Same Genre, Different Specifics

The Same Genre, But Different Specifics

We were swapping stories, as my deacon friend and I often do.  We were talking about “God-incidences.”  A recent author also referred to these occurrences as “God-winks” – where something happens that you just know is a little nod-and-wink from the Father upstairs who truly doesn’t miss a trick.  He told a great story of something that happened recently; I chuckled and then told a similar story with the point:  for him, those kinds of things happen in a reasonable way.  For me, those kinds of things always have a strange, perhaps humorous, twist to them.  I’ll let you decide.

The deacon was speaking with another church staff member in the parking lot.  A young distraught woman came across the tarvia with a bag in her hand.  Deacon went out to meet her, presuming she had some temporal need (ie. food bank access) that he could facilitate.  But when he spoke directly to her and she shared her story of a critically ill family member, he realized that she had come for support that was more spiritual in nature.  She reached into the bag and produced a rosary and simply asked that it be blessed so she could give it to her family member.  Deacon prayed with her asking for consolation for the family member who was suffering as well as the people who were affected by this sad situation.  The young woman expressed her gratitude, “Can I give you a hug?” and both walked away from the interface feeling buoyed-up.

So the ministry interface he had was like this:  broad daylight, visibly observed by another team member, situation was clear on how to proceed and no churchy-rules or regulations were bent or broken in the process.  And then there’s the way that my ministry stuff unfolds:  in the dark, abandoned by any sense of personnel back-up in case the person tries to kill me, and I have to use what little good judgment I have left to decide if/how I can help the person. 

I pulled into the church parking lot at 9pm when it was quite dark, but the autumn air had that warm-yet-crisp feel to it.  I was on my way into the chapel for an hour of prayer.  As I almost always do, I make a visual scan of the area before stepping out of my vehicle.  I see a distraught young woman perhaps in her mid-to-late-twenties clutching a stuffed animal in her arms.  She was looking around as if not knowing what direction to walk.  I stepped out of the car and onto what is now the Stage of God.  Somehow I get the feeling He is watching and orchestrating this to see how I am going to respond. 

“How can I help you?” is really the only question to ask at this point.  She steps toward me, still looking uncertainly behind her across the street toward the rectory where the priest works during the day.  She hesitates and then holds forth the stuffed animal.  I want to say I think it was a dinosaur or a bear of some kind.  “I wanted to see if I can get this blessed for my friend who was just put in the nursing home with only a few weeks to live.” 

I’ve been Catholic all my life.  We typically bring things like rosaries, crucifixes or religious statues or holy pictures to a priest for a special blessing.  The user thereof may then find the object helps them draw closer to God Himself.   

So we’ve got a few irregularities in this current scenario:               #1 no priest present or attainable at this hour (unless you are in the hospital and the priest is called in to give you the final anointing blessing); #2  I’m not ordained clergy to be handing out blessings officially like priests and deacons are; and #3 the item to be blessed is not the norm.  So, I’m thinking, wracking my brain, for what I know about the Scriptures that will justify this break with protocols that I’m about to do.  And the lightbulb over my head pops on and I remember that people brought things like handkerchiefs to St. Paul to bless and then they’d take them home and lay them on the sick person as if the handkerchief represents the presence of the holy person doing the praying.  Those people got healed.  So, this young woman is giving me this stuffed animal that she just picked up at the corner store and is going to bring to the dying woman in the nursing home.  At that point, I started seeing the path forward.  I invited her to step into the church.

I took some holy water and made the sign of the cross on the stuffed animal.  Then I asked her if I could pray with her.  She said yes.  I prayed for healing and consolation in her life, and for the Lord to bring His love to her… then the tears came …. she had given over some of her emotional load and went away feeling a little better.  That’s what I had hoped would happen.

As she walked out the church door and I settled into a time of quiet prayer for my own re-charge, I mused how The Leadership would view me doing this – me, a non-ordained woman just following the leading of the Spirit to help heal His people.  Another Bible passage popped into my mind – where a prophet of God was going in the wrong direction and the donkey he was riding refused to move.  He began to beat his donkey, which then buckled to its knees and spoke to its owner:  “Do not beat me.  I can see the angel of God standing before us blocking this path.”  And I got the message:

If God will use a talking donkey to straighten out a prophet in the Old Testament who was going in the wrong direction, why can’t he use me to help His distraught child find peace?

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Do You Know the ....

“Do you know the Muffler Man, the Muffler Man, the Muffler Man?  Do you know the Muffler Man that lives on Drury Lane?”  Oh wait, wrong words.  It’s MUFFIN man.  But I want to talk about Muffler Men.  No, not guys that work at the garage.  Muffler Men is the technical term for those tourist trap markers that are scattered throughout the country. 

Ever since my childhood, I have always been fascinated by these tall fiberglass statues that were built for the mere purpose of attention-getting.  I remember the one painted like Uncle Sam near a car dealership. There was a replica of Abraham Lincoln somewhere in New England if I remember correctly.  There is a Paul Bunyan up in the Adirondack mountains.   An Amish giant man is in the heart of Lancaster, PA, as well. There’s not much to do about them other than look at them and wonder whose idea it was to put it there, how long it will last, and why do I just love seeing them. 

