Today's word

Demogorgon \Dee-muh-GOR-gun\ - a mysterious spirit or deity often explained as a primeval creator god who antedates the gods of Greek mythology

An appropriate word for the day, I suppose.

snippet

 . . . echoed in the wells of silence

Our Spanish teacher was Mrs. Wilson

I remember too little about the project. It was our sophomore year, and in hindsight I wish I'd kept studying the language beyond the state-mandated two years. Mrs. Wilson was younger than most of our faculty, and this particular sophomore found her delightfully lovely. This post isn't about her, though; despite what I suppose is a MacGuffin of a lead-in, this memory lies in another direction.

One way in which the class requirements were more advanced in the second year was a mandatory Spanish project. We had an incredible amount of leeway into what it could be, and since several of us were at least somewhat Trekkies, we decided to do a Star Trek skit. Our friend Joe took the lead on the project, and portrayed Spock. I guess, based on a comment he left on my FB share this afternoon, that our friend Randy was Kirk; I was McCoy. I can't remember who portrayed any of the other roles. I'm sure our friend Ken was in it, and perhaps Ed and Jack, and I'm thinking that a classmate named Gary joined us, too, which sticks with me because he was one of the few black guys in the school and my social circle didn't otherwise overlap with his. I can't recall who anyone else played, how many total were involved in the project, or anything about the plot except that there was some falling around the set and maybe a staged fight. I barely learned my lines, let alone contributed much else to the translation. I think I may have helped more with the props and staging? (Geez, I hope so.) For Joe and I, our semi-antagonistic roles became a running gag throughout high school and even into college, with me pulling out the "I'm a doctor, not a.. . ." line (in English; always thereafter in English!) whenever the occasion remotely warranted it.  Joe and I both attended Maryland for freshman year, but I think because of his grades he was gone after that - maybe even after just a semester.

We completely lost touch, as I did with pretty much everyone else when I joined the service; there were no e-mail and Facebook then. To my great sadness, unlike many of the others whom I'm blessed to be in touch with again, I won't be reconnecting with Joe in this life.

A hilarious Audi commercial that I saw and shared on FB has had me remembering him this afternoon.

Frustration

I was in bed for 9 hours last night, and 8 the night before. Why am I still falling asleep at my desk?????

Faces of superiority

Just a few, some I'm immune from and others to which I'm highly prone:

• Trying to answer a riddle challenge.
• Posting the challenge to see how many of your friends fail, as you did, to guess the answer.
• Boasting that you got it right.
• Keeping track of how many of your friends got it wrong, or felt compelled to try and to comply.
• Asking others to take an action demonstrating that they support your cause.
• Refusing to kowtow to such requests.
• Answering yet another variation on the same math question, geography question, etc.
• Knowing that in less than two seconds you can indeed name a state, animal or branch of science that doesn't contain the letter "A."
• Not needing to post it. 
• Coming up with such things just to see how many people feel compelled to try.
• Wanting everyone to know how well you can do something, anything.
• Always evaluating whether you can do it better.
• Or whether you are better.
• Judging others' faults.
• Judging others' judgmentalism.

Oh, I may as well stop. It isn't as if there's any end to the list. I guess that this comes back to Fr. Spitzer's concept of the comparative identity to which many of us - perhaps all of us - tend to fall subject, at least occasionally. That's the disease. Yes, living by the contributive identity is better, but in itself still leaves us susceptible to lapsing. Soaking in the love of God is probably the analgesic, and ultimately the cure, though none of us will probably fully realize it (make it fully real) in this world. 

I need to stop making other things more important. 

An older song

So yesterday I was singing this and not liking the range for my voice. I grabbed the capo and transposed it down a step, and the combination has me doing some different guitar work on it and not singing so much in my head voice. But it occurs to me that I haven't shared this nearly as widely as I want to:

For Karen

A hedonistic worshiper at Mary Jane's thatched throne
daily living for the hour when I could next get stoned.
How many times did she see me with that redness in my eyes,
my baby sister influenced by what I now despise?

The Father's hand delivered me from what that path held in store,
and He's placed a joy within my heart that ever shall endure.
But I was now so far away, and though we were still in touch
I never spoke the words to her that could have meant so much.

So now I hear her calling from somewhere beyond her grave,
saying, "Don't let it be for nothing; there are others to be saved."

We all have our little fears as we're growing in our ways.
She always feared a needle, from her childhood's youngest days.
Could it have been that, somehow, the recesses of her heart
knew that that would be the instrument that would tear it apart?

And now I hear her calling from somewhere beyond her grave,
she says, "Don't let it be for nothing; there are others to be saved."

I don't know if He would have healed her, had I taken time to share.
I don't know if He'd have touched her heart, the way He pulled me back from there.
And I'll never know if He might have worked through me to make her whole.
I only know I miss her to the depths of my soul.

