Timely preaching

So, given the end of yesterday's post, Fr. Dave's homily this morning was most appropriate.

It can be so helpful when a message I hear coincides with where I'm struggling.

Another "milestone" that isn't, of course

For about six months now I've been watching my hit count creep toward an average of 9 hits per post. It doesn't matter; it's just an exercise in . . . well, in curiosity, I guess.  And it isn't as if I really have all that many  people who are interested in my thoughts.  All time, 40% of my page views have come from Russia, which I imagine to probably be machine hits, so I don't take the whole statistical exercise as being at all indicative of my "popularity" or, by extension, value.  Anyway, when I first started paying attention I was averaging under 6 hits/post, and ended up passing 6, 7 and then 8 hits per post within a couple months of each other. But the average has been slow to reach this next integer, in part because I've been blogging so prolifically this year - by nearly three times my previous highest number of posts, and December looks as if it will be the first month in which I don't average at least one post per day.

The count has been hovering just below 9 since we got back from vacation, the wonderful trip and family time that was also the reason I didn't write as much this month.  I was a little surprised when  I got up this morning and saw the average was over 9, with enough views to spare that I could do another post without dipping back under it.  I probably have something to actually say, so when I get around to that one the average will dip back under again unless I've picked up a couple more views.  Eh.  I suppose I can live with that.

Anyway, I seem to be having a really difficult time focusing on the positives in my life right now.  The negatives are right in my face all the time, and it's a constant exercise in discipline to turn my attention from them that I just don't seem to always (or even usually, of late) be up to.

I can't afford not to be, though.

From a Christmas sermon of Pope St Leo the Great

Dearly beloved, today our Saviour is born; let us rejoice. Sadness should have no place on the birthday of life. The fear of death has been swallowed up; life brings us joy with the promise of eternal happiness.

So the second sentence above sums up what I was already thinking - how I was judging myself - on Christmas Eve.  I knew that Christ's presence in my life has overcome all the petty things in which I was wrapped up, yet couldn't seem to get beyond them.  Ultimately, the joy of worshiping together finally overcame my frustrations.


In the fullness of time, chosen in the unfathomable depths of God’s wisdom, the Son of God took for himself our common humanity in order to reconcile it with its creator. He came to overthrow the devil, the origin of death, in that very nature by which he (the devil) had overthrown mankind.

And so at the birth of our Lord the angels sing in joy: Glory to God in the highest, and they proclaim peace to men of good will as they see the heavenly Jerusalem being built from all the nations of the world. When the angels on high are so exultant at this marvellous work of God’s goodness, what joy should it not bring to the lowly hearts of men?

The angels' song seems so distant, beyond my reality somewhere.  Sometimes I wish for the opportunity to witness the undeniably miraculous, and in the process I know that I tend to denigrate the circumstantially miraculous which I have experienced.  I sometimes think that it is a matter of my faith not being simple enough - all those who seem to experience this type of encounter seem to be far less complicated than I imagine myself to be.  I envy them, and yet I cling to my own gifts.  "But you should appreciate your own gifts!" you might argue, but it seems to me that there is a difference between appreciating and clinging. The latter has a sense of not being willing to to let go even for the sake of gaining God more fully.  The truth is, I have a hard time praying the prayer of St. Ignatius: Take, Lord, receive all my liberty, my memory, my understanding, and my entire will, all I have and call my own.  Intellectually, I know that what I will gain far outweighs what I might lose, yet I still seem to lack the faith to truly return these gifts to the care of the One who gave them in the first place.

Beloved, let us give thanks to God the Father, through his Son, in the Holy Spirit, because in his great love for us he took pity on us, and when we were dead in our sins he brought us to life with Christ, so that in him we might be a new creation. Let us throw off our old nature and all its ways and, as we have come to birth in Christ, let us renounce the works of the flesh.

Christian, remember your dignity, and now that you share in God’s own nature, do not return by sin to your former base condition. Bear in mind who is your head and of whose body you are a member. Do not forget that you have been rescued from the power of darkness and brought into the light of God’s kingdom.

Through the sacrament of baptism you have become a temple of the Holy Spirit. Do not drive away so great a guest by evil conduct and become again a slave to the devil, for your liberty was bought by the blood of Christ.

I often find that, after a grace-filled season such as Advent or Lent, I quickly fall back into a less focused approach to life in the immediate aftermath of the great feasts for which they prepare us. This reading helped me this morning to remember this tendency and to choose better, for one day, at least.

Christmas feelings

I felt emotionally blackmailed on Christmas Eve:  You made clear there was only one thing you really wanted this Christmas, even though we'd pretty explicitly agreed (sorry if you don't remember it that way, but we had) that our main gift to each other this year would be our Hawaii trip, and even though you're going to insist on buying that sofa and chair from Sam's by New Year's Eve.  Instead we spent as much as ever on each other.  I had no idea you'd bought me three pair of pants from Lands' End already - even though you say they weren't originally intended to be for Christmas - nor the (very nice) tripod, in addition to the LOTR on Blu-ray on sale from Amazon.

So I suppose it's a good thing you made it so clear that you really had your heart set on a Kindle Fire and that nothing else would do.  And I'm also glad you indicated that you'd rather have the HD model.  If you'd gifted me and I hadn't done the same for you, I'd have felt even worse than I did earlier in the day.  I'm glad you have it, and I hope you enjoy it.

I also felt hurt on Christmas Eve, left over from the weekend:  If there are two things I've come to understand in the intersection of relationships, money, and priorities, it's these: our words reflect our true feelings, and we allot our resources to what's important to us.  So when a daughter says that she isn't willing to "waste gasoline" for her children to spend time with us, there are implications that go beyond the family of six that they're trying to keep fed, housed, clothed and educated.  When she then drove most of the way here anyway because they needed to go to her in-laws' place, and didn't save us the full round trip to her place by bringing the oldest two along with her, it really felt like a matter of adding insult to injury.  It's clear that nurturing her children's relationship with her parents is not important to her.  My bride and I were both deeply hurt, but we went and got the oldest two kids anyway even though we just wanted to curl up in a ball.

On the other hand, I'm glad that didn't completely cloud my judgment:  I was thinking on Christmas Eve about how my grandparents always came to our house on Christmas Day, after having spent Christmas Eve evening with my cousins.  That way, none of us had to "leave our new stuff" on Christmas, or at least, that was how it was explained to us.  I think that maybe it also reduced the stress on the then-current generation of moms and dads to not have to worry about getting everyone (and another round of gifts) rounded up on Christmas day; for my cousins, that would have been a round of gifts from the grandparents for 8 kids who were already squeezing into the VW bus with their parents. So when our oldest asked on Monday if we could come there on Christmas to exchange gifts because she wasn't feeling well, I was emotionally prepared to be open to that suggestion.  And when we were out finishing our shopping on Monday night, I was prepared to be generous with a gift for her and her husband even though history had made clear that they weren't going to reciprocate.  But I feel as if we may be pressuring them a little just by our generosity, and need to ask if they'd just rather not exchange gifts at all among the adults, even as much as I'd hate not giving to them.

Perhaps that openness helped with the resolution of my funk:  When I know I should be feeling thankful to God, and I'm just. not. because of all the aforementioned issues, my recognition of my bent perspective can become another obstacle to getting past it all and back in touch with God's love. The should gets in the way of itself.  But midnight Mass was so uplifting, and being part of the music ministry helped me enter into the worship.

More than hypothetical

So, our daughter unapologietically took financial advantage of us for nearly a year.  When we suggested it was time for her to get financial counseling so that she could meet her financial responsibilities, including to us, she announced that she was suddenly able to afford to move out.  Now that she finds herself in legitimate financial straits, what course of action truly benefits her best?

My initial evaluation was that it would probably be best for her if we give her the one of the most important gifts a parent can give a beloved son or daughter: the gift of being responsible for herself.  This isn't a matter of being pig-headed about her lying in the bed she's made, with a hint of bitterness.  Working though her own issues to arrive at her own best solution still strikes me as the best thing we can do for her.

Yet she's going to be car-less if she doesn't do something.

But it will be important for me to not feel pressured into paying for decisions I don't agree with, too.  I'm not going to help her pay Brownie's IT double to rebuild her transmission what our mechanic would charge her for a junkyard transmission, just because she wants the perceived security that comes with the former.  If she was footing the bill for that security herself, then it would be her decision to make.

Quick hits from Christmas 2012

This may be the first of several posts as I process some of yesterday, finally.

I'm fairly sure it was mostly because of playing it for the first time after hearing Fr. Satish' homily at midnight mass - which dealt heavily with the comparing and contrasting events surrounding Jesus' birth with those of Newtown - but may have also been due to the pre-service being less hectic yesterday morning, but When He Comes hit me pretty hard at Christmas 9:00 mass.  I had to fight back tears as we sang: "When He comes, the children of ages will die nevermore," then somehow managed to make the transition to Can You Hear the Christmas Bells without losing control of my voice.