Do I have a favorite?  YES.  Lucy the Margate Elephant is my favorite.  On my first journey to find Lucy, my friends and I were leaving our annual beach vacation and driving up the coast to find her.  Occasionally, there’d be a landmark sign indicating the general direction toward finding her.  However, after about 20 minutes of rambling up the shore roads, one of my dearest friends snapped and said:  “IF we don’t FIND THAT ELEPHANT in MINUTES we are just GOING HOME.  I haven’t seen my husband in four days!”  Well, I hadn’t seen my husband in longer than four days …. Because I’m NOT married…. I’ve NEVER seen my husband, so I was happily distracted to ramble around looking for a giant elephant.

I stopped a policeman who was, oh, probably 14 years old as they all seem to be in the beach towns.  I asked him where the elephant was.  He looked at me like he was more concerned with where the Psych Ward of the local hospital was for me.  Heck, I’m used to that look by now.  He isn’t the first; he won’t be the last.  When he drew a blank on Lucy the Elephant, I just asked, “How do we get to Margate?”  “Oh, just go over that bridge.”  He pointed and the bridge was visible up the street (to my great joy).  My friends and I jumped back in our vehicles and headed over the bridge, around a bend and BAM!  There she was:  Lucy in all her glory…. On a lot the size of a postage stamp.

Lucy was built by land developers as one of three elephants in New Jersey to attract attention.  One elephant was in Coney Island; unfortunately it went up in flames.  (This being a mystery to me because I didn’t think metal burned.)  The second elephant was on Cape May.  It was removed due to deterioration.  When the time came to consider Lucy’s fate, someone played the “Historic Landmark” card and saved her from a fate similar to the other two.  She was put on rollers and moved down the street from her original position to a small lot facing the ocean in Margate, New Jersey. 

You’ve heard the expression that someone who is hungry “has a hollow leg.”  Lucy the Elephant has a hollow leg …. With a spiral staircase in it.  Tourists can climb up to the belly area and walk around – it was quite empty when I was checking it out; however at one point it had been a haven for quenching thirst…. if you get my drift.   The bar-in-the-elephant didn’t work out long term so when she moved to her current locale, she became a tourist spot.  And, yes, I PAID to go inside the elephant.  Through her eye, you can look forward and see the ocean off the coast of the Jersey Shore.  Tourists are also able to go up to the top of the elephant and enjoy the view from the beautiful Indian canopy. 

That day, unbeknownst to me, my sneaky friends went into the gift shop and purchased my birthday present a few months early:  a black & white pencil sketch of Lucy the Margate Elephant.  It hangs proudly in my kitchen to this day.

In my online search to find a few pictures of these silent giants, I came across a website called usagiants.com.  (I think I found my soul-mate.  LOL.)  It turns out, the guy even produced a few dvd episodes about the topic.  I am amazed at the plethora of giants there are.  They are all around us in so many communities once you start looking!  I wonder if there are elves somewhere too?

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I dedicate today’s thoughts to all who are free to have the joy of a child in their hearts when they see something fun or silly.  “It is to such as these that the Kingdom belongs.” (said Jesus)

The Particulars of Real World Math

The Particulars of Real World Math

Was Algebra class useful for you in the Real World?  Just thought I’d ask.  I’m taking a course in a new kind of mathematics now.  No, it’s not an online course.  It’s more of, well; let’s say an “in-home tutorial.”  Remember when New Math came out?  I remember the phrase but I don’t know the difference between Old Math and New Math.  It’s a detail. 
The course I am taking is called “Dog Math.”  It is closely related to “After-Math.”

The principles of Dog Math are all lived in real-world time.  You can use them daily.  See if you recognize these.

Paper Towels.  The number of paper towels needed for cleaning up a spill on the floor is always multiplied by two.  And then you add yelling.  And you then subtract a dog running away with one of the paper towels (which is why you needed two, so that you wouldn’t be left with zero).  It looks like this:  (Px2)+Y-DRA=0+1

Quantity of Socks in Drawer.  How many socks actually in the drawer, minus 10% for the ones that are mate-less because some are on the back lawn or under a bush or snowbank, divided by two = number of pairs.  It looks like this:  (SID-.10)/2 = pairs.

Dog Fur.  In order to calculate the number of years that dog fur remains in a home after the particular dog is located Elsewhere (dog heaven for most ….) calculate the number of years the dog lived in the home, multiply by number of any dogs still living there.  Then take that figure and multiply it by the number of brooms, vacuum cleaners and dust –busters you have had during the dog years.  Multiply that final figure by 100.  You should end with a number that is higher than one thousand five hundred.  Divide that number by twelve months and you will feel better.  But it is still pretty high.  DF=(DLx#ODs)xBVCDB’sx100= FUR Years/12 months.

Thunder Storm Watch.  To calculate how many dogs it takes to sleep through a thunder storm I recommend this formula:  Begin with you in your bed or on the couch + One dog curled behind your knee +  One dog draped horizontally over your torso + One dog on your head.  (Take the number of dogs available and make sure they are utilized to their own comfort level.)  Now multiply this figure by zero.  Because no one really falls asleep during a thunderstorm, with or without full dog coverage. 

