I'm laser proof", "Oh yeah well I'm bomb proof", "Well I'm rocket proof"... and finally, "well I'm Everything Proof!!" That seemed to end it, though I wondered why someone didn't create a laser that could blow up stuff that's everything proof.

That's about as far as my pee-brain can go. God - everything proof. More immense than all that Robin could show us with Google Earth, and with that omnipotence, (infinite, remember) there is the possibility to know us down to immeasurable detail. Seems hard to imagine of course, why, with all the interesting physics of the billions of planets in this galaxy alone, how could my troubles or thrills matter to God?

I've come to a conclusion out of this. Today, I'm going to do my best to leave God alone... well not totally. I'm going to work hard to hand over thanks and encouragement, in my small way, to the One whom I believe is responsible for all this. The beauty that is. He has done an amazing thing, and my petty complaints or wants (aka "needs"), are not what God deserves.

One thing I know, this planet is NOT the only dirtball in space. I'm convinced there are others. Have we been "visited"? It doesn't matter. What is important to me today is that I resonate with the other great omni, the Omnipresence. If everywhere at once it is, then here is there enough. That is, here is one of those wheres that God touches. What do I want Him to feel as he touches this "where"? I want it to feel to Him like joy, and wonder, and above all appreciation for who He is and what He has done. Today, as for me, I'm offering God my pittance of a gift. My love. Hope He likes it.

Lost, and to be Found

One night, during the years when I was commuting into San Francisco on BART, I wandered around the parking lot for an hour before I realized that my car was stolen. The thought occurred to me about fifteen minutes after I got off the train. But I kept saying to myself, "it can't really be gone..." 

The disbelief of its absence was pure denial. I went up and down every aisle of the station parking lot looking left then right. From one end to the other, then back again. I covered the lot at least three times. I kept looking at the spot where I thought I'd parked it, as if it would materialize since the last time I looked there. But cars don't materialize. This one was given to me from a friend who was a pastor. It was a 1958 Ford Fairlane. I loved that car. The real treasures were in the trunk though. 

I was newly married and had filled the trunk with about $1,000 worth of wedding gifts we didn't know what to do with. The loot was headed for a thrift store, some of it, and some would be rewrapped for other wedding gifts. Something about it being stolen was infuriating. Even though I wasn't going to keep the gifts, the fact that someone just took them upset me.

Up one row, down another... until my feet hurt. I never found it. The absence was cavernous. I felt sorry for my car. And for myself. I finally resigned myself to the fact that it had been stolen, called Melinda for a ride home and found a policeman to fill out a report.

The car was discovered two years later, after we had moved to the Los Angeles area. I had to pay for a plane ticked north, parking tickets, the impound fees and towing. And of course, the trunk was empty. I drove the car back south and gave it away to a single mother who needed transportation. She may have sold it for drug money.

All the time I didn't have that car, I would reminisce about it. I tried wishing it back, and of course, none of that worked. I was just left with a gap there. My car lost forever. But when it came back to me, unexpectedly, it was a great joy. I gladly spent what it took to go retrieve it, not even knowing what condition it would be in. I was sure the years and the man-handlers who stole the car would have left nothing for me. But I was wrong. The car was almost as I had left it in the parking lot.

Might I be so lucky that everything I lose could find its way back home as though nothing was different. There are things that have, for whatever reason left my life. There are people who were an intimate part of my daily details, giving and taking words of kindness, who have now grown silent. No matter that I look to see them, even where we last spoke, they are not there. I keep coming back to that place, expecting to see their faces, or hear their voices, and have not gotten used to missing them. That's the final admission that they're not there. We'll all likely go to the grave without seeing some of those people who have made an impact on our lives.

Through some act of grace, perhaps at some unanticipated moment, I'll get a call or a notice in the mail, that something of mine will be found. A car, or a soul friend from the past. I'll come many miles and at some sacrifice either out of curiosity or for some other reason just to see that nothing, really, has changed...

Recreated in each other's image...

Wow, it's been a long time since I've written. But that's how it goes in life. I just blow past days and friends as if they were telephone poles along the highway. Not much detail just vertical, blurry lines in the periphery.

Then without warning, there I'll be. Pulled over, stepping out of the car either because it broke down or to relieve myself, just a stone's throw away from one of those poles. At full speed, they are a sort of boundary. But stop and look closely and an intricate web of stories and memories and textures are there for the taking. It feels random, the slowing and landing in front of one of them. Our human contacts are just like that.

Sometimes a new acquaintance, and sometimes a soul mate. And most often, a brief touch and a whisper and they are gone. We leave our imprint on each other, it's true. Over time, we'll begin to look like every one we've met in some distant way.

But this time of year, Lent and Easter, I'm more acutely aware of how much we look like our Creator. Each of us, in some way, through what are often called "gifts" take on the expression of the Expression of God. The Holy Spirit. Christ's essence. Who proceeds from the Father, who with the Father and Son is worshiped and glorified... so goes the creed. And yet we are an abstract of that union... we are in fact created in His image and as such, the subject of God's love. How undeserving.

That is who we really look like. Created in God's image. Three in one: water, steam and ice. Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Mind, Body, Soul.

I knelt down looking forward to the chancel wall at communion today. There was my favorite icon, as I have often said. The Trinity. I don't get all the detail of The Trinity, it's like a puzzle with all the inside symbolism. Icons often lose me, I've found. It's almost like the thing keeps moving past you even when you've pulled over to stare a while.

Oddly, one of the things I like most about The Trinity is its color. A beige tone. It's very soothing. And when I see that icon, I feel at home. As I knelt, there was Christopher, watching me closely with a plate full of hosts. He stared me down as I landed on my knees and I flashed on how much of my life has been influenced by him these recent years. He placed the wafer in my hand and I smiled up at him and grabbed his thumb as he went by. A fellow sojourner, Christopher. I went on with my swirling repentance, and waited for the cup to come.

It was Polly Dodds who served me. Funny, feisty and a woman of great accomplishments. Her design sense back before retirement was legendary. She's lost none of it, still brilliant. I tried to catch her eye, as is my custom at communion, but she was concentrating on her balance and tipping the chalice toward my mouth. Then she went to the next person and as I crossed myself I watched the fabric on her alb, almost too close to be in focus. A telephone pole where I happened to be kneeling after my life, broken down once again, came to a complete stop for just a moment.

