Great Expectations ...

 

Would you expect to see A SKELETON driving the car in the lane next to you on the highway? I did not. And it wasn’t like one of those adhesive stickers of Mr. Trump or of Pope Francis that you put on the window of your backseat so people think you are a chauffeur. It was a skeleton, sitting in the driver’s seat doing 55 mph on the highway. I was relieved to know he wasn’t driving alone because a person, the kind with skin and eyeballs, was sitting in the passenger seat. Upon further consideration I recalled that it is, in fact, possible to have a car with the wheel and pedals on the right side of the vehicle as they do in post office vehicles or in most of the cars in England and Europe.

It made me think about the expectations and assumptions under which we are continually operating. When you think about it, the most likely fountain from which our disappointments flow is that of Expectations. Whether expectations are reasonable, or unreasonable, is perhaps the grey area and can be subjective. But I am thinking about it. I was in a situation recently where I expected things to go a certain way… if the environment was what it should be … I thought all I had to do was my very best, be professional, be accurate in my task, and it would all go great. And it did not. It did not because my expectations were not the same as the other people involved in the situation. When the rubber met the road and changes needed to occur, no one was more disappointed than me.

I wasn’t just disappointed that things could not grow and build and move forward. I was disappointed that the people were not of the caliber that I initially presumed. What do you do with that? It shook me up. It made moving forward as uncomfortable as staying in the situation was… and that was pretty rough too.

So, I guess I am saying that the Life Lesson is, place your expectations carefully. People do not always represent themselves for who they truly are. Everyone has a back story. Every person has other influences working on them. You may think all people develop emotionally and personally at the same rate, that they mature and get professional and are people of their word. This is clearly not always the case.

Over twenty years ago, when I was teaching high school, a new student transferred in to our school. He was eager and bright and fit right into his peers… except something happened. In my class, he was initially firing his hand up in the air to answer questions. Then, he stopped. Apparently, another student had gotten to him on the side and dumbed-him-down. To be “cool,” he conformed to non-participation. It was a bummer to watch it happen. At the time, as a young teacher I did not know how to change that phenomenon. I kind of took it personally. However, if it happened now, I would have sliced that dialogue wide-open in class and gave a lecture on, “You only get in proportion to what you yourself bring to the table.” But I did not. Ten years later, I ran into that former student at a social gathering. The minute I saw his face, the disappointment of that whole thing came flooding right back to me. It had bothered me more than I realized at the time. I made a comment to the student about that and he said, “Miss A, people change.” In other words, he wasn’t that guy anymore. He learned to stand on his own two feet but back then my expectations of “high school kids” were, pun intended, too “high.” I agreed with him and thanked him for pointing that out.

The one thing I will say about all those kids that I taught during those years is that I was fond of each and every one of them. I remember their names and faces when I see them around town or on Facebook. I remember some of their stories. But nothing hits me harder than enduring the disappointment when I find someone who has not become the person of integrity that we teachers tried to educate and cultivate. We worked hard, and we expected to make a difference. Maybe sometimes I was just hoping against the odds… if they only knew.

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Dark Night of the Soul

Dickens began one of his most well-known writings, A Tale of Two Cities, with this unapologetic statement:

“It was the best of times, It was the worst of times…”

It sounds so insightful and bold. Even without reading further, your mind paints pictures of what that means in a removed sort of way:

“It was the best of times” paints a scene maybe from The Great Gatsby with a mansion lit for an evening party. 1920’s limousines driven by dapper gentlemen or even perhaps chauffeurs pull up to the curb and lovely young women emerge in shimmering dresses and stylish hats, perhaps with a trinket garnish and single feather. There is champagne, laughter, trivial talk, even gaiety.

“It was the worst of times.” I see a red kettle poised on a tripod stand near the door of a storefront shop in a nameless city. The hollow clank of a nickel as it hits the base of the kettle hurts my stomach. It doesn’t even give the courtesy of spinning and reverberating its own pitiful sound for a moment. Just, “clank.” One, and done.

As humans, we might be willing to negotiate for some tolerable piece of middle-ground between “best” and “worst.” But that was not offered to us; we don’t get to make that call. In fact, what we do get is only (and this is not small) the choice of our own perspective. We can choose to try to spend our lives between soaring or being knocked down or just staying knocked down because, this side of Eternity, gravity always wins.

I picture the scene in City Slickers, the comedy-western movie where three men riding on horseback herding cattle are preparing to have real conversation (which apparently can only happen in the wilderness or near a campfire). The question is posed: “What was your best day and what was your worst day?” The man answers: “Same day.” You feel cheated by his answer, expecting two stories to emerge when in fact, there is just one story – one story with both a dark side and a light side.

On days when all seems bleak, and there is virtually no wind in your proverbial sails, the thought “How can I go on like this?” ambles across your mind. What you do not see, what you lose sight of, is that as you plow through and tough it out, you are being watched, observed by others. You are giving someone else courage, the inspiration to hang in there and make their next good move towards meaning and significance.

I am pretty sure the great Catholic mystics were referencing THIS experience when they named it: “the dark night of the soul.” It is a transition period -and we don’t know how long – that, while difficult, can be incredibly fruitful. But, if you try to read about it in St. John of the Cross’ writings you get kind of circled around by the literary repetition that the whole concept is hard to grasp. (His great work was written as a poem in Spanish, and when it translated to English, it became cumbersome to interpret, at best.) At the outset we can say this experience is not clinical depression. It is something Other. It almost escapes words. It is like waiting for the last train at the Station, knowing it will come, but the waiting can be so wearisome. In his song “Hold On,” contemporary singer Toby Mac assures:

“He’s never early, never late. He’s gonna stand by what He said. Help is on the way.”

The hope that this statement is true is what you cling to through this transition. And if you can remember it is a transition, because all of life is transition, and/or transitory, you can keep a bit of perspective through the rest of the uncertainty.

My current transition period feels more manageable because people keep talking me through it. They are talking. I am talking. They are listening. I am listening. Yes, sometimes people do admittedly say things that are unhelpful or throw me backwards emotionally. But that is an occupational hazard of humans trying to know exactly what to say when there really seems to be nothing obviously helpful to say. I admit that it is in the talking, the connectedness, that I find comfort. Sadly, sometimes I watch television just to see complete human dialogue happening. This pastime links me emotionally with most people in nursing homes … twenty years earlier than I would prefer it to, and it makes me sad.

I could at this point itemize the hardships and challenges that brought me to this juncture – two job changes within six months, a friend moving away, loss of a relative, loss of a dear friend, and betrayal by someone I care about. But for obvious reasons, I need to defer from specifics. So, I will point you in another better direction for understanding how the dark night of the soul works and is different than depression.