Cat Corollary to Thunder Storm Watch.  When located with appropriate number of dogs on couch, be sure that a cranky cat is lying on the top part of the couch.  When that cat steps in between the dogs, gets snorted in the caboose by one of the dogs and all heck breaks loose, again, the final figure will be Zero Sleep, but you add the Yelling Factor in there for excitement.  

The Bone of Contention Theorem.  The number of special-purchase bones available for dogs in the house can be calculated this way:  Purchase same number of Elk bones as you have dogs in the house.  Minus that figure by quantity of dogs minus one.  That is how many bones will be visible and available, causing dog riots at any given time in the house.  It looks like this:  #B – (#D-1) = number of available bones.  This figure should always calculate to:  one.

Insanity Formula.  This formula is tricky in that it involves time which is impacted by Quantity.  There are many corollaries.  It is always calculated by dogs to ensure Insanity of People is the final outcome.  Apparently, we are more pleasant when we are drooling like the dogs.  Basic formula:  #Dogs > #people in household.  Children also use this principle:  #Kids > #parents in household.  The Boomerang corollary for dogs:  #dogs at home - # puppies sold to new homes + one puppy that boomerang back to the home.  The Boomerang corollary for kids:  #adults at home - # of kids launched into adult life + the kid that returns.  The Commotion corollary for dogs:  #dogs at home x N (noise) x RA (Rambunctious Activity) = WN4O (Wine Night for Owner).

Forgiveness Principle.  How many times a true Dog Lover will forgive their dog.  This is an ancient biblical formula that we find so much easier to apply to dogs than people:  70x7.  Even if it is daily, the Person is only happy to do it.

In Search of a Good Excuse

In Search of a Good Excuse

So I haven’t written for weeks and you want an explanation.  Writer’s block, perhaps?  No.  It’s actually a new disease called:  “Springtime Paralysis.”  This disease affects mostly mid-life people who do yard work.  It is probably a disease related to:  “Midlife Basketball Psychosis.”  The latter is a disease mostly contracted by men who, while in midlife, still think they should be on a basketball court with the young bucks.  Inevitably, they pull something – like a hamstring – and are sidelined until they come to their senses and realize, “Hey, I think my body is older than my soul and I can’t do this anymore.”  Common denominators in both syndromes are:  chronological age; youthful mentality; no one with common sense to deter or stop them; and opportunity.

Opportunity presents itself in many forms.  My symptoms start to come on in mid-February when the winter lashes its cruelest blows using snow and sleet and grey daytimes against my otherwise cherub-like demeanor.  Then, the petri dish that incubates my restless soul comes in the mailbox:  magazines from every garden supplier known to mankind.  Ones with bulbs and ones with perennials.  Tall grasses.  Short shrubs.   Giant thuja trees. The shade-lovers and the drought-tolerant.  Blasts of vibrant red, glorious yellow, majestic purple, soothing blue – the colors intoxicate me and I begin to feel woozy.  I reach for my pencil to create a Wish List.  Perhaps “Lust List” is more accurate.  If it makes it to the List, it may make it to the Planning Journal that I draft to map-out my garden.

Do not be impressed that I have a Planning Journal for my gardening efforts.  It is strictly a memory aid to help me because inevitably I dig out this year as a “weed,” some great thing I planted last year as an “exotic.” (regarding anything officially labeled “exotic,” please add five-to-ten dollars to estimated costs.) For example, I was given many peony tubers this year from a friend, so I had to map where I planted them lest I start tearing them out next year or mowing them down before they become what they are destined to be.  Do not vote for my sanity by saying:  “Oh, come on now, you would never do that.”  I would.  I’ve done it.  How someone can lose roses, thorns and all, I do not know.  But I am not alone.  I suspect that my lawn guy also has been part of the back-asswards process of mowing down what I put in.  Now I have driveway markers indicating when the young trees or shrubs went in.  It is so much easier now - it cuts down on me grinding my teeth every time he mows the grass.

I would be remiss if I didn’t share the Iris Story at this point.  One fine summer day I came home to find not one, not two, but seven large, black, filled, 30 gallon lawn/trash bags lying in a heap on my side driveway.  Question marks danced around the cartoon of my head.  Did the town crew clean the drainage ditch in front of the neighbor’s house and leave the junk there?  Not a chance.  Did someone drop their lawn cuttings?  Or was it a dead body?  With great reserve I peeled back the corner of the bag and then I recognized many, many iris tubers.   A lightbulb went off in my head:  my friend was having her yard cleaned up…. I called her husband.  He said, “Oh no.  They should’ve gone to the landfill.”  His wife was out of town, so I called her on her cell phone:  “Hey did you have your yard worker leave iris bulbs for me?”  “Yes.”  “How many bags?”  “She was supposed to leave two.  She was thinning them out for me.”