Looking for the perfect meal?

Frederick Beuchner, in his autobiography, I think talks about a childhood memory of grilled cheese sandwiches. He says in typically common language something like, "...the grilled cheese sandwiches were as hot and limp as a dead bird in summer." What a picture! As you hold the buttery thing in your hand, it sort of drapes over your fingers.

I'm not really supposed to be eating things with that much fat in them. Cheese and butter, basically the same thing with different processing, are something like 100% fat. The other night when I came home to my sick family, every one of them down with the flu, Melinda had made the ultimate comfort food. Grilled cheese sandwiches (hot and limp...) and tomato soup. She was having trouble standing upright, her illness working against her like gravity from every direction, but not at once. So an easy meal it was.

As I sat down alone, I'd arrived after dinner with this crazy work load heavier than usual, and took a bite of that sandwich dipped in the hot orange soup. Intellectually, I know that meal cost something like $1.50. But there in my mouth, and near those nerve endings in my brain that produce dopamine, I might as well have been at a Ruth's Chris Steakhouse.

That's when it hit me, I even said it out loud, "You know, grilled cheese is highly under-rated". There's something about that cheese melted and combined with the crunchy buttered toast that rivals some of the best, most expensive meals I've ever had. Of course I'd rather spend a buck-fifty than fifty bucks on a meal...barring the atmosphere. There's always something to be said for ambiance of a high priced restaurant and romantic candle-light.

As usual, there's more to this. I started to dig a little deeper here, as is typical these days and here's what I found. The world is full of common people, and I mean full. The "uncommon" ones (on both ends of the spectrum between repulsive and magnetic), take up about a slice of cheese in all of Wisconsin. When I learned recently that Tom Cruise's baby is supposed to be the reincarnated founder of Scientology, there was no more clearer picture of cheddar in search of one slice of Wendsleydale.

But there we are; most of us individually overlooked by some standard we, none of us really like. Admit it, there are times you've dismissed a person you hardly know, but judged to be of common worth. What's worse is when one person degrades another, presses them down with expectations and openly judges them to be of common, or not of any worth. What an injustice when one of us tramples the common beauty and serenity of another. Even in the name of Christ, I've seen men expect and demand perfection of their wives and lovers. I've been guilty of it too.

It's not until I, hungry for comfort and the beauty in the surprise of what is ordinary, surrender to the heady perfection of love, loyalty, friendship, kindness, joy and peace among other things, that I can be truly fulfilled. What was I thinking? The fancy steak surrounded by porcelain white space and garnished with roast vegetables, sprinkled lightly with balsalmic and herbs just doesn't compare with the buck-fifty treasure on my own table.

The crime is when we never notice, and continue to believe that prime cuts are somehow more valuable. Where did that "standard" even come from? So. A toast.

"Here's to you, may you be known as the perfect meal, may those who take you in, lean back in their chair as you roil over their senses and may you be love, loyalty, friendship, kindness, joy and peace among other things." Hot and limp as a dead bird in summer... that's us. Common and desirable and confident to be what we are, even in a world of false expectations and ridiculous demands.

Down the hatch.

A Tiny, Momentary Mercy

Her hand slipped easily into mine. It was the first thing of hers that I noticed was human. Until then she was a beggar, the symbol of those poor we were supposed to ignore for the moment. But her hand, palm pressed into mine and fingers around that soft part of my hand between my thumb and forefinger, was hard to dismiss. Now my attention was off my work, bringing home the images of Mozambican life. Startled, I looked down to see her little African face looking back up at me.

The other children moved into my path and walked backwards in step with me, their eyes fixed on mine and one hand palm up. We had our orders. "Don't give even one of them money, there will be a mob around you in 15 seconds." Some of them were wearing burlap for clothes. I could read the print that named the corn mix that was once relief food for a local distribution center. They flooded around us wherever we went, constantly underfoot.

But not her. She was quietly happy to be my companion, and so as the others begged, she and I walked along hand in hand. Many of these children are prostitutes at an obscene age. And this might have been her story for all I know. I judged her to be about eight years old. 

I told myself, "giving any of these kids money will not help them. Parents or pimps or both will take whatever I give them..." We satisfied ourselves with the plan that we would give money to relief organizations instead of beggars. A good plan I suppose. 

I moved my hand out of hers to set up the camera for the next shot. The other children tried to get in front of the camera as they always seem to do in the third world. I don't have any recollection of what, exactly, I was filming, but I can almost certainly reconstruct the scene of the street and faces around me. It was 1992. 15 years ago. Memory is funny that way. 

We picked up our equipment and kept walking, and there was her warm hand again. This time though, it was not a shock to feel that hand there. It was not foreign. This same event repeated two or three more times after setting shots. We, at last, set up a shot that took our attention for longer than usual. We stopped the camera, folded the tripod and started walking. 

I remember looking all around me, in the sea of faces that had become our entourage. My hand stayed empty from that moment forward. Even the next day as we continued our work, I fully expected my friend to appear at my side to put her hand in mine, but it never happened. As it turned out, she had never spoken to me. She never asked me for anything. We exchanged smiles a few times as we walked, and I remember her pushing some of the other children away as they tried to move too close to her grip on me. 

The cynical side of me says she was working me for money. I don't know. It doesn't matter really, because though I never saw her again, she's never really left me. I don't dwell on the story, but now as I sit here in the thick of the Christmas season, she's a powerful reminder that the streets are full of poor around the world. Christ was indeed prophetic when he said they'd be with us always. He said it to defend the woman who poured perfume on his head and washed his feet with her tears, if I'm not mistaken. 

An undeniable reminder, that story, to worship Him in spite of the world's trouble. And here we are celebrating his birth, and life. I suppose, after all, the little miracle that comes even in the warmth of a friendly little African hand is mercy overflowing. There is no guilt or sorrow in that. Christ will be glorified even with the poor before us... and for that matter, far away from us. May His blessed birth, lowly and humble, be our call to pass on His mercies in far more abundance than we receive them.

