Tag Archives: Spirituality

Oniontown Pastoral #6: Solace of the Red-Winged Blackbird

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Oniontown Pastoral #6: Solace of the Red-Winged Blackbird

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The animals were out of sorts yesterday. I trust them to keep me company on Route 19 and District Road, the last third of my commute from Erie to Oniontown, but the cows and horses were standoffish—or maybe they didn’t want to be out and about.

The farmers may not have let them out of the barns. I don’t know. Having lived in cities all of my life, I’m still figuring out how things work in the country. The next time one of my farming parishioners is around, I’ll ask why no cows were eating breakfast at around 9:00 a.m. on Thursday, May 12, 2016—none. And why did I see only a few horses, and those a football field or more from District Road, which they normally hug?

I don’t know these animals personally, but they seem like neighbors. “Hey, there,” I sometimes say while speeding by. “Morning!”

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Lovely field . . . could use a few cows

With the windows rolled down and warm air rushing in, I couldn’t help wondering if my beloved companions weren’t shy, but bereaved. Did they somehow sense that my destination was the home of a woman who died much too young? Did they know that loved ones wheeled her to the porch the night before she died for ten last minutes of bird song? And did they see through some cosmic collective lens when her daughter held sweet lilacs up to her nose?

No, of course not. Such magical thinking is a little too flighty, even for me. Still, the congruence was irresistible. On a sad morning, the landscape itself seemed depressed.

And cows and horses weren’t the only ones behaving strangely. Other critters kept running across the road in front of my bulbous, orange Chevy. A brief inventory: a squirrel, rabbit, chipmunk, mole, scrawny white cat and a turtle as big around as a softball.

This last pilgrim was the only one I nearly hit. “No!” I hollered, realizing that turtles can’t hustle. Fortunately, a glance in the rearview mirror showed no turtle, squashed or sound—nothing but pavement.

Never have so many road kill candidates presented themselves to me in so short a span. My thought: “Has a portion of the small animal population gone bonkers?”

A metaphor shouted back at me: “Boy, if this isn’t life, I don’t know what is. Some ugly car is always barreling toward some man, woman or beast.” The roads around Oniontown prove that the vehicle often wins.”

Only one species on that choked up Thursday morning reached out to me: the red-winged blackbird, which is my favorite. Red can be sassy, a Joan Rivers in the family of colors, but this blackbird always makes me believe that the Great Mystery is singing hope.

This solace is only in my head, but I’m fine with that. A message doesn’t have to be factual to be true.

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Credit: USFWS Mountain-Prairie on Wikimedia Commons

Ten minutes before I reached my destination, four red-winged blackbirds passed just above my Chevy. I close my eyes now and see them again. Their red sashes at the shoulder are peace and gladness, maybe because their canvas is impossibly black. The yellow fringe is a smile and a wink.

How many of us gathered around the deathbed? Fifteen? And what exactly did we pray? I don’t remember. Words can do only so much when parents have to bury their child, short of fifty, and when a truck like cancer can be slowed down, but not stopped.

What do you say from a pitch-black heart-scape? The only prayer that makes sense is a promise. In the end, God will welcome us home.

This promise is a burst of color in the darkness, but that’s all it is, a promise. Why do we fold our hands for prayer? Because, let’s face it, what we have to hold onto sometimes feels slight—a hope that’s as humble as a kiss of red on a black bird. We weave our fingers together and hang on until our knuckles go white.

Or sometimes we join hands when we pray, borrowing bravery from each other.

On Thursday morning we neither folded nor clasped hands. Instead, we rested them on the body, touched the place every one of us has to go. The old promise was so vivid we cried.

Hope, thank God, doesn’t survive on facts. Seeing one red sash of it on a black wing brings on tears, an unlikely share of them joyful.

April Fools’ Day, 2016: A Stimulation Junkie Waits for a Second Grandson

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April Fools’ Day, 2016: A Stimulation Junkie Waits for a Second Grandson

The impulse to check my iPhone has been wicked lately. Of course, today I have good cause.

This very instant (10:42 a.m.) a text message from wife Kathy landed: “Contractions are picking up.” Daughter Elena is the contractor, and grandson Killian Davis Thompson is the contractee. I suppose that would be the arrangement.

The previous update rolled in at 9:22: “They just broke her water. All is well.”

