The Day My Bones Turned to Dark Emeralds

Posted on July 5, 2013 by John Coleman

Wednesday, July 3, 2013

This morning at 3:50 my body woke up with the off-kilter assumption that the routine was underway. Years ago I responded to such circadian hiccups by trying to will myself back to sleep. Now I prop myself up in bed and practice my trippy marriage of Christian prayer and Zen meditation for as long as it feels right. If my head gets heavy, I lie down and let go. If I’m fresh, as was the case before dawn, I keep going–in this case for sixty minutes.

“Make mine a San Pellegrino water, if you please.” (Szenenbilder aus dem Stück “Der Snob” von Carl Sternheim. Credit: Wikimedia Commons)

For another hour I pecked out notes on my iPhone, planning church work and making a shopping list: pistachios, avocados, San Pellegrino water (aren’t I refined?), pinto beans, soy hot dogs, etc. Thinking at 5:00 a.m. about anything positive or even mundane has a spacious quality. The mind drinks cool draughts of sanity. Wonderful!

At 6:00, as the maples on Shenley Drive took shape in the first light and the neighborhood cardinal chanted his dawn mantra, I took an hour’s siesta. Yes, siestas are by definition an afternoon activity, but I’m taking a semantic liberty. After two hours of healthy wakefulness, lying down again and drifting off with a lovely breeze on my face and arms and a lovely wife beside me seemed more like a nap than a resumption of night sleep. A little after 7:00 I dressed and creaked downstairs to discover a small envelope on the dining room table.

If I weren’t already light and refreshed, the contents would have washed any sludge off my spirit. Son Micah had written me a belated Father’s Day note, full of love and gratitude, and enclosed a Starbucks gift card. Had I not been under the emotional surveillance of Zoloft, I’d have cried. As it was, I rubbed the gift between my fingertips like a feather found on a beach, like a leaf of the lamb’s ear Kathy has growing out front.

One of Kathy’s lamb’s ear leaves.

Driving to church, I decided to record Happy Birthday and send it as a text message to daughter Elena, who turns twenty-five today. One voice in my bush league vocal repertoire is a schmalzy vibrato, and I laid it on thick for my pregnant girl. For a flourish I scooped the last you note.

Elena’s text response: “Thx daddy! U just made me laugh cry. Damn hormones!” At 2:22, when I would normally take a siesta, Elena texted me a recording of my dancing grandchild’s heartbeat. Woosh, woosh. Sounded herculean to me, but what do I know? I smiled, but again, wasn’t verklempt.

Bundesarchiv_Bild_183-13175-0015,_Bergarbeiter_bohrend

Credit: Wikimedia Commons

I never did get a nap. Didn’t get a run in either. Obligations took over. I spent half an hour with a parishioner in a soul-strangling situation and drove home gratified that he and I had extracted a couple veins of grace out of a cavern of darkness. In my chest, joy and depression played Twister.

Close to dinnertime, I received another text message from Elena, which I paraphrase: “Daddy, any chance I could use my ‘I’ve had a bummer of a day and need my daddy’ coupon?” A couple Christmases ago I stuffed the family stockings with coupons written on index cards. Ever since, Elena and her husband Matt have been redeeming them. Elena and a co-worker hugged goodbye this afternoon as the latter was moving to Columbus. Seeing a dear friend leave combined with those damn hormones had Elena’s tears splashing out. So off the load of us went to Perkins Restaurant, where wife, son, daughter, and son-in-law had a pancake-waffle frenzy. Thankfully, the carbohydrates and bummer coupon brought Elena’s hormones back into balance.

Wednesday, July 3, 2013: one ambush of blessing after another. I’m constantly aware that my personal healing from living for years under reality’s fist is taking longer than I’d like, so I’d be a fool to rush this day to a conclusion.

Kathy’s trumpet vine waiting for hummingbirds.

When people I love blossom—even those standing throat-deep in compost—I’m going to stop! Shamatha—calm abiding—in an elementary extravagance: a wife who loves me, though my faults are legion; a daughter and son-in-law in giddy orbit around her belly; a son whose true self emerges more each day after being suffocated so long by addiction; friends and parishioners whose goodness keeps making me pinch myself.

Gladness lives under no obligation to stick around. I remember this constantly. So on days when joy is so thick that no afternoon nap is needed, I wear a wide interior grin of gratefulness. My amen is written by the poet James Wright:

When I stand upright in the wind, my bones turn to dark emeralds.

(Credit: Wikimedia Commons)

Whispering Gratitude for a Dancing Yam and a Cursing Son

Posted on June 30, 2013 by John Coleman

Saturday, June 29, 2013

I’ve been a Lutheran pastor for twelve years now: 624 weeks of sermons, give or take; hundreds of teaching moments, hospital visits, and pastoral counseling sessions; scores of babies baptized, couples married (“let no one put asunder”), and brothers and sisters buried; thousands of hours in prayer; Lord knows how many books read and Bible studies led. I’ve looked into dying eyes and held dying hands.