I've wanted to play on Breath of Heaven for as long as we've been doing it, but they didn't publish chords with our arrangement, plus my voice has always been needed in past years.  Now that we have four other voices on each men's part, I looked up the chords online.  They were in the wrong key, but only by a half-step, and I think they only had one or two chords wrong, both of which I recognized and figured out right away.  I ended up just memorizing it rather than writing the chords onto the music (which I'll likely regret the next time we pull it out).  Oh, it was wonderful!

The mass setting we're using this year is well suited to the classical, which I also think fits better with the violin and bowed bass, so I didn't have deal with nearly as much switching between guitars as on Christmases past.

The other new piece we did which was a big hit was Rise Up and See the King.  What a fun piece!  I think it would have fit better in Advent, but that also made it appropriate for the beginning of our prelude music. It wasn't originally on the menu for morning mass, but it was so fun and so well received that we rearranged things to include it. (We really didn't need to do Gesu Bambino again anyway, even if we do use the first choir arrangement of it I've ever really liked.)

I may have teased Teri just a bit over her suggestion that she might have lost her mind if I'd done 5:00 mass, too, this year (i.e. "oh, it's too late to avoid that!").  The truth ended up being that, with the way things worked out, I'd have likely lost mine if I'd committed to it.  (yeah, too late for that, too.)

Mele Kalikimaka

All day long I was feeling ungrateful for all God has done for me.  I couldn't for the life of me shake the depressed feelings I was having, or the negative thoughts I was battling.  I knew I should be thankful, this day of all days, for the gift of God's love.

It turns out all I needed was to go to such a wonderful Mass!

(I FINALLY got to play Breath of Heaven!  But we had so much great music, and Fr. Satish offered a wonderful set of reflections on the birth of the Son of God.)

Must remember:

I've survived far darker ones than this.

just shoot me

our oldest daughter has just told us, both by her actions and in so many words, that the use of her resources to help us have a relationship with our grandchildren is a waste.

Another wonderful Advent reading

Yesterday's reading from St. Ambrose, which I didn't read until late last night, deals first with Mary's trust in the word which the angel spoke to her, which led to her journey to visit with her elderly kinswoman Elizabeth.  It then moved on to the interaction of the Holy Spirit among the four people present at their meeting.  Jesus' presence in Mary's womb was perceived first by John in Elizabeth's, and the sons inspired the movement of the Spirit in their mothers.  Only after John stirs in her womb does Elizabeth greet Mary with the words that become part of our wonderful prayer requesting Mary's intercession in our lives, then wondrously question why the mother of her Lord should come to her.  Mary's response in the Magnificat is a prayer of praise and wonder and trust rooted in God's wondrous work that we should all echo with our lives.

This morning it struck me how often our children lead us to some fresh insight into or understanding of the boundless love of God.  I'm amazed at how becoming a parent helps us to experience God more fully, in so many different ways. To describe just a few that I have experienced:

• The initial awe of having participated in the creation of the marvelous new person, who is in our own image yet is unique unto themselves.
• The wonder and responsibility of having someone so utterly dependent upon us for their every need.
• The joy of seeing them grow into people who make their own decisions, of being amazed as they choose to love in ways we don't expect or anticipate.
• The pain of seeing them make selfish or short-sighted decisions.
• The self-discipline of withholding action we could take out of respect for their own will and independence.
• The peace of having them return to the right path for their lives.
• Seeing them experience the bounteous wonder of parenthood for themselves.

This wonderful season provides so much practical insight.  People who think that Christianity is irrelevant to modern life have never really entered into it.

Newtown and the 2nd Amendment

It has always been true, and it always will be: we can be safe, or we can be free.

I think this debate needs to be held, and we need to understand as much as we can what is at stake in both options.  As we discuss it with each other, we will undoubtedly invoke all the passion that we feel on both sides of the issue.  I have strong feelings on both sides warring within me, in fact.

We need to understand the 2nd Amendment's intention - which has never been to protect our right to hunt.  And we always need to be very careful about what rights we are willing to yield to our "benevolent government," particularly in these days in which the governability of the people - our own citizens and those who enter our nation from abroad using the transportation means which are available today - may be at an all-time low.

The freedom which we may yield because of our fear will be sorely missed should the tyranny of our government ever rise to the level from which we seized our freedom by force. And we should never trust our government to be immune from such tyranny.

With all that said, I do not know what the wise path is in the face of today's challenges.  I know I must trust God for my security, but do not know the degree to which he would call me to defend this freedom which our founders found so essential as to give it second place in our Bill of Rights. But why should we expect it to be sacrosanct when those listed first are themselves under assault?

Has the American experiment already failed, overcome by some combination of the threats of technology, population boom,  mental health issues and lack of good sense, and we have simply not recognized it yet?

Which loss will our posterity mourn more acutely: their fallen peers, or the right to take up their own arms when necessary?

I fear the wisdom of Solomon is insufficient for this dilemma.

God, help us to know the way that is truly wise, and to trust you in it.

Second night back in Ohio

I was so exhausted after the nearly sleepless overnight of traveling that I had no trouble sleeping last night.  Tonight seems to be a different matter, as my body seems convinced it should still be awake.  Tomorrow will be a challenging day, but at least it's the last work day before Christmas!  And my sleeplessness has given me a chance to enjoy one last cognac before the end of the world.

One of my favorite Advent readings

I keep losing track of when the reading from St. Bernard falls in the liturgical calendar. I always remember that it's in the Office of Readings, but I keep thinking it's from the feast of the Annunciation. So I was pleasantly surprised to encounter it this morning during my prayer time.

I love the idea that all of creation throughout all of history is waiting on the response of this betrothed maiden of Nazareth.  Bernard doesn't take it into the future, much, focusing more on the parallels with the past of salvation history, but it is easy enough to think of all of us who have ever lived anticipating her reply, even those of us for whom it occurs in the past.

There is an interesting paradox in the idea of omniscient God submitting his entire plan of salvation to the Virgin's response, and likewise to his submitting his plan for each of us to each of our own individual wills. I'm appalled by all the times I say "no," in the moment, rather than granting my fiat. Yet God meets me in each moment, offering me another opportunity to let it be done to me according to his divine will.

I believe I'll wait . . .

. . . until after the Mayan apocalypse to catch up on any new words-of-the-day I missed while on vacation.

Leaving them sucks

I'm so grateful for the time with them, though.

Hawaiian memories

How wonderful these last eight days have been.  Here are just a few things I want to be sure to remember:

• Warm temperatures, but not too hot.  Always warmer at the lower elevations than up here at Schofield.
• Rain, practically every day.  But also at least a little sunshine every day.  Again, differences between the coasts and the higher elevations inland.  And rainbows!  The one while we were driving on Monday was the best; wish I could have gotten a picture of it.
• Three tries until we finally managed to visit the USS Arizona Memorial.  What a solemn and moving place.
• Hale'iwa, and the North Shore in general.  
• The traffic around Honolulu and Waikiki.  No fun, but we didn't spend much time there.
• Two tries to get to the Hard Rock Cafe, then a visit back right away to get the right shirt.
• Beach after beautiful beach.
• Laie Point State Wayside Park: stunning rock formations, the serpent, the wind, the awesome views all around it.
• Every turn in the road bringing another breathtaking view of mountains, beach or ocean, and sometimes all three in one turn.
• Finally immersing in the Pacific, 23 years after missing my opportunity to double-dip in the Pacific and the Bering at Shemya.
• The luau and show at the "Polynesian theme park" (I can't think of it any other way) run by the LDS.
• Lots of yummy food.
• Dancing with Teri on stage on our anniversary.
• Adequately clothed hula dancers (there are some advantages of going to an LDS facility).
• Fire dancers!
• Shave ice, first at Matsumoto's, and then even better shave ice (snowier ice, better flavoring, yummier coconut topping than the condensed milk) at The General Store; I'm glad we had it at the original place, though, too.
• Turtles just off the beach in the water off the North Shore the first two times we tried to see them, then finally one on the beach on the third try.
• Two lunches at places featured on Diners, Drive-ins, and Dives:
• Hank's Haute Dogs, where Teri had a Hawaiian Dog and I had the best Andouille I've had outside of Louisiana.
• Sweet Home Waimanalo.  Cassie and I shared a vegetarian meat loaf sandwich and a tofu and black bean burger, and Teri enjoyed the pulled pork.  Cassie and I didn't miss the meat on either of them, and agreed that the meatless loaf was delicious, suffering only by comparison with the tofu and black-bean burger which was absolutely incredible!
• Wonderful time with our daughter and son-in-law, along with his mom and brother.
• But mostly great time with our precious grandchildren:
• Getting up with Hannah and Nic for school in the morning.
• Grandma going to read in Hannah's class.
• Doing the gingerbread house project with Nic.
• Emma shaking her head "no" when I told her I love her, just so I'd tickle her.
• Taking Emma to the Dole Plantation and riding the train together, then watching in amazement as she ate a whole Dole Whip cone.
• Madelyn ("Baby") finally warming up to us.
• Lots of hugs and kisses and "I love yous"

Wonderful day

What a wonderful day.  Nice prayer time this morning.  Took Hannah and Nic to school after getting them ready.  Great visit to the North Shore with them and Hannah this afternoon.  I'm really pleased with the whole day!

