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.

You are getting verrrry sleeeepy

I really could have used a short power nap at lunch time, but didn't feel comfortable taking one when the mrs. had a friend over to help her have a look at her painting project . . .

Maturity

Maybe I'm getting some in my old age.

A damper . . .

In view of the weather forecast, I'm setting aside the exercise of checking ticket prices on StubHub for tomorrow night's playoff game in Baltimore.  (dammit)

The Nightmare Before . . .

I heard Tim Burton this morning talking about how his movies are a reflection of his thought processes from his childhood.  At one point he discussed how, even with having a family of his own and overall a really good life, those dark feelings from his youth - in a suburbia so physically close to Disney's (and other) studios yet a world away - are never very far from him.

It's a fascinating commentary on the commonality of human experience that I can so relate to what he shared even without being a fan of his work.  As we enter into the season of autumn, which is always a mixed emotional bag for me, it might be good for me to try to bear in mind the effect the emotional inertia of my youth still has on me, to see if I can recognize it without getting caught up in it again.

Here we go again

For the first couple weeks after a layoff, every time a meeting starts late or disappears from my calendar, or an e-mail doesn't get answered, it prompts a new round of wondering whether the host was let go . . .

I'd COMPLETELY forgotten . . .

. . . how fun it is to root for a baseball team in October!  Go O's!

Gratitude for Providence

As I prayed with my wife this morning, I asked that we would be grateful for whatever means God would use to meet our financial needs.  For the present, it looks as if this will continue to be via my present job.

While feeling a little disappointed about that is an indicator I need to pay close attention to, I need to not let that interfere with my giving thanks to God for continuing to provide for us.  God is good!

Plucking out and cutting off

Our pastor took a fairly gentle tack on this challenging gospel reading yesterday, suggesting we might look for things in our life that interfere with having a deeper relationship with God.  It was a good approach, as far as it went.  Where he stopped short, in my view, is in how drastic we should be in removing those things once we identify them.

My own reflection on this scripture early in the week was rooted in the idea that many of us are like an delicious pie with just a bit of arsenic baked in.  We may be "mostly good" people, but often we let that be good enough, unaware of how we are poisoning those we love by not addressing the toxic parts that remain in us. When I entered therapy - both times - it was because I recognized I had something in me that was important enough to take strong action against.  I know a couple of husbands who are destroying or poisoning their families in ways they don't recognize and for reasons that seem completely reasonable to them.  They're oblivious to the damage they do, and think that the problems in their homes are of everyone else's making.  Even when we recognize our own shortcomings accurately, we tend to not have a strong enough hatred for the things that cause chaos in our lives and our families, nor for the things that keep us from walking closely with God.

That said, I guess I'm accusing myself of at still harboring at least a degree of complacency, too . . .

Fests

My wife and I have a friend who gets so enthusiastic for a local event every year that is seriously dims our own enthusiasm for it.

(I wonder if I might have more in common with her than I thought?)