So now I hear her calling from somewhere beyond her grave,
she says, "Don't let it be for nothing; there are others to be saved."
Oh, can't you hear her calling from somewhere far beyond her grave,
saying, "Don't let it be for nothing; there are others to be saved"?

© 1990, LifeKnell Music Ministry. All rights reserved.

I wonder if God feels this way sometimes

I feel frustrated when I have new music and new lyrics that clearly have nothing to do with each other. I just know each will be really nice when it's complete!

(way) More on Monday (edited)

Caution: probable megapost ahead, with links to previous posts.

I was as nervous as I was excited to see them again, for a combination of reasons. But first, why these relatives that I saw only a half dozen times in my youth mean so much to me.

Well, that will take sharing some more details related to this post. Yes, I was finally going to be reunited with the people that I was with when my dad died. That trip would have been quite memorable for other reasons had it not ended so catastrophically. The idea was to go by train. I don't know how Amtrak pricing compared with flying in those days - it can be significantly more expensive today - but the cost wasn't the main issue. Mom wanted us to experience the country by rail. Dad couldn't go, as he didn't have enough vacation left: he had a Sunday package of Orioles' season tickets, and he never felt good enough to get to work on Monday morning after a game. By then I had come to understand why that always took so much out of him, why my mom objected to my going along with him very often, and why I was forbidden to tell her about the stop that he made just down the street - what was in that odd shaped bottle wrapped in brown paper from which he drank on the way to and throughout the rare games I was allowed to attend with him. (That was by no means the worst thing that I was never to share with her, but it was the most frequent.) Anyway, for this trip it was just the three of us, Mom, my sister and me, with none of dad's alcohol-fueled complications..

The rail station was a different experience, but not that different in nature from an airport. We had dinner in the dining car, and I seem to recall going back later for a snack before it was time for us to sleep in our semi-reclining coach seats. Along the way I developed a crush on one of our fellow passengers who, like most kids my own age, was way less naive than I was. She tried to convince me to let her paint my fingernails with clear polish - lots of guys do that, she assured, and no one will be able to tell because it's clear - and the only reason she didn't succeed was that I was too tied by the apron strings to not check with my mom first - so I guess that wasn't entirely a bad thing. I think we had only one overnight on the train between Baltimore and . . . I can't remember . . . Topeka?  I'm pretty sure it wasn't Kansas City. From there we transferred to a bus - this was the second night of travel, I think - to ride to Dodge City (another "I think") where my dad's brother and/or sister-in-law was picking us up.

There are other details I remember from this trip. It seems to me that this was the year we went to the Seward County fair, which I thought was way fun. We had fairs in MD, but I don't think I'd ever been to one. In the ensuing years I'd go with my high school girlfriend (now my bride of 32 years) to the Glen Burnie carnival, but hadn't been as of yet. Anyway, I remember on that trip and the next playing baseball with my cousins and their friends in the field behind my aunt and uncle's double-wide. When there weren't enough friends around for a game, my cousins and I had plenty of games of catch and rundown - though for the life of me I can't remember the different name they had for the latter. I've finally figured out why I've been remembering them as closer to my age than they really were: they were at least my equal in sports ability, even though Bill and Mark were two and three years younger than me. I can't remember which of the years it was that I helped with the mowing at my grandparents' house, taking a little bit of flack from my cousins and then my uncle for not "following the pattern."

I'll spare the reader (and myself) the details of my clearest memories from before The Call. They happened at night, in youthful ignorance and curiosity. I may not have understood the nature of what we were doing, but I knew it was forbidden. We weren't trying to be naughty, yet I knew we were. And I'm remorseful about it now, but will probably never get a chance to tell them so, because it isn't the sort of thing you raise without it being clear that the other person hasn't already moved past it on their own. I talked about it in therapy, but am not completely without difficult feelings about it. This was the biggest reason for my nervousness about visiting this week.

The power behind those lingering feelings is undeniable. We were in the latter days of the trip, preparing to retrace our steps back home, when The Call came one evening. Some time later, our mom called my sister and I together (I thought I was remembering, though now it is occurring to me that maybe she told me but not Karen?) to tell us most gravely that dad had become very suddenly and seriously ill. It wasn't at all clear that he was going to survive. We were going to have to fly home the next day and pray for the best.

Pray I did. I remember my cousins praying the rosary with me, under the impossibly starry rural Kansas sky. As we offered our repetitive, ritual prayers, I silently begged God to answer my prayer for my father in spite of the bad thing I'd been doing. I was afraid that if he died it would be my fault, because I'd learned that God doesn't answer the prayers of a sinner. We were up, praying and afraid, for most of the night, though I suppose I must have slept for at least several hours.