Thanks to Daddy and Uncle Bubba for cooking, again.

It's real now

It is a great blessing to be with our daughter and her family in Hawai'i.  I'm looking forward to doing some things on the island, but for now it has been nice to just hang out with the crew.

Mass today with the older three was an unexpected opportunity to explain some of what they were hearing in our prayers, of encouraging them to pay attention to what was going on, of sharing the Lord's love with them as we worshiped.

But I was especially pleased when our 7-year-old granddaughter thanked me this evening for praying for them at bedtime.

What a blessing this trip has been already.  I know the remainder will hold many more . . .

First morning in Hawai'i

(HAST; recorded as text and subsequently entered here because I didn't have wireless credentials entered yet. . . )

My body is so confused.  It knows it needs more rest after yesterday's long travel day, yet it is convinced that it is 5 hours later than evidenced by the not-yet-visible sun.

The grandchildren were all so happy to see us, except for Madelyn, who doesn't quite know who we are yet.  That's okay: Baby will come around.

It is nice to be able to take some time to pray and to jot down a thought or two before the rest of the house rises.

I was so pleased when Cassie greeted us at the airport with leis.  How thoughtful, and fun. It helped make our first visit to Hawai'i seem real, finally, especially since arriving in the dark kept us from having a good view of the island.

Still a fantasy

Only two days away.  I wonder when Hawaii will start to feel real to me?

Taking one day at a time

I heard a coworker drop this cliché the other day, and a bunch of thoughts sprang to mind in rapid succession.

"Actually, I generally like to take a week at a time, myself."  A completely smart-aleck observation.

"I think I'm going to try to take the next four days all at once, then go moment  by moment thereafter." A Hawaii reference, for me.  I'm antsy to get there, but want time to pass slowly while we're with our dear ones!

The thing is, on the one hand we sometimes bite off more than we can handle, and sometimes fail to plan enough in advance for success.  So the "one day at a time" adage has some places where it serves well and others, well, not so much.  Everyone knows this, of course, so a couple examples.

If you eat a doughnut in the morning, figuring that the damage is done for that day and to make a fresh start on eating better tomorrow, you're going to lose a lot of battles that you're not even in.

He who sets his hand to the plow and looks back . . .

I'm lately finding it very difficult to set aside the tendency to make a pair of "only one who" lists.

While this context is very different from the one in which this scripture passage first struck me upside my head and so greatly encouraged me, it is very applicable to this one, as well.  Keeping score is as much an example of "looking back" as any of the other things we're not to long for like Lot's wife.

I must. not. do. this.

A (not song) snippet or two from life, lately

Nominally related?

• The most striking thing about my life during my wife's recovery from surgery may be how little it changed from before.
   
• I have to stop thinking that I don't believe in Hawaii.  Putting away some decorating empties (boxes, light reels) at lunch time, I nearly missed a step on the stairs - barely got enough of my right heel on it to support myself - which may well have self-fulfilled that thought.  But it has come to represent a sort of terrestrial paradise in my mind, even if a temporary one for me.
   
• We make time for the things that are important to us and for the people we love. When someone doesn't have time for us but that makes sense for the limited role we should have in their lives, it feels right and appropriate; there's a confidence that time may eventually allow us to reconnect.  When you can tell someone is making an effort to fit you into their lives, at least as much as they can, it feels affirming.  But when someone whose life we clearly should fit into doesn't have - doesn't make- time for us, it is hard to describe how deeply it hurts.  This contrast is pretty clear for me right now.

Today's words

campestral \kam-PESS-trul\ - of or relating to fields or open country : rural

scumble \SKUM-bul\ - 1a. to make (as color or a painting) less brilliant by covering wi th a thin coat of opaque or semiopaque color applied with a near ly dry brush  b. to apply (a color) in this manner  2. to soften the lines or colors of (a drawing) by rubbing lightly

I don't know when I've had so little enthusiasm for two new words.

i must remember that my daughters were not raised on regular time with their grandparents.

What love isn't, or Of Ents and Entwives (fixed)

Ent.	When Spring unfolds the beechen leaf, and sap is in the bough; When light is on the wild-wood stream, and wind is on the brow; When stride is long, and breath is deep, and keen the mountain-air, Come back to me! Come back to me, and say my land is fair!
Entwife.	When Spring is come to garth and field, and corn is in the blade; When blossom like a shining snow is on the orchard laid; When shower and Sun upon the Earth with fragrance fill the air, I'll linger here, and will not come, because my land is fair.
Ent.	When Summer lies upon the world, and in a noon of gold Beneath the roof of sleeping leaves the dreams of tress unfold; When woodland halls are green and cool, and wind is in the West, Come back to me! Come back to me, and say my land is best!
Entwife.	When Summer warms the hanging fruit and burns the berry brown; When straw is gold, and ear is white, and harvest comes to town; When honey spills, and apple swells, though wind be in the West, I'll linger here beneath the Sun, because my land is best!
Ent.	When Winter comes, the winter wild that hill and wood shall slay; When trees shall fall and starless night devour the sunless day; When wind is in the deadly East, then in the bitter rain I'll look for the, and call to thee; I'll come to thee again!
Entwife.	When Winter comes, and singing ends; when darkness falls at last; When broken is the barren bough, and light and labor past; I'll look for thee, and wait for thee, until we meet again; Together we will take the road beneath the bitter rain!
Both.	Together we will take the road that leads into the West, And far away will find a land where both our hearts may rest.

I don't mean to judge people, or Ents or Entwives.  But it seems to me that marriages suffer when the partners do not submit their divergent callings or interests to their relationship.  It is easy for a relationship that was rooted in deep admiration, respect and fondness to fail to develop into the selfless love that alone is a marriage's life blood if the partners allow their individual passions first priority.  The life together can easily fork into lives apart.

I have to be on guard against this all the time.

"Ancient" history reminder (edited)

(I've reviewed some of the historical facts online, but the basic memories are still vibrant.)

I still remember the night that made clear for me whose side I was on in their relationship.

The 1973 Sugar Bowl was held on New Year's Eve.  It hadn't moved to New Year's Day as of yet, when the Cotton, Orange, and Rose Bowl games were contested.  This year, the tilt would basically be a national title game between Bear Bryant's undefeated Crimson Tide and Ara Parseghian's Fighting Irish, who'd also completed their regular season with a clean slate.  Alabama finished the year ranked #1 in the coaches' poll, which at that point didn't vote again after the bowls.

In our home, while mom may not have been the typical Catholic in many ways, she was very much rooting for Notre Dame in this contest.  Dad was convinced that Alabama was the better team, and was pulling for them to complete their undefeated season. Each of them openly relished the debate over the game.

By then, Dad's too-brief period of sobriety - prompted by our family doctor's well-intended misleading regarding the negative effect that drinking might have on the recovery of control of his left eye following his auto accident in the autumn of 1972 - was long since over.  His relationship with mom, and with pretty much everyone else, had deteriorated drastically in the booze.  The two of them were usually civil to each other, though by no means "always," and it was clear by now that they no longer had a loving relationship.  Mom had figured out that she couldn't stop him from drinking but also didn't have to be a part of his entire dynamic anymore.  She'd returned to working nights at the bank, which usually allowed her to leave after my sister and I had gone to bed for the night and be home before we were up for school in the morning.  So in the midst of this dynamic, a friendly - well, socially acceptable - area of unwavering disagreement between them was this football game that had the nation's attention.

I'm sure I'd never cared about either team before, but that on that night when dad's Alabama team took on mom's Irish for the first time, I was definitely a Notre Dame fan.

In retrospect, I recognize how much that bothered him.  I think he concluded that mom was turning us kids against him; he'd yell as much at her in the midst of an argument one night in the coming months, when we were in bed and the two of them thought we were asleep.  He couldn't understand that it was his own dysfunction that was making it impossible for him to love us as we needed and would be able to respond to.  In the fog of his alcoholism, he lacked the foggiest notion of how unstable he was making our home, how we feared his drunkenness even though he never physically abused us in the midst of it.  In fact, during the only directly abusive action I remember from him, which had happened at least the summer before and perhaps as much as three and a half years earlier, I am certain that he was completely sober.

(disgustingly detailed memory omitted)

Notre Dame would win the AP national title that night by hanging onto a one-point victory in a hard fought game.  Dad was pretty pissed (in both senses, actually) at the end.

And grown-up me wonders whether concluding on that night that he'd lost my sister and me to mom - as I'm sure he thought of it - contributed to this being the last Sugar Bowl he'd ever see. By the following New Year's he was dead by his own hand.

Remembering this, as Notre Dame and Alabama prepare to contest for the national title once again, feels oddly calm.  As I finished recounting the memory, I expected to check in with myself to find my stomach in knots and my fingers and toes cold from the stress of the recollection, from the pain of our dysfunctional home and the brokenness that just kept pouring forth in my life for so long thereafter. Instead I'm just grateful for the memories, and missing my mom just a little, and praying for her and my dad and sister.