After all this and more, you’d think I’d have a handle on what exactly I believe in the God department. The truth is, when I pray these days, I feel as though I’m standing at the edge of a Grand Canyon. I’ve no clue how this world is put together and how it works. Some folks I love and respect believe that God has a plan for each of us; they may well be right. The problem is, I grew exhausted years ago trying to figure out what kind of divine plans could include teenagers taking their own lives when old people pray for death’s relief. If God does have plans, I’m content for now to be ignorant of them.

“Whatever You say.” (Credit: Wikipedia)

What I am interested in is letting go. My prayers leap into Grand Canyons, trusting that the Eternal Loving Now will see to both flight and landing. I open my mouth, but not much comes out. Lately, I’ve spoken three sincere words: “Whatever You say”—now and forever. I keep a framed photograph of Mister Rogers on my office wall. Yes, Mister Rogers. I tore it out of a magazine. At the bottom of the photograph is a quote: “Frankly, I think that after we die, we have this wide understanding of what’s real. And we’ll probably say, ‘Ah, so that’s what it was all about.’” Amen.

Crappy Fred Rogers photograph on my office wall. (Original credit: Pittsburgh Magazine)

I also pray “thank you” a lot, but it’s no easy gratitude. I don’t believe that God looks at one father and says, “You know, I think John could use a break. I’m going to cure his son’s heroin addiction” and looks at one mother and says, “You know, I think Mary could use a good soul smashing. I’m going to give her son brain cancer and take him slowly.” My current narrow understanding can’t abide this brand of lordship. Each “thank you” I pray is whispered out of my chest and clutched throat into an extravagant, Grand Canyon Mystery. I cry the same way.

For a long time, sadness had the upper hand, but lately, gratitude has been winning. While gladness is hanging around, I’m wallowing in it.

This morning during yogurt and applesauce, I looked out at the backyard. Wife Kathy grows flowers, food, and foliage. Days go by when I forget to notice. Occasionally she takes me by the ear for a tour—that was yesterday, in fact, immediately after we got home from her colonoscopy and EGD. Who would want to assess begonias after taking such a plunging? That’s my wife.

Breakfast view.

Kathy’s foliage, neighbor’s shabby-chic garage.

What Kathy calls her puddle. What dog Watson calls his drinking fountain.

Garage ferns, etc. End of tour.

Kathy after the procedure and yard tour, cat and old K-Mart box fan looking on.

This afternoon I met with several church families and was struck by their goodness. These mothers and fathers treat their kids with love and tenderness and try hard to raise them with wisdom. As a father who’s messed up in the past with great intentions, I’m moved by parents who do their best. The hosts also served pesto-jack cheese, mango salsa, a great Southern Tier wheat ale, and brownies Mom thought were a bust—I ate three on my way out the door and could have taken out more had I not been worried about a diabetic coma.

I followed the brownies with a forty-five minute siesta on the old pre-school mats in my church office. Gracious! I slept for fifteen minutes at most, but woke feeling as if my whole body had a cleansing breath.

Back to this morning: I read a great quote by Charles Kuralt in Booknotes by Brian Lamb. Nappers everywhere should put this on the refrigerator:

I met a fellow in Key West, which is undoubtedly our most laid-back American community. [His name was] Clyde Hensley. Clyde says human beings were not made to labor from dawn until dusk. Human beings were just made to hang out. . . . Human beings were just intended to be on this earth to enjoy themselves a bit. It’s a philosophy you don’t hear much in this intense, work-oriented society of ours. But to the extent that one can survive without working from dawn to dusk, I’ve about decided Clyde is right.

Charles Kuralt (Credit: Wikipedia)

My future grandchild, presently the size of a yam, has rhythm. Sparkling daughter Elena reports that her virtuoso husband Matt was strumming his guitar by her belly, and little tater started to dance. I suggested they play Marvin Gaye and see if the kid’s got soul.

Elena with dancing yam bump.

A fellow blogger responded to one of my recent posts with a great quote by Calvin Coolidge, which will go in my worrier’s file (nice blog, by the way, and worth checking out: unexpectedincommonhours).

If you see ten troubles coming down the road, you can be sure that nine will run into the ditch before they reach you.

Another fellow blogger lives one block west of my house. Her dachshund Sophie tools around the neighborhood in a doggie wheelchair. (Her blog, Our Dachshund Sophie, is also a winner.) All this dog has to do is roll by, and my mood’s improved for an hour.

Neighbor Sophie

One last thank you: as Kathy and I relaxed at Starbucks this evening, son Micah texted to ask if I’d bring him home a coffee. “Ur order, sir?” I answered. (If you’re easily offended, skip his response.)

A decaf venti vanilla latte with 5 shots v[anilla syrup]. And can u poor the amount of vanilla powder in that an asshole would do? Just unscrew the cap and dump a shit ton in.