Hoo boy.  When your yard worker doesn’t know the difference between “thinning” and “utterly purging,” you are in for heartache.  I broke the news gently:  “They left seven bags of irises.”  The response wasn’t stunned silence, it was immediate profanity.  And rightly so.  Two days later my friend came to my house and began inspecting the contents of the bags because mysteriously her expensive hostas had disappeared from her home’s landscape as well.  They were not in the bags.  Just a million irises…. Only some of which I proceeded to plant in my valley.  The hostas never turned up.  That summer was the beginning of my body starting to feel chronologically challenged.

Then I did a very dumb thing.  The other morning when I woke up –with plenty to do already on my work list – I felt absolutely compelled to get the statue of the Blessed Mother moved from the far back of the property up into the perennial “garden.”  Well, it’s not truly a perennial garden yet, but I am trying really hard to make it one.  Moving the statue six years ago to its extended location in the far back involved three very strong Protestant young men.  That was my first clue.  Moving it to where it is today involved my 4-wheel drive vehicle and me, myself, and I.  It would serve as an important revelation of my physical capabilities at my prime long ago to, at this point, note that in high school I was “clocked” for the Presidential Physical Fitness Awards doing the flexed-arm-hang for negative three seconds.  That means I have less-than-zero upper arm strength.  Did I lift that statue two weeks ago?  Yes I did.  Do you remember the cartoons where people lift something or pull something and they end up with gorilla arms that hang longer than their whole body length?  Yep.  That’s me today.   You may not be able to physically see what happened to my muscles and tendons but I am putting a dent in the pain reliever bottle to help abate the “mild, yet incessant, discomfort” I am experiencing for two weeks straight.  That maneuver, plus raking and pulling weeds for close to two hours finished me off.  Lesson learned.  Maybe.  I won’t be heroically lifting volkswagens off of innocent victims any time soon.  I’m pretty sure I burned up the reserve of adrenaline with the raking of the garden.

All that being said, it’s been kind of tough to be inspired to write when all I want is a couch with no dogs on it and a hot pack draped over my arms.  <Picture me hoisting gingerale>  Here’s to a great gardening season and blooms all summer long!  It will be worth it. I just know it.

The Life of Martha ....

The most profound statement I ever heard Tim Allen say was this: 

“We found the one woman in the country who actually enjoys cooking and cleaning, and we threw her ass in jail!?”  He was speaking, of course, of Martha Stewart.  Like the woman that the Pharisees “caught in the very act of adultery” and dragged before Christ to be judged (they thought), we realize with very little astuteness that a man also HAD TO BE INVOLVED.  So why not more about the man?  In fact, since that culture considered men higher life forms, why not just punish the man?!  I mean if he was smarter, then he should have been more morally responsible, right?!

I want to admit that despite her detour into the shady world of insider trading and time in Sing-Sing or wherever it was, I really respect Martha Stewart.  I think, I hope, she is an example of “do what you love, the money will follow.”  Meaning, I hope she loves what she is doing because she is doing it so fabulously.  I can barely clean the one house I live in!  And I don’t get paid to tell people how to clean or what to plant when. 

I subscribed to her magazine for a year and then stopped because I just never found enough time to read it cover-to-cover as it deserves.  Even when she was otherwise occupied behind bars, the magazine kept being generated with the same impeccable quality I had come to appreciate.  Quite mysteriously last year, the previously expired subscription re-appeared.  So now I have a bunch of reading to catch up on.  It will be a good vacation or rainy-day-read when I am not cleaning up the debris that the new puppy is making in my house, around my house, and in my life in general.  (A debris that I feel privileged to clean up after because the sun, in fact, does rise and set around that little dog.  Someday the AKC will agree with me… even though he does have a tail.) 

May I please take this opportunity to poke fun at one thing in the magazine, though:  Martha’s schedule.  Initially I counted it a privileged revelation that she let us in on what some pieces of her real life looks like.  It was the same kind of privilege, I reckoned, that was bestowed on me when Ciocci Helen gave me the recipe for her Polish Easter Babka (bread).  Ciocci had not given the recipe to anyone else because I practically promised my first born to her in order to get it.  Then I made the bread and found out what a tremendous amount of work went into it.  I understood why she didn’t just photocopy the recipe and pass it around:  she wanted you to “get it” that it was a thoughtful labor of love that literally took ALL DAY to manufacture. 

That is where the similarity to Martha’s Stewart’s personal schedule dissipates.  I am not sure that Martha is working as hard on her schedule as I am on MINE!  Martha may have two or three great estates worthy of being airlifted and put on a hill in Glocca Moira or Wales, but she also has a support staff to help her out.  Let me run the contrast portrait for your entertainment:  we have been a total flood zone in Central New York for the past month.  Not “flood” like New Orleans.  Just “flood” like- um, let’s go see if we’ve got water in the basement, or if all the sump pumps on the shelf are ready to go just in case.  “Flood” like, do I want to take that country road at night and risk it might not actually still be dry to pass?  “Flood” like, why is there an entire flock of Canada geese standing around in my backyard having breakfast and SWIMMING on my grass?  You get the picture.  So the other day after work, I put on my work jeans and climbed up on a ladder to unplug the top of the corner gutter with a gardening claw.  I did not need Martha’s schedule to remind me to clean the gutter:  I knew it was plugged because the water, instead of draining down, was spurting up over the top.  I just managed to snag a few leaves with the claw.  Water surged up into the 40 degree air, splashing my face, going down the front of my jacket inside-and-out, soaking my jeans and wetting parts of my shirt.  It was too cold to even use profanity.  My job was just to hang onto the ladder until I heard the slosh of the water re-routing itself downward and guzzling through the appropriate pipe.  I am wondering if these are Martha-moments, or her staff gets to do them?