Thinking-talking link

I'm not especially a fan of Joyce Meyer.  Last week I heard of a book written based on some scientific evaluation of the whole "positive thinking" phenomenon that is at the center of her ministry.  I'm sure she thinks she's doing a lot of good with it, but the study found that it tends to hinder rather than help happiness.  I guess maybe I embrace that because it matches up with what I believe already: that making happiness a goal makes it more difficult to achieve, whereas it more naturally occurs in the ebb and flow of emotions that result from living as we should.  Focus on being the person I am to be, and my happiness will take care of itself.

Still, I can't help but think that the image my FB friend shared this morning failed to finish quoting her accurately:  "If you want to get over a problem, stop talking about it. Your mind affects your mouth, and your mouth affects your mind. It's difficult to stop talking about a situation until you stop thinking about it."

That is true, as far as it goes.  But what concludes the beginning of this thought is more like this: it is impossible to stop thinking about a situation until you stop talking about it.

The thing is, some situations call for us us to think about them, and others call for the increased level of attention that cannot be healthily achieved by thinking alone.  Still, we tend to obsess over things that shouldn't be as important as we make them - or, at least, I still do - and to stop dwelling on them all the time involves discipline of both thought and expression.

The same is true of other action we take, btw.  Actions are prompted by our thoughts and feelings, and also reinforce them.

One more drink and I'll move on . . . 

Today's words

hortative \HOR-tuh-tiv\ - giving exhortation : serving to advise or warn


librocubicularist \lib-ro-kyoo-bi-KYOO-la-rist\ - a person who reads in bed

The first was actually yesterday's WOTD, and not the "hort" root I'd've guessed.

The second was courtesy of our goddaughter, who proudly acknowledges that she is one. (I used to be all the time, but not so much anymore.)

A response

to yesterday's post:

Thinking this morning of the correspondence shared between St. Jane Frances de Chantal (whose parish and grade school I attended as a child) and St. Francis de Sales, I encountered this online:

We have been told the secret of happiness is finding: finding yourself, finding love, finding the right job. Jane believed the secret of happiness was in "losing," that we should "throw ourselves into God as a little drop of water into the sea, and lose ourselves indeed in the Ocean of the divine goodness." She advised a man who wrote to her about all the afflictions he suffered "to lose all these things in God. These words produced such an effect in the soul, that he wrote me that he was wholly astonished, and ravished with joy."

Today, when any thoughts or worries come to mind, send them out into the ocean of God's love that surrounds you and lose them there. If any feelings come into your heart -- grief, fear, even joy or longing, send those out into the ocean of God's love. Finally, send your whole self, like a drop, into God. There is no past no future, here or there. There is only the infinite ocean of God. 

Prayer: Saint Jane, you forgave the man who killed your husband. Help me learn to forgive a particular person in my life who has caused me harm. You know how difficult it is to forgive. Help me to take the steps you took to welcome this person back into my life. Amen

It seems a more useful solution than lamenting my struggles.

(I just noticed, for the first time, that I was married on the anniversary of her death.)

I'm tired of letting it go

It has been 35 years.  Won't I ever be done letting go of it?

The next morning . . .

. . . I mostly miss my sister.  and our nephew.  and feel lonely.

Feeling like the (alphabetically) penultimate dwarf

I woke up in the middle of last night - I've no idea of the actual time, as I made a concerted effort not to investigate it - with what felt like indigestion.  I went out to the living room and propped myself up on the sofa for a while, and after realizing I had nodded off, went back to bed, adjusting my pillows so I'd be a little more elevated.  I slept for the rest of the night, but woke with the same gassy feeling that had awakened me. I'm feeling better now in that regard.

I don't know whether it is the lousy night's sleep or just the day itself that has me feeling like I wish it were over.

Today pretty much sucks

Okay, so I messed up the calendar just a touch, and it turns out that today is the time-math intersection at which 2x = x + 17.5.  Oddly enough, I've just realized that there's also almost a 3x in the mix, since I was almost 17.5 years old when the YMCA happened to me.

It's also our granddaughter Emma's 4th birthday (thank God for one positive!).  She was born on our late nephew's birthday, though I can't for the life of me remember for certain which one today would have been - his 40th maybe?  And that adds a closer element for me, as I can't very well empathize with my surviving nephews' pain over the loss of their sibling without being reminded of mine.

I know I'm supposed to rejoice in all things, but I just don't seem to have it in me today.

Today's words

sederunt \suh-DEER-unt\ - a prolonged sitting (as for discussion)

numen \NOO-mun\ - a spiritual force or influence often identified with a natural object, phenomenon, or place

I'm not sure I'd have guessed the first one even if I'd seen it in context, and I'd certainly never have pronounced it correctly.

Two movies

Life of Pi - What a wonderful treatment of an incredible book.  A visual treat, thrilling and uplifting, tragic and victorious.  The interaction between the author and protagonist was a bit flat against the other parts of the film, yet served an important purpose.  And contrary to what the review I heard on the radio seemed to indicate in some of the details it shared, this movie adhered pretty closely to the book, with its divergences driven by the medium.  By and large, I was pretty pleased with it.

It's really unfair for it to suffer so by comparison with Lincoln.  I understand why Spielberg wasn't willing to make this film without Daniel Day-Lewis, who so convincingly becomes every character he portrays, and brought both the sheer physical stature and the dedication to detail to carry off a role that so intimidated him that he first refused it.  This film, as I presume the book on which it was based, was a fascinating peek into the political machinations of Lincoln's day and of the abolition effort. It made clear how politicians sometimes must use their opposition's perspective to win them over, as it was clear even to those who were adamant about racial equality that they could not hope to gain even the abolition of slavery if they clung to the path of true equality which they knew to ultimately be in the right.

Perhaps most importantly, it illustrates how important it is to not allow fear of the future to undermine our willingness to do the right thing now.  We allow ourselves to be paralyzed by the unknown repercussions of doing the right thing.  This is a lesson I learned by experience: even the most dreaded consequences that come to pass are less fearsome in their reality than they are in our anticipation of them.

Time math

Just happened to realize that "by the weekend" (as opposed to "by date") tomorrow will be 35 years.  Must try to not think about that too much.

As I type this, I'm also realizing that I'm now at 17.5 years since my own behavioral anniversary.  That means that I'm at an odd juncture: the landmark of my childhood abuse being mathematically twice as long ago as the start of my recovery.

Thanksgiving 2012

I am so tired!

The food:

Appetizers: 

• A plate of assorted cheeses (Emmenthaler was one, I don't know the other two)
• Boar's Head Italian dry salame
• Stonemill artichoke and parmesan spread
• Assorted crackers

The main course:

• Bowman and Landes free range turkey, rubbed with butter and sprinkled with tarragon, thyme, salt and pepper, with celery, onion, carrot and apple placed in the cavity, and roasted
• Apple-Sausage Stuffing Recipe at Epicurious.com (could have used more apple)
• Cosmopolitan Cranberry Sauce Recipe at Epicurious.com (a consensus hit)
• Mashed sweet potatoes with freshly ground clove, cinnamon and nutmeg
• Sauteed fresh green beans with lemon juice and garlic
• Mashed potatoes
• Roasting pan gravy

Desserts:

• Pumpkin pie
• Scratch mincemeat pie
• Apple crumb pie
• Lemon meringue pie 

The attendees:

• The mrs. and I (of course)
• Our middle daughter
• Teri's cousin Tim and his wife Kathie
• A couple of young parishioners who are dating: Samantha and Frank

What a wonderful time.  Melissa nearly choked at dinner and we had to clean up her plate.  (Okay, that wasn't so wonderful.)  After dinner and dessert I nearly made Tim shoot Pepsi out his nose with a timely and witty (evidently) observation.  But the company was wonderful, the food a hit, and it was just a really lovely evening.

Now, turkey soup on the stove.  Life of Pi in 3D this afternoon.

Happy Thanksgiving, my love.

I can't tell you how much your apology this morning meant to me.  It is so hard feeling distant from you. This feels so much nicer.

Thanksgiving weekend

As Father Dave acknowledged the challenges we face amid the many blessings for which we are so grateful, I immediately thought of my bride beside me, for whom Thanksgiving is still strongly associated with the death of both of her parents, two years apart from each other and just two short years since Dad passed away.  Then, before moving on from consideration of those negatives we must sometimes deal with during otherwise heartwarming holidays, I again encountered a passing thought of that terrible Thanksgiving weekend so long ago, on which a boy's last vestiges of innocence were obliterated.  My friend's visit to New York this weekend had already prompted a faint reminder yesterday.

Yet I find in the memory the knowledge that God was with me in the midst of it, as he has been all along the way, as he supports me spiritually and through the love of my dearest family and closest friends.

Thank you, my Lord.

Tell me *why*.

I really hope you don't think that last night is over.  I sure don't.

I don't know what is going on with you.  If you're just in a bad mood, tell me so.  But if so, stop taking it out on me.

Seriously.  I may not have always deserved better than this, but I do now.