The seriousness of his condition was underscored when Grandma and Grandpa made the trip back to Maryland with us, too; I can't remember for certain who else came along. We drove to Wichita to catch our plane, but the rest of that part of my life is a distant blur, starting with the flights home; I think I slept through most of both (?; I'm sure it was at least two, even in the "pre-hub" days of air travel) of them. Once we were home in our own living room, Mom told us that Dad had already been dead when she'd gotten The Call before we'd left Kansas, and that she'd wanted to wait until we were back in familiar surroundings to break the worst part of the news to us. She explained that he'd died of a sudden, unexpected cerebral hemorrhage, saving the rest of the truth for some day much later, when I was older and she'd had a chance to deal with it. (That would be after she revealed that my dad wasn't my biological father, I think.) One of my uncles - I'm thinking it was my Kansas uncle, but I just don't remember for certain - dropped the "man of the house, now" line on me, but it didn't seem like the unreasonable burden that it might have been had I been younger. I remember the funeral home behind our school, run by the family of a grade school classmate. I'm pretty sure I had been in it before, but it's way different when it's your own dad and you're there for the duration rather than just to pay your respects and leave. There were a few of his friends from work with whom we'd visited over the years - always at their homes rather than ours - who came for the viewing or funeral. Our pastor led a service at the funeral home and prayers at the gravesite; he was a bit of a rebel, honoring my mom's request that he preside despite my dad's professed atheism and undeniably non-Catholic status. My clearest recollection is the tender moment back in the limo at the graveyard when, remembering my uncle's admonition from our arrival home, I asked my tearful mother if she was okay. She seemed legitimately bolstered and comforted by my asking. Grandma and Grandpa stayed for another day or so, I think. In just a few weeks I started high school, from which there are all sorts of memories that are part of my whole story but are well beyond the scope of this post, even though emotionally some of them might be considered part of a continuous weaving.

The following year we had our big road trip, which included a side trip with our Kansas aunt, uncle, and cousins to the Ozarks (though I suppose it's possible this side trip was the previous year). It was the only time in my life I've ever enjoyed fishing, though I think that maybe I enjoy it more in the memory than I did in the moment. I remember very clearly, though, how patient my uncle was with me, very different from how my dad had been.

So the family members with whom I was reunited on Monday, for the first time since I was fifteen years old, are very dear to me. I was surprised when we got there with the chance to also see the ones who'd almost let my paternity cat out of the bag 38 years ago. My secretive, overprotective mother was so mad at them that day she could have spit fire, as she told me the day she finally revealed my paternity, but then, "Spitfire" did become her nickname. Now, it was nice to visit under these circumstances when there was no longer any need for there to be such secrets between us, and I found myself caught off-guard by how nostalgic I felt toward them despite having only met them on the one previous occasion so long ago. It was wonderful to hear their stories of my dad, who over sixty years ago lived for at least one summer in that small town. I had a short moment of panic near the start of their visit when his aunt looked me in the eye to interrogate as to whether I remembered breaking her ribs, until my aunt reminded her that that had not been me but my dad. It was great to hear stories from before he'd become enslaved to the bottle, when he was once just an enthusiastic kid, too, struggling to find his place in this world, which apparently ever eluded him. The years seemed to contract as I shared with my aunt and cousin how much my late uncle had meant to me, too, and some of what I had learned from his example. His generous spirit lives on in his son who, when showing me his memorabilia room, would not allow me to leave without two baseballs autographed by famous Orioles from the '66 championship team. "They'll mean way more to you than they will to me," my cousin insisted, perhaps not understanding that the biggest reason for that is because of who gave them to me and the renewed relationship with him that they represent.

Not as big as Alaska, but still, it's BIG!

inspired by trying to figure out where Lubbock is, in conjunction with a story on Texas Tech

For another insight into just how big Texas is, consider: the distance from El Paso to Beaumont, TX is 100 miles greater than the distance from El Paso to Beaumont, CA; that latter distance includes about half the width of New Mexico, the full width of Arizona, and basically the width of California. Oh, that first distance is also 60% longer than our drive home to MD from here.

Today's words

Today's WOTD has an etymology that has resulted in some pretty significant differences in meaning between some closely related words . . .

ritornello \'rih-tur-NEH-lo\ - 1a. a short recurrent instrumental passage in a vocal composition  b.  an instrumental interlude in early opera  2. a tutti passage in a concerto or rondo refrain

I love learning new musical terms. (Not so much as to make me actually formally study music, mind you.)

Two closely related thoughts

We may have many resources, but we only have one Source. When you try to turn a resource into your source, you set yourself up for a fall.

You can exchange the God of Israel for a god of the culture, but be careful, because the gods of the culture will let you down.

- both from Dr. Tony Evans

There can be a variety of different resources which we mistakenly trust as our source, but there is only one Provider for all that we need. God may provide for our needs through different types of resources at different times in our lives, and if we invest our trust in any (set of) resource(s) instead of our Source, our life will feel like turmoil when God is merely changing resources for us.