It was curious to me, for instance, that only once in the month did she list:  groom the horses.  Um, I’m no equine genius but I think the horses need a brush-out on a fairly regular basis.  I horseback ride once every decade and expect that when I jump astride the horse, someone else has been putting the time in on a regular basis to groom, ride and train this horse so there are no “negative events” when I go out for a trail ride.  One of my dearest friends had a horse that she was crazy about but kind of got distracted with other things and didn’t see him as often as she had hoped.  He was up there at the farm doing what horses do all day:  eating, hanging around, making piles, winking at the girl horses and living off the land.  We went up to visit him and put him on cross ties in the barn to prepare to groom him.  She walked around front to give him a kiss on the forehead and apparently he held some deep grudge against her for the life of Reilly he was living because he bowed his enormous head downward…. and then rammed it up into her chest.  If that was me, he would have knocked me on my keister.  Has Martha had any of those moments?  Or does she shield us, the innocents, from the raw negatives of her life?

I love her birthday reminders on her schedule.  I have those on mine too.  Except they don’t remind me of anything until after I have failed:  I fail to buy the card.  I fail to mail it on time.  I fail to order the present on Amazon early enough so that it makes it.  I fail to bake the cake the day before because I have a meeting of some sort (church, veterinarian, grocery shop, etc.).  Really, I owe one big THANK YOU to anyone that I am supposed to get a birthday card to because I’ve missed everybody’s birthday, including Mother’s Day, Father’s Day, Grandparents’ Day, Bosses’ Day, and all my dogs’ birthdays at least once and no one reams me about it anymore.  I guess I have to have at least one fault, right?

It is easy to see that Martha has got the organization thing down to a science.  Yet, so do I… except I can’t always execute the plan.  She has it written on one particular day in the fall “plant bulbs.”  Where I live, either it rained that day or some other priority of the urgent trumped my original plan.   I have an apple tree that bears apples once every two or three years.  When those apples “come in,” boy, do they ever!  I am making apple butter it seems for two weeks straight with every free moment I have and often late into the night… only to have two of my critics say, “we don’t eat a lot of butter because of our cholesterol.”  I had to educate them that there is NO cholesterol – or butter, for that matter – in apple butter.  Another commented, “this should be less spicy,” to which I replied:  “um, that would be apple SAUCE.  The point of apple butter is to spice up your toast or your roast!”  Bottom line, when the apples come in, there’s not a free second to be popping bulbs into the ground hoping for a spring showing.  You just wait for Spring, and try to trick mother nature by putting the bulbs in as soon as the ground yields enough to let you.  Then you wait.  And you watch for the squirrels.

I am surprised Martha doesn’t write more about “waiting.”  Waiting is an essential part of gardening, cooking, and living off the land.  Even raising dogs – as I do – requires an inordinate amount of time waiting.  One of my dogs made me wait over a year before she was “in season” to breed.  Then the weekend of the puppies’ anticipated births, I thought I would outright perish with all the waiting.  I am a big reader, and was way too stressed to read.  I could just walk around and pace, like expectant fathers used to do in the hospital baby-delivery lounges.  The dog kept going in and out of the house.  Then once outside it seemed she couldn’t do what she wanted to do.  And then I got it.  She thought the pressure meant that she had to eliminate.  She didn’t realize – and neither did I – that the pressure at that very moment would bring forth Puppy #1 on the back lawn … well, it would have, if I didn’t pop his forehead back in and walk her into our cellar quickly and then encourage her to push her firstborn son out into my waiting palms in the warmth of our home.   Yes.  He was worth the wait – and he is the one that we kept.  His official name is:  Prince Valor of Morning Glory Acres.  This year I have to plant the morning glories.  It wasn’t on Martha’s calendar to remind me, so I guess I’m on my own.

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Operation: "Without Complaint"

Operation:  "Without Complaint"

I found it an odd penance that the priest gave me so many years ago.  I probably had told him that I am guilty of the sin of complaining.  I am sure that all things considered, I am not in a minority in that bad habit.  But the penance was hardly a penance to me.  It wasn’t, “Say three Our Father’s and four Hail Mary’s.”  It was more to the point of my spiritual illness:  “think of three things you are grateful for this week.”  I was in my late 20’s at the time and at least I had the wherewithal to realize I was doing something that was wrong.  Most people get caught in the rut of complaining and don’t realize how destructive it is.

For those of you who may be stumbling over the concept of penance, let me get that out of the way.  Penance doesn’t “make-up” or “un-do” something we’ve done wrong.  The extreme and somewhat frightening monastic practices of the Middle Ages left us with a very distorted view of penance…. And I’m not even sure it was as widely practiced as we were led to believe by secular history textbooks.  I would more readily equate penance with a man who gives his wife flowers after he hurt her feelings.  Flowers don’t make the harsh words un-said.  But they are an important gesture that speaks volumes when presented sincerely.  They say, “I stepped wrongly in the dance of our relationship.  Please let us begin again.” 