Okay, I know you're temporarily gimpy, but

when I ask you where to put your exercise elastic, an acceptable answer is not "where it was" when where it was was in the middle of the stairs that your guests will have to walk up tonight and our guests will have to walk up on Thursday.

Of course, I'd probably better move it before you see where I put it when you wouldn't give me any ideas.  I don't really think "on your pillow" is a better solution.

Living for oneself

I'm concerned about writing this when I'm not actually in trouble, for fear of inducing panic in someone.  On the other hand, I could never write it when things seem bleak.

There's a difference between the selfish way most people talk about living for themselves and what I mean by it.  I'm not referring to advice given by both well-intended counselors and hedonists - which can be appropriate or outrageously egocentric - that a person should generally do what is best for themselves.  This is more like how they misconstrue the snippet from Polonius' maxim-laden (and, I contend, comic relief) advice to Laertes: to thine own self be true.  I'm of the opinion that the adage, in general usage and Polonius' intent, referred more to remaining true to one's honorable standards in the face of others' lesser ones.

But what I mean when I reflect that I'm still not really living for myself is the difference between what several Suicide Prevention Center posts talk about - '"consider how much it will hurt your loved ones" - and the longer-term goal of simply living for the joy of my own life.  I've gotten pretty good at the first over the last couple of decades, but am still not very good at the latter.  In the midst of darkness, thinking of others can help a desperate person to realize that there are other truths of their life than the immediate circumstances which seem so overwhelming.  But once the immediate crisis has passed, I'm convinced that we must reach a point at which we're no longer primarily preserving our lives primarily for the sake of others.

The habit of choosing to continue living for the sake of our loved ones is important, but can only carry us so far.

A quibble about Flight *SPOILER (of the worst sort)*

(I really think that this sort of observation is more revealing than any specific details would be.)

I've been reflecting on how this movie blindsided me, and it finally occurs to me that this had to have been intentional.  Do the director and the studio wish to mislead the addicted into an experience that they build their whole lives around trying to avoid, one that might motivate them to deal with their own issues?  If so, I suppose I can't feel too angry with them for basically lying to the public regarding what this movie is.  But the trailers and advertising definitely created the impression that this movie was about something very different - and less important, really, to most people - from what it ultimately brought home so powerfully.

As an ACA, though, I wish I could have made my own choice whether to see this movie, as opposed to the one they advertised.

Internal monologue

This thought has to go:

"They love me in spite of myself."

Flight - **SPOILERS AHEAD**

The scenario was completely ridiculous and utterly manipulative.  It would have been next to impossible for housekeeping to not notice that they failed to close the adjoining room's side of the connecting door when they shot the bolt, and the likelihood that they'd have left balcony door open, too, so that the banging of the dead bolt against the door plate would have caught the pilot's attention.  Still, as soon as the camera revealed that the door was open, everyone in the theater thought of the fully-stocked minibar in the next room.  Of course the pilot noticed it, too.  Of course he selected one of the miniatures (premium vodka), slowly opened it, inhaled its aroma.  Of course he then put the lid back on it, placed it on the counter and turned away from it.  As the camera zoomed in on that little bottle, the tension in the theater was palpable as they hoped against hope that he would make the right decision.  Obviously most of these people never lived with an alcoholic, or they wouldn't have gasped as his hand came into view, snatching the bottle up.

So much of this movie reminded me of my dad.  But if he ever experienced the protagonist's eventual moment of finally saying, "enough of this!" it was right before he put the bullet into his brain.

When he was in his subsequent AA meeting, he described that moment of knowing he just couldn't lie anymore.  I could relate to that in a completely different way.

This was a very hard movie for me to watch.

If I'd been sitting on the end I'd have walked out, but it was worth sticking it out.

Today's word, but not here

I don't generally like to post words-of-the-day that I already know here, unless they ended up leading me to other related words I didn't know, so I'm not sharing today's here either (okay, ratiocination, to keep from having to click through). But took me a moment to realize that it wasn't a repeat.  I recognized it right away from just a couple years ago, when it was listed as a trending word on M-W's site because of a couple of reviewers who used it to describe the then newly-released Sherlock Holmes movie with Robert Downey Jr. (which is probably the iteration of Holmes which relies on the process the least.)

And the beat goes on . . .

I guess it's probably a good thing that this sort of story is more common than it used to be.  I'm convinced this doesn't mean it's happening more often, just that it's being reported more.  I'm also glad to see that it isn't just the sports-related ones that make the news - although this is obviously not going national, as it shouldn't - and that everyone is being so careful to protect the survivors' privacy, which should encourage others to come forward with such allegations.

At the same time, the specific grooming pattern and the location here are both painfully familiar, and makes this particular story hit very close to home emotionally as well as geographically.

And I'm a little stupidly jealous.

Even though I've forgiven him, I find I must make the decision to forgive once again.

Visiting Middle Earth

I haven't read The Lord of the Rings in entirely too long.  This time, I'm trying to make myself slow down on the descriptive and poetic parts that I think I've probably skimmed over too much to fully appreciate in the past, eager to move on to what happens next.

I still have a hard time slowing down for all of the Tom Bombadil section, though!

Runnin' on . . .

Lookin' out at the road rushin' under my wheels - Jackson Browne, Running on Empty

Between craziness at work and extra busyness at home, I am definitely just maintaining, at this point.  I'm resenting the former, and embracing the latter, and sleeping every minute I'm in bed.

Today's words

eructation \ih-ruk-TAY-shun\ - an act or instance of belching

I think I knew this word, once.

borborygmus \bor-buh-RIG-mus\ (plural bor·bo·ryg·mi) - intestinal rumbling caused by moving gas

But I didn't know this one.

Today's word

biddable \BID-uh-bul\ - 1. easily led, taught, or controlled : docile  2. capable of being bid

I knew definition 2, of course, but not the first one.  In this sense, "'biddable' is often applied to children and indicates a ready, constant inclination to follow orders, requests, and suggestions." - www.merriam-webster.com

What a weekend

It was filled with a mixture of challenges and blessings, with the greatest of the latter being the chance to care for my bride.  Have done a pretty good job of keeping up with the inside and outside chores and the caregiving, and have managed some time to relax, too.

The only negative, and I could be misreading because she wasn't feeling very well today, is that I think my choir director might be upset with me.

So *that* was his problem

Dad must have been part croc . . .

Actually, dad was pretty smart.  Just broken.

Apparently instead of inheriting his alcoholism I only got his resumé writing skills.

A note to everyone:

You realize that I have a lifeline, and that as much as I love our relationship, you're not it, right?

Why they hate us

This morning, shortly before I awoke, I found myself in a remote Muslim community such as the type you'd see depicted on the news or in one of our television programs, in a small desert village with a dusty courtyard.  It couldn't have been more stereotyped, but then, it was a dream from my brain, so what else would I expect?  Let me say from the outset that this post is not a defense of Islam as a religion or especially of intolerance or terrorism as actions, nor an effort to condemn our own culture and actions, but just an attempt to articulate what I seemed to understand upon waking.

In my dream, I approached one of the men who sat on the ground outside a low building, and we had a frank and open discussion.  I can't remember much of the actual conversation, but on waking I am struck with a greater understanding of the conflict between Islam and the west, and particularly my own nation, which practices an imperialism of culture and values greater than any Britain ever practiced politically.

They do not hate us for our freedom, in the way our President understands it.  In my dream, I understood that they, too, value free will, and the ability to choose.  They may not have been able to exercise it in forming democracy the way that we have, but that isn't what bothers them.  Rather, it is the fact that we have elevated it to the status of a god to be obeyed above all others.  In our own terms, liberty has become the chief idol to which we bow down in violation of our own first commandment.  They view obedience to the will of God, of Allah, as more important than freedom, yet even those of us who believe in God seem to insist on defending the right of others to offend God, and those who don't believe insist that nothing should interfere with their right to choose whatever they wish, so long as there is no serious harm to others in it as they define harm.

I may be naive in this belief, but I imagine that, at the founding of our nation, the concept of freedom and liberty were primarily about our freedom to do what is right. Now I realize that good people can differ considerably on their opinion about what is "right," or about what actions should be taken to further its cause. Still, when we talk about liberty today we seem more focused on what is "best for me," as I define it for myself.  This shift in focus has driven our society to stop considering what is right in favor of merely avoiding what is wrong, then defining wrong according to the terms that best fit our desired course of action. Now it may seem as if I'm going afield here, so let me start to circle back. It seemed to me, on waking from my dream, that the issue which Islam would have with us is not merely our disagreement regarding right and wrong, but our insistence that accepting other's own view of right and wrong is the hallmark of civilized society. It isn't just that some people think it's okay to burn the Koran, or use our sexuality for titillation and entertainment, or take advantage of others. It is at least equally our insistence on allowing people to offend in these ways and others, if they wish, without repercussions.

(It seems to me that this is related to my previous post about democracy and faith, somehow.)