She is the ultimate example of “what you see is only part of what you get”: Mother Teresa of Calcutta. She stood only four feet tall but radiated a focused purposefulness seasoned with genuine human warmth. She knew what it was like to be on one vocational path and have her plan de-railed by the Divine Plan as she sat on a train and heard the interior Voice she so loved telling her to serve the Poor. She left a teaching order of sisters to form a new outreach to the unfortunate ones on the streets of Calcutta. She was doubted by some in church leadership. She was hassled by some government officials. She probably had days when everything felt like pushing a large rock up hill in a snow storm. The strong calling she felt when she began her mission remained, even though the Voice that spoke to her initially became more of an almost-whisper. She continued to pray through this dark feeling of almost abandonment. She hung in there. She was faithful. She was fruitful. She was bold.

My favorite Mother T quote of all times was at a breakfast with the presiding Clintons and Washington Politicians. She got up and said, directly into the microphone: “It is a poverty that a child should die so that you can live as you wish.” And therein the message on the Sanctity of Human Life was most directly delivered by the one person no one could say anything bad about. (Although atheist Christopher Hitchens’ later pitiful attempt to detract from her reputation was only demolished by the powerful truth of who she was: a humble servant, doing the business of serving and reminding others to do the same.) No Pope, no bishop, no leader, no statesman could have said it better or more clearly. Her words, in a broken warbly little senior citizen voice, resounded because of who she was.

Amidst her work with the poor in Calcutta, starting a religious order, and doing international speaking engagements to wake the rest of the world up to suffering they could actually do something about, she was going through her own deep, personal suffering. It is the suffering of one who waits, but only hears silence. The world saw one thing on the surface: her extreme charity. The other thing below the surface was this silent suffering, this feeling of almost-abandonment by Divine Providence. Did she have a moment before she left the earth when this experience lightened, or lifted from her? I do not know. But I know as she passed into Eternity she must have heard the words her soul craved, “Well done! My good and faithful servant!” The quantity of people that passed by her casket to pay final respects was innumerable. Probably only the other saint of our generation, John Paul the Second, drew such a crowd in my lifetime.

It is highly unlikely that I will ever become that kind of saint. But I can be the very best version of ME and continue to walk the way as I understand it. One moment of perfection may never be granted to me. A successful ministry may not come from my efforts. I may be denied opportunities given to other people that I would have preferred for myself. The people I love may not love me back with the same zeal. And, I may be the victim of vicious, lying tongues. But if I stay faithful, stay focused, and hang in there, good will come. And for every suffering I have had to endure, I hear the voice of my dear, saintly Aunt Nellie, “Chrissie, love, this too shall pass. This too shall pass.”

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A Time for Ghosts

 

"Do you think our loved ones hear us, do they know...?" the grieving widow asked Patrick Jayne on the TV series The Mentalist.  He, a widower himself, shook his head sadly from side to side and said "No." And she went away sad.

No one should go away sad.  And it disenchants me that they paint Patrick Jayne as so handsome, so witty, and yet so cynical and un-spiritual.  Because he was a former fraud doing seances for money and allegedly reading peoples' minds, when he uses his unique insight and keen powers of observation to help the CBI team solve cases, they portray him as an atheist since he has left all that "spiritual stuff" behind.  It's throwing the baby out with the bath water.  I hate it when handsome men are atheists.  It's like being given an ice cream cone with sherbet, not ice cream, in it:  sweet, but not filling at all.  

He did get one thing right when he said "all people are spiritual beings."  It bugs me when people say "I'm not religious; I'm spiritual."  Actually every single human being is spiritual.  We in-spire (breathe-in) and we ex-pire (breathe out).  The Greek word pneuma means:  wind, breath, spirit.  From this word we get "pneumonia" and "pneumatic."  When we run and grow weary, we say, "I am just a bit winded."  When we stop breathing, when we let our spirit leave our body, the very essence of who we are lives on... somehow, somewhere.  

The Somehow and Somewhere is defined by the various religious systems based on the teachings of their religious leaders.  You and I may disagree on who is right.  But in the long run, I think we might all agree that we entrust ourselves individually and corporately to the Mercy of God.  And it's kind of intriguing when you think about it that we believe how we live as people - good or evil - has a role in where we end up, but we never really think of ourselves as bad enough to not end up in a good place.  (The margin of erroneous thinking here is the mistaken people who have a mental image of hell being "fun" and say they want to go there.  Hell's preview on earth is the disorder and disruption of the flow of goodness here on earth - just listen to the morning news and feel how tiring it is to hear of yet another shooting/ stabbing/etc.  What sane person would want that for eternity?!)   

October is the time of year people turn their attention to the passing of friends and relatives.  Maybe it is because here on the East Coast the trees shed their leaves in preparation for the long, cold winter.  There is a bitter-sweetness to this transition, and yet what I've begun to do to cope (I hate winter.) is to think forward to the joys of next spring.  I plant bulbs and hope the squirrels won't ferret them out.  I make a note of what outside summer equipment needs to be repaired, replaced or re-purposed.  I conjure up craft projects to keep me busy.  I think of the ocean vacation I left behind two months ago and anticipate the next time I will put my chair in the sand and my fancy sunglasses on my face.  I think of the litters of puppies to come in the Spring.  In short, I try to put myself in the mindset of Maria vonTrapp in The Sound of Music when she sings the classic, "These are a few of my Favorite Things."  It is a decisive mental exercise so that I don't get sucked into the winter's clutch and stay there:  The tricky driving.  The earlier mornings.  The snow blower battery that doesn't make it through the whole job.  The cabin fever with 3 dogs, 2 cats and 4 million dust bunnies.  The way one room in my house never quite gets warm like the rest of the house.  The way the wind howls when I am trying to sleep and not worry if the power is going out.  Those are all my reasons for hating winter, and hate it, I do.  Autumn is the natural transition into winter, just as Spring is the natural transition out of winter.  If the life of the people we love mirrors the going into winter, I trust the mercy of God that there is a Spring time, a coming out of winter as well.  But what about winter?

 What started out as an opportunity to honor the memory of those who have gone before us got pirated. The first historical Christian Church (the Catholic Church) celebrates All Saints Day, followed by All Souls Day.  Honoring the holy ones and the ones not as super-holy but still loved by God for slugging it out down here on a daily basis, is good for us.  It turns our attention to the End of the Earthly game and towards the spiritual continuance.  What we do here matters.  Who we are here matters.  What we believe here matters - for out of that believing flows our deeds, how we live here.  Yet, somehow the Halloween tradition started and the attention shifted in a worldly way to ghosts, goblins, and things that go "bump" (slash, rip, tear, etc.) in the night.  What a horrible shift.  