Why does this toilet-mouth text merit thanks? Because this is reality. I’ve got my son, and he’s clean, working full time, and a joy to be around. So I’ll bring him a disgustingly sweet latte. Bawdy heretic that I am, I chuckled at his two shots of vulgarity. My answer to his request? “Ok, rumphole.”

A clean Micah in good spirits, modeling a new sunhat.

There’s more, but you get the idea. It’s dark out now. Lying in bed soon, I’ll be leaping into a Grand Canyon, whispering gratitude to the Eternal Loving Now and trusting in a safe landing.

Second Report from the Ark: Talking Adultery, Contemplating Adrenal Fatigue

Posted on June 21, 2013 by John Coleman

Day Three

Wednesday, June 19, 2013, 5:02 p.m., again at Lyndora, Pennsylvania’s Panera Bread. An extra shot of decaf espresso has my iced latte tasting almost like coffee. I wish caffeine didn’t make me jittery; a jolt would be great right now. After waking from an hour’s nap at 3:30, I felt refreshed at first, but now I’m either tired again or nervous. With my temperamental constitution, it’s tough to tell the two apart.

“Noah’s Ark” (1846) by Edward Hicks. (Credit: Wikipedia)

Overall today has been peaceful. Forty-five minutes of prayer this morning followed by another thirty after lunch have helped. Still, I wonder if naturopathic physician (I never heard of it, either) Dr. Lauren Deville, NMD, might be describing me in her TucsonCitizen.com article “Adrenal Fatigue: The Epidemic of a Stressed Out Society.” If I’m tracking the author correctly, adrenal fatigue works like this:

Your adrenal glands, which sit atop your kidneys, pump out epinephrine (a.k.a. adrenaline) in response to stressful situations.
Dr. Deville writes, “One of three outer layers of the adrenal glands produces another hormone meant to offset the effects of adrenaline and ‘buffer’ the body against the effects of acute stress. This hormone is called cortisol.”
If you experience a normal amount of stress, the adrenal glands can produce enough cortisol to keep nerves and fatigue at bay. If your life is chronically stressful, the adrenal glands get whacked out. They keep epinephrine coming, but cortisol slows to a trickle.
The result: adrenal fatigue, and with it depression, PMS, insomnia, sugar cravings and hypoglycemia, low blood pressure upon standing, and recurrent infections.

So those blobs of chicken fat on top of my kidneys might be making me siesta obsessed? (Credit: Wikipedia)

I’ve covered all these symptoms, including PMS, which in my case stands for panache-less male syndrome. It’s occurred to me in the past that maybe my adrenal glands were firing out large doses of epinephrine long after stressors had gone away. Turns out I may be cortisol deficient.

Rembrandt_-_Moses_with_the_Ten_Commandments_-_Google_Art_Project

Rembrandt’s Moses looking like he’s about to clobber the Israelites over their heads with the tablets. (Credit: Wikipedia)

Or hypochondria might be the problem. Whatever. Tired, nerved up, goofed up, or lacking cortisol, I’m grateful for this day. While my teaching partner Jeff was back home in Warren doing a funeral, I talked to eleven middle school students about the commandments against adultery or stealing. I decided not to pamper them, to just say what needed to be said. The essential message: don’t cheat (obviously!) and don’t get obsessed with sex, not because God gets especially enraged when people sleep around, but because the whole business will end up making you miserable. Lutherans don’t claim to know the mind of God, but we believe that God gives the Ten Commandments out of love, not in an attempt to be a divine buzz kill.

“The Only Known Photograph of God” by Thomas Merton. (Credit: photobucket.com)

Funny thing, middle schoolers get awkward and squirmy listening to a balding, pale, fifty-one-year-old pastor talk about sex, mainly due to the yuck factor. We got through the lesson thanks to the little candy bars I gave them to redirect their discomfort. Teaching thou shalt not steal went quickly, and we closed out the afternoon session by thinking about not robbing ourselves. For prayer time, they drew chalk self-portraits and thought about how they can take loving care of the person God made them to be.

Kind and healthy kid, fond of hair sprouts.

Accurate: wonderful minimalist kid, brainy, chatty.

Back now to camp for free time. On Wednesdays at Lutherlyn, we don’t have evening classes. The kids head into the woods to play campy games, and we pastors lounge in the Ark, eat pizza, and toast the day.

The Ark at Camp Lutherlyn, the site of porch sitting, daily postmortems, and many long siestas.

My job is to pick up the pizza. The fatigue-nerves-hypochondria-cortisol deficiency has eased up, who knows why. I should just learn to accept that I’m a strange man.

Wanting To Be Verklempt After Nappus Interruptus

Posted on June 13, 2013 by John Coleman

More people should go to this joint! 3741 West 26th, Erie, PA.