So what I realized for the first time, upon waking from my dream, is that their frustration with us is not so much that we are free as with the way we allow our liberty to become a license to perform and tolerate acts that they consider deplorable and depraved. We value liberty more highly than the things they think are more important, and arrogantly insist that they are backward if they do not agree. We insist that they must change the attitudes and values that bring them into conflict with us, without being willing to even examine the things that offend them.

And yet I am still not suggesting that the burden of stopping terrorism committed in the name of Islam, for instance, is in changing who we are. I am still just trying to understand where someone who views it as an acceptable approach might be coming from, knowing that I will never agree with their conclusion. I believe that terrorism committed for any reason is rooted in the control issues I have previously considered.

Closer, but still not finished.

It isn't exactly a boycott

Okay, here's the thing about the song I'm not singing.  It's completely empty of anything of value to me in my walk - no praise and worship, no discipleship, no comforting reassurance, even - but that alone wouldn't keep me from supporting the choir. But what it is full of, for the second consecutive octavo, is plaintive longing for heaven. 

I can only sing about that so much right now.

Democracy and faith

A young FB friend yesterday was soliciting a ride to the polls from "anyone who's voting for" the same guy he was planning to vote for.  I was kind of confused by the request: wouldn't he accept a ride from someone who was voting for the other guy?  Or did he not expect he could get a ride from someone who was?

Maybe we have citizens who would withhold transportation from someone who they felt would "cancel out their vote," but I'd hope that the majority would invest more faith in the democratic process than in their ability to control it.  I get concerned, sometimes, that we have some groups of people who think that lower participation in the election is a good thing.

I think that attitude is a combination of elitism and lack of trust.  It isn't so much that I trust the citizenry to make the right choice; we see people make a variety of choices in everyday life that are obviously not right, rooted in their self-interest at the expense of others or in common misunderstandings of how things really work.  Elections are often no different, and the electorate largely seems to make its collective decisions based on a world view that I make a conscious choice to reject, thereby finding truth that I could not recognize otherwise. But - at the risk of seeming like a religious nut who "sees the Virgin Mary in the grass over the septic tank" (thanks for the image, Bill Maher) - I trust God to be at work in and through the world, including when others make decisions that I don't agree with.  Salvation history is replete with examples in which the actions of one person or one group of people in the grand scheme of things turn out to have very different meanings than they intend.  (assuming, of course, that there really is such a thing as the grand scheme of things.)

So maintaining my own peace of mind and spirit over our national direction is a matter of taking God at his word, which says very clearly that he has ordained all authority.  In a democracy, there must be a degree of submitting control of things beyond me (that is, beyond my own decisions; none of us has true control of our circumstances) to the will of others.  We have the perfect example of this in God himself, who as the omnipotent creator of the universe submits to the free will with which he has endowed us.

Any vitriolic response such as I am seeing from some friends is rooted in the frustration of wanting to exercise control in ways that go beyond our actual realm of control.

Those who fail to learn from history . . .

I can't even tell you how far back the pattern goes.  Certainly it predates my stepfather's influence in my life, but he sure honed it to perfection:

RESIST!

reSIST!

Resist.

resist

resist

resist

yield

(repeat)

It must not be so any longer.  It feels different now, but I must do whatever it takes to make sure that it actually is.  That this one would be less destructive than the worst is irrelevant.  It would still hurt terribly, and I will not.

Acknowledging while resisting

Even as I stay away from the influences that may have put the idea into my head, I find my unconscious mind still conjuring up images in my sleep, and in those first moments when I stir in the morning, that I must set aside in order to live the life to which I am called.

It is important, I think, not to let fear be a driving force that keeps me from acknowledging or even recognizing this side of myself, as that would not be healthy.  Yet, neither would embracing it and following wherever it leads.

Anti-"thing" vs. anti-"thingism"

I just read a quote from a left-wing humorist pundit dismissing a significant part of the Republican party as being an "anti-intellectual, anti-science freak show."

I have nothing against intelligence.  I have a serious problem with people who elevate this to the status of virtue, in and of itself.  Like any other talent or gift, it can be used well or poorly, and can be raised to an inappropriate level of esteem.

So I like intelligence, but am anti-intellectualism, the idea that intelligence is the answer to our problems.

I like rationality.  I am anti-rationalism.

I like emotion.  I am anti-emotionalism.

(I like alcohol. I'm anti-alcoholism.)

etc.

If it weren't for the people I love . . .

. . . I was ready to quit three different ways today.  Lunch time was really rough, coming out of this morning's meeting, and I could have used some company to help with my perspective.  Instead my bride was out working, a one-morning child care gig, and I made due with considering how soon I'll be visiting our sweet ones, finding in that thought the strength to press on.

Today's words

gorgonize \GOR-guh-nyze\ - to have a paralyzing or mesmerizing effect on : stupefy, petrify

maieutic \may-YOO-tik\ - relating to or resembling the Socratic method of eliciting new ideas from another

A floodgate of words of the day not already in my vocabulary over the last week.

old stuff

it's amazing how a well-meaning invitation to an event about one thing i survived and have dealt with from my childhood has awakened an awareness of another that i've never really processed properly.

i was supposed to take care of her.

and i didn't.

come to think of it, that applies to something I have processed to death, too.

A homily for me to be a little wary of

Fr. Dave's homily this morning was interesting.  I'm as skeptical of near-death experiences as the author of the article he read from used to be.  As encouraging as the overall message was, and even with the strength of its testimony boosted by the scientific support of the author's experience, I still have to really watch out for the third part of the message the author shared, this idea that we can do nothing wrong.  I think it's dangerous, especially in the context of the rest of the author's experience, both in general and for me specifically.

Because I still sometimes feel so daunted by the life I see ahead of me, it isn't healthy for me to think too much about how wonderful the next place is going to be without the corresponding understanding that my choices along the way have an effect on that.  It isn't that I have any illusion of having to pay my own fare, mind you, but I think I need to believe that my choices affect things beyond what I can see, including what my experience of eternity may prove to be.

Loss

When the sun slipped below the horizon, it was not only the day that died and the poor zebra, but my family as well.  With that second sunset, disbelief gave way to pain and grief.  They were dead; I could no longer deny it.  What a thing to acknowledge in your heart!  To lose a brother is to lose someone with whom you can share the experience of growing old, who is supposed to bring you a sister-in-law and nieces and nephews, creatures to people the tree of your live and give it new branches . . . Life of Pi

The protagonist proceeds to briefly reflect on what it means to lose a supportive father, to which I could unfortunately not relate so well (would that I could), and a mother, which is way worse in childhood than as a middle-aged adult (as I was when my mom died).  But as for this passage: I'm glad I didn't read this last weekend, when I was already so filled with missing my sister.  Still, he doesn't touch on what I miss most about her - just having someone who remembers when, with whom you shared childhood's best moments, who was with you as you survived its greatest dysfunctionality.

Yet all of these reveal a great thing to realize about grief: as much as it hurts to lose someone, even when we think we're hurting for them, we're usually really hurting for ourselves.  That's okay; I don't think it's selfish or that it makes us shallow.  (I hope?  Maybe I'm just so narcissistic that I think everyone shares this egocentricity?)  It's just good for us to bear in mind, even while we're hurting, to help keep us from descending further into it than is healthy for us.

Today's word

sequacious \sih-KWAY-shus\ - intellectually servile

You aren't referring to me, are you?

Q time?

Time?  It certainly was time together.  Q?  Well, the first part of the evening, when we played a game together for the first time in weeks, was nice.  The rest of it was mostly just time in the same room.  Is that the same thing for you?  'Cause it kind of isn't for me.  Don't get me wrong, though: it was better than time not in the same room.

It isn't that I'm complaining about the evening, actually.  It was pleasant enough.  I'm just concerned that our relationship has devolved to a point where that passes any test of a quality evening.  We deserve better than this, and I wish you thought so, too.

Now, I'm not going to be satisfied with just posting this here where you'll probably never see it and lamenting our condition.  (When is the last time you've read this?)  But I probably also will not be this blunt as I try to raise our quality standards back to where they belong. (I imagine that I feel a little like how the American auto industry must have felt a few decades ago, when they finally realized just how far they'd slipped . . . )

Today's word

agon \AH-gahn\ -  conflict; especially : the dramatic conflict between the chief characters in a literary work

I should have known this one already.

Also, two new ones within a week.  woo hoo.

Our prelude for this week

Wayfaring Stranger

I am a poor wayfarin' stranger
a-travelin' through this world of woe
but there's no sickness, no toil or danger
in that bright land to which I go

I'm goin' there to see my father
I'm goin' there no more to roam
I'm only goin' over Jordan
I'm only goin' over home

I know dark clouds will gather o'er me
I know my way is rough and steep
yet beauteous fields lie just before me
where their vigils keep

I'm goin' there to see my mother
She said she'd meet when when I come

I'm only goin' over Jordan
I'm only goin' over home

I'm goin' there to meet my Savior
to sing his praise forevermore

I'm only goin' over Jordan
I'm only goin' over home

An occasional moment

hopelessly she breathes my name

sometimes i like to entertain her for a moment
her seductive touch refined and cool
urgently whispering her bankrupt promises
of desperate escape to a fuller reality
i know everything that she says is a lie
yet on occasion indulge her as she smoothly
peddles the only elixir she has to offer
pretending she's not merely a charlatan
lacking enough substance to obscure her falsity
her thumb cheating the rational balance
as she insistently presses her point
i never forget that she is incapable of seeing truly
and soon grow weary of her myopia
tenderly and resolutely i decide
and once again turn from her anguished pleading

she will eventually have me despite my good sense
but never with my willing cooperation

Stupid wasp

I'm so tired!