When we feel the presence of spirits that are not at rest, instead of praying for them to be at peace, as we should do, knuckleheads make party games out of it and keep trying to bring them back.  Sometimes when you are trying to bring back Aunt Mildred, you end up getting an imposter demon instead - but I will leave the study of demonology for someone else to tell you about.  Why is it we turn everything that is sacred and important that we don't really understand into a game?  Perhaps we trivialize things to feed our curiosity.  I don't know.  But I want to propose this:  maybe sometimes the things we call ghosts, the memories we have, we create to fill the empty spaces that real people left behind.  A lot of humans are not really good at dealing with emptiness.

I drive by the apartment where my friend Mike lived before he moved south to be of help for his sister during her time of need.  Every time I look at that building I think about him inside his apartment.  Someone else surely lives there by now, but not in my mind.  

I can't drive through the neighborhoods in Dewitt where my close friends used to live.  One of them has passed away and I am missing her a lot lately.  Another couple has moved south to Florida and all I can remember is the happy times having picnics on their back porch, or watching Mother Angelica on tv and eating ice cream together on a hot summer's evening.  It's as if that house has echoes of them and our happiness all through it.  No one else's car belongs in that driveway.... the driveway of the friend who threw me a surprise party when I left a job I loved because I needed a new direction.  I think of the double-wide home my other friend used to live in.  No one else's car belongs in her driveway either.  Or does it?

When my dear uncle passed on, he left a vacant house literally right next to my parents' home. During its empty days, it was hard to drive by it and not feel the hollowness. One member of the family, feeling all of the angst I reference in the previous paragraph, said, "I wish it would just burn to the ground.  I have so many happy memories there."  She was serious.  She couldn't see anyone else being there, because that was where he belonged.... at that time.  I encouraged her to spin it this way:  "Just hope for some young couple to come and buy that house and raise their family in happiness there.  That way the happy just keeps going on...."  When my grandparents' house was for sale on the market, the good people that put in a purchase offer sent a letter to my parents saying how they wanted to make that house a happy place once more, something to that effect.  It was so warm, so kind to have someone intent on honoring the memory of those who had gone before.  

The empty houses are places where our minds place ghosts.  (not that there aren't the Other kind of ghosts, again, story for another day).  I am at the point in life - which I am not liking too much - where everything reminds me of something or someone that used to be alive.  The ghosts are everywhere.  So seeing them on the neighbor's lawn down the street as a decoration is kind of just an annoying cartoon to me.  I am hoping for happier days and new memories.  I am longing for springtime, Easter eggs and bunnies and the hope of rebirth.  I am so "done" with ghosts and winter, even though it is not here yet.  But I do know this, sometimes I am guided by a thought, or an unseen hand.  Sometimes the words of my mouth and the meditations of my heart are heard.  It is then that I know that Patrick Jaynes was handsome, but wrong, Yes, they CAN hear us.  They want to.  They are the home team just waiting for us to finish running our bases.  And as for me, I will run so as to win the race.

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An Ode to Cable Ties

   An Ode to Cable Ties 

(aka: zip ties)

You held my work together when I need it the most:

You secured ugly orange snow fence

to those holey metal posts.

You wrapped around electric posts

when wiring wouldn't do.

How did I make it this long

without the wonders you pull through?

You hold pieces of my world

from the kennels to the cages,

just like you help the farmers

down throughout the ages.

My mailbox flap kept falling, 

you shored it up so I can get my mail

while hanging proudly on the thing

like a bright green tail.

When I discovered Rust-o-leum, I wanted every hue,

but that was before I discovered

the wonder that is you!  

                                              

The Purpose of Re-purposing

 

The ring-tailed lemur with bulging eyes had this caption below his picture on my refrigerator:  "Did someone say, 'yard sale?'"  I smile every time I look at it.  He is kin to me in that matter.

The new word to describe down-sizing one's possessions is "editing."  I don't understand why someone would want to do that.  In fact, I don't understand how someone could do that.  But, I am not a hoarder.  I am a re-purposer.  My entire adult life I have lived on a relatively snug budget so I really do think before I throw something out.  

Case in point:  It is the dead of winter and every time I drive into my garage I have to look at the pots of dirt I am holding for springtime.  Why? This is why: because I'm too cheap to throw the dirt out, hose out the pots, neatly stack them in one corner of the garage and buy new potting soil in April... which, by the way, is what I will end up doing anyways because the dirt gets stale when it winters-over.  So for now I have a long planter of dirt stashed under the gas grill and two tucked under the extra table in the front of the garage.  I have about four or five pots with partially dead thingamajigs in them that may or may not perk back up in a few months.  I  have three empty hanging pots hooked to the side of the garage shelf taking up space too.  Heaven forbid I recycle them and start anew in the spring.  All this by way of saying, I am not an amateur, I am The Quintessential Saver & Re-purposer.

I had to explain to my almost elderly mother the other day that I am not a hoarder.  My mother and my younger sister live like Benedictine monks in exile:  sparse possessions.  I cannot relate to that.  I am emotionally touched by cute figurines at flea markets and bins of tools at antique stores are very interesting to some corner of my brain.  I don't dismiss things; I think to myself:  is there anything I could use this whooziewhatzit for, because it is only two dollars?  

I also "ransom" religious artifacts from antique barns.  I went through a summer where I was re-painting indoor & outdoor Saints & Blessed Mother statues for people.  I picked up a very, shall we say, "homely" 8-inch plaster duo of St. Anne and young Blessed Mary in the back room of an old antique house in Booneville.  I repainted them and gave them to a friend.  I didn't want to keep them for myself because I have ambivalent feelings about St. Anne ... in college another nice Catholic girl told me that the prayer was, "Good St. Anne, please find me a man."  Either the prayer was too short, or she thought I would take just any specimen of XY that she sent along ... no match on either count.  

That same summer, one of my buddies gave me, rather gingerly, a small desktop grotto statue of the Blessed Mother and asked me if I was able to refinish it.  He pointed out that it was a gift from a family member, and was I certain that I could do it?  I smiled in my heart.  Did he think I would paint her with a purple robe and green hair?  I washed that statue carefully and sat it on my kitchen table.  Then I let it "speak" to me.  I started with the painting each and every grotto stone a lighter shade of grey than previously.  As I was doing it, mentally taking one step at a time, I found that the prior painter had actually used a dark dungeon-grey color and painted not only the rocks but right over tiny rosettes and vines as well.  I was able to bring those rosettes to the foreground with their appropriate happy shades of pinkish-white.  