I’m sipping an iced, decaf latte at Brick House Coffee at 5:19 p.m. Micah’s talking life over with his therapist—a life in progress. Those words triggered my question for the day: should I say in progress or incomplete? The answer depends on whether I’m glad or disgruntled. My aura is foggy and fatigued, thanks to a neighbor whose yard work occasionally collides with my siesta, so for the moment, disgruntled wins. She’s nice, but has the loudest leaf blower and weed whacker on the market. A couple years ago when Micah’s death metal band Festering Pestilence practiced in the Coleman basement, I could nap through their roaring hits “Dead and Leaking” (a tribute to one of the boy’s ex-girlfriends) and “Stench of Greed.” Those were the days! But lawn grooming’s high-pitched wheeee and whirrrr make the maple tree propellers, weeds, and me all toss and turn. I gave up and joined neighbors Joy and Kevin on their porch for a Saranac pale ale, which landed in my belly like a quart of bacon grease. Delicious, but ugh.

Mike Myers as Linda Richman on Saturday Night Live, getting verklempt. (Credit: Wikipedia)

In addition to my cases of nappus interruptus and gut slosh, Zoloft also has a cry trapped in my chest. Yes, I’m a man, and I could use a good blubber. Who knows exactly what it’s about? This is one drag about being on an anti-depressant. Before Zoloft, every day was a swim upstream. I’m much more peaceful overall now thanks to a slim 50 mgs of a chemical, but the sanity comes at a price. Geritol and the Church of Latter Day Saints commercials used to make me verklempt. No more. Tears are rare these days, and I miss them. Anyway, the point: an incomplete cry is exhausting. You try to sigh it out, cough it out, talk it out, whatever. Nothing works. (I’d be glad to hear from any of you who can relate.)

Fortunately, not all of the day’s incompleteness has been a bummer. After prayer this morning, I surveyed the downstairs bathroom, which wonder-wife Kathy is tantalizingly close to finishing. Check out the photographs for a summary.

I’d probably be okay with this for a year.

Until the privacy curtain is finished, we shower at the rodeo.

Bathroom door still under anesthetic in the garage. From this angle, it could be art.

Since the bathroom is functional in all necessary ways, I put it in the joyful, in-progress category.

Shower, sink, toilet: yep, it’s a bathroom, all right.

Until the door is finished, a curtain fit for a brothel.

Micah himself is obviously in progress. Possibly for the first time in his post-pubescent years, he’s taking employment seriously. (A good friend went to bat for him, got him a job. Gracias!) Nearly one-year clean now, my twenty-one-year-old slides into the passenger seat after a day of painting, lights up a Camel Wides Menthol, and groans. It’s a good tired. For once I’m grateful for cigarette smoke, which smothers his lathery stench of work.

Near the complex where Micah’s painting, a multi-generational gaggle of geese congregates. When I dropped him off this morning, I thought to myself that the youngsters are in progress, which can be a gentle way of saying, “Kind of stupid.” One of them was sleeping in the middle of the road, and as I approached, one of the adults waddled out and said, “Hey, Scooter, get your downy rump off the road.”

Come along, Scooter.

Don’t judge me. I’m “in progress.”

One of the rooms at Brick House. (They also have micro-brews!)

From my corner of the Brick House, I laugh at a gosling and a man-cub, but if ever there were a work in progress it’s me. Or am I incomplete? Eh, whatever. If there’s one thing I’m not, it’s a brick shithouse. I mention this because Micah asked me about the term’s origin as we passed this coffee house on the way to therapy. I told him it probably comes from the image of a structure that’s stronger than necessary for its purpose. I was right, basically. Check out straightdope.com if you can’t find anything else to do with yourself.

Off now to fetch my son from shrinkage. He’ll light up, I won’t cry, and we’ll drive home, each thing we speed past praying in its own way for an aura that shimmers hope and growth into the ambiguous afternoon.

A brick . . . outhouse, surrounded by trees putting out a hopeful aura. (Credit: Wikipedia)

Worrying Possible Setbacks into Certain Hiroshimas

Posted on June 11, 2013 by John Coleman

It must be ten years ago I first read the Parable of the Chinese Farmer. Yesterday during my routine of worrying possible setbacks into certain Hiroshimas, I thought of the wise farmer again and tried to imitate him. Here’s the parable as retold by Evelyn Theiss of the Cleveland Plain Dealer:

Credit: Wikimedia Commons

A Chinese farmer gets a horse, which soon runs away. A neighbor says, “That’s bad news.” The farmer replies, “Good news, bad news, who can say?”

  The horse comes back and brings another horse with him. Good news, you might say.

The farmer gives the second horse to his son, who rides it, then is thrown and badly breaks his leg.

“So sorry for your bad news,” says the concerned neighbor. “Good news, bad news, who can say?” the farmer replies.

In a week or so, the emperor’s men come and take every able-bodied young man to fight in a war. The farmer’s son is spared.  

Good news, of course.

Horse watching (Photo credit: @Doug88888)

And the parable goes on in the reader’s imagination. Obviously, I’m supposed to find peace in the steady, centered farmer. With as much as I pray and rest my soul and body at midday, you’d think I’d be radiating om. Ha! I was a wreck. That is to say, I am a wreck. There you go. There’s the truth.