More later . . .

Today's word

skylark \SKY-lahrk\ - 1. to run up and down the rigging of a ship in sport  2. frolic, sport

I didn't click on this one until after I noticed that the verb did not describe the bird's activity that I was expecting. I thought it would refer to singing rather than to flitting about.

Ahhh

Last night was pretty close to going home again, even though they were never, strictly speaking, my home.

My uncle's generous spirit lives on in his son, my cousin.

It was wonderful to spend this time with family I haven't seen in so long. What a complicated family tree, though. Here's who I saw: my adoptive father's step-father's 1) sister, 2) brother-in-law, 3) nephew, 4) daughter-in-law, 5) grandson, 6) granddaughter-in-law and 7) great-granddaughter. My wife and I, then, were my adoptive father's step-father's step-adoptive-grandson and step-adoptive-granddaughter-in-law.

So I'm sort of a graft onto a graft onto the family tree.  But they don't much seem to see me that way, and I am grateful!

More on the visit later . . .

Today's words

asseverate \uh-SEV-uh-rayt\ - to affirm or declare positively or earnestly

Here's a completely new one on me. I don't imagine I'll ever use it, though maybe I'll remember it from context if I ever encounter it again.

in silico \in-SIL-ih-koh\ - in or on a computer : done or produced by using computer software or simulation

Another new one, though it makes sense.

parol \PAIR-ul\ - word of mouth : oral communication

Wow. Three straight new words-of-the-day. It has been a while. What a neat etymology!

Reconciled

inspired by having a clean soul again, and hearing three new songwriters in one night

My Lord, you know I've failed you
time after selfish time,
entertaining brokenness
in lieu of love sublime.
Again I come before you, Lord,
crawling on the floor,
knowing that your plan for me
has always been much more

Ref:
Despite how much I struggle,
will you use me anyway:
to glorify yourself through me,
to show your love, help others (us all) see
that there's no end to your mercy?
Will you use me anyway?
(Last: Just use me, in any way.)

My Lord, there's no denying
the vastness of my sin,
the darkness that's consumed me,
how prodigal I've been,
that I've no hope, save grace alone,
to enter into you.
Yet grace suffices in the end,
for you will carry through.

Bridge:
I've compromised my whole life long
let worldliness just sing along
with what should be the purer song
you long to sing through me.

My Lord, you've cleansed my spirit
scrubbed the filth out of my soul.
Your Spirit moves within me
as I'm once again made whole
I fear that I will fail again
fall short of your great plan
But I will trust in you to sing
your melody to man


© 2013, LifeKnell Music Ministry. All rights reserved.

Tired man

It has been months that we've been working toward yesterday's Life in the Spirit Seminar, with the last month a more intense time of preparation, especially with regard to music ministry, with four 3-hour rehearsals.

It was well worth all the effort. Aside from needing a bass player to fill out the bottom, we apparently sounded pretty good, and it was wonderful to see people advancing throughout the day in their openness to praising God. Our pastor did a fabulous job with his talk on Encountering God's Love, but each of the speakers did a nice job. Of course, the lay speakers who did talk number 5 were the only ones without the self-discipline to stick to their time. Oh, and let me never forget that 15 minutes of repeat-after-me prayer is at least 10 minutes too long. I really think that some of us may have gotten in the Spirit's way a little bit there, which is a shame after all the great stuff before it.

Yet I also know that the Spirit did move powerfully, and that people encountered the presence of God in new ways.

Today's word

It's a doozy of an etymological mystery. I thought the "Name That Synonym" was pretty easy, too.

Internal monologue

"Hmm.  I'm feeling kinda hungry . . .   "

About 15 seconds pass

"  . . . Wow. In fact, I'm feeling really hungry already . . . It isn't anywhere near lunch time yet . . . Oh, yeah: I haven't eaten my yogurt yet.  Duh.  No wonder!"

The piece that the right is ignoring:

"If you start insuring a bunch of previously uninsured people, without any choice but to take them no matter what health conditions they bring to the table, then the average costs per customer have to go up." - this is the gist of the "simple math" argument against the ACA.

And actually, that's pretty undeniably true.

In the short term.

But the financing of the (heretofore) uninsured will shift from hospitals (and other providers) to insurance companies (along with the premium subsidies from the federal government). Hospitals have been trained over recent decades to inflate what they charge to cover the significant percentage of uninsured patients whose treatment they often eventually have to write off. Of course, this is why they've been able to offer insurers far lower pricing for the same procedure for which they charge private citizens a far higher rate. For many of these, they never receive any payment at all; the ones that do pay usually require service from an inflated staff/paid external billing service to deal with all of the follow-up payment issues. So in the short term, yes, the cost of insurance is going to increase. But in the longer term, if health care providers should be able to reduce their charges because there will be a higher percentage of treatment for which they are paid. If they don't, new providers should be able to step in and improve the competitiveness of the marketplace, which will reduce what insurers have to pay.