(dream wasp, btw)

Today's word

malison \MAL-uh-sun\ - curse, malediction

One more on Karen

I feel like saying, Damn, it shouldn't be such a hole anymore, but then I realize that a whole person tends to leave a pretty big empty space behind when they're gone.

Relationships over time

I was someone's brother, once 

In retrospect, this recognition of ourselves in relation to others must normally evolve over the course of our lives.  For a time, while we are children, it defines us: we are our parents' son or daughter, and sometimes in some of our circles we will forever be known primarily by that relationship.  Our middle daughter was lamenting last night at our parish's All Saints/All Souls bonfire that she's mostly known in the parish as "the guitar guy's daughter," which is a shame because she has plenty of involvement of her own.  Likewise, I was once someone's grandson, and Shirley's son, and in some people's minds I suppose we remain defined by those relationships long after the person has died.  But mostly, as we grow into our own selves, we grow out of being defined by these relationships.

Still, we expect to carry some relationships throughout our lives, not for the purpose of defining us but for the richness of the unique aspects of history and interaction that they bring to us.  While there are people who know me primarily as Teri's husband, these know and appreciate that I am a person with my own unique gifts and interests, too.  They know my wife far better than me, though, so that is primarily who I am to them.  But the value, the treasure of being Teri's husband is not in my identity but in the relationship we share together.  While it doesn't define me, it does challenge me to become who I should be.  This is one example of a relationship that we expect to last most of our lives.  This relationship deserves much more discussion and elaboration than I'm going to give it here, but that isn't the point . . .

We expect the same of our relationships with our children, and there is no hole in our lives that rivals the loss of one of our children.  Whether through death or estrangement, no loss is quite like it.  No matter how many children we have, our relationship with each of them is different, but in each case it is a person for whom we have been completely responsible for a time and, though many carry it to an unhealthy extreme, the person they become bears a reflection of us.  (There's a lot to be careful of there; we can't accept too much credit for who they become, nor accept too much blame.)  Yet when one of our children is gone, the loss of that reflection is not the most painful part of the emptiness they leave behind.  It cannot be explained, especially by someone who has never experienced it for himself (and prays he never will).

So, too, our relationships with our siblings.  I remember my eventual stepfather lecturing my sister and I when we'd argue as teenagers.  Oh, how she used to yank my chain!  He told us over and over again that the day would come when we would rely on each other as no one else in the world.

When she died, we were just starting to get there.

Musical selections

So we're doing this piece that our director is so excited about.  It's a musically interesting piece - though another motet without a guitar part; thankfully she's letting me work up a part for the next one we're doing which just screams for it - but it just doesn't do a thing for my walk.

Listen to the lambs, all a cryin'
Want to go to heaven when I die 

Seriously?  Me too!  The verses aren't much of an improvement.

I know, I know: it's supposed to be a great new take on an old spiritual.  It really is kind of interesting musically, especially contrasted against the original spiritual.  But there was no meat in it to begin with, and dressing it up with more moving and intriguing music just hides the absence of sustenance under a layer of fancy sauce.

This is the second new piece this year that I've just hated, and I think she gave us a third at last rehearsal.

I was someone's brother, once

I watched a program that featured a grown brother and sister dealing with issues from their deceased dad.
The tragic thing is, she's been gone so long that I don't know if the show made me miss her or just the idea of having a sister.

Life of Pi

Reading a book while Teri watches a DVR' ed soap.  Must embrace the former and not get derailed by the latter.

I know zoos are no longer in people's good graces. Religion faces the same problem. Certain illusions about freedom plague them both. - Life of Pi

Old snippet

"Cathy, I'm lost," I said, though I knew she was sleeping.
"I'm empty, and I'm aching, and I DON'T KNOW WHY."
Counting the cars on the New Jersey Turnpike
and they've all come to look for America. - Paul Simon

Today's word

immure \ih-MYOOR\ - 1a. to enclose within or as if within walls  b. imprison  2. to build into a wall; especially : to entomb in a wall

Not just the warm feelings

On a night like this, as I lie in this unyielding wakefulness next to you, my arms hugged around my lonely self and my head cradled in my own hand, it is good for me to embrace this fervent longing for us to be more and know that this determination to just feel my emotions along the way and stay committed to relishing whatever life brings us together is also what love looks and feels like.

Three weird dreams

1. I don't remember who was in the first dream with me, at the start, but they'd had either a shoulder injury or shoulder surgery and couldn't lower their arm as a result.  At first I was holding their arm and trying to lower it, but by the end I was trying to lower my own, and couldn't in either case.  I must have been gradually waking up, as I finally realized that I was awake with my arms both up over my head, my shoulders sore from being in that position, and slowly let go of my fingers and lowered my arms, rolling over and going back to sleep. So I had incorporated my body position into this dream.
    
2. In the second dream, my wife came into the bedroom to complain about my snoring, but in my dream I was not asleep, so started looking around to figure out where the snoring was coming from.  Potter was on the floor by the bed (wherever we were; it wasn't our own bedroom) and we thought it was him, but when I disturbed him to wake him up the sound continued.  Next we thought it might be our youngest granddaughter, who in my dream was sleeping in a bassinet next to the bed, but when we jostled her gently we saw that the snoring was coming from somewhere else and started looking around to determine where.  Finally I awoke from my dream to discover my wife was sawing logs in our bed next to me, which I had incorporated into this second dream.
    
3. After lying awake next to my snoring wife for a while, I moved into the guest room to try to salvage some of the night's rest, where I had my third dream.  I was dancing with a group in a store space in a shopping mall that had been set up as a dance space.  I had my haircut from when I was 20, and was dancing better than I have ever actually danced in my life.  There were various colors of fluorescent lighting flashing on and off from the floor and the walls, including quite a bit of neon green. I hopped down from the top of a cube and then assumed with my body a pose on the floor that the choreographer intended to represent the cube, at which point the green glow seemed to outline me.  As the group met after the performance, it was generally agreed that this move was lame, and for this reason I was dismissed from the group, along with another male dancer.  I thanked the group for the wonderful opportunity to dance with them.  I was then having a conversation at a food establishment in the mall with a female dancer who'd previously been cut from the group, and we tried to encourage each other that it wasn't a reflection of our skills but due to other factors.  I was confused that I'd been cut because of a lame move that the choreographer had approved and even insisted on.  We were walking past the dance space as I woke up.  The only external stimulus I can think of that may have been incorporated into this dream might have been the lights of cars passing by on the street, or perhaps that annoying streetlight that keeps going off as soon as it reaches full brightness . . .

A gastrodilemma

Okay, if I'm going to have to grill dinner between getting home (late) from work and going to choir, the charcoal has to be ready when I walk in the door.  When I get home from choir at 9:15, I don't feel like eating a steak and a baked potato, even if they haven't been sitting around getting cold for two (plus) hours.  It isn't that I'm not hungry.  I just don't want to eat supper at this point.

Still, I'm betting that either the hunger or the indigestion will be keeping me awake tonight.

Ugh.

Thank you, Lord, for the blessing of food that is there if I decide I want to eat it.  Help me to appreciate your gifts more than I do.

I decided that an earlier post was a little more public than I really want to be with some of those thoughts.

I've since edited it to make it a little less, I dunno, blatant?

Today's word

A new WOTD that I didn't already know.  What a nice surprise:

demiurge \DEM-ee-erj\ - one that is an autonomous creative force or decisive power

I suppose I may be more of a hemidemisemiurge.

A morbid post that I've been sitting on

(edited to smooth a couple of sharp edges)

I was "accused" (not at all the dynamic in which it was offered, nor in which I received it; I'm just being lazy and not looking for a better word) last week of getting morbid when my wife is away.  A good friend speaks the truth to you as they see it, and a good friend receives that in the spirit in which it is offered and looks for deeper truth within it.  I've decided that this one wasn't completely accurate.

I'm almost always morbid.

I shouldn't be.  I have so many blessings in my life.

But I feel as if I have squelched my own interests for so long that there's no room for them in my life anymore.

Is this what it means to "die to yourself"?  If so, I guess I should feel hopeful and all the more thankful because of it.

So what is better to choose to live for?

• What is over the horizon: a skydive, a trip to Hawaii to visit our dear grandchildren?
• The short term impact on others, such as the effect on Ben and Rebecca and their wedding?
• The long term impact on others: not wanting my wife, daughters, grandchildren and dear friends to deal with the pain and questioning that I've experienced during those times when I've learned that someone I cared for had taken his life?

I suppose it is best to just live for the joy of living and loving, trusting God to make living worthwhile as I live for him.  That latter part is so hard, though, when my faith in him seems so insubstantial.