When a priest suggests a penance to a person it is with the aim of putting the offense in perspective.  It is well-assigned when it is related to the sin.  For instance, only a fool goes to confession and thinks (as the movies suggest) that he can confess to a murder and somehow get away with it because the priest “can’t reveal what is said under the seal of the confessional.”  You can bet that the penance for murder, the gesture of wanting to make it right, is going to be:  “turn yourself in to the police.”  If the penitent says, “No can do,” then he isn’t trying to make things right, is he?  He’s just trying to make his guilty conscience silent.  Confession isn’t magic – it is helping a life get back on track to someone who sincerely wants to make the change.

Back to complaining.  People complain about a lot of things large and small.  The weather.  The politics of the day.  Families.  Work.  In essence, all the things of our daily lives, including at times the very things that are blessings to us…. like our children and our material things, etc.  So it is very fitting that a person who wants to change should consider what blessings surround them -  “Blessings without number,” as an old hymn says.  Yet, sometimes being asked to do something right doesn’t quite sink-in.  Due to a lack of reflection, which is probably proportional to the speed of life, we often only half-do something we could do better at.  I got my chance.

My family asked me some years after that original scenario in paragraph 1 if I was happy.  And I said, “not really.”  I’m not a glass ½ full person.  Neither am I a glass ½ empty subscriber.  I just think, with all the possibilities, the glass isn’t full enough.  So I was just registering my dissatisfaction.  To be fair, I was dating a miserable, controlling human being that was stressing me out.  I wasn’t feeling like my typical self because I had begun trying to “make things work with us.”  I wasn’t in my zone of fulfillment and I didn’t see anything other than relational (and my emotional) disaster if we made that relationship permanent… as he was pushing for.  He needed a green card.  He kept saying, “It is easy to get married.  Just take the decision.”  I even objected to the word “take” – and insisted it is “make.”  This was very important in that it underscored our worlds-apart perspective:  he wanted me to “take” a decision that would benefit HIM.  I wanted to “make” a decision that would benefit me.  (And I did.  I put him on a bus and sent him back to where he came from.)

Apparently Oprah was on this “Be Thankful” kick for a while too.  So my younger sister, ever eager to straighten me out, said I should make a list of things for which I am thankful.  Sounds familiar to the first story, no?  This time, I intended to turn the tables.  I did not make a list of ten things.  I took a spiral bound notebook and over a period of time made a list of 100+ things for which I was thankful.  And then I began to understand. 

When we realize how great we have it, there is no room for complaining.  When we even look at the unfortunate circumstances or suffering of others, we also realize how profoundly we are blessed.  Even our response of compassion to those who are in lesser straits physically, mentally, or spiritually, can grow good virtues in our own lives.  I like that rendition of the song “You Raise Me Up” by Josh Groban because it reflects our interdependence so beautifully.  Surely there is pain and suffering of various levels for all of us because we live in a world that is fallen and marred by the sins of humanity (including our own).  It is clear that the spiritual law of the universe mirrors the agricultural law of “sowing and reaping.”  If you plant good things, you will grow good things.  If you plant weeds, you will reap weeds, nothing useful.  My list of 100+ things I was thankful for helped me begin scratching the surface of the basics that I so much took for granted.  I began looking at my life with a broader lens and I liked the view.

I think complaining is a vice of the privileged more than an expression of the underprivileged.  I have met people who have lived so simply and have been so very happy.  You just wanted to be around them and have that happy glow rub off on you.  I have also met people who have the best of all circumstances and they do nothing but make lemons out of apples.  I wonder if Gallup Poll or Pew Research has considered doing a National Complaining Comparison Study.  They could send people to a variety of other countries and have them see if they could determine the general mood of an entire country, or if there were groups of whiners in certain cases that were generic across international lines.  It’d be interesting, wouldn’t it?

One of my friends has been doing missionary work in Zambia, Africa for over 50 years, really almost his whole life.  He came for a visit to the States at one point and we went to the Mall together.  I thought it might be interesting for him to see all the new types of stores.  What caught his eye was a kid in a sneaker store whining that he didn’t “like” the type of shoes he was trying on.  He was shocked at the whining.  I really had thought nothing of it, having seen many examples of the American teenager in its prime over the years.  He pointed out to me:  “In Africa, the children are taught a sense of both respect for their parents and gratefulness for anything that is given to them …” It went without saying that the gratefulness was probably naturally spurred on by a position of want or need:  If you have little and someone is generous, you don’t take it for granted.  His observation made me embarrassed for our culture, and it also made me more aware of my reaction to generosity.

There is so much generosity and blessing in our daily lives that most of us are tripping over it.  