Black Dog is Better For You (or, the value of sipping relationships regardless of your first impression)

The Chinese consider dog a delicacy. This fact is not unknown, anyone who's been to China discovers it, either through anecdote or by seeing it firsthand as the skinned Lassies hang in the market. What most people don't know is that there's a hierarchy of value for which color dog is most desirable. Dog with black fur is considered to offer supposedly the best flavor and the most benefit to the consumer (the black fur is believed to provide protection from the cold in the winter). Seems oddly superstitious, of course, this "you are what you eat" worldview.

Fresh coffee is both a scent and a flavor, I've decided. There are times after buying a bag of newly roasted espresso beans that I'll just inhale the aroma. Brewing it creates a different pleasure, and while it used to be that a good drip was just the thing. The other day, I found myself at a new level of coffee snobbery that bordered the superstitious.

Blaise, who doesn't drink coffee, was moving out and we were going through the closets, basement and kitchen to stock him up on the castoffs of items we thought he could use. Melinda came across several coffee cups of various sizes and colors. Red, blue, purple and one promotional collectible from our church, maroon printing on gray ceramic. I was so happy to relieve our cupboards of those cups and along the five hour drive to Monterey to deliver Blaise's final truckload of loot, I realized why.

The scent and flavor of coffee is exclusively found in earth tone shades of brown. It's possible that I believe this due to years of conditioning my brain as I drink. I can't enjoy coffee sipped out of a cup that is anything but some shade along the beige continuum. I think that if I were blindfolded and asked to drink the same coffee out of two cups, one red and one off-white, I would never fail to identify the better coffee as coming from the off-white cup. I've not been able to finish French roast from a promotional blue cup, or Hazelnut creme from purple ceramic.

We've been using glass mugs of late at our house. I must admit that neither ceramic nor beige pigment compare to the sight of swirling creme and java, or even better a dab of Baileys in those mugs. 

How is it then that thousands of holiday mugs and trade-show cups are still made in these primary colors? Obviously the non coffee-drinking population of Marketing executives have pushed this tasteless merchandising on us. 

But along that drive to Monterey, I also had to ask myself, why was it that I even made these judgements about coffee containers. Can books really be judged by their covers? Can a good wine be discovered because of the coolness of the label alone? Is black dog really better than yellow or spotted? 

At the end of the day, or in my case, first thing in the morning when I'm most likely to drink my coffee, maybe it is superstition that informs this powerful conviction. And if there, why not as I meet people and develop relationships. My brain is conditioned to see the world and everything in it a certain way. Coffee is coffee, after all. The same pot won't pour sweet or sour from a single drip. My eyes inform my tongue. A good caution, I think, as I encounter those I will eventually come to love. Perhaps I should develop a taste for blue ceramic before refusing to drink at all. I might otherwise miss the heady scent that liquifies into hot steamy satisfaction. 

The Last Few Volts at Night

Batteries get sleepy. They don't die really. They just doze a little and curl up, yawning, the deep kind of yawn with watery eyes and two or three gasps there at the end. Then they sort of stare, glossy-eyed across the room. The conversation gets fuzzy, someone asks a question and they give that cute little NiCad head movement and say, "huh?"

Don't even bother repeating. It's best to just turn off the phone or iPod or whatever is occupied by those polarized little bricks and plug it in.

Tynan gets "tired leg" when his batteries go. His head flops to one side, the black dense Taiwanese hair bobbing up and down then up again. It never stays down. He has a way of leaving his jaw slack when his batteries are low, and then the leg. It hurts him, he says. I don't ever remember getting "tired leg", but I'm sure it's tied to the drip drip drip of energy that falls away at the end of the day. Then it hurts. 

Tynan is so much better than he used to be. I mean now he deftly climbs the play equipment at school and scrabbles over rocks at low tide. There was a time there not too long ago... once he fell over onto his face. His hands didn't even rise. His coordination was damaged from lack of stimulation at an early age, and so it was his front teeth that broke his fall. Darned hands. So I guess tired leg isn't so bad. 

Tonight I will put him to bed and watch as his eyes close, but not all the way. He scares Devon, who once looked over at Tynan in the car and seeing the whites of his eyes under the fast-asleep eyelids, covered his own face in horror and said, "Geez he looks creepy".

Tynan is the battery boy. Powered by them and suffering from their nightly demise. He's a dreamy one when he wakes up, but he fights for the last few volts at night. It is clear that you better find his charger if you want to finish that last sentence. 

All Along, There it Was, a Gift We May Have Never Opened...

Blaise left this morning to live in Monterey. 

As I drove to the restaurant last night for his farewell dinner with just our family, what's left of it here in Grass Valley, I called Melinda to tell her I would be there in five minutes. Mei An was crying in the background because Devon pushed her as she sat down at the table. I asked to talk with her. Through her light tears, she said "hi dad". I told her to save me a seat so she and I could sit next to each other. A few sentences later I was driving alone again in the truck to the restaurant. 

Now there are a lot of things that go through my mind when I talk to a person on the phone. With Mei An, I'm imagining how hard it is for her to keep the chatter going, she is always trying to hang up. I envisioned her giving the phone back to Melinda and saying, excitedly, "Dad is going to sit right here... next to me..." She is smiling in my vision of this perfect scene. She feels empowered against Devon who has just been tweaked by my request to be with her for the evening. 

This morning as Melinda and I lay in bed waiting for the sleep to ebb away from us and start up the day, I was reminded of how she saved my life down there by the creek. My side hurt, the part of me that still somehow has an ache from the crush point. I have this ringing in my ears, constantly, and it is especially loud now in the mornings. But the thing that was in my mind was that I'm alive. Really alive! That's a gift. 

John and I talked about it last night, he called the accident a "near miss". I told him, "I have thought that, but don't anymore. It wasn't a miss. It was a direct hit..." I'm not sure either of us is right. Our black and white minds want to see things as either/or. In this case if I say that the log didn't kill me, it must have been a miss. But the log did kill me, it didn't miss, and I am living now. So it wasn't successful (a direct hit), nor a miss (not by any means) but it was something else, and I'm o.k. not really understanding what that is.