The real trick is going to be to get insurers to return this money to the pockets of customers in the form of reduced premiums, rather than lining those of stockholders. But if they don't it won't take long until new insurers step in to address this inflated market, too.

So I still don't know how I feel about the whole program, but I'm not going to jump to a conclusion based on the short term increase in premiums, even should it prove to be significant.

A cry, a response

What I read: 

My mom divorced my dad in 2007. I never talked to anyone except him, at that time. She got cancer in 2008, and fell into a state of alchoholism to escape her depression, her actions affected everyone. By that christmas, my dad killed himself, he blamed it on her, but we don't know if that was true or just meant to hurt her. I spent one week losing my mind, and when I came out, I was alright. I lived my life. I grew up, I found reasons to live, and even though I'm terrible at socializing, I began to do it.

I went to college. I liked it here, it got me away from that "Home" I had that had now become a home only to the shell that remained of my mother. My last memory of her was her showing up at my apartment unannounced to collect $20,000 my dad left to me, a fact she found out about by going through my private bank letters. She brought me straight to the bank and then right back to my apartment and then only remembered to save she loved me right before she drove away. And two weeks ago she died. Losing a second parent so early on is a completely different kind of pain than I can articulate, and it hurts to think about how she saw me as a person, if she still even considered me a son when she died. And now, I might be losing that house, but I don't know.

Every time I go home, I don't know. I don't what what of my "home" I'll still have. A brother, my papou, my grandma, and some plaster walls on foundation are all I have left, and I don't know which of those I'll still have in a year. Loss is all I feel like I have left to look forward to.

So, I might seem a little unstable in the coming weeks, and I'm sorry. I'm trying to be "admirable", but all I feel is betrayed, by everything I have ever loved or trusted. I don't want to learn any more life lessons, I just want someone for just one god damn second to hold me and say that it's okay to feel the way I feel. And not judge me when I can't stop screaming.

What I wrote back (edited for his privacy):

Hi Xxxx,
You don't know me from Adam, but I'm a cousin of the Xxxxs, which is how I ended up seeing your post. (To be precise on the relationship: xxxxx and xxxxx were xxxxxxx.) What I already knew about your family can be summed up in one sentence: your family is precious to their family. But that by itself would not have caused me, as an utter stranger, to reply to your post.

I don't know how public you intended that post to be, but having read it I find that I cannot just ignore it without responding to your anguish. You've had more to deal with than a young man should have to in a lifetime, let alone by your tender age. Just surviving it with the good sense intact that drives you to rail against it rather than just shut down is a small victory in itself. When such severe emotional trauma happens to us, whatever mechanisms we have in place by that point have to suffice to help us survive it, and we are rarely equipped for it. How wise it is that you have reached out to the people around you for support, in such an honest expression of your frame of mind. Lean on them, and get through it together. Eventually . . . well, "eventually" is pretty meaningless right now; you'll figure out "eventually" later, with the people you have in your life. But don't dismiss them. Everyone who responds to you is offering you support in the ways they can; please find a way to accept it from them. As for me, I have two specific reasons for writing:

1. Yes, in response to your reply (I don't know why my fingers typed "reply" instead of "plea"), what you're feeling is completely okay. Your parents have hurt you unspeakably deeply; express that hurt as you need to. Your feelings are a normal response to highly abnormal hurts that the two people who should have most protected you instead have inflicted on you in their own brokenness. You deserved - and still deserve - way better. However, don't learn from their example and despair in the midst of your own pain. Instead, reach back out to those friends and family members who are offering to support you. Put them to the test, and the ones who prove faithful in response will be your support network, your shoulders to cry on and to lean on. 

2. If you didn't intend your post to be this public, you might want to change its access settings.

I myself was a son of alcoholism and of suicide, and more. The way you're dealing with it is so much healthier than how I did. Acknowledge your hurt, for there is no other path to being healed from it. Dealing with it now is way better than burying it for later; such profound hurts don't rest well.

May you find the peace and healing that you need, in the loving arms of those who reach out to you in your need. And know that there is a stranger in Ohio who is praying for you.

In heartfelt respect, 

There were a number of other things that I maybe could have addressed. No, no amount of his mom being screwed up makes his dad's suicide her fault. He seems to know this, but perhaps fears that cutting his mom any slack on any front is the road to letting her off the hook. But there is plenty for him to be angry at both of his parents about even without mis-attributing blame. I think he could benefit by taking a few months to talk all of this through with a professional, but that wasn't the purpose of my reply, and I couldn't think of any way to say that without it sounding like "Geez, you need a shrink," which would have been the opposite of what I wanted to convey in response to his plea. Maybe I could have found a way to say, "Yes, what you're feeling is normal, and a good counselor can help you process all of that." Then again, maybe I'll still get a chance to . . .