The other day a stranger sat at my lunch table and bowed his head before eating his meal.  I thanked him for saying grace.  Really, as someone who owns dogs that practically run each other over to eat their meals – as if they will never see another meal again – I think people can do a little better to thank the Creator for the gift of food.  What if all we had to eat as human beings was like dog food, every single meal the same?  How boring it would be!  Five years ago I discovered Brussels’ sprouts.  They were done really well as they were fried with olive oil and sesame seeds.  I closed my eyes for a moment to focus on the flavor.  If you have eaten regular iceberg lettuce all your life, do that with arugula greens some time.  Just close your eyes for a few minutes and let all your senses focus on tasting.  Maybe in doing this, we have stumbled onto the secret:  slow down & savor and then we will grasp more of how blessed we are!  Of course, let it not go unsaid, that I don’t have to close my eyes to eat ANY flavor of ice cream – I’m one with the spoon and loving every minute of it!

So this is my challenge to you, take a step forward in the Journey of Gratefulness.  Train yourself to operate without complaint.  Perhaps grab a spiral bound notebook and start taking notice of all the things you just have accepted as if they were your personal due.  They are not.  They are blessings and we should feel so happy.  Then let that “happy” glow out of you and help others.  Shut off the evening news and become yourself.  Filter out the negative.  As the sign says:   “Live the life you love; and love the life you live.”

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I dedicate today's writing to Fr. Bill J.  Thanks for the good "penance."  It took 30 years, but I'm "getting it."

There's Got to be Clowns

There’s Got to be Clowns

Tonight the world-renowned Ringling Bros. & Barnum & Bailey Circus performs its final show in New York City.  When I heard this news on the radio this morning, my eyes misted-over a bit… well, okay, I started to cry.  I have so many happy memories of the circus.  The circus is something you do with someone you love – your family, a close friend, a date.  You can’t be disinterested when you are sitting on the bleachers trying to figure out which of the “rings” of activity you are paying attention to and you remember why people use the expression, “It’s a three ring circus around here.”  I think if I had ADHD, I would melt-down at the circus.  But I don’t, and so I love just letting my attention float from one arena to the next.  I don’t demand myself to absorb it all, any more than a child has expectations of what he/she is going to “get” out of any particular day at the playground.  To use a religious phrase, “you let it minister to you.”  And that it has done for decades.

I take my hat off to the many selfless people who have brought this form of entertainment to us over the years.  They have chosen to live a truly transient lifestyle so that others could be entertained.  They live in trains and trailers, always on the move.  Their off-season homes are something they get used to leaving when the Ring Master calls.  I read a fascinating article once in Catholic Digest that talked about a priest in Florida who devoted his ministry to the circus people.  How cool is that?!  (plus I bet he got great tickets and heard awesome stories!)  My friend Mary once told me that the families of volunteer firefighters are like another layer of a big family.  I pondered that because we say that about our faith communities, too, sometimes.  So I imagine the circus is even more so like that:  you have an understanding of the sacrifices and challenges that are unique to your profession and you can respect and support your colleagues with a level of comprehension that is beyond most of us.  Ie.) I’ve ridden in a train, but never lived in one for months. 

I think the personal enrichment factor for them is that they get to do what they absolutely love.  Sometimes that thing is bizarre – like putting a flaming torch down your throat.  I can honestly say I’ve never woken up in the morning and said, I think I’d like to soak a stick in some foreign substance, light it on fire, and see if I can put it in my mouth without burning my lips.  In the same regard, I have honestly never longed to get face-to-face with a Siberian tiger or tried to train a grizzly bear to ride a bicycle or the like.  But I honor the fact that someone, somewhere, in fact does wake up in the morning and say:  “this is what I want to spend my time doing.”  All of this has served to bring levity and joy to families and friends, to get our minds off partisan bickering and elections, and to help the beauty of our imaginations remain engaged by wonder.

The word is that “ticket sales are down.”  I do not think that is because, as some have asserted, they stopped using elephants in their performances.  Although I’m sure it was a factor.  I remember when I first moved to Central New York someone told me that back in the day when the circus came to town on a train there was a big parade from the rail yard down the streets into the venue in the city where the circus would actually be held.  I wish I had seen it – the concept of a circus parade of that caliber is so wondrous to me.  And, yes, the elephants would be what I was MOST interested in seeing.  (I could insert here a spirited monologue on my resentment against judgmental, ignorant people who presume that any trained animal is abused.  Frankly, if you’re traveling with the likes of elephants and tigers, etc., you HAVE TO GIVE THEM A JOB by training them so they don’t go all Marley-dog-whacko on you.  It is true for dogs;   they need to be constructively busy or they will make their own negative-busy.  Why wouldn’t that be true with elephants, tigers, bears or even monkeys?  Hence the phrase: “engaging in monkey business” when things go crazy.)

My best guess is that ticket sales are down in the circus in proportion to the raising of interest in other things.  Shall I go off on the over-the-top demands of youth sporting programs here?  Or perhaps we could talk about the explosion of countless forms of social networking for adults and kids alike (twitter, facebook, snapchat, and plain old email, etc.)?  We have so many means of communication it is in defiance of logic that we remain such an underdeveloped generation when it comes to true heartfelt understanding.  Maybe we could interject the idea of the dissolution of the traditional nuclear family as we once knew it (George, June, Wally & the Beaver)?  In the current generation, you only give attention to pretty much three things:  1) what absolutely demands it – like work or school; and 2) anything that is connected to keeping those things going – groceries, parent teacher conferences, soccer practice; and 3) whatever you elect to do to get away from those demands.  Perhaps just as the slogan “The family that prays together, stays together,” was evidently true forty years ago; we could also posit that “The family that PLAYS together, stays together.”  And the latter hypothesis is why I grieve the loss of the circus.