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First grandson Cole listens for his little brother, Killian

Present circumstances are compelling, but I’m checking my iPhone now only a little more often than usual, which is idiotically, pathetically, embarrassingly often. It’s as if the 4.7-inch screen—yes, I looked up the dimensions on the devise itself—will give me what I’m after, which is . . . what?

I could say that I want to calm spiritual restlessness or escape mortal ennui, but the truth is mundane and unflattering and, I believe, pandemic. I’m so confident of the affliction that I won’t bother confirming the commonality of what follows with even a whiff of evidence.

I’m a stimulation junkie. And I don’t like it one bit. Seriously, I’ve got some work to do. How can a middle-aged man who has practiced prayer-meditation for over twenty-five years be so easily and frequently uncentered?

For the last few days, Kathy and I have dog-sat Layla, Elena and son-in-law Matt’s yellow Lab, who is affectionate, but as tranquil as a panicked doe. On our afternoon walks, Layla zigzags as though she is fleeing gunfire. The point: sometimes my soul looks like my grand-dog, aquiver with indecision about where to sprinkle her next droplets of pee. I’m looking wildly about for nothing in particular, or so it feels.

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Layla attempting the old K-9 mind trick: “Pop, you don’t want the rest of your sandwich.”

11:39, and I just checked for updates, even though my iPhone plays a come-hither, noir saxophone wah waaaah when Kathy sends a text. But, hey, I might not have heard.

In fairness, updates are always tapping me on the shoulder or landing like mosquitoes on my ankles. Heaven forbid I should miss something.

I have 568 Facebook friends, which means at any moment a photograph of food porn or an unsexy kissy-lips selfie might show up. Fortunately I have enough self-control to shut off the bee boop alert for each new post.

I don’t do Twitter because the whole hashtag lingo is lost on me. Thank God for small blessings.

But, really, these early years of the 21st century conspire to distract, rush and over-stimulate all of us who let technology and the media govern our habits. Consider:

  • Not only is patience often unnecessary, it’s downright discouraged. Used to be you had to endure a week of suspense and torment between episodes of your favorite television show. Now with enough Doritos and moxie, you can cram a whole season’s twists and turns into one calendar day.
  • I admit it, I’m a Pandora fan. Sadly, my tolerance for a song that gets off to an unappealing start is low. If it’s bland, I hit the skip button. During my teenage years, we Erie kids had WJET 1400 am or K104 fm. If both were playing clunkers, we had to wait it out, commercials, news, and all.
  • Credit cards: the black holes of impatience and impulse. Why plan and save?
  • Back to my iPhone: last night at the Coleman house we wondered if Steve Buscemi was, indeed, the voice of Templeton the rat in a film version of Charlotte’s Web. Shazam. We knew in seconds.
  • My MacBook Air, at my spoiled fingertips right now, dumps most of the information I need in my lap, without a drive to the library and an interrogation of the card catalog.

And so on. It’s hard to imagine what harm there might be in getting what I want when I want it, but I think the pace is injecting my disposition full of adrenaline. When nothing is going, when my head is left hanging with “shave and a hair cut . . . ,” I bob my leg.

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Leg bobbing in coffee shop

This is not good—not for me, not for us. Get ready to roll your eyes, but I suspect that our collective stimulation addiction has fueled the rise of at least one presidential contender, Donald Trump. I keep asking myself why his frightening behavior isn’t blasting him out of contention for the highest office in the land.

Why? Because every day he stimulates us out of our wits. What will the twit Tweet next? Stay tuned. As long as he accumulates delegates, there’s no way we can get bored.

But enough of this sad digression. It’s 12:32, and I’m jonesing for Kathy’s alluring sax and a second grandson.

My Killian is about to arrive! Now that’s a great reason to stare at an iPhone screen. But a goof gnawing on a ghost pepper? Or television news bloopers from 2014? Or worse? Why do I cram my head full of such diversional potato chips?

Later on, when I kiss my grandson’s head and smell the perfume all newborns wear, maybe he’ll birth a new grandfather—a man who enjoys deep breaths and looks at the sky.

Come on, kiddo. You’ll still have the wise before-world on your skin when I hold you. Share a little with your Pop.

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Pop receives before-world wisdom

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Killian suits her. I can’t remember when I’ve seen Kathy quite this beautiful.

 

Oniontown Pastoral #4: The Late Imposition of Ashes

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Part 1: Holy Saturday Evening

Chopped pears bubbled with white raisins and honey—an improvisation to anoint vanilla ice cream for Easter dessert.