This morning as I talked about my aching side and ringing ears, I told Melinda that I'm so grateful. I almost left this world through death, and felt palatably the bliss that is on the other side of the membrane between the worlds. But by this gift, undeserved, I get to have both. Heaven isn't going away. It will always be there. It's not like saying, "Well we better go visit rural China before westernization ruins it..." Nothing will ruin Heaven. It will always be there. So it is a privilege to feel the pain in my side. A joy to hear the ringing. "Tinnitus" they call it. Just as it is a joy to have had these past 23 or so months while Heaven remains unchanged. I felt light again as I thought of it. I have the chance to sit next to my six year old daughter in the face of annoyance from her older brother. I have the chance to go on one day and finish the journey begun and interrupted toward Heaven.

A few tears. They remind me too that I'm alive. It occurred to me as I lay there, that I never did get the details of what really happened after I hung up with Mei An. So I asked Melinda. With one beat, I could see her put the story back in from memory, she said, "As Mei An was handing me the phone she said, 'Ty - an move'". That was it. I shouldn't have asked. The tyranny she had experience moments ago she was exacting on the next in line. I laughed hard enough to change the source of my tears. 

As I talked with Melinda I was imagining the family going on without me. The events and stories about them, the relationships and longings and more... would have happened in my absence. But not this time. I sat next to Mei An and across from my family shortly thereafter, and then this morning I was there to hear it told. 

Neither moment would I miss for the world.

Ungrateful Machine.

So I tried to do something new today. It was this laptop's fault. I didn't want to do it, but there was this little window in the top center of the screen that begged to be smiled at. A camera. Or lens from what I can tell. And there it sat completely unaware that it wanted a smile and so I did it. I reached down with the mouse, clicked on the little red button, and well there it is. Me smiling like an idiot at the screen in my office as if the humming, glowing thing cared that I was watching its cyclops glassy stare. That's not so new, me staring at the computer screen intently. I suppose the least it could do was say, "Cheese", or something equally inappropriate. There wasn't even time today for the snapshot in the first place...

Cold Sun

It's bone chilling cold tonight. Clear sky, nearly full moon, what's left over from last night. And only the memories of the summer. The sun runs away south this time of year.

I remember asking my dear friend and physicist, John, how it was that an icy glass of water seemed to "radiate" the cold. I mean, if you put your hand there, near it but not touching, you feel cold reaching out to your skin.

He thought for a moment, not because it was a hard question for him, but so he could frame the answer in a way that my mortal mind might grasp. Then he said, "It doesn't exactly radiate the cold, instead it steals the heat from your hand." The sensation of heat transferring from my hand to the glass leaves my nerves feeling the cold, as though it was projected from the ice.

During the day, there is my retreated summer's sun. Some call it a cold sun, as though its temporary distance has made it any less scorching. But it does feel like the freezing air is pressed onto my face. "Radiated", what a wrong word that is in this case. Instead, my warmth is pulled from me, drawn south. "Stolen", as John said.

As soon as it goes, I miss the warmth that was once mine. A breath into the night air makes it appear visible. My body's heat floats out and up and dissipates into blackness. I can't help but wonder if it has made any difference, this old body that has borrowed the heat from the sun itself.

If the cold sun is taking from me, did it get all it wanted? Is it satisfied? Or will it be my joy and wonder to give until, at last, it returns from the equator with its laughter all full of blues and pinks?

A Story About the Necessity of Grace.

1992. November in northern Kenya was cool and dry. Our plane landed on the dirt runway after having earlier flown over the plains of light brown grass. Here and there we saw rings in the grass, dirt circles scarred into the land. They were where homes of the tribal peoples once stood. Probably Masai, made of dung, sticks and thorn bushes, these people are nomadic, so as their food sources move, so do they. Rains and heat cannot remove their footprints as seen from this Otter, the bush plane that moved people and supplies to relief zones.

We were staying in a UN camp near Lake Turkana, on the Sudanese border. Though it was a tent encampment, there were very few luxuries spared. We had hot showers (wood fired water hand hoisted from recycled fuel drums by local villagers to a bag above small shacks with cement floors.) and hot meals, (some of the best lasagna I've ever had, and grilled seafood in an indoor/outdoor mess tent).

But it was 1992. And it was November. The evening we arrived was the same day of the US presidential election. The results came in as the party was beginning to rev up. The UN employees who were there to feed and support relief efforts in the Sudan where southern Christians were murdering and being murdered by the northern Muslims. At the time, I couldn't understand why Christians were murdering anyone. I began slowly to understand that "Christians" had little to do with the faith I knew.

Clinton won the election that night. We woke to the sounds of revelers at around 2am. There was also the sounds of the crack of gunfire. Those days of hard travel tied to video journalism were taxing and I remember not laying awake long. The next morning, the camp was a ghost town. There were a handful of people at breakfast, and word traveled quickly to us that most everyone was hung over after celebrating the liberation of the US from the Republican party.

The gunfire we heard was not celebratory. It was a tribal feud involving cattle. A "Christian" Sudanese who was outfitted with an automatic weapon to counter the attacks of the North also had a dispute with a Turkanese who allegedly stole some cattle from him. That night, he and several others apparently came across the border into Kenya, killed his rival and recovered his livestock.

It seemed surreal at the time. Now I know it was a minor scrape, considering the genocide that has plagued many parts of the African continent without our awareness. Our work the next few days carried on as usual, interviews on the ground with the client we were serving, an air relief organization with a UN contract, and various sorties in the air for footage of their equipment doing the unenviable job of serving desperate remote distribution points.

The US was never rescued by the then new president. The hunger problem in the Sudan is still there, some of it has migrated to other places, and there are more circles in the dirt now, where my eyes saw living villages. The stench of death even with supplies flying into the distribution camps will always be with me. My short trip is nothing to the years of support some people offer. And yet it is perspective.

Not of how lucky or blessed we are, though we are. The perspective is of Grace and the necessity of our sin. It is necessary, of course, because of who we are, born rebellious. It is necessary because of our continued choices that are imperfect and corrupt. National leaders in those places in Africa of course could solve much of it, but for their own appetites. As is true of each one of us.