As a child, I was raised surrounded by my parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins all pretty much in a 20 minute radius from my home.  I remember one of my uncles taking four of us cousins to the circus when we were younger.  It remains as important a memory to me as that of riding the mini-bike with my younger cousin sitting behind me, helmet-clad, holding on to me for dear life.  She trusted me to drive safely and that is why I am the only family member with whom she would ride double on the motorized bike we all loved so much.  It was in these interactions of leisure and levity that we all built the relationships of love and trust we enjoy today.  And into these relationships, some of the cousins have brought spouses, and then their own children.  I was raised by the village before the politicians even claimed it as their idea.  And I am a better person for that.  If I had my own children, it is what I would want for them as well.  I maintain that events like the circus were an important particle in that mosaic of love.

The other great loss with the finale of the circus genre is the loss of an outlet for some spectacular talent.  It was the place where people of unlikely forms of talent fit rather handily:  trapeze artists, tiger-tamers, motorcycle stuntmen, and so forth.  It was also a place where the unusual variances of animals and humanity could be observed and appreciated without spectators being labeled as bullies or people who were politically incorrect.  Perhaps more than one person who felt out of sync with the larger set of society packed a bag and said, “I think I will run away and go join the circus.”  They had some sort of confidence that there would be a safe haven there with like-minded souls.  Haven’t we all had days we’d like to give two weeks’ notice at work and just go do something that was really, really quite different and, at any rate, far more exciting?!

Now at this point, we will have to rely on local fairs and summer festivals to see some of these oddities of nature.  Even the less odd can be a source of entertainment.  I remember walking by a travel trailer at the State Fair and seeing the advertisement for getting a closer look at bears of the North Country.  I presumed it was some sort of a hoax but curiosity got the better of me.  I kissed my money goodbye and walked into the trailer only to find the venue definitively as advertised.  Holy smoke!  What seemed like a sheet of plexiglass separated me and a few viewing humans from not one, not two, but four or five healthy and very large bears.  And they weren’t sleeping either.  Two of them were rolling and playing with each other – which I am sure was a good occupation as opposed to slamming the glass and eating the PEOPLE on the other side – I examined their detail as they played.  Their fur was amazing and thick, even for the summer.  Obviously the trailer truck was climate controlled for them.  But what made me pause was the length of their claws:  each claw was as long as any of my fingers.  They were probably registered with the FBI as lethal weapons.  At that point I found myself making my way toward the exit, my curiosity was not only fulfilled for the moment, it was abated from any need to see bears again.

Lastly, a word about clowns because what is a circus, if not a haven for clowns?  Clowns have gotten some really bad press lately due to a few college kids having some sport by scaring a few kids at a bus stop.  In our ever-heightened vigilance surrounding Stranger Danger, it set off some community alarm when in fact it was young adults just being foolish and, surprise, surprise, not thinking through the consequences of their actions.   I met a real clown recently.  He sat at the bedside of his ailing wife with a devotion and constancy that is only hinted at in Hallmark movies.   I had the opportunity to talk to him a bit and found him to be an incredible and compassionate human being.  He told me some of his thoughts on clowning which, for him, is truly a ministry to people who need some joy.  I found my eyes brimming up, as I pondered the importance of that particular effort.

Clowns can trace their roots at least back to the court jesters of Medieval times.  Their job was to bring levity to the king and his entourage.  Was the presumption that beyond the obvious entertainment value afforded to the wealthy and sometimes noble, the job of being a good king needed some comic relief?  I wonder if we sent some clowns into the Senate and House of Representatives, they would lighten up at lighter things, and re-focus on what is truly important thereby enabling them to come at their interchanges with others with more civility and respect thereafter?  I know, but I can dream.  Maybe it was The Joker from the Batman series that first combined the role of clown with villain.  That has done us no good, because now we can’t distinguish the good ones from the bad ones when we need to (ie. The college kids mentioned above).  Why can’t we have just ONE thing in our world that doesn’t have a bad-side to it?!  Then there are the men who serve as clowns for the Shriners circus and raise money for things like the Dana Farber Cancer Institute, or the Hospital Burn Unit in Boston.  Suddenly, the comic role yields to nobility:  the clowns have become kings.  This role of humor being their message to us:  search inside to see that beneath the pain, beneath the humor that makes sport of life’s incongruities, you too can become a king in your world.  You can make The Difference.

So if the elephants must go, and the trapeze artists must climb down from their high-wires, and the guys who eat fire and the ladies with beards and triple chins need to go live somewhere in a trailer park to drink root beer and eat chips, I make one final appeal:   please, somewhere there’s got to be clowns.  I don’t think we can make it without them.

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