Morning would come early. Before wife Kathy and I headed out for the hour drive from Erie to St. John’s Lutheran Church in Oniontown, Pennsylvania, bacon and congealed fat, soaking potatoes and sliced onions had to get from refrigerator to crock pot, along with whatever else Grandma Coleman included in her German potato salad recipe.

While I cooked, Kathy went to the Vigil of Easter at Abiding Hope, the congregation I served for fourteen years and said Godspeed to five months ago. The gracious interim pastor invited me to come, too, but it was too soon to go back.

Ash Wednesday arrived at an awkward time for this pastor’s heart. The last fifteen years have been disproportionately penitential, my topography rich with Gethsemanes. These forty days being mostly unburdened, I haven’t felt like sweating in the garden or walking the lonesome valley.

My ingredients for happiness aren’t exotic. A couple of untroubled hours at home suffice. With clove and cinnamon taking over the smell of bacon and guitar solos leaning into the dark, I pulled up the footrest and closed my eyes. Breathe in, breathe out. Then, without warning, a suggestion of Lent rose into my throat.

How many times over the decades have I refused to cry? I’m not sure why deferred tears surface on warm spring days, when each breeze is the Sacred One cupping my face. Or on quiet evenings, when the moon passes through living room windows, when failure and regret are subjects of past calendars and my lungs fill with the air of glad memory.

Part 2: Easter Sunday

7:00 a.m.: Why the mess? Everything everywhere, owner’s manual and insurance card on the floor, napkins and dry pens by the gas pedal.

Some little expletive had rifled through our unlocked car overnight. Since nothing was missing, Kathy and I agreed drug money was the goal. But lesson learned.

Dinner on low, we left for Oniontown: breakfast at 9:00, worship at 10:00. All was in readiness. The tomb was empty; “the cloth that had been on Jesus’ head . . . [was] rolled up in a place by itself.”

As Kathy sipped coffee, I thought through the sermon story. Notes wouldn’t be necessary. I can never get far from my dad’s last trip to see wife Mary in her nursing home.

They kissed. He rested his lips on her hand. “Come on,” he finally said. “Let’s get out of here.”

In spite of shared dementia, they both realized the impossibility. Mary’s legs were dead. The only place Dad was going was back to assisted living.

“Well, maybe we can get together . . . .” Dad searched his evaporating vocabulary. “Maybe we can get together at the other post.”

“Wouldn’t it be nice to step out on a cloud?” Mary said. “But that can’t be.”

Dad’s eyebrows gathered down—his standard incredulous look. “Why not?”

Dad, who didn’t have one church-going hair in his wavy gray compliment, was proposing heaven: the other post.

My sermon, falling on the ears of many parishioners who had endured loss after loss, wouldn’t be buoyant with resurrection, but hushed with hope. The other post: oh, that we could all gather there, offenses forgiven, injuries healed, fears rocked to sleep like colicky babies.

We were making good time, and my sermon was rehearsed. I can’t remember a more fair Easter morning. The sun was waking up the pale land, telling it to live.

Then, suddenly, I remembered something that placed the fullness of Lent on my lap. Half an hour away from church, the betrayal and nails and the sponge soaked in sour wine lifted on a hyssop branch all caught up with me. If I had consented to tears at that point I might not have been able to recover in time for a triumphant Easter shout.

What I remembered was four years ago. My own beloved expletive—son Micah—was hooked on heroin and owed a dealer $200. Desperate, expecting to be flogged, he rifled through a couple of cars for stuff to sell and scored a laptop and something else that escapes me.

He got arrested, spent a couple hours in jail, then went out and injected melted down fentanyl patches with a friend, who overdosed and nearly died. Micah earned a felony for his trouble.

My son got clean shortly after his one-day crime spree and is now a joy. Anyone who dismisses the earthly poetry of death and resurrection can talk to me.

My teenage junkie once knelt in the middle of West 8th Street, waiting for a minivan to run him over. I have seen with my own eyes the junkie stand and reach honorable adulthood. On the way to Oniontown, though, a wadded Kleenex still next to the clutch, I imagined the punk who chanced upon the car in the Coleman driveway and made a frenzied search.

My boy came to such a place, and it occurred to me that Easter morning’s little expletive was probably loved by somebody. Maybe he or she was a boilerplate creep, but did a parent pray—with face buried in hands, as I did—for a miraculous healing, a decent path, anything?