I don’t make this confession to get sympathy. I tell the truth here because I’m pretty sure I’m not the only person who genuinely appreciates all the beauty he sees each day but also occasionally feels like he’s walking through the world without the protection of skin.

To all of my sisters and brothers who are addicted to worry, who take far too much to heart . . . grace and peace. We’re not alone.

Letter to Myself After Morning Coffee at Starbucks

Posted on June 9, 2013 by John Coleman

Dear John:

Stop, breathe, and pay attention to the man who’s cleaning up the parking lot. Receive into your spirit his stooped back, pinched shoulders, and twitching left hand. Take note lovingly, “This guy did not win the genetic sweepstakes!” He didn’t create his body small and flawed, like millions of his misshapen brothers and sisters who endure their days, trying to make something of a life that never forgets its vessel urges strangers to look away.

Remember, as you stand by your car in the holy space of shamatha (calm abiding) and watch this brother walk to his next scattering of crushed cups and cigarette butts stuck in sunbaked butter pecan ice cream, that he’s important, no less a child of creation than you because you have a title and he bends his face to our leavings for money. You’re an ass if you suppose, even fleetingly, that the trashy, puke smell he takes home in his nostrils makes him less beloved than you.

His life may be glad, happier than yours, in fact. Maybe he goes home to an embrace—maybe not. Whatever the case, stand a few extra seconds at your car, breathe again, wait until he’s a far-off dot in a fluorescent-orange vest, and imagine. His days are difficult. The brain under his bristle of red hair may stay wakeful at 2:00 a.m. and pray that a companion would hold his trembling hand and know that it would never fail or betray. The hands that pick up the occasional sopping diaper are probably as faithful as your hands, John, which lift the bread and cup and presume to bless.

Watch. Witness. This is the purpose of your siestas and prayers: not that you’ll be centered and refreshed for your own sake, but that you’ll honor—shamatha!—your stooped brother’s residency in this spiritual city. Honor him? Yes, because he’s blessed you. He’s helped you to understand yourself. You’re thirty pounds overweight? Poor boy!

Finally driving off, you see his brother one parking lot away, wearing Dickey work clothes and peddling a crappy ten-speed: a skinny scalped man with jaw thrust forward like Billy Bob’s Karl in Sling Blade. Around the next curve, another towering lumpy brother stabs litter. Don’t forget, these men’s homes may be content. Or they might stare at the ceiling in the longing twilight, clenched and miserable.

Let them all be beneficiaries of your silence, John, recipients of your long Sunday naps and hours of prayer. Don’t assume to know their suffering, but always make room for it as you sip your privileged pinot noir on the front porch. Take compassionate shamatha into lonely places. Acknowledge with tenderness the forsaken. Hold their troubled flesh in your awareness.

Jowls Hidden by Beard, Baggy Eyes Behind Black Glasses

You can’t and shouldn’t get up in their business and suppose you can fix their lives. You don’t even handle your own life very well. Still, no matter whose face you look into, you can recall that God, too, beholds that face. You can say hi. Of course, you’ve now got bags under your eyes as well as the start of your grandfather’s jowls, but if you smile—not sanguine and flakey, but real—and pray, “Let my eyes say, ‘I wish you gladness,’” maybe the soul behind that face you pass by will wonder in the wordless way souls do, “Could I be loved? Might gentle grace mysteriously abide under all the sloshing garbage bags and behind the furrowed glances of indifference? So, maybe I’m not alone?”

Somehow or other, if your worn eyes can say any of this, especially to the unlovely, then celebrate. And if all you can do is notice a man with a twitching hand moving on to his next mess, then you’ve done one invisible piece of work in the stewardship of the universe.

Thanks for trying,

John

So What If There’s a Toilet in My Breakfast Nook?

Posted on May 20, 2013 by John Coleman

Great Tile Work for a Rookie

For over two weeks now, the one-and-a-half-bath Coleman house has been down to one toilet and no shower. Kathy, who wears the family tool belt, decided to remodel the full bathroom. As the project got underway I was on retreat at the Abbey of Gethsemani in Kentucky, so the hygiene situation at home wasn’t an inconvenience. (Kathy got by showering at Best Fitness, where she works out; Micah’s tidiness-optional these days.)

Since landing back in Erie last Saturday, I’ve showered at a wellness center with a really long name where I work out. Neighbors Joy and Kevin are also great about our invading their shower. The point is, we’re all staying as clean as usual.

In Kathy’s Lounge, a Cabinet with Deodorant, Tools, Hand Cream, Paint, and Brassiere

The house is suffering, though. Parts of the bathroom—impeccably clean toilet, sink, and cabinet—are camped in the breakfast nook during the delay. Various cosmetics and toiletries are cohabitating with tools and paint on a cabinet in the room off the bathroom Kathy has named her lounge. A few days ago Micah needed Neosporin for some chaffing somewhere—I didn’t want to know—and dug through a tote parked beside a table in the dining room; after several minutes he stood up with a sigh, waving the puny tube above his head.