When I got to the base of the statue, I painted her feet and added just a tasteful, slight peach hue to her toes.  Then I painted the snake she was standing on.  Again, the prior artist had just washed grey right over that.  She had also been standing on a nondescript globe.  It wasn't just an artistic detail - it was an important theological point that had previously been smeared-over with the all-purpose dungeon-grey. When I painted her hands and face, I asked the important question:  How should a Middle Eastern Jewish woman look?  I finished the whole ensemble and let it sit on my table for days so I could ponder it and finalize any details.  I took out my small bottle of magic finish that adds a slight sparkly sheen to anything it touches, and added that to her gown.  After all, if the Blessed Mother appeared to me in my living room, that is what I expect she would be doing:  shimmering with holiness.  And yes, my friend seemed quite pleased with the result.

So, I am not just collecting religious artifacts or odds & ends at yard sales.  I am expanding my own hobby talents (ie. painting).  Painting is actually a form of spiritual contemplation - I find it very grounding.  But I digress.  The original point was that this concept of "editing" one's possessions is not for me.  I gave away two blankets, a pair of pants, and a lavender colored handbag this past weekend to the local Thrift Store.  I can do that because I feel as if I am sharing my collection with someone out there who needs it more.  But I will admit this:  if I come to an untimely demise, someone who comes to clean out my house is going to name my blanket collection: The Chris A. Memorial Blanket Collection.

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Meet Amelia Bedelia

 Hi, this is Chris (also known as "Bik"). This summer Amelia's mother ("Carmen San Diego") was left behind by her people when she needed them the most ... and she birthed 4 kittens in the nearby woods. A very nice neighbor has been feeding these kittens all summer and looking after them. As you may know, the shelters are FULL to the brim of cats & kittens ('tis the season!).

 Finally, a nearby shelter took Carmen San Diego in ... because she was expecting ANOTHER litter! However, they would not take the kittens. One went to live at a nearby farm. Two are on the loose. And one, well, let's just say Valor, Madeline, Sophia, and Gracie have a new friend at their house! 

Giving a kitten a place to live is fun; the vet bills are NOT. She was taken immediately for first shots & general check-up. ($145) She is healthy but needs two more booster/vaccination visits ... and the spaying surgery. Not everyone has the patience to deal with pets.

 But sometimes, those of us who do could use a little help offsetting this enterprise. Also, we would like to give a stipend to the very kind neighbor who fed them all summer and yet was required to also provide a monetary "donation" when she dropped Mama Carmen San Diego and unborn litter off at the shelter. 

We thank you for your support. Amelia Bedelia is healthy and has the cutest pink nose ever! She knows how to use her litter pan, but then she sits in it because she is used to sitting outside. Amelia and her family say: "Thank you for giving us a home! We were so scared the coy dogs would eat us!

We are on GO FUND ME as "Amelia Bedelia & Family"

Seeing Dead People

 "I see dead people."  That was a great line from a movie.  It's useful in so many ways.  And it is ironic that a culture that often seems to want nothing to do with the Almighty and His ways, really, really wants to talk to dead people ... some sort of assurance that this earthly life isn't all there is.  But they don't want eternity on His terms, so it is easier to write Him out of His-story and say things like, "I'm not religious, but I'm spiritual."  To this latter phrase I usually respond along the lines of:  "This is not news.  All people are 'spiritual' beings.  Whether or not we acknowledge it is the other thing."

But I want to talk about something else for a minute if you permit me.  "I see dead people."  Actually, I've seen a lot of them - too many - lately.  One of my closest friends passed away last week and when I looked at her lying in her casket I thought two things:  First, she would've hated that color of lipstick.  Second, that what I was seeing was really just the shell she left behind.  And her shell had been worn-down by an unnamed neurological disease for the last decade at least.  It took away her ability to walk without tripping due to not feeling her feet.  It took away her ability to sew, which she loved, because she couldn't feel her fingertips anymore.  It gave me pause to think.  What are the abilities I have now that I just take for granted?  If I lose my feeling in my fingertips, my hobby as a writer is done-for, my ability to play guitar is done-for, and my ability to sew is also done-for, although some would question if I had that talent anyway.  Well, since we are here I will tell you that story.

I have a pair of pajama bottoms I had grown unreasonably fond of and so I thought, "What's to stop me from just sewing my own pair using these as a pattern?"  So I went out and bought literally three dollars worth of jersey cotton, blue tie-dye patterned cloth at Walmart and went home to sew.  I turned the old pajamas inside out and laid them on the table to use as a template.  I laid the new fabric on them and then just measured out one inch on each side so I could roll the seam in nicely.  Then I proceeded to take my Brother-at-my-Side sewing machine and sew them puppies up.  Except when I tried to step into them I  had some problem.  There was not enough top for some reason.  So then I sewed a band of material around the top.  And tried again, and couldn't get into them.  My other friend, who is pretty much also an expert seamstress, took a look at what I made and asked me some questions.  Not the kind of questions you like.  Things like:  "What the hell were you trying to do here?"  and "Why do you have a 'fly' on these - on the front AND on the back?" (I couldn't bring myself to cut the extra fabric so I just folded it over and sewed it.)  It took her longer to fix the problem than it did for me to sew it the first time, albeit incorrectly.  My friend that had just passed seemed to love that story a bit too much, so for Christmas she gave me an official pattern for pajamas and some material.  Both are still in the bag.  I'm kind of scarred for life at this point.

I went to another funeral the week before.  (yeah, we are back on that topic.)  And I was sitting in church at the funeral Mass for a man I met once but did not really know.  I am friends with his daughter and her young adult children, who now are grown up and have husbands and families of their own.  The grandchildren were polite and in fact delightful.  And as I was sitting there in church listening to the homily and the beautiful music of guitar and piano (just like I want for my funeral) it struck me, "So this is where It all ends up.  We all end up spending our whole life pretending that it isn't going to come to this point."  I'm good with the idea of spending eternity with God, it's just jumping the ravine from here to there that makes me nervous.  

"I see dead people" is part of my Polish culture.  It has happened to so many people I know that I fully expect to see someone before I pass away.  For example, with my grandmother, she woke up in the middle of the night and poked my grandfather and said, "Staszek, my mother is here.  She is standing at the edge of the bed."  He did not see his mother-in-law there so that was that, back to sleep.  I think it was a few nights later that my grandmother got up to get a glass of water in the middle of the night and collapsed in the hallway.  I have also heard-tell of stories where just before a person passes away, he or she smiles as if seeing someone familiar.  It's Polish, and we stick together, that much I can tell you.  I

will see dead people. In fact I have asked God for who I want to see that would make me most comfortable in the transition.  Yes, of course, Jesus, but I also have relatives that I would like to see.  