Familiar landmarks on District Road were a private blur. I couldn’t afford to have Lent—creation aching with needles, wounds, and rancor, lost pilgrims wandering the lonesome valley—crack me open a couple miles away from St. John’s.

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District Road landmarks were a blur.

Breakfast was five-diamond Lutheran. We shouted and sang. When I talked about the other post, my tears behaved, but some of the folks cried on my behalf. I appreciated their help and knew unfinished ashes would rise in my throat again on a still evening of their own choosing.

Oniontown Pastoral #1: My Wife Sleeping

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Oniontown Pastoral #1: My Wife Sleeping

IMG_4284I’ve been going to bed by 9:00 p.m. lately and waking up several times during the night–changes in established rhythms. Wife Kathy and I have pruned home to 1000 square feet. My pastor work has slimmed to part-time to make room for writing. And Kathy cries out whenever she rolls over.

As our friends know, Kathy climbed to unfurl the royals on Brig Niagara. She put a new roof on our old house, remodeled the bathroom, fashioned a patio out of salvaged brick, and planted flowers I could never name.

When we bought our little house, which I call the hermitage, Kathy willed the dingy place into fresh order with elbow grease and doggedness. She has big plans: a vegetable and herb garden with raised beds; a deck cobbled together with wood from a backdoor ramp she will saw into pieces; and, of course, flowers.

Kathy has plans, but as we found out a few weeks ago, she also has rheumatoid arthritis. Questions still outnumber answers. Will medication help? Diet? Exercise? Can the condition be coaxed into remission?

She has swollen joints, particularly at the fingers and wrists, and pain all around. A steroid helps for now, but it’s not a long-term solution. Her spirit still sings. Just now she sent me this message: “I hope you are enjoying your morning writing time. You should try to get out for a walk today. What a lovely day. Love you.”

Lovely day, indeed. Lovely human being!

This morning at 1:48 I woke up, sipped some water, and watched Kathy sleep. She should win awards for the dexterity and variety of her snoring. A couple of exhales in a row, her throat sounded like a playing card being flip-flip-flipped by bicycle spokes.

When I smoothed hair away from her forehead, she started. “Oh, I’m sorry,” I said. For the first time in my life, I heard a complete, discernible sentence uttered in mmms. Cadence alone provided the words: “Oh, that’s okay. You can put your hand on my head.”

So I held her hair between the fingers of one hand, rested the other on her puffed out knuckles, and prayed—sort of. If wanting to draw pain out of my wife by touch, to take it upon myself, counts as prayer, then I prayed.

And if “Oh, my dear” counts, then I prayed without ceasing. How many times did moving a little bring rapid breaths and four or five ows out of her sleep?

“Your hands?” I asked.

“My leg,” she answered.

“Oh, my dear.”

She returned to snoring. I looked at her face and longed for a miracle, but I’m eccentric, a pastoral black sheep. You would expect articulate petitions from a trained theologian, but I pray best by breathing.

Each time Kathy resumed snoring, I drew close again and kept vigil. In our shadowy bedroom, we lay bathed in holy light.

One belief granted me sleep: every cry ripples in the waters of Eternal Love.

P. S. Please stay tuned for further Oniontown Pastoral posts and other explanations and solutions.

Thus Spake the Rabbi

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My stride has been ragged lately, my groove flummoxed. As the poet said, “Nothing is plumb, level, or square.” Or the politician: “What a terrible thing it is to lose one’s mind. Or not to have a mind at all. How true that is.”

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Old buddy Watson, twelve years of family joy

Joy is largely to blame. Wife Kathy and I had friends over the other night to catch up. When eyes turned toward me, I said, “I’m happy,” which took some explaining. During the last couple of years, though surrounded by more love and support than anyone deserves, I have been tired and stressed. Maybe burnout is the word. Against all worldly good sense, Kathy and I raided my retirement funds and bought a hermit-sized home. (“You might come to regret that,” an old colleague said, and I couldn’t disagree.) I left a fourteen-year, full-time pastorate and accepted a part-time call seventy miles south of Erie, right through the region’s snow belt. Oh, and we haven’t sold our big house yet.

We Colemans have either lost our minds or found them. It could be that you have to lose one mind to find another. Since gladness and good sense seldom form right angles, I’m not surprised that my stride and groove—constructs of a neurotic brain—are stepping lightly these days.

I didn’t use these words exactly to unpack “I’m happy” for my friends, but they understood. Forced to choose between weary, anxious circumstances standing in crisp formation or calm ambiguity weaving like a drunkard, I’ll take the latter.