We are necessary evils. May God bring us to our knees more and more often to remember it. We are here and therefore are necessary. And yet we are born of sin. So what to do but beg for mercy, forgiveness and look for Grace. That's the point. Right here, each one of us is a Story. Will we be told after we're gone? Only if we create a human grace among our fellow travelers. Today, I am one for grace. Tomorrow I will likely sin again. May forgiveness be even more prolific than world hunger...

May it come, the dawn.

I saw the mists in the forest deep. Seeing them as they were, was the prize. The reward. Yes they shrouded the massive redwoods so that I could only see bark and low limbs. And I knew instinctively that above that gray scarf that wrapped itself below the underarms of the tree's limbs, there was green. The coastal redwoods, if they could, they would know that they belong. They are accepted as they are. And though that ever-moving cloth of damp may shroud the sight of those mighty princes and princesses of the trees, their beauty goes without saying. They stand assured. They are their own reward.

Whether I was there or not, they would be. Whether I could do anything for them or not is immaterial. I can only hope that I will see them again, perhaps someday in the sun where backlit dewdrops will push prism light to my clothes and skin. The sun, pressing through the shroud, the fabric dew, misty fog retreating and revealing the greatness that they are. Ancient beings, we all of us are. And yet the damp wetness of our bark so oft creates doubt that we will stand any longer.

Hold on to that thing. That rewarding thing that is and was and is to come. Visitors to the grove or NOT, seeing us, appreciating us for what we are in our imperfect splendor, or NOT. That is the thing. That is the one sure thing. The warm light at tree-top is more perfect and more powerful than the tiny, minuscule droplets of water that, gathered, obscure our beauty. It is the sun that turns the gray of a million droplets into the full spectrum of refracted light, the promise, the rainbow. In that dawn, each needle will hang a single rainbow-maker, where the visitor will marvel at perfection in total.

May it come, the dawn.

Hollow Where it Used to be

Why is it when you take something made of flesh out of your body, you're not just hollow there? I mean, it's odd, but over time, your body just sort of fills in. For a while there is a cavity. But it doesn't last long. What fills in doesn't do any good really. Just tissue. What was there had some reason for being, in general it made me feel better. The tissue is just filler and there's nothing you can do, or hope for that would turn it into the thing that you once had. All I can do is hope I don't cave in.

I know that after it was taken I could sort of remember what it felt like, back when that part of my body was where it used to be. "Nature abhors a vacuum", is another way to say it. And though I'll miss those things that I came with, I won't know it over time... unless of course there is scar tissue or "adhesions". Which I suppose is inevitable. There's something in there that just won't leave me alone. Guess I'll have it checked. Another CT Scan in a few weeks and I'll know more.

I've had enough of them to know how it goes. Laying on my back, the IV in my arm hooked up to the clear vial of contrast. They'll ask if I'm ready, then I'll watch as the plunger presses it down and feel the hot flush race through my body to all my extremities... ALL of them. Like being bathed inside out in a warm bath.

And if I were hollow in there, like a chocolate Easter bunny, I suppose I'd fill up with contrast. Maybe I'd cave in when it drained out.

The adhesions or whatever they are, hurt when I sit a certain way. Sometimes they hurt when I think about the accident, the defining moment that changed me forever. I know one thing, I don't want to medicate the pain forever. So I'll always live with it if necessary. And pray God to make the best of what's left of me...or what's bettered of me. Defining moments are like that. They take and give, and sometimes not in proportion. I know I'm hollow where it used to be, the thing I was made with. Fortunately, for all of us, when our bodies heal, we can make the best...while being made the best of.

Peace. Peace to the Earth

There is peace on the earth. The iconic image that hangs in my room is called Peace, Peace to the Earth. Like some liturgical element that we've come to count on within the context of a Sunday morning. The Latin phrase that adorns the icon is something like: M N Y M N P Y. Which to my lizard like mind says "many men pee". It is the perfect thing really. The ridiculous, the sublime. Humans are binary that way. Both magnificent and desperate beings. We come from the earth, to the earth we return.

Maybe that's what really matters after all. The peace we return to the earth, we carried it all along. Sublime. Latin letters. Then there's the ridiculous, the eye catching a glint of gold overlay on the iconic art that says "men pee". We are both spiritual and physical. Both lizard and king.

Once I was reading the Nicene Creed in church, that favorite chunk of liturgy that can stand alone should the pastor show up without a sermon. Sometimes the Gospel reading or Psalms are the lynch pin of the service, but usually through some wise interpretation. The Creed, however, stands alone nicely. It is fully explained. There's no need for deep interpretation. You either believe it or you don't. Sublime. But there's this part, "He has spoken through the prophets..." Beautiful. Whether it was lack of sleep or a daydream, or something else, I don't know, I read it, and it came out of my lips, "He has spoken through the gophers..."

Needless to say, I couldn't finish the rest of the creed. Tears formed and my body lurched and gasped to try and hold back the laughter. Even now, years later, we get there and a smile forms on my face as I read it. Prophets...Gophers. The two words look kind of alike. And there it is again. We are, all of us, borne of both spirit and dirt. Both prophet and gopher. Maybe it wasn't the lack of sleep that revealed it, perhaps the Holy Spirit made me see it because there wasn't enough laughter in church that morning. Or maybe it's to remember that it's better to be a gopher considering the words of a prophet than the other way round.

In the end, it is peace to the earth that we can, at our best, hope to bring. Though it does not originate in our hearts, it can live there for a time. Until, that is, we're through with it. When we, at our best, return to the earth from which we came. And lay there at last the ridiculous. "Many men pee". "He has spoken through the gophers".

May some laughter in your liturgy of your life hold back the darkness, or even better, make it possible to deposit it once and for all where it belongs...in some forest deep. Peace. Peace to the Earth.

The Corner of Canal and Bourbon Streets

New Orleans... hmmmm. Can't decide if I like it or not. Definitely not at first. Something very charming about the French Quarter. Wandering the streets among the whores and transvestites (and normal people too) just gave me the feeling that there was something very spirited about this place. I really like the brashness of their sin, it's just so unapologetic. The zydeco music works like an anti anxiety drug, like verced.