Is that veil between Here and There as hard and fast as we think?  Maybe not.  The Irish have a concept they call "thin spaces."  That is where the veil between Earth and Eternity is less like a drapery curtain and more like a sheer.... we feel our people with us, and there is a sense of peace - or maybe a soul has come to ask for prayer so they can complete their journey.  Perhaps they are stuck in Eternal Third Base and need our prayers to "bat them home."  The day I found out my friend Denise passed, I was driving on the road to my house and just felt "her" in my car.  It was quiet - no radio, no nothing, I just felt her there as if spending one more minute with me before she went further Onward.  If you are American, some of this may be hard for your modern sensibilities.  But if you are Native American these ideas will feel like a favorite Saturday sweatshirt in autumn to you.  The Slavic European cultures also have a much more natural acceptance of this because culture and faith are woven together almost inextricably.  Well, except for those from Communist countries, which explains why they can blow people up and not care.  I would like to admonish them: "Just because you think there isn't a hell, doesn't mean you are right and doesn't mean you won't end up there."  

At the last wake I was at, there was a montage of photos of friends & family.  It was lovely.  Then I noticed the 2007 photo of me and four friends on vacation at the beach.  Of the five people in the photo, three of them are now deceased and of the two of us remaining, one uses a walker and it aint me.  For a moment it felt uncomfortable knowing that since many of my closest friends are mostly older than me by a decade, in the natural order of things, I am going to be burying most of them.  That is the price of friendship.  When it ends that way, it stinks to be the last one standing.  I know a lot of people that won't get a second dog once they go through the soul-wrenching agony of losing one.  As for me, that is why I have more than one at once, and overlap their ages.  I will have a furry friend remaining to get my mind of how brutal death seems at the time.

But because of pets dying, most specifically dogs, I  know the exact time I will die.  Well, generally speaking anyway.  Even people who are not particularly religious are fond of St. Francis of Assisi who was so kind to animals that he even tamed a wolf.  It seems reasonable to presume that the Good Lord will put Francis in charge of the pets that go to heaven.  And it is also reasonable that at some point St. Francis, who may be a saint but also will have his patience wear thin when he says, "Lord, it's TIME for you to call HER up here.  She keeps sending her dogs up first and I've got my hands more than quite full.  I need some help."  That being the case, bury me with a box of Kraft Mac n Cheese because Serena has been waiting mighty long for another bowl of that stuff.  St. Therese of Lisieux may spend her heaven dropping roses as "signs" to those on earth.   I will spend my heaven playing ball with dogs.  

In my mind I still see my friend lying in state in her coffin.  And it bugs me how unnatural that is because she would prefer dragging me out to Denny's for a meal and going to the Christmas Tree Shop to wander around aimlessly.  I think about seeing her dear husband at that same funeral home only a year or two ago.  I think about her now in heaven wrapping her arms around him and giving him a kiss like she used to do when the Women's Group would return from vacation.  He would smile like it didn't phase him much but you could tell she was his world.  I think about her telling me how he would never pick up his socks off their bedroom floor.  And I told her that even though I'm not married, I think it was just his way of saying he still needs her.  She could do that one little thing for him.  Every single day.  And that she should just give up yelling and move the laundry hamper out of the bedroom since he wasn't using it for his socks anyways.  I remember the stories people tell me.  So funny.  So raw.  So human.  So full of love.    

                                              

I had a choice - to either start sobbing from the raw reality of all this, or go find some comfort quickly.  So I drove to a local farm-store and walked up to the ice cream window.  I asked her if they still carried Maine Blueberry which is what I had there a while ago.  She smiled and said, "we don't serve ice cream that is dairy-based anymore ... " and I almost said WHAT THE HELL IS THE MATTER WITH YOU? But I stifled the urge.  Did I want Kale-based or beet-based frozen product?  ARE YOU BLEEPING KIDDING ME?  I looked at her and said I would try the cherry something ... on a sugar cone and she smiled and said, "we don't carry cones either..." SONOFBIACH.  GOLDARNFRIGGIN COMMUNISTS.  I don't give a ratz arse if the cup you put it in is biodegradable or styrofoam that will last in the landfill for 150 years.  In fact, in her honor, (just to get even) I am going to throw a perfectly good styrofoam cup in the landfill this weekend knowing that when I needed it the most, the people of this world could not give me some of the comfort that I find in a simple bowl of ice cream.  Because it is very hard to be midlife and keep seeing dead people.

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Rapunzel, Rapunzel - I think not... and The Cat's Astrophe

I saw her for the first time down the street about a mile.  I thought, "No.  I did not just see her here."  She was so out of her element.  She was all by herself, not necessarily safe, and just strutting around like the world was  her oyster.  A week later I realized she was in my back yard.  I looked up her profile on the internet.  I was not mistaken.  She was a guinea fowl.

Then I started to read her qualities and job description.  All of a sudden I thought of the prospect of getting about six more just like her next spring.  She eats ticks.  She kills snakes.  AND ... at 6:15 a.m. every morning she marches around the perimeter of my house, positions herself where she sees a light coming through a window (or just goes to MY bedroom window) and yells:  "Chuck-chuck-chuck"  and then punctuates it with a sound like a scream and a chainsaw combined.  The first time you hear it you can skip your morning coffee.  I'm just sayin'.

She is chilling with the ducks in the back yard.  They march around doing what they do, fairly merrily.  As my friend Joan once said, "don't get ducks.  We HAD ducks growing up.  They eat everything in front of them, and poop everything behind them."  She was not wrong.  However, now I have a guinea fowl on Staff, eating up all the ticks and hopefully killing snakes for me, although I've seen two I wish I had not seen alive... 

Guinea hens, it is said, do not need a coop.  I wonder what the plan is when winter comes, will she hop in the coop with the ducks when it is negative twenty degrees?  What she does now is:  "Roost."  I was helping my neighbor tuck the ducks into their coop one night and I said to her, "Where's the guinea hen?"  She said teasingly, "I think she likes you.  She is always walking near your house."  That was not the question.  She took her flashlight and shot it straight up over our heads.  There was the guinea hen roosting on the black walnut tree branch about 10-15 feet up.  Wow.  It made me wonder, if she falls asleep and loses her grip, then what happens?  Is it like people when we have a dream like we are falling, and JOLT?!  

I have been rather pre-occupied with looking at potential coops if she is still hanging around in a few months when it gets cold.  I just wish I would hit the lottery or something so I could do right by her.  