Even the garage hasn’t escaped the mess. The bathroom door, hidden under decades of paint, rests like a pale cadaver across two sawhorses next to Kathy’s puffer, a kind of Yugo among sailboats. Micah’s spent hours sanding and burning away at that door and still has more work ahead.

The Puffer’s Garage Mate

In short, our bathroom—6’ x 8’, tub included—is out of control, like a puppy not yet housebroken, leaving surprises everywhere. Kathy had hoped to have the shower working by the time I returned from Kentucky and arranged a few days off work to give herself a reasonable shot, but remodeling projects are always booby-trapped. Estimate your time and expense, then double both, and that’s where you’ll end up, if you’re lucky.

Once Kathy returned to work, progress slowed considerably. Messing with caulk and tile is tough after you’ve nursed chemotherapy patients for ten hours. As I write this post on Monday, Kathy plans to throw herself at finishing the shower on Wednesday, her day off.

Lace Tablecloth with Neighboring Tote, Neosporin at the Bottom

You’d think having one toilet, no shower, and bathroom artifacts strewn about would be frustrating after going-on three weeks, but I can’t bring myself to care. (You might be thinking, “Well, maybe you could bring yourself to help out,” but that would be a mistake. I’m solid with avocados and cilantro, passable with a paintbrush, but an idgit with power tools. We’re all much better off if I make snacks for the skilled labor.)

Why don’t I care? No kidding, it’s the spirit of siesta, the impulse to stop, settle down, rest, and consider. First, I’ve got an incredible wife who actually enjoys swinging a hammer, cutting grass, and planting basil and tomatoes. On a pragmatic level, I’ve got it made. Kathy’s creative and anything but a slouch. So take six months on the bathroom if you need to, dahling! If necessary I’ll go out back, squirt myself with Palmolive, and turn on the hose.

So what about the mess? I’m not fastidious to start with, but in the unlikely event that having a commode in the breakfast nook bothers me, I know how to make it go away: just close my eyes. And Mennen Speed Stick smells the same whether I put it on in the bathroom or my lovely wife’s lounge.

I don’t say this out of any sense of pride or with any pretense: my life is more joyful than I have any right to expect, joyful largely because I pray (really a lot, I have to admit), nap, and breathe. When I stick to this program, most of the complications that would have upset me years ago fall into the it-just-doesn’t-matter category. (For a great expression of that huge category, check out this You Tube video.)

Yes, prayers, naps, and deep breathing! Having a splendid wife and children helps. Oh, and Zoloft doesn’t hurt either.

The One Plant Whose Name Kathy Doesn’t Know Calmly Abides in the Breakfast Nook by the Toilet

Diddy Wa Diddie and a Lovely Daughter

Posted on May 17, 2013 by John Coleman

The Key in Question (Honest!)

Yesterday. Weird. Wonderful. I’d just finished praying, propped up in bed, when daughter Elena’s dog ringtone barked. 8:01 a.m. I’d intended to set my Zen bell app for another fifteen minutes, but duty called. Elena (almost twenty-five) locked her keys in her house. Could I zip up and let her in with my key? Of course. I’d be there in ten minutes.

“Don’t rush, Daddy,” she said. “My boss knows I’ll be a little late. I’ll be at [mother-in-law] Janine’s,” which is two-minute walk up the street. (As it happened, Janine couldn’t find Elena’s house key either.)

Photo Credit: waferboard

So I dressed, fed the animals and, well, rushed, but it still took me twenty minutes to get there. I figured Elena would be on the porch pacing and drumming her fingers on the railing. Nope. She was inside sipping coffee, talking with Janine and cute-as-an-acre-of-daisies niece Shaylee, and so disgustingly not in a hurry that she immediately brought me to myself.

Shamatha—calm abiding. Habit energy’s anxious gravity eased up. I breathed in, breathed out.

“I walked up here, Daddy,” Elena said when we got into the car, “and said, ‘I’m going to have myself a cup of coffee.’”

Elena with Her Handmade Cupcake Piñata

I waited in the car as she let herself into the house, brought back the key, and headed to her car. In the three seconds it took her to get from my jalopy to her (and princely son-in-law Matt’s) Subaru wagon, joy settled inside me. Her ponytail bobbed and bounced; her flowing dress swayed. What a lovely daughter! She seemed in that instant like a five-year-old again—sweetness and light, giddy in the sunshine and wind.

I drove back home to pick up son Micah (twenty-one) and get him to a couple hour’s of community service yanking weeds and slinging peat moss. Along the way I pulled over on South Shore Drive to witness the sun coming through the spring trees on the boulevard.

Micah’s body clock has goofed itself into third-shift mode, so I woke him three hours after he’d gone to bed. In year’s past when he was in the midst of mighty struggles—more on those someday, with his permission—he’d have been a winey little witch, but he got up, ate a bowl of Raisin Bran, hopped in the car, lit a cigarette, and joked with me till I dropped him off. “Wonder of wonders, miracle of miracles!” Boy is becoming a man.