Recovery

My lunchtime massage was wonderful. I was still pretty sore afterward, but didn't feel as if I was still tied up in knots. I've been heeding Donna's advice to drink lots of water, and we'll see tomorrow morning if I'm really on the road to recovering from my labors.

Today's word

ensky \in-SKYE\ - 1. to raise in rank, power, or character  2. to praise highly : glorify

So here's a word that made perfect sense, as soon as I pronounced it correctly. Pronounced as \EN-ski\, it made no sense at all!

Today's words, with a twisted one

couloir \kool-WAHR\ - a steep mountainside gorge

A new word for me. Funny: "French for 'cold, narrow place to die.'" Am pretty sure I'll never ski one of these.

lanuginous \la-NEW-gi-nus, -NYEW-\ - covered with down or fine, soft hair

I might have heard this word from today's Dictionary Devil puzzle before.

excrescent \ex-CREH-suhnt\ - 1. forming an abnormal, excessive, or useless outgrowth  2. of, relating to, or constituting epenthesis

Perhaps this one, too, also from the DD puzzle, which nonetheless drove me to look up the final word in its second definition.

epenthesis \ih-PEN(T)-thuh-suhs, eh-\ (plural -ses, as expected) - the insertion or development of a sound or letter in the body of a word (as \uh\ in \ATH-uh-leet\ athlete)

I know I've heard this one before, as I recognize it from its definition, but I can never recognize it when I see it outside of context or recall it on those rare occasions when I have cause to refer to it.

Finally, today's familiar WOTD (musket, for future reference without clicking through) has an interesting etymology of which I was unaware. For me, it also carries with it the almost nostalgic echo of the crude slang usage of which my (eventual) stepfather was fond. That sense of nostalgia is part of the twisted legacy that sexual abuse leaves. I loved him, dammit. The difference he made in my life was huge, and I miss the relationship I thought I had with him before that first weekend trip, with that first night at the Y in NYC, even though I now understand that it was about the abuse for him long before his explicitly abusive actions started. It's a powerful indication of my emotional dependence on him that I was willing to pay such a steep price for his continued attention.

A kneejerk judgment countered

So my youngest was tagged in a post about the series Revenge. Another friend of the person who posted (sorry, a "poster" will always seem like a different thing entirely to me) lamented that she started watching it on Hulu but that her husband (I presume) kept interrupting with questions about it, so she was just going to wait and watch it by herself.

I find that I can't help reaching conclusions about what this means for their marriage. I mean, it isn't as if he is completely uninterested, but she'd rather just keep this experience for herself than be bothered to explain it to him. I guess, though, that she's probably a mom with a limited amount of time for her own entertainment, and she's trying to safeguard her enjoyment of it. And I know my negative reaction is probably rooted in the challenges my own wife and I deal with in the entertainment realm.

'65 or '66 (or, how I pissed off Robert Plant)

Okay, this dream was just so utterly odd that I want to be able to remember it later:

I heard on the radio that John Paul Jones (the member of Led Zeppelin, not the naval hero; duh) had died. Seeking a bit of camaraderie in my nostalgic sadness, I went to a local record store, where Robert Plant was entering just ahead of me. Another fan tried to express his condolences, but Plant shook his head to indicate that he simply couldn't deal with that at the moment. There was a bit of commotion in the shop over his presence, and the proprietor was indicating what a broad range of his music was on hand. Among them was a very obscure CD with Plant self-accompanying on a much maligned stringed instrument called a "3-note," smaller than a ukulele. To demonstrate his authentic musicianship with it, he took one out and began to play a song from the album, joined by a Scottish friend with whom he had previously performed who sang harmony.  I was standing close to them and began to add a bit of bass harmony underneath their parts, at which point I was pulled into their performance as they began to dance backward and forward, Plant strumming his 3-note as we sang. The song was comparing a friend's personality to that of a specific model of classic automobile - though I'm not sure the specific model was in my dream, it seems to me it was of British manufacture - right down to the specific model year that best represented the friend, "maybe '65 or '66," which was the last line of the chorus. I had a strong sense of definitely being the outsider of the trio and desperately wishing there was something I could do to pull myself in.  This selfish wish manifested itself in my foolish choice to quietly lean over during an instrumental interlude and whisper my own condolences to Plant on the death of his band mate.  Just as outside, he sternly shook his head, and continued with the song without breaking tempo. And now without me.

More unconscious fun

I'm not sure which sort of dreams are worse, the ones that serve as painful reminders of my past, or the ones that make me disappointed to wake up.

Sodden history

A familiar word with an interesting past.