But she is not the only new-comer in the 'hood.  At the start of summer, a funky looking calico cat showed up after just having birthed a few kittens.  Mostly they lived on the edge of the woods and skittered back into the leaves and underbrush any time her human fan club tried to visit them.  One neighbor took charge of the feeding and counting of the cats.  Some days we thought there were two kittens, other days, three, and then a fourth was reported at the farm nearby.  They reported to her that they had found the kitten "on the side of the road," and she presumed that meant DEAD.  In fact, it was not, it was just, quite literally on the side of the road.  So they took it into the horse barn, and now one kitten has a Place.

I reported to the Cat Coordinator (my neighbor) that I heard on the radio last month the SPCA was trying to place 96 cats.  That would be: ninety-six, as in four less than one hundred.  Talk about a story that is not going to end well.  So Cat Coordinator reached out to the local shelter and after many messages, they finally said, they would take the mommy cat because... by now it was evidenced that she is expecting yet Another Litter.  We saw the male cat come to visit a few times.  I nick-named him "Lucky" for obvious reasons.  The momma cat I called Carmen.  So Carmen and Load #2 ready for delivery got to go to the no-kill shelter.  Three babies remained outside.  My resolve buckled and  I took the young female... reluctantly.

I had to wait until after I came back from vacation because the dogs in my house are avid cat-fans.  I wanted to be home to supervise, and not stick my dog sitter with that nightmare.  So in my living room, I have two big crates for dogs, one dog roams free, and then a medium crate for the kitty. (I should probably just throw the couch out and let them take over completely.)  The medium crate actually looks like a mahogany coffee table with a kennel under it.  Inside the kennel is a layer of potty pads, a small hand towel for her to sleep on, food & water, and a small litter pan.  I give her credit she has made expeditious use of the litter pan.  So Day #1 was just her sitting in her pan all day looking muy nervioso.  Today the dogs have decided that they like, like, and even Facebook-like her.  I have pictures of wagging butts as they jam their heads on both sides of her kennel.  Unfortunately my chocolate-colored spaniel has decided that the kitty is "HERS" - as in, "get-the-hell-out-she's-mine" to the other  dogs. So I supervise my chocolate crab apple very carefully.

Yesterday afternoon, having been the first full day with her, I was quite anxious to get her vetted and cleared so as to not accidentally bring disease into my household.  She got a clean bill of health.  BUT, we had to wait for literally over TWO HOURS on the sidewalk outside the store that hosts the vet clinic.  It was 80 something degrees.  When I finally got to drive us home I could feel my energy ebbing out of me like low tide at its lowest... this morning I woke up and realized I probably was dehydrated with heat stroke or whatever.  I laid on the couch most of the day hoping life would return to me.

Meanwhile, my 84 year old mother is probably calling around to find out if anyone has such a thing as Animals-Anonymous.  I can imagine my out of state family showing up on my front step for an Intervention, if you will, and hauling me off to some psych facility for hoarders.  I kid you not.  My decision to save this kitty from life as a feral, parasite-infested, appetizer for coy dogs was not an easy one.  I cannot take all three kittens.  I can take one. But I remember the story about the kid throwing starfish into the sea.  To the guy who said, "You can't save them all," the kid replied, "You see this one?  It makes a difference to him."  And he flings a solitary starfish through the air into the ocean.  Starfish-skipping, if you will.  And for those of you who know my email address, now you know the story behind it.

Meanwhile, 3 dogs, one cat, one kitten and two birdies later ... I am keeping the Lysol people in business, and the veterinarian will probably put his other kid through college this year with my help.  Next spring, when Princess Sophia has her first litter of the most amazing spaniels ever, think about adding one.  It's the way the dogs pay for the cat food.

                                    

Starving Muskrats in Jersey

 She began crying at her cash register.  My fault, of course.  My shopping companion probably thought she was nuts, but I understood.  I understood completely, and from personal experience.  Except it was not ME who was crying over turtles.  I cry over dog-related conversations, specifically when we talk about puppies that were born to my dogs.  It engages every part of my soul, and my eyes get "notified" and then I start to tear-up, and it's all downhill from there.  But her story was more interesting.  Until it got gross.

It started with a simple question:  "Are you about ready to get off your shift today?"  (If you shop with ME, prepare yourself for conversations with cashiers and other people standing in line.)  The cashier was in her mid-40's I think.  She stated, "I became a gramma today."  I said, rather cautiously because I caught an odd vibe, "Congratulations.  It is congratulations, right?"  She smirked.  She replied, "turtles.  60 baby turtles."  Cool.  Tell me more ...

Her boyfriend works under a bridge somewhere on the Jersey Shore and found turtle eggs.  So he was concerned that the muskrats would eat them.  So he brought home the terrapin eggs.  All of them, I guess.  She tilted her cell phone towards me and I saw the little turtle head sticking out of the egg.  He paddled a bit, and then he SHOT OUT of that egg like a rocket.  A very small rocket, but a rocket nonetheless.

I shared with her the first Terrapin Turtle story I heard in Jersey over a decade ago:  one of the seaside conservation groups collected - or I believe they call it "rescued" - turtle eggs and hatched them at their facility.  The day that they planned to launch them into the salt marsh, they had planned quite a to-do event.  The news media was invited.  The local kindergarten class was invited.  They all gathered at the dock preparing for the Great Jersey Turtle Launch.  Except for one thing:  someone forgot about the seagull colony that was situated on that same marsh.  When they launched the little turtles, those bad-birds came down on that operation for Turtle Potato Chips!  The media did not get the story they wanted.  No one likes to see kindergarteners wailing and crying over a turtle massacre.  Heck, if I was there I probably would cry too.

The cashier smiled.  Then she told me what she fed the turtles.  As my friend LL in my former office at the hospital would say, "Wuuuhhh," as she turned green.  She said, "I feed them roley polies."  If you don't know what that is, do NOT look it up.  They are kind of like the white cut worms that kill your grass from the roots up.  Then she added, like it was worse, "But I can't feed the bigger turtles crickets, I make my boyfriend do that."  Lucky him.

Truly I think it was the most interesting story of the whole vacation which overall was fine, just not very eventful.  Maybe it's better that way.  The only wailing I saw on vacation was the eight year old girl wailing hysterically at her mother:  "I DON'T WANT TO GO IN THE WATER!  IT'S SCARY!  IT'S SCARY!"  The mother said, rather matter-of-factly, "Your father said he'd help you in beyond the waves."  Clearly the mother was in a sun-stroke-induced trance of Idiocy.  I was looking at those waves.  Perhaps you could get out into them, but all bets were off as far as an Unscathed-Return-to-Shore goes.  The waves were pummeling full grown adults into the sand as they tried to crawl back to shore.  (And then, to add Insult to Injury, it dumped salty sand down the back of some people's suits, oh so uncomfortable.)  I am usually pretty brave as far as "jumping waves" goes, but I saw that getting out may produce varying results.  I wasn't feeling like I was 27 years old again, so I just didn't do it.  That little girl didn't want to either.  As far as her mother ... I bet she'd feel differently if her husband picked her up out of her shore chair and dumped her into the Atlantic.  Somehow I think Child Protective Services would agree with me.  When a kid tells you, "NO!  IT'S SCARY!" I think we need to honor that.  