Before driving off, I texted chemo-nurse-wife Kathy, who had told me she expected a crazy day at work. Every now and then I send her what we call a Pocket Note, a taste of gladness she can read over lunch. “Kathy Coleman gets tired and is very busy,” I wrote, “but she genuinely cares about her patients. And that’s wonderful.” As I hit send, I heard the voice of Jack Nicholson in my head: “Well, aren’t you the little ray of sunshine.”

Jack Nicholson (Photo Credit: Wikimedia Commons)

On my way to the church, I plugged my snotty iPhone into the car speakers and listened to Leon Redbone’s rousing version of “Diddy Wa Diddie” on You Tube. (Yes, I know about the song’s double entendre, but don’t care. Want a song that’ll make you want to laugh and dance? Have a go.) It was so good I listened to it twice.

And the day went on like this, blessings lining up on the road before me. Micah’s last-minute therapy appointment forced me to abbreviate my siesta, but even this alteration to my plans didn’t take the shine off the afternoon.

While my son unpacked the meaning of life, I perched two minutes east on West 26^th Street on Brick House Coffee Bar’s porch, nursed an iced latte, and did some church work—what a gift to have a flexible schedule and technology that lets me get work done literally anywhere!

I could go on, but you get the idea. “Life is what happens to you when you’re busy making other plans.” That’s how John Lennon would have described yesterday. If Elena hadn’t locked herself out, the day might not have glowed as it did.

Thanks, my dear, for inspiring Thursday, May 16^th to be full of gentle, mindful sanity!

By the Driveway

Confessions of an Itinerant Contemplative

Posted on May 15, 2013 by John Coleman

I consider it an outrage that I woke yesterday morning with the well-intended but terrible song “To All the Girls I’ve Loved Before” playing in my head. Who sang that? Was it Placido Domingo and John Denver? No. That was another sweet one, “Perhaps Love,” or as Placido sang it, “Puh-da-hahps Love.” Was it Willie Nelson and Domingo? Close. Willie Nelson and Julio Iglesias!

JulioIglesiasAndWillieNelsonToAllTheGirlsI'veLovedBefore7InchSingleCover-1

Okay, Boys, Show Us Those Irresistible Smiles (Photo Credit: Wikipedia)

I wish the tune would go away, but I’m grateful for the thought it coaxed out of me. In their hit, Willie and Julio take on the character of itinerant Don Juans, loving a girl at every stop on tour—oh, brother! Wherever they go, they love. I, on the other hand, am an itinerant contemplative, praying and napping (my two requirements for contemplation, anyway) wherever I go. All I need is a decent spot to sit or recline.

Years ago most midday rest came at home, but now the pastor’s study regularly hosts blessed oblivion, as does the car if I’m faced with a long wait. And, of course, travel has never prevented napping. I’ve taken siestas in cars and on buses, trains, and ships, but never on a plane–too nervous. I’ve probably napped in over half of the fifty states. In the next few years I hope to nap in Europe.

An Office Napping Spot, Set Up in Thirty Seconds

And prayer: I’m apt to pray wherever I can sit down.

Beloved Home Prayer Chair

Pillow That Turns Bed into Prayer Chair

A Quiet Nook at the Wellness Center

Prayer Chair in the Messy Pastor’s Study

View from the Prayer Chair in a 1999 Mazda 626

A couple of places you’d think would be good for contemplation actually don’t work very well.

Lovely Church Sanctuary, Many Seats, But Every Noise in the Building Echoes Here

Beautiful Zen Garden at the Wellness Center, But Hard Benches and High Thermostat

I don’t often need to nap in public, but I’m always praying out in the open. Some people get mad about their doctor being behind schedule, but unless I’ve got somewhere else to be, I close my eyes, sit still, and breathe. I’ve prayed in a probation office waiting room a few times and even managed it in the natter of the 30th Street Station in Philadelphia. In a coffee shop? Yes. In a department store while wife Kathy tries on clothes? Sure. In a library? Absolutely. I used to feel self-conscious when folks passed by, but what for? I don’t mind being known as the pudgy guy with owl glasses who sits around with his eyes closed.

The Library of Congress; I’d Pray This Reading Room (Photo Credit: Wikimedia Commons)

When this long, cold spring on the shore of Lake Erie breaks, I’ll take the show outside, too: the front porch, back patio, and Presque Isle State Park are all in the running. In fact, if I had more time today, I’d find some shade at Presque Isle and chase down an hour’s siesta with half-an-hour’s prayer. It’s sunny and 77 degrees. The rest of this week won’t be so nice, but before long I’ll have more places to nap and pray than I know what to do with. For now I’ll settle for an hour in my own bed–that is, if I can shut out these playboys singing “to all the girls [they] once caressed.” “And may [they] say [they’ve] held the best.” Ugh!