It lifts you up and over the smell of vomit and cigarette smoke, the dirty street, the sound of a bottle dropping and breaking, the guy asking me to shine my shoes, and then telling me he can tell me what city and state I bought them in... the woman walking toward me smiling... I smile back (shocked) and then mouths, "Hi", which I can't hear, but read loudly enough... the neon, the French balconies, the elbows and plastic plants draped over them, the blues on one side and zydeco swirling on the other... plastic beer cups in the open... beads in the forever-mardi gras shops... "topless and bottomless"... up and over.

I could have stayed and gotten caught up in it. Like believing a movie is real. Like seeing yourself in the story... in the scene. During the scary parts, saying to yourself, "It's just a movie." But there was an urgency also in me. An urge. To remember where I had come from last year. And how it is I'm still here... Always seems to come up.

It defines me now. The log. My flat left lung that couldn't have taken in cigarette smoke if I'd lit one up. The waiting through a good day then a bad one. And the result, me here somehow, for whatever reason, still alive. Glad for it, and glad for the quiet of this hotel room, that womb-like bed that will swallow me into sleep in just a minute.

Glad to be here, yes. Glad when the time will come for me to go back through the membrane. And uncertain why I cannot remember all the time, cannot live in the urgency of the memory that music much sweeter than zydeco, more spirited, will lure me to my heart's desire... to Christ, glowing brighter than neon. Passing the streets with others who mouth "Hi" and smile...but who stop and share a decade or two in the time it takes for one human heart to beat.

That's what finally walked me back to the hotel on the corner of Canal and Bourbon Streets. It was just a movie..... It was just a movie..... was just...just...a........movie..

...zzzzzzzzzzzzz.

Good Shepherd Sunday

This weekend was really significant in unexpected ways. Christopher's message was oddly heart twisting... the lost sheep, the lost coin were the readings (Good Shepherd Sunday). It included his review of the scandal of Mother Teresa's memoirs and the truth that God will do whatever he needs to in order to get our attention to get us to repent and come to Him again. again. again. again. Teresa of Avila, revered saint, felt abandoned and forgotten. It makes her that much more a saint, more real and relevant.

There is a complication with the two parables of the sheep and the coin, they, neither of them have a choice. The "finders" come for them and snatch them. And it is not so with God. Our choice plays a part.

Mei An was indeed found by us, and snatched without her choosing. The Chinese gov't saw fit to do what they do best - predestine their people. And she has come to us... a queen, royalty for sure, in the making. And I will try to show her the deep magic that is in her life, that in spite of abandonment, she has been found, and her throne will be returned to her.

Christopher's message reminded me that I was plucked from the creek bed and carried on Christ's shoulders, feet held together, for those forty days before I went home again. And now I'm, as you have pointed out, made to worship in the royal courts and to ask Christ to accept me into his life not the other way 'round

So it's what I did at communion yesterday, I pleaded with Christ to accept me. And I stood up, both the same and changed. The rest of Christopher's sermon rambled... not even one of his best. Just something there just for me.

Mumbling out loud

Every once in a while, I get a notice from Classmates.com and decide to go in there and update my personal information. It's been about two years so I decided to go in and drop a line, here's what I wrote:


I'm living in Grass Valley, CA. And the living part is a bonus. In 2006, I was crushed by a tree, lost several internal organs and happily, survived. My wife Melinda is the one who raced for help and saved my life. Then it was a couple months of trauma treatment in Roseville, CA.

What a ride, to get that close to the other side of the membrane that separates this world from the next, and receive the gift of full recovery...just what DOES a spleen do anyway? One of my kids is about to be married, and two others are entering first grade. Five total.

It's a funny thing, a social network. You just seem to be mumbling to yourself in the hopes of being overheard by people with whom you have only an arbitrary connection, something that time hasn't totally erased. We had more hair, less flab and all the answers. Now that we know what to do with ourselves, we float around these virtual walls and look for each other's graffiti. Funny, huh? May you make the most of it, and experience the joy that awaits you who crave your destination.

From St. Teresa of Avila

Be brave and walk through the country of your own wild heart.

Be gentle and know that you know nothing.

Be mindful and remember that every moment can be a prayer

Balancing ecstasy with clear thinking,

Self-control with self-abandon.

Be still.

Listen.

Keep walking.

What a spectacular kingdom you have entered!

Crossing the moat between this world and that,

Walking on water if you have to,

Because this is your rightful place.

That is your Beloved reclining in the innermost chamber,

Waiting for you,

Offering wine from a bottle with your crest on the label.

Explore.

Rest if you have to,

But don't go to sleep.

Head straight for His arms

When you have grown still on purpose,

While everything around you is asking for your chaos,

You will find the doors between every room of this interior castle

Thrown open,

The path to your True Love unobstructed after all.

No one else controls access to this perfect place.

Give yourself your own unconditional permission to go there.

Absolve yourself of missing the mark again and again.

Believe the incredible truth that the Beloved has chosen for his

Dwelling place the core of your own being because that is the single

Most beautiful place in all of creation.

Waste no time.

Enter the center of your soul.

My Trees

I'm sitting on the couch in my living room, the windows open. it is dark. the air is dry and warm, left over from the day. I can hear the creek below the house. Mei An and Tynan are in bed.

We're just getting the first few tree frogs in the warm spring nights...

I still smell of barbeque smoke, the browning butter that came up off the big shrimp I cooked in the bbq wok... and zucchini spears and portabello mushrooms marinated in a teryaki sauce...

A favorite of Mei An's, the Shrimp... and Tynan who loves so much the little tail-less pink moons browned in butter. He always seems to go for where the tail was, the skinny section, first. He says it is "cwunchy."

I have missed writing like this, sitting in peace, on the couch and saying what I "see".
the air outside is just how I like it. We might as well be in San Diego, the desert ocean, beach that doesn't sweat...the air is dry, the leaves of the trees now are supple, a maiden's palm, delicate and smooth.

The maples are my favorite for that. The tips of the pines have become pale green, new growth. The ponderosas that surround the house, sentries in the wind, are deep green all the way up, until the tip.

They are said to grow 12 inches on average every year. The one outside my window is nearly 70' tall. that's an old tree. When we cut 35 trees to clear the land and use the money to adopt Mei An, I insisted on leaving that one.