In Search of ... Mice

 

"What do you collect?" my friend Liz asked me on the phone last night.  And for some reason, I was

hard-pressed to give her a good answer.  I started with, "It's like the collections start accidentally...."  And I meant it.  It's not like I ever ran out and said, "I have to have a bunch of these."  I looked around my house and added, "it seems like there are a collection of bird houses that I have happening here."  As I said it, I overlooked the eleven various houseplants that are scattered around my extended living room.

I collect books.  In truth, I have read at least 60-70% of them.  I guess that makes me smart, but I have yet to have any true proof of that either.  I have about 20 scrapbooks of the various pieces of my life - they are filed on the lower shelf of the hutch my father built.  If the house ever caught fire, it would be pets first, then my scrapbooks out the door with me.  I have furniture that is hand-made by my father (a hutch, a TV cabinet, and a re-finished bureau); and I have re-finished bureaus I have done myself that are kind of cool.  I could live without them, so I guess that makes them an official collection .... except for one of them has all of my bathing suits in it... four or five bathing suits and the collection of beach towels, and beach-specific flip flops and sunglasses.  I guess if I have to leave for the beach emergently, I just have to go to One Room, to One Bureau, and pull open two drawers and I will be good-to-go.  And yes, my vacation friends DO make fun of bathing suits "One for Each Day."

Then I have the Christine A. Memorial Lipstick collection.  Yesterday I went through and tossed out anything over ten years old.  Germs. Probably.  Reality is, I only use one or two shades.  I don't know how I got mixed up trying other colors and such and thinking I could branch-out.  Just can't do it.  I also have about six boxes of band-aids now.  The last time I had a rash on my wrist a few weeks ago I was living in dread fear that it was never going to stop itching and spreading so I kept buying more band-aids.  The rash is okay now but I have a heck of a lot of the darned band-aids left over.  Especially since I figured out that the non-latex whatever in these new kinds of band-aids are what was causing my rash to spread.  My wrist gets itchy just thinking about putting one on at this point!

The thing about Collecting Stuff is there's no real one thing I can blame it on.  Back in 1987 when I got out of college, I had one goal in life:  to buy my own dog.  (Oh yeah, and to get a real job.  I guess that was important.)  I had that dog 22 years.  Serena was awesome.  She came to the office with me when I was in full time youth ministry, and came camping with me and so many other great adventures.  She loved kids so she was a great youth ministry partner - and people adored her.  She moved with me from Arizona, to Massachusetts, and finally to New York State.  When I moved back East, my Uncle John took care of her for a few weeks while I searched for an apartment in New York that would allow dogs.  Then, a decade later, when I moved from that apartment to a house, and she was aging, I got a SECOND dog because:  a) I had the room; b) I needed to transition from losing one dog to gaining another; and c) if one dog was great, wouldn't two dogs be fabulous?!?  Then, another ten years later, I bought my own house and started breeding dogs and ended up keeping a puppy from the first litter so I had THREE dogs.  At one point, a couple returned the puppy they bought from me because, as they put it, they were aging (70's) and forgot how busy puppies are.  They were afraid they'd trip on her and fall and hurt themselves or the dog.  So briefly I had FOUR dogs.  Never again, if I can help it, will I have four dogs intentionally.  That is the short road to crazy.  When you go to let them out potty in the morning, it's like the running of the bulls in Spain as they plow from one end of the house to the other with high speed, great zeal, and full bladders.  That was more than I could handle and happily dog #4 went to her proper home with my friend's sister-in-law.

I collected birds for a while.  That is where the "psychology of collecting" is most evident in my history.  I started with one bird in Arizona.  Then I realized there was money sitting on the table in New York if I started breeding cockatiels.  Most especially because when I tried breeding hamsters, I only sold them for 75cents EACH to the pet store.  Cockatiels were more lucrative:  $35 each, at the time.  Now, you would be hard-pressed to find one for under $200.  Since the PETA crowd demonized pet stores for, imagine, selling pets, people patronized them less, and a lot of them closed-out their branch of extortion-for-domestic-critters.  

I did even have the Bird Police at my house once.  She thought she was clever, that I did not know who she was and what she was about.  She communicated with me online about birds and asked if she could come to see my birds next time she was in the area.  She came in with a camera in her hand.  She made some blah-blah about how much she loved birds and asked if she could take pictures.  Hey, my cages were clean and the birds were bright, beautiful, and healthy so I said, "sure."  I was glad to see her go because I feel she was dishonest, I feel that she had some unfounded judgmental critique in her head as she left.  I hope the door didn't boot her in the fanny as she left.

Now, at this point, I've got it in my head that I'd like to breed (which is a more noble term for "collect") Rosey Bourke parakeets which are pretty rare.  I keep surfing the net (the technological part of the obsessing process), and looking at birds, and distances from my house, and cages, and kind of regretting that I sold two cages last year.  Well, they were kind of big anyways.  I had four cages going in that room at one point.  It was kind of like, well, a collection .... You get the point.

This is not an adult problem, this collecting thing.  And I am not blaming it on my parents.  I am just saying that it has kind of been a subtle thing in the back of my head to do all of the things I wanted to do as a child, and didn't get a chance to do.  I am under the perhaps mistaken impression that it is the one luxury of adulthood you get:  to spend your money as you see fit.  But I will tell you the oldest and most lingering collecting-process in my head...

My mother's god-daughter had this cool little Barbie-sized house to play with when we were growing up.  Only it wasn't for Barbie and Ken.  It was for these little toy mice that had dresses on.  And I asked for that for myself, as in:  "Mom can I have some of those mouse dollies?"  And the answer was a bit more descriptive than a resounding, "No."  It was:  "no, I will not have you playing with rodents."  As a kid, you never know why adults get all panties-in-a-wad about certain things.  But this was one of those things.  And I will tell you that now as I have taken to antique shopping and browsing these yard sales in barns across New York, I am waiting to see those mice.  You would think that there wasn't just ONE set of them made, ever.  And no, they were not the calico critter series - they are old mice.  Mice that are at least 45 years old if I had to guestimate.  I am not sure how the mouse house would look, I remember it being a tall and thin Victorian house, as opposed to being a ranch style.  There was no garage to accommodate Malibu Barbie's sportscar.  What will I do when I finally see those mice?  Will I buy them?  As a middle aged woman, do I actually need the mice dollies?  I am not sure.  What is the price on childhood happiness?