Apothic Red, Java, and the Weeping Birds of Gethsemani

Posted on May 9, 2013 by John Coleman

I used to make retreats hard work. Stick with the program! Pray, read, worship, rest, walk (or run), and write—this last one has always struck me as okay because writing for me is a way of meditating. This Gethsemani retreat has been different. I haven’t turned my short stay into an exercise in competitive contemplation. Relax, Coleman.

Small Prayer Sculpture in Meditation Room, Gethsemani

I’ve enjoyed a splash of wine in the evening, sitting at my desk, writing, and giving thanks for the cool breeze on my arms and face.

For Medicinal Purposes

I’ve spent a couple of hours each morning in Bardstown, about fifteen minutes from the monastery, at The Java Joint. It’s unique in my experience: trippy, artsy to the eye, but Rush Limbaugh blusters on the radio—thank God for ear buds and Pandora—and, pleasant as the employees are, the coffee’s, well, ugh. Still, it’s been an amiable second home this week. Oh, yes, and free Wi-Fi.

A Writer’s Java Joint Perch

A Bust Vase in the Java Joint Japanese Garden (Suggesting What Many Women Claim, That Breasts Are Like Snowflakes

Painting in the Men’s Room by Cantrell, 2008 (What Are They Putting in My Coffee?)

I’ve also permitted myself a touch of interior grumbling, which is way out of line, considering what a gift this week has been. Yesterday morning I visited graves not within the monastic enclosure. Mainly I wanted to see the resting places of Fathers Louis (Thomas) Merton, Matthew Kelty, and Roman Ginn. Merton’s marker was so slathered with sacred litter that I had to nudge the leavings aside to photograph his name. Kelty’s and Ginn’s bore pilgrims’ droppings as well. I felt mildly cheated, wanting to pay homage to these monks I regard as spiritual masters, not look at what amounts to big fat red lipstick kiss marks all over the crosses bearing their names. But, thankfully, these harrumphs were fleeting, quietly scolded into silence by a few good laughs at my own fussiness.

Father Louis (Thomas) Merton’s Grave Marker

Father Matthew Kelty’s Grave Marker

Father Roman Ginn’s Grave Marker

I’ve even enjoyed some healthy irreverence. I have to think that Father Louis Merton is buried next to Abbot James Fox for cosmic reasons. According to Merton’s journals, he considered his abbot something of a megalomaniac, and they drove each other nuts for many years. Yet their bodies rest together, Dom James and Father Louis, hopefully having come to terms.

Contrary Neighbors, Dom James Fox (Left) and Father Louis (Thomas) Merton

My last couple of posts have mentioned the birds of Gethsemani, the singingest flock I’ve ever heard. In all irreverence, I have to say they’re prolific in another common means of expression as well. One photo below shows a chair that obviously serves as a bird latrine. The other photo shows part of a statue called The Epiphany. Lovely work, and at first glance you might think the young Jesus is miraculously crying for our troubled world. Quick, call the Vatican! Ah, well. Turns out that the boy’s forehead is a favorite perch, and the tears are wept by birds lightening their burdens before take off. (How one enterprising sparrow or robin managed to weep into poor Jesus’ eye socket is a mystery.) Everything is sacred, and nothing is sacred.

The Birds’ Loo (I’ll Take a Pass on This Prayer Chair)

An Ambivalent Expression (For Good Reason)

I even used to feel guilty on retreats if I napped for too long. It didn’t stop me, but the voice of fervor and time’s winged chariot hurrying near were always on my mind. Not so now. Yesterday’s siesta, so needful, lasted two hours—two hours of snoring and drooling with abandon, followed by fifteen minutes of staring in a stupor at the ceiling. Lovely! In a couple hours, I’ll rest again, for as long as I please.

This is my last full day on retreat. Tomorrow I’ll head to Columbus, rattle around there for an afternoon, sleep one night in a hotel, then get home Saturday. In spite of the rugged stretch in prayer yesterday morning, this week has been joyful, freeing. Some would say I’ve been a retreat cheat, slinking off to a coffee shop in the morning and sipping wine in the evening. But this has been my retreat.

North American Robin (Just Like One That Wouldn’t Keep Still for a Portrait This Morning, Photo Credit: Wikipedia)

Gethsemani’s birds speak for me, in their singing and in their weeping.

A Napper's Companion

Tag Archives: Prayer

The Day My Bones Turned to Dark Emeralds

Whispering Gratitude for a Dancing Yam and a Cursing Son

Second Report from the Ark: Talking Adultery, Contemplating Adrenal Fatigue

Wanting To Be Verklempt After Nappus Interruptus

Worrying Possible Setbacks into Certain Hiroshimas

Letter to Myself After Morning Coffee at Starbucks

So What If There’s a Toilet in My Breakfast Nook?

Diddy Wa Diddie and a Lovely Daughter

Confessions of an Itinerant Contemplative

Apothic Red, Java, and the Weeping Birds of Gethsemani

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