That is to say, I have taken the latter and am learning to embrace uncertainty and surprises. Lately sleep has been whimsical. A new work schedule has taken issue with my long-standing afternoon habit of napping. Like an AARP veteran, I’m reading in bed at 8:30 p.m. and surrendering by 9:00 or 9:30. The result: I wake up at 2:00 a.m., float to the bathroom, return to bed, and abide in a space that is to sleep what free association is to therapy.

Neither refreshed enough to get up nor drowsy enough to disappear, I breathe. Deep breaths, yes, but not those of my past, taken to lift a burden just enough to endure another hour or hush a remark that can’t be retrieved. If insomnia is an enemy, my peculiar wakefulness is a bearer of gifts.

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A bulge on the forehead: “soon and very soon,” Watson

Darkness is upsetting if you’re trying to find something, but it’s a gentle companion if you’re waiting to be found. A few nights ago snoring found me, not my own, but wife’s and dog’s. The sounds, joining for a moment then going their own ways, were blessings. Kathy has been swollen, weak, and achy for the last couple of months, and neither we nor the doctors know why. No matter what noise it makes, her sleep is medicinal. I welcome it. And Watson has weeks rather than months to live. The fatty tumor on his flank is getting hard. The growth on his forehead pains him more by the day. I now hope to come home and find that he has slipped away while dreaming that he and I are going for a run like we did years ago. His snore means that we don’t have to say goodbye quite yet. God bless his kind soul, even our walls and floors will miss him. I think now of his eyes, alive and expectant when Kathy and I left him this morning, and am close to undone.

The first decoration I nailed up in the Coleman’s new home is wisdom from a rabbi, Abraham Joshua Heschel.

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Thus spake the rabbi

“Just to be” in a warm bed next to Kathy; “just to live” one more day with Watson: these are the teachings of wakefulness. My chest rises and falls, each in-breath a blessing, each out-breath sacred.

But my darkness isn’t deceptive. It would never say to a lost soul, “Just to be is a blessing.”

Instead I hear, “One corner of your joy will always be uneven, cracked with grief. Whatever mind you possess, it will never be satisfied.”

In this moment, I close my eyes to learn, invite the 2:00 a.m. wakefulness, and hear the rabbi more clearly. Breathing is grace. I survive on love. And I pray: “When my dog dies, Holy One, please help him not to be afraid.”

Mindfulness in a Driving Rain

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The foundation of happiness is mindfulness. The basic condition for being happy is our consciousness of being happy. If we are not aware that we are happy, we are not really happy. When we have a toothache, we know that not having a toothache is a wonderful thing. But when we do not have a toothache, we are still not happy. A non-toothache is very pleasant. There are so many things that are enjoyable, but when we don’t practice mindfulness, we don’t appreciate them. (From Peace Is Every Step by Thich Nhat Hanh)

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Baby Crash watching common rain, the Buddha looking in

Just now I closed my eyes and paid attention to my non-toothache. My mouth looks like a demolition derby in there, so I can vouch for the venerable Buddhist monk’s counsel. And sometimes I think my soul looks like my teeth—cracked, patched up, cavernous, important pieces missing.

Just now, with open eyes, I took in a full breath and enjoyed the air flowing back out past my throat and through my nose. My body, relaxed and light, isn’t cramped with any of the absurdities my mind habitually puts it through by narrating potholes into sinkholes and possibilities into finalities.

Happiness is fantastic, but okay will do. Hold the drama-trauma, blue cheese, and skydiving, and I’ll likely be fine. My job is to pray-meditate, walk mindfully, and swaddle Overthinking, kiss its spongy head, and shush it to sleep.

Even inclement days are sweet when my chops aren’t being busted and when I refuse to itch old scars open. Last Friday was one of those days. Weather has never bothered me, but Friday, November 13, 2015, was stern. Each chilly, gust-whipped raindrop was a slap on the cheek.

Poor daughter Elena couldn’t take Cole, now a Ninja of motion, to the playground, which is why I received a call at 10:11 a.m. Toddlers can turn homes into Thunderdomes.

“Hi, Daddy.” Was that a quiver of desperation in her soft greeting? “I was just wondering what your schedule was like today, if maybe you wanted to do lunch or something.”