Theology on Tap

It was so nice to see Chris last night, to hear about his current work in the pro-life offices of the Archdiocese of New York. He is clearly more in his element, doing meaningful work that nurtures him more than his engineering work in the Air Force did. It was nice, too, to be around an enthusiastic group of younger Catholics who are hungry to grow in their faith. What a great venue to discuss our faith, and Chris did a great job echoing Pope Francis' observation that the only way to counter the culture of death is to joyfully live the life of love to which we are called.  Two things in particular stood out from what he shared; as always, a good talk always gets my own thoughts rolling, and I'm undoubtedly adding in a few of these:

• Cardinal Dolan of New York was apparently meeting with the staff of Chris' office the day that Pope Francis' interview with America magazine was published. Cardinal Dolan related that in response to that interview, a member of the New York press had asked him why it seems like the church focuses so much on issues that the Holy Father has indicated should not be our biggest priority. I thought his response was incisive: "We don't. You do." These sexuo-cultural issues consume our modern society, and are therefore often used to caricaturize how "out of touch" the church (specifically the Catholic Church, but increasingly this charge is leveled against evangelical Christianity as well) has become. Yet Cardinal Dolan's succinct reply can only form the smallest part of our response. We instead have to continually draw the attention back to the Good News we have to share, which we can only do effectively as we live out joyful lives that are transformed from death to life. 
• Chris turned the tables on a Scripture that Catholics who've had to defend our faith know by heart: "You are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades shall not prevail against it."  Now, it drove me crazy that he insisted on repeatedly pronouncing it /HAYDS/ instead of /HAY-deez/, but that did not distract me from the point he made about it. We usually consider that the church is under attack by the world, by society, or by our adversary, the devil.  But the ancient understanding of Hades, rather than the fiery torment that we think of (and - my input - which was surely the sort of image that Jesus meant whenever he referred to "Gehenna") was simply the place of the dead. The image which Jesus is using is that the place of the dead - and by extension, the culture of death - cannot withstand the assault which the church should be making upon it. We are not to be on the defensive about these issues which our society upholds as the ideals of freedom and love to which we should aspire rather than the "restrictions" which the church places upon us. Rather, as we experience our transformed life in Christ in the joy of the Holy Spirit, we must share this life by living closely among those around us and letting them see for themselves what a difference this hope brings about in us. Then the gates of the stronghold of death will not be able to stand against the resurrected life in which we share, and we will deliver the victory of love and life to those imprisoned by the culture of death..

In a nutshell, then, as Pope Francis has emphasized, we must focus first on being transformed in Christ's love, and next on sharing that love with those around us. Then we can allow the Holy Spirit go to work to change the things that are internal strongholds of sin and death in the lives of those whom he has delivered/is delivering into new life in him.

suddenly

feeling really old and wasted.

(for future self-reference: this post brought to you by Julie's 20-year reunion.)

Today's word

corrigendum \kor-uh-JEN-dum\ - an error in a printed work discovered after printing and shown with its correction on a separate sheet

I love it when a word I've never seen conveys its meaning even sans context.. 

Weakened

I suppose we'll find out here shortly what the ramifications are for my wife's broken tooth. I'm glad she isn't in much pain from it; it seems to have pretty much just broken off from structural weakness due to a cavity/filling. She didn't particularly bite down on it; she was just eating her lunch, happened to be chewing on the other side of her mouth, actually, when she felt something foreign and hard. It looks like she lost about half of the crown of the tooth, with the filling still attached to the part that broke off.

I think we're only going to be on the hook for 20% of this work, but depending on what they have to do it could be 50%. But there is no question about needing to have it fixed.

The answer

Our God is greater! Our God is stronger!
God, You are higher than any other!
Our God is Healer!  Awesome in power, our God! 

And if our God is for us, then who could ever stop us?
And if our God is with us, then what could stand against? - Chris Tomlin

Taking poor care of myself

It's such a challenge to make my own health the priority it should be. I am overdue for a physical and for two specialist visits: one to my nephrologist, who I haven't seen in five years, and one to the urologist I was supposed to visit a year after my kidney stone incident. My scalp is acting up again, too, and I'm out of my prescription shampoo.

But every time I turn around our HSA is empty again. I'm going to have to put more money in it, but then, I expect to have to do that anyway next year just to cover the increased deductible I'm dreading. I suppose I may be buying trouble ahead of its time, but the bad news from today makes it time to think about this even if it isn't time to reach conclusions.

Today's word

nidus \NYE-dus\ - 1. a nest or breeding place; especially : a place or substance in an animal or plant where bacteria or other organisms lodge and multiply  2. a place where something originates, develops, or is located

I'm not sure I've ever heard this word. Interesting etymological history.

The Pledge

I promise I will always leave the darkness for the light.
I swear by all that's holy I will not give up the fight.
I'll drink down death like water before I ever come again 
to that dark place where I might make the choice for life to end. - Michael Card, The Pledge

Sometimes I feel like an angsty teenager, except without the hope that I have a whole life ahead of me. Quite the opposite. I'm supposed to believe I have all of eternity in front of me, and most of the time I do, but the night descends quickly when I don't . . .