Now with the big incense cedars, they are almost my favorite things outside my window. My all time favorite though is the lone Madrone tree outside my bedroom window. Its orange bark almost glows in the right light and the tropical-looking leaves are so opposite all the other trees. It will begin dropping them any time now, when all the other trees are greening, the Madrone, a sort of evergreen, will molt into summer and in the fall it will look most healthy.

Brilliant nothings

tis all the more reason to keep quiet
as the good book says, a fool who says nothing is thought wise
all the more reason to look and nod knowingly
and furrow the brow
the fool, wise enough to know to keep silent

all the more reason to sip once more from the glass
and dab a little cheese on the cracker
and glance up at the ceiling tiles
or out the window, wistfully
when they pry
asking for tidbits

tis all the more reason to sigh
and tap a finger against the glass
and penetrate in silence, their gaze
until through complete and utter discomfort
of awkward shuffling
they speak or leave and think the fool a genius

it is reason enough to arrive and leave without a word
and keep shallow, folly-filled opinions safe from their grasp

A letter to Ken

My friend Ken asked me to explain what I meant when I said, "prayer has its own reward".

I like some parts of this reply, and want to refer back to it when the Heresy trial begins.



One of the most powerful aspects of prayer is that God wants us to come to Him, so in our coming, we've done the greatest thing we can do. In fact it should be enough.

When people tell me they prayed for me, I say, "and God answered your prayers". They think I mean because I was healed, which is true. God may have been moved by the pleas of his children. "He understands how his children feel, God will listen to you", goes the Nickel Creek song.

But I really mean, that God answered their prayers the second they prayed. God's intentions were met at that moment. They came and He abided with them. Answered prayer. Done. In full. Now even if I died that next day, I believe that God's objective was met, that his child who prayed for me entered in. And God met him there. In that light it must befuddle God (if that's possible) that we complain when we didn't get what we asked for, no matter how hard we prayed...

The deal is, we are so results oriented. The extreme for me was when in a Baptist church I once layed eyes on a brochure that read: "When Southern Baptists Pray...God Works". Now I just have to believe that their good 'ol American work ethic there just got the better of them. Like a bunch of railroad workers whipping God, in shackles, into pounding the spikes in faster. Or the picture I get is a board room, and the chairman, a pompous man, looks over his glasses and says, "Now God, we talked in the last meeting about the results we need for this month's numbers... by the looks of things, you've not quite met your quota..."

I realize I'm over-simplifying it, and yes God does change things on our behalf if we but ask. But people often chuck their faith because they view God as ignoring them. "How could God be good if..." that old argument. God is ultimately good because He's placed realities that are for our benefit. Like the one we often overlook. Choice. God is ultimately in "control", right? He's got to have choice to be able to be supreme. If He doesn't, we're more powerful than He is. So God had choice. He's made us in His image, maybe that's why we have choice too. But it is clear that we do. I can choose to eat the candy and get sick, or not to and enjoy restful sleep. Choices have consequences. Lots of choices have more consequences. Some of those exponential bad choices have such deep consequences that things like genocide happen..

Now when I choose something, does God know what the outcome will be? Hmmmmm. Interesting. That would mean that God can't help but to know the outcome... All outcomes come racing at Him and He's at their mercy, after all, they will be what they will be. So why pray? If God knows, and He's powerless to His knowledge, He can't help but know the ending, we are Predestined, right? (Oh now there's a sticky wicket). Or there's the view that God is moving every atom in the universe at once. Maybe that's true. He could, you know. I don't think that's quite it, though. He clearly gave us choice, meaning we move at least the atoms we're responsible for, in the way we want to. When I choose to break a commandment, if it were God moving the atoms, it would be God who was worshipping an idol; and just how does God take His own name in vane, then forbid it in the Ten Commandments? Doesn't seem right. Can God do or be evil? Seems to me (at Melinda's prompting for this paradox) that the answer is yes. Does He? It's a pretty sound argument that the answer would be there, "no, God chooses not to...every time". Otherwise, we are once again more powerful than God.

I don't pretend to know the rules of Heaven, or the physics of eternity. But it seems to me that God must, something like, CHOOSE to not know certain things. (after all I believe He is all powerful and the only way to have true power over a thing is to be able to accept or deny it). I believe that while I was there on the creek, I was indeed for a time, fateless as Christopher likes to say. So that said, I was allowed to have a choice that God chose not to have. Doesn't make me a god or anything like one, just a person with that choice. So God's "will" if you'll allow, was to let me choose. Just like His will is to let Ken Buchanan choose to accept or deny His existence. God must have chosen to not choose that for you. So why pray?

I think the fall of man has prompted something like a deliberate unknowing in the mind of God. Not that I really know, I am but pondscum. Isn't it possible that God chooses to leave us all fateless and from time to time, when prompted, perhaps coersed, or maybe even out of love - interveines on our behalf? That would be truly a miracle wouldn't it? God deciding to go against His nature to know it all, so that when we in our best moments come to Him, He can slide into his nature (like an Italian suit) and touch us for our own good. It's not even a theory, so don't read it as one. It's a fiction that might in some small way be more informative than facts we wish we had.

However we view it, one thing is certain. God wants us. Craves our attention. Will do the outlandish to get us to come and abide with Him. He already has it all. Why isn't He satisfied that we merely exist? I think it's because love is meaningless unless it has a substrate. (like the wind is invisible unless it has smoke or trees to move). So our response to God is the substrate in which Love moves. Suddenly I realize that it's not about what I want God to do for me. Will my company make it financially? I've been praying for God to act in the thousands of potential customers out there. I peek up from my desk to see it the web counter is ticking. And God is delighted that He can see, for once, the smoke move - because I've come to talk. He loves me. I can't get that. I keep thinking prayer always has the word "request" as part of it. Prayer is our pausing to be filled, to be moved by the invisible wind of Love.

How can you hate a God like that? He gives me a choice (even though He could choose me to oblivion), to return to Him out of my suffering and lack, (though one touch could but restore me), so that in the end, I will be moved by my experience of abiding with Him. Too often I duck in to pray get through the list and blast out and wonder when God will act. He acted while I was babbling, He's just too polite to interrupt me and say, "eh, hem. You are blessed". We seek these emotional experiences or the definitive answer to prayer, and it drives us batty when some teenie aspect of it "comes true". Maybe the thing that happens could actually be explained by medical science or is a bonafide coincidence. It wouldn't matter to God. His work was done by the time you said "Amen". He gets us a second time if we're smart enough to thank Him for the "teenie" thing.