Here’s a summary of our negotiations:

1.) Elena: Could we please not have lunch at my house? [X]

2.) Elena: There’s a play place at the [Millcreek] Mall. Maybe we could get a Starbucks and let Cole play there for a while. [X]

3.) Daddy: Then we could find somewhere to have lunch. [X]

4.) Elena: There is a God. [X]

We met at noon-ish, fed quarters to a fire truck and convertible, picked up coffee, and settled in at the official play place—and by settled in I mean kept Cole from making a break for the concourse, which he did four times, and from dispensing hand sanitizer until his fingers were raw.

After ten minutes of crawling through tunnels and nearly colliding with a dozen or so children of other desperate parents, he announced “Cole done” and copped a few sips of Pop’s decaf latte. Next he gnawed an eggroll and noodles while Elena and I had bourbon chicken.

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Cole likes coffee and spicy food

Then it was time to go. An hour with a toddler doesn’t allow for segues: ride the choo choo train, slip and almost fall on the padded turtle, get hurt feelings because the thick-boned boy hopped on the tug boat ahead of you, sample coffee, squeeze duck sauce on your egg roll, and refuse to hold Pop’s hand when it’s time to go home.

So we ran together, my little buddy’s jelly bones all akimbo. Before we reached the door, Elena insisted: “Do you want to ride in the stroller or let Pop carry you?”

“Pop!”

Bullets of rain got us right away. Cole’s face pinched in, and two steps later I felt his head settle on my shoulder.

“Aw, are you getting tired, buddy?” I said.

“No,” Elena said. “That’s what he does when it’s too windy.”

I must say, mindfulness is getting to be a habit for me, and it’s not for nothing. My bald spot and glasses were getting pelted, but so-the-hell what? A grandparent is made for the moment when the grandchild leans in. Love, fatigue, or safety could be the reason, but who cares? I still haven’t figured out exactly what a parent is made for, mainly because I was a trembling neurotic in that role. But Pop, I’m meant to be a shoulder for my grandson. The rest of me—I sometimes believe—is vestment.

“You okay, pal?” I said.

“Yeah.” One lilting syllable, almost a chirp.

Thich Nhat Hanh says that mindfulness can turn neutral into joyful. A non-toothache is hardly noteworthy. Neither is being able to breathe through your nose. Standard operations, that’s all. A two-year-old using his grandfather’s shoulder to hide from cold rain is about the same—thirty unremarkable seconds across the parking lot to the car.

Commonplace but for one truth: while my embrace kept Cole dry and warm, I found my own shelter from the elements.

Well It’s All Right: An Open Letter

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Dear Everyone,

I woke up singing this morning, a losing-weight-but-still-fluffy guy sliding into jeans and the Baja hoodie Kathy lovingly de-hooded for me years ago. Gimpy Watson had to pee, so out we went, the song coming along:

Somewhere beyond the sea

Somewhere waiting for me . . .

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Out back, where Watson kills the grass with his pee, where I hum Bobby Darin.

The trouble with this swaggery Bobby Darin thing, which I both love and hate, is I don’t know all the words. Back inside, I finished putting myself together and noodled around with the signature lines:

I know beyond a doubt (HA!)

My heart will lead me there soon

HA! is the best part—so dated, so got-the-world-by-the-stones, so satisfying. Darin could walk on stage, say, “HA!” and I would cheer. Forget the lover on golden sands and birds flying on high. HA! and a smirk are plenty.

I crooned these juicy lines a few times, each HA! rattling the windows.

“Somebody’s peppy this morning,” Kathy called from the bathroom.

“That’s right,” I said, praying another song would break into my head. Yelping out HA! eventually triggers the gag reflex and makes you light-headed.

If your home has its standard measure of weirdness, a family member turning twelve lyrical words into a mantra might not be noteworthy, but in the midst of my heart dragging my smarm around the house, I noticed: I was singing. This hasn’t happened much recently, and certainly not upon waking, which generally amounts to a twenty-minute game of drag-ass.

About this singing, I’ll observe only that it’s not because I’m leaving one pastoral call and moving to another. Nothing is ever simple, is it? It’s possible to be both excited about a destination and bone-sad over a departure. My heart doesn’t know how to beat right now.

Which is why I appreciate the present singing. Before morning coffee, “Beyond the Sea” was relieved of duty by “End of the Line” by the Traveling Wilburys. Ah, Roy Orbison’s sweet warble, Tom Petty’s blessed assurance kissing me in my plump Chevy HHR:

Don’t have to be ashamed of the car I drive

I’m happy to be here, happy to be alive

“This is most certainly true,” my Lutheran-Zen brain answered. Ashamed of the car I drive? Ha! I have better shames than transportation. Happy to be alive? Why, yes, don’t mind if I am. Happy to be here and receive all kinds of music.