Downers

I'm really feeling the recent lack of exercise already. This winter could be rough.

I'm in contact lately with an increasing number of people who don't really know me, but probably think they do, because they think "they knew me when . . ."

I should avoid spending too much time on the Shemya group page on FB. It makes my heart ache.

Poison ivy "fun"

Ooh, ooh, itchy woman, she's got the moon in her eyes.

Hopefully my poor wife's severe encounter with the poison ivy in the back corner of the yard will be over soon. She seems to finally be starting to turn the corner. That area was newly cleared by the power company, and she didn't notice the hairy vines interwoven through the fence when she was reaching across it to get firewood.  I have it cleared out of there now, and judging by the lack of reaction that I have, seem to have taken satisfactory precautions to protect myself. It can take several days for a mild reaction to develop, though, so I'm not taking bets yet.

Today's phrases

cat's-paw \KATS-paw\ - 1. a light air that ruffles the surface of the water in irregular patches during a calm  2. one used by another as a tool : dupe  3. a hitch knot formed with two eyes for attaching a line to a hook

I saw this WOTD and thought, "I know what that is!" Then none of the definitions were what I was thinking of.  I never considered the tool's history, though, which makes a lot of sense.

dog in the manger \'dawg-in-thuh-MAYN-jur\ -  a person who selfishly withholds from others something useless to himself

I had never heard this idiom, nor have I heard of the related fable.

Apple crisp for breakfast

Rationalization - hey, there's oatmeal in the topping
Minimization - it was only two bites
Justification - it's better for me than a doughnut would be
Denial - I can choose a healthier breakfast any time I want to
Blaming others - my wife shouldn't have made such a delicious apple crisp
Blaming the victim - I'd never have eaten it if it hadn't been calling my name. It tasted so good!

Today's words

fimbriated \FIM-bree-ay-tud\ - having the edge or extremity bordered by slender processes : fringed

I knew flagellated - though evidently the preferred form of that adjective is flagellate, with two of three recognized pronunciations being different from that of the verb - but not fimbriated.

cichlid \SI klid\ - any of a family (Cichlidae) of mostly tropical spiny-finned usually freshwater fishes including several kept in tropical aquariums

I ran into this in an article about a newly-discovered species of pufferfish that creates interesting circular patterns on the ocean floor.

Respect for the whole person

And this letter from a mom to her unborn son is why the argument that we should feel free to enjoy whatever consenting adults choose to do is completely specious. I love how she takes responsibility for her own decisions and doesn't shift blame for the entire industry onto the consumer.  Nonetheless, we are called to act with justice, not from a sense of protecting people from themselves but rather out of true respect for them as a person.

It goes hand-in-hand with this letter from a dad to his son.

Plea

God, you know I have been lifting up many others' needs before you in prayer. Please heed this one small request on my own behalf, if it is your will: please safeguard my rest. If not, I will believe that you will use my weariness and my dreams as part of your plan, somehow, and I thank you for letting me participate in your work.

Your grateful servant.

Today's words

minion \MIN-yun\ - 1. a servile dependent, follower, or underling  2. one highly favored : idol  3. a subordinate or petty official

98% of the small population of people who didn't already know this word have been introduced to it by the Despicable Me franchise, which now has an entire fandom built around its minions. But the reason I included this common word when I usually only feature the more obscure is that I was shocked to discover that the connection my mind made to it within the past week - when I was thinking about the high-end cut of steak - parallels an actual etymological link.

lucubration \loo-kyuh-BRAY-shun\ - laborious or intensive study; also : the product of such study — usually used in plural

I took time to share the link this weekend with a friend who has been immersed in multi-pronged lucubrations, but didn't have time then to add it here. 

Also, I'm linking to foofaraw because it's a fun word with a mysterious etymological background.

Nightmare

In my dream, I was trying to convince my stepfather of his abusiveness, for his own sake, in the presence of his brother. Before that, the dream started out with me yielding bathroom right-of-way to him, after which I had to sit amid his diarrhea foulness which was all over the bathroom while I dealt with my own diarrhea. 

• I'm not sure there has ever been a truer dream image.
• My heart is still pounding from the dream argument.

Sometimes we just need to get past it

Last night ended up being chore night at my oldest daughter's place. They had new appliances delivered, and needed help getting them installed. I put in their new over-the-range microwave and did some of the ground work for their dishwasher. A more efficient installer would have gotten both things completely in over the couple hours I spent there.

When I got home there was new television programming on, so I went upstairs to tend to e-mail for a few minutes before going to bed. But even though the whole evening was spent separately, it lacked the dynamic of separate-ness that had marked the previous night. It was way better, and I slept really well last night partly as a result. I don't know that I'm really caught up yet, but I feel better so far today.