So I don't know if I've answered anything. I actually hope I didn't, because I don't have answers. This little experiment is all about choice, knowledge and prayer. The whole thing gets real wobbly on the topic of wisdom. And I don't even want to know about homosexuals in the ministry or coffee hour politics. These things are far too weighty for me.

Lou

making sense out of the ends

There's a study that was done that showed people could make actual sense out of scrambled words and read them as long as the first and last consonents were correct. Like this:

Atfer mnay yaers , Ireasl geav geart patires.

Seems like that's all I have these days, the ends. The middle, where I spent all my time, is jumbled and random. Each situation in my life references the mess before and the one after, which helps to make sense of the whole sentance. Annoying little picture, really. I half expect at least one word to be spelled correctly all the way through. But I don't get that luxury.

I know how the story ends, essentially. It goes a lot like it did last year at this time. A lifting, and leaving. Exhiliaration. I know pretty much how it began. Not that I remember, but the letters of that event are familiar enough. So it has context.

We are completely broke, and owe money to just about everyone we know. A few jumbled letters. Then Mei An begins to get an odd eye twitch and we suddenly owe some people we didn't know before. And our checks bounce, while we try to raise money for an idea that may or may not succeed. That's how risk is. Jumbled and random, with a few ends that look right. We're one step ahead of foreclosure and our cars are falling apart, but still running. I live in the exact place I want to, a small house for a large family, but we all love each other deeply. Chaos and order, both hanging on to each other like frightened monkeys.

I'm learning to be thankful for the parts that make sense of the things that remain mysterious. If I look too hard, too closely, I see the mess and miss the meaning. Funny that. What I should be doing is reading quickly past it all, glancing at the sentance so that I see that "After many years, Israel gave great parties." Only see context and ends. The mess in the middle, taken for what it is, happens to be indiscernable no matter how hard I look at it. So next time, maybe I can chalk it up to a curiousity and nothing more.

What I should be more interested in is the actual sentance. And the day I read: "Mtsier Duroos, it's teim to ceom to hvean", better be the day I sell everything and give it to the poor...which may be my own children. The ends...today that's all I can be thankful for, the rest is just a mess.

The men of Thanksgiving.

My Best Friends.

The Wall

Deep down into the soul it went. My prayer. Into the depths. Way in there, comfortable as a feather bed,where the water is still and the light is so dark it hurts your eyes. That's where it was.

The wall.

The Jews believe, I am told, that God's spirit dwells in a special way in what remains of the Temple as the Western Wall. God used to dwell in the Holy of holies in the form of his Shekina, spirit. The only times when God refused to dwell there were times when some political occupant set up an idol. And now of course, finally, the Muslims have done the most unthinkable, built their own architectural idol on the sacred place. I have been there, but I missed it. The Presence went right past me.

When I was in the hospital, Fr. Christopher went there and put his head against the wall, knowing full well that God dwelt there in a special way. He felt the cold hard stone and thumped his forehead against it as though God's immovable breast were in front of him. He did it on my behalf. As though I were standing there with him. While I lay nearly dead, my dear friend was trying to be absorbed by the Holy Spirit, hard as rock.

Now I'm there. In the deepest, down-filled womb of the quietest of places with God. And the wall is there. Rising up. Up. I can't see the top. Only the sky on this side of it. The wall goes all the way to the sky. There is no other side of the Western Wall as I stand there, palms open on the stone with the note-filled cracks under my fingertips, and the imprint of cold rock on my forehead.

In that place, there is no room for graven images. Only the glory of God, shining brightly dark.

Faces

When Blaise was Danny, we traveled together to China to complete the Mei An adoption. Since I traveled a lot, he was always interested in wherever I went and knew I would come home with cool stuff. It was rarely stuff that you'd buy in a gift shop. It was usually some haggled piece of used thing or other. It is the story that goes along with the gift that makes it special.

One of the most gratifying things for me is when Blaise travels to foreign soil, he returns with objects that have stories, not usually from a gift shop, but a haggled thing. When we were together in China, he bought locally produced music on CD's that must have been burned one at a time. Things like that.

I've had the fortune of traveling with a camera and could come home with more than memories of those places. In fact, the faces most often of the children there seem to stick with me most. I have cut together some of the children who got me most and uploaded it to YouTube. Some of the footage was captured by other producers from Fresh Air Media in Auburn, CA. The video is one of my favorite things.

Second Pictures...

I'm astounded that Dusty turns 16 this week. Wow. I stand and look at him nearly eye to eye and marvel at the gentleman he has become. My gaze is not complete before the bubble pops and I hear him being snide to his brother, or kicking the little ones out of his room. Same guy. Polite and a young gentleman, tugging against the webbing of his escape velocity.

How hard it is to remember being that age. What ramblings in my mind about girls and parties. We can't ever escape our own gravity as it happens. Both gentleman and cretan. So Dusty is balanced I think. He has more to say than most kids his age, and his opinions are so often couched in empathy. He states them often as questions. Like this one: "Really? Don't you think that's gross?" And then he laughs his head off.

When he was twelve months old, he could laugh himself into falling over. How was that possible that a one year old got the humor of a situation? He hasn't changed in that way in 15 years. He can still laugh his head off, and often when he doesn't know it's him that's funny.

Somehow he has the ability to see what's material and at the same time, aparently, see something else from a memory or an idea, just as real as the material. Once he was frustrated by my inability to understand what he was talking about, and said, "you know, like I'm looking at that glass of water there, but can see a tree that's just as real?" That's when I knew I'd met my imagination's match. We dubbed the phenomenon, "second pictures."

Dusty's greatest inventions to date are the many names he came up with when he was just starting to talk. Hugliss Poombey, Hordo and Bookey Honk all became names of characters in a story or two. And of course his famous insult delivered to his older brother, "...you...fart felly blat snapper!" As mad as he was, he laughed so hard that his four year old body was soon prostrate on the floor.