The thing is, I know I have a great life.  After all, to paraphrase Pearl Jam, "I'm a lucky man (who can't) count on both hands the ones I love."  I need to appreciate my life more, work on changing the things I should, and quit lamenting any other ways I wish it were different.

Disconcerting anatomical observation

Last night before I went to bed, I noticed that my shins felt particularly dry and itchy.

Next I noticed just how little protection the tibia has.  For the first time, I noticed that I could distinctly feel the contours of the bone under my skin.  I know it's considered the strongest weight-bearing bone in the body, but I still felt suddenly vulnerable, as if the support of my entire frame is just a couple millimeters from exposure to potential painful compromise.

Dammit, I want some padding there!  Now I understand why soccer players wear shin guards, and why they still go down in a sobbing heap so often!

More true words

"I do not want you to wallow in guilt over what I have forgiven." - word of prophecy, 10/20/12

I am thankful to be mostly free from that dynamic, thanks in large part to the love poured into my life so abundantly through so many.  Still, occasionally a hint of it will rear up, and this was a good reminder to be on the lookout against it.

Thoughts on Zig

You are what you are and where you are because of what has gone into your mind. - Zig Ziglar

Truer words were never spoken.

This is why it is so important to guard our hearts and minds.  The truth is that there may be many stimuli over which we have no control whatever, but there are countless others that are the direct or indirect result of choices that we make.  The entertainment and experiences we choose form us.  If I choose things that espouse values at odds with what I proclaim to be my own, it will affect me.  (It may also reveal that my values aren't really what I proclaim . . . )

Through decades of experience, I have found that when I focus my attention on the wrong things - put the wrong things into my mind - it can change how I interpret my whole life.

Keeping the balance up

As I finally recover from Wednesday night's emotional semi-crash, I'm gaining a sense of perspective on what drove it.  After all, it isn't as if the evening's choice dynamic was any sort of aberration in and of itself, and I've been successfully dealing with this primary choice pattern - as opposed to simply ignoring it or, worse, gnawing on it - for quite a while now.

But Wednesday I think I was especially vulnerable.  We'd spent most of a week apart.  I knew my wife was still battling the effects of her cold, and generally not feeling well, so I was glad to take care of dinner again, despite having done so again and again when she was sick before she left and when she got back the night before.  She seemed genuinely appreciative, and had expressed earlier in the day how much she was looking forward to our having time together.

Before she left we hadn't had enough of that, which was at least as much my fault as hers.  I was fully embracing the MLB postseason for the first time in decades - far longer than the O's absence, as their last two appearances had coincided with the most challenging time of my adult life.  She was supportive of my enthusiasm, for which I'm grateful, even if that may have been partly because it freed her from any guilt about her own entertainment choices. Between the two, we chose to spend very little quality time together over the week before she left.  She wasn't eating because of her pancreatitis, so we'd even gotten out of our long-term habit of having dinner together and our shorter-lived one of playing a game together after eating.  Her last night in town was marked by mostly better decisions, if only because I took the initiative to make sure we didn't spend our last night "together" separately.  Still, it was not really enough to make up for the draining of our "love bank" brought on by our choices over the previous week, including choices which in our home invariably accompany the new television season.

So I was really looking forward to our time together on Wednesday evening, just as she'd earlier indicated that she was, too.  I think that's why it hurt so much when I came into the family room after choir and asked what she was watching and she guiltily replied, "Oh. Something you won't watch."  In this case it was a program that I used to really enjoy but quit watching when I started having nightmares about it.  It wasn't as if she was very far into the program, or as if it wasn't being recorded by the DVR.  It was just as if the energy to make another choice was beyond her, and I was completely deflated by that.

Even after last night's much better night together, it was this morning before I began to really recover from the hurt of it.  Until then, I had no recognition how low we'd let the "love bank" get.  And I'm concerned about thought processes I've still had to correct this morning.  But it is better to recognize them and address them than to ignore them and let them do their damage.

I have shared my feelings on this issue with my wife many times over the years.  Still, now that we are a couple days removed from it, I'm going to have to discuss this specific example with her, with the hope that we can both better apply its lessons in our decision-making in the future.  (I hope we apply it to our small decisions, and if we don't we'll need to make a bigger one.)

Two quotes

You are what you are and where you are because of what has gone into your mind. - Zig Ziglar

It strikes me how God is humble. He humbled Himself; He who possessed the fullness of the Godhead took the form of a servant. Even today God shows His humility by making use of instruments as weak and imperfect as we are. He deigns to work through us. Then there must be joy in the heart. That is not incompatible with humility. - Mother Teresa (The Joy in Loving)

Will she never learn?

Will I?

Integrity

The presider of the wedding on Saturday was a long-time friend of the groom, and he doesn't have an especially spiritual background.  He shared instead about how the values espoused by Air Force officers can bear fruit in a marriage.

When he shared about integrity, he said, "Integrity is more than just honesty.  You can do wrong and be honest about it.  Integrity is always choosing to do right, even when no one is looking."

If life were only that simple.  We're flawed human beings.  We make mistakes.  We confuse our wants and our needs.  We're driven by things we don't understand.  (In fairness, I don't think he ignored any of that.)

Then there are the inevitable conflicts that arise between two people who, for all their oneness, will always be very different.

I want to be a person of impeccable integrity, but sometimes, when I compare what I feel and what I know I need to do, I don't think I'm ever going to get there.  Some days the only right things I can manage to choose are to remember that I've chosen the only road that will work for me and to let that truth lift me up.

Today's word

I haven't seen a new one (for me) in so long that I'd quit checking.  Here's one from last week:

nuncupative \NUN-kyoo-pay-tiv\ - spoken rather than written : oral

Friends tell you the truth

An O'de to teamship

"There's no 'i' in 'team'."  "A true team is greater than the sum of its parts."

There has been much written about the roles of personality and chemistry and other intangibles in forging an effective team.  Looking subjectively and generally, the quality of "teamship" should probably be judged by how a team meets or exceeds its goals and expectations, or by how its synergies have coalesced to make its performance greater than it had any right to expect.  By any combination of those standards, the Baltimore Orioles - probably along with the Oakland Athletics, whose season ended last night (and, incidentally, two teams known to go by their first initial) - were probably the best teams in Major League Baseball this year.  Such an outrageous assertion could not hope to stand on its own, of course, though both teams should be commended for a year of success beyond almost everyone's foresight except their own.

One of the beautiful and maddening things about sports, and baseball in particular, is how teams with seemingly lesser talent can pleasantly surprise against all odds, while those with superior skills and resumés (not to mention payrolls, and I'm not referring to the Yankees here, at least this year) can cruelly disappoint.  When it comes right down to it, there is only one measuring stick that determines the most effective baseball team.  It isn't the team batting average, home runs, nor ERA.  It isn't BABIP, OPS+, VAR, run differential, nor any other modern metric, no matter what the analysts say to justify getting paid full-time to tell us what they think.  Nor is it the degree of success that the individual players have had during the year, nor throughout their careers.  It isn't their record in tense games, though we're getting warmer.  It is simply wins and losses.  At the end of the year, it is these head-to-head match-ups in the playoffs that decide which team is better, which will advance while the other goes home for the off-season, which is left standing at the end as the world champion of baseball.

Still and all, at the end of tonight's game, while we O's fans may potentially feel great disappointment in the outcome of this game and this series - and mostly that this wonderful bolt of success from the blue has finally spent the last glorious attojoule of its energy - the utterly unforeseen thrill ride we've experienced will make it impossible for us to feel disappointed in our team.

Thanks for a wonderful year, Orioles!    Let's keep it going a while longer, okay?

Mixed drinks

How can I feel glad for the time to myself and sad to be alone at the same time?

Expectations

Okay. I get that there are certain shows you're never going to skip.  I do. After all, I'm going to be champing at the bit over this playoff game tonight, even though it's your last night in town for the week. I may manage to decide not to watch the whole thing, but you know I'm at least going to be checking in on it all evening. So, yes, I understand why you're eager to find out what happened to these characters you've come to care about and in these story lines that are so captivating.

Still, it will probably help us both if you exercise enough foresight not to set my expectations for a different decision?  I don't keep track of what program is on which night, while you know pretty well which of your programs I can't stand to be around.  So you're the only one of us who has any internalized sense of when we're going to have time together and when we're not, except for the clues that you give me.  When my expectations don't match the decision you're going to make, especially when I base them on the clues you've given me, the decision feels more personal and more frustrating than it would be on its own.

Recognizing the truth

When your decisions contradict your words, I will always believe your decisions.

Always.

Smaug, minus an "a"

"I was certain, in a way that most people will find smug, that the Yankees wouldn't lose to the Orioles. They're our little brother. They can't win." - Shane Ryan, Grantland columnist

"smug - highly self-satisfied" - Merriam-Webster

Yes, most people will find it smug because it's the very definition smug. But the most revealing part is how the author uses the word "our," which is kind of sad when one is being so completely condescending on the basis of other people's athletic performance.