I found it ironic that last week my mother was on a rampage to clean up and lay down traps in someone else's basement that had mouse poop in it.  Her war against the mice continues.  Meanwhile, I walk through old barns on Saturday afternoons hoping for a glimpse of Henrietta and William, the Victorian mice that live only in my misty childhood memories at this point ... 

I guess I am most grateful that I don't collect gross stuff, strange stuff, or dangerous stuff like other people do.  Cases in point:  

      

The Nature of Distraction

I shouldn't have been thinking about anything else.  But I was.  I was sitting in the middle of one of the most boring sermons I have ever heard, praying for death.  Well, perhaps I exaggerate.  I was not praying for death, it's just that the mind cannot absorb more than the seat can tolerate.  I was tired of sitting.  I was tired of listening.  I had heard the same thing, oh, at least 50 times in my life.  (I am not counting the first eight years where I was just reading little church books and eating Cheerios in Mass, like every other Catholic kid.)  The sermon had no new insight - which really is the point of giving a sermon at all:  to share insight into spiritual living.

Do you wonder what I was thinking about?  Guinea pigs.  Yep.  I'm in my late 50's.  I've got two degrees in Theology.  I've visited three foreign countries... and I'm sitting in church thinking about guinea pigs.  Because that, is the the nature of distraction.  Distraction, as an enemy of spiritual-centeredness, doesn't have to be about anything important.  It just has to distract you.  That's It's job:  to take you off focus, and consequently side-line you from any spiritual progress or a focused prayer life.  Even if you are not a person of prayer, mindfulness, introspection, or contemplation, focus is tremendously important.  

When you are standing on the pitcher's mound trying to strike out the batter, you must focus.  If you are standing at home plate preparing to swing and connect with the baseball, you must focus.  "Wax on, wax off, Danielson."  It's about focus.  But it was not just about guinea pigs in general.

                                      

About 12 years ago I decided that in addition to two dogs, two cats, and a whole flock of cockatiels and lovebirds, I needed a guinea pig.  Letting me go into the pond shop in Fairmount unsupervised was a bad idea .... akin to letting an alcoholic go into the bar to "just get a ginger ale."  They had a small pen on the floor bedded with light, flaky cedar chips and sprinting around inside were a few guinea pigs.  And, clearly, I needed one.  So I bought one the color of a cottontail bunny, took her home and named her "Charity."

I had her for a few weeks when the house I had hoped to buy two years prior came back on the housing market for sale.  Things moved pretty quickly and my parents planned to come out for a weekend to do some house shopping.  I knew that I had to stash that guinea pig somewhere safe because even at my age, I would be given a lecture entitled:  "Should you really be buying a house if you are wasting money on things like guinea pigs?"  Actually long prior, I had been giving the lecture, "Should I really be not buying a house when I am wasting money for decades on RENT?!"  But, I digress.

So I reached out to my friend, let's call her Penelope, and asked her to "pig-sit" for me for the weekend.  She said she didn't know anything about guinea pigs, and that she had a cat who may not like it.  I assured her that Charity the guinea pig was very gentle, and her pet carrier could be safely housed in  her unused spare bathroom for the weekend.  I would drop the pig off on Friday night and pick her up Monday afternoon.  

The weekend came and went, and so did my parents.  They were none the wiser for my foolish guinea pig obsession and all seemed right with my world.  Temporarily.

I got in my vehicle and drove to Penelope's house and asked her how Charity had done.  I walked into the spare bathroom to see that she had moved the pet carrier onto the floor.  I lifted it up, and wondered why my little pig didn't sprint into the air like they tend to do when they get startled, which is often.  As I set the carrier onto the sink and opened the door, my friend said to me, "I went to feed her this morning and she didn't do much..." and I responded:  "... because she's dead."  

I didn't burst into tears.  I wasn't mad at my friend.  She didn't realize that something as simple as the forced air heat from the vent on the floor could chill the pig and kill it.  They are so delicate.  Or maybe my pig just missed me, after all, I was her biggest fan ever.

So there I was in the middle of a dead-end homily thinking about my guinea pig...  probably because the Bible story referenced a guy who left home to work with pigs, which was not a dream career move for sure.  

I was thinking about how stupid it is that the prices of guinea pigs have gone from $7 to about $40... and the prices of puppies have tripled ... and how it seems nobody is selling cockatiels locally or for less than $200 when I used to sell them for $35.  We can't blame this on the situation overseas.  We could possibly blame it on COVID because for the last two and a half years, people have had time to spend at home and pets make that more pleasant, at least for the children and the children-at-heart.

My intention Sunday morning when I got up and going was to "pay attention" in Church and try to focus myself spiritually.  I have, by all accounts, failed at that yet again for the umpteenth time.  But I will tell you this, if I ever get the chance to give a homily, I PROMISE it will be relevant and as insightful as I can possibly render it.  I will not take the Time or Life of people for granted.  We are here for a moment, and then we are gone.  If we all had a better grasp on that, I think we'd adjust our sails in earnest.  We would live with more purpose and intention.  We would make the words we speak matter.  

I am spending Lent studying up a bit on St. Ignatius of Loyola (founder of the Jesuit order).  And when he wrote the spiritual exercises he urged his readers to begin at the End ... to ponder their death in order to put their life into perspective.  

Today I had an opportunity to clear a slate with someone that I had exchanged a volley of unpleasantries with over a decade ago.  I haven't seen her in all that time and she looked frail to me.  I thought about how I could offer an olive branch while not rolling over on the importance of what I was arguing for back then.  (I do, trust me, have a memory like an elephant.  Forgiving may be an option, but forgetting is not possible.)  Actually even thinking of addressing the issue with her would involve timing and decorum.  I could not afford for it to re-ignite the old fire.  All of a sudden, the other person in the room with us got up and left.  There's the timing.  

I turned to her, in a softer voice and said to her, "years ago, the last time we spoke, I regret that it ended unpleasantly.  I suspect we both were under a lot of various stresses then, and I regret it." She acknowledged that a lot of time had gone by and that the past was behind us, but she said she did appreciate my words.  To be honest, I appreciated being able to get that off my chest after over a decade.  Sometimes, I'd rather be at peace than win the argument.  Maybe I am growing up.  Maybe the good sermons are inside me and I am unfair to expect anyone other than God in my heart to deliver them to me.  Maybe.

But I think I'm done with pondering guinea pigs for now... I'm pretty sure.  

I wonder if the prices on alpacas have gone down.... 

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