In the last couple of weeks I’ve realized a beauty that has always been offering itself to me. When I walk from the house to the car, at least one bird is in the sky or on a wire or atop a tree. Friend Mary could tell me all their names, just as Kathy can identify nearly every flower. My memory is Teflon with such details, but I can witness and give thanks.

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A bird that friend Mary can certainly identify (Credit: Wikipedia)

I make that forty-foot trip from house to car and back again multiple times a day, and only once has a bird not accompanied me. Sometimes it’s a tiny, lone eye-song flying on high. Why have these companions been invisible for so long? A hardened heart and blinded eyes, maybe, projects of my own doing?

But gladness improves vision. As peace increases, the commonplace comes alive. Right before Kathy and I headed out the door a few hours ago, the kitchen windowsill said hosanna.

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Tomatoes from Kathy’s garden ripen, only after I had given up and decided to make cream of green tomato soup out of them.

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Rosemary from friend Denise, basil in water experiment, a ripening peach–each one a “hosanna.”

And yesterday Elena, Cole, and I had homemade vegetable soup and bread for lunch. As my wonder-of-a daughter poached eggs, my savior-grandson walked toward his bedroom and said, “Pop, come. Pop, come.” The message was of burning-bush proportions. I followed.

Cole is into hammering these days, so we went at rubber balls and his miniature electronic drum set, which said “Let’s jam again soon” each of the hundred times he turned it off. After lunch Elena got out his new piggy bank, and we all counted as he slipped in coins.

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Each time Cole says “Pop,” I stand on holy ground.

When I said, “Pop has to leave now,” Cole said, “Cole leave.” Referring to yourself in the third person is not only charming when you’re almost two, but also infectious.

“Oh, you want to go with Pop?” Elena said. “No, Cole has to stay here.”

My little buddy sagged at the screen door, his face widening into a pitiful toddler cry as I waved goodbye. By the time I reached the Chevy, I could see he was on to the next attraction, tears already drying.

“Pop, come.” Cole is calling me. Birds and songs are, too, as is the Lover of Souls: “Wake up, child,” Love whispers to me, “greet your sky-neighbors and sing. Two lines are enough. Even a HA! of joy will do.”

Love,

John

Under the Clock

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Getting out of bed this morning was like lifting an anvil. Both wife Kathy and I lay slack-jawed through alarm after alarm. I’m not sure choosing Bach’s Goldberg Variations as my iPhone wake up call was a good idea. Such a gentle, thoughtful melody, but I now associate the first few measures with the shared human struggle of starting a day.

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Six already? Come on!

We tried to hold each other the way some wives and husbands do, with Kathy’s head on my chest and my arm around her. That worked for five seconds, thanks to bursitis in my left shoulder. So, we adapted. I put my arm down, she slung her arm across my belly, and we listened to the morning household. Son Micah’s obnoxious alarm nagged him—he was tired, too. Watson made old-dog dozing huffs and grumbles. Baby Crash, the most beautiful cat I’ve ever seen, played drumrolls by dashing around the hardwood floors.

“How old is Baby now,” I said out of nowhere, “four?”

“Six,” Kathy said.

“Six! How is she six?” I was only off by two years, but still, 1/3 of her life. The passing of time weighed in on my chest like a second anvil.

My God, where are the decades going? Next week I’ll turn fifty-four. How can that be, when I walk tentatively through the world, shaking just like I did trying to summon teenage bravery to ask a girl out on a date? Gray hair sticks out of my shirt collar. So why do I feel the same as I did when Kathy and I were dating, thirty-five years ago? Hot summer day. We were watching television, and I had one long, pathetic hair sprouting from my left nipple.

Innocently, Kathy spoke and acted in the same instant: 1.) “What’s that?” 2.) Reach toward hair. 3.) Grab ahold. 4.) Yank.

I screamed. Carbon dioxide hissed from the pinhole in my areola.

Kathy laughed, hard. “Oh, was that attached?”

“Yes.”

I now have hundreds, maybe thousands of chest hairs, but I still remember that first, overachieving pilgrim, its lilt to the left, a jaunty kink 2/3 of the way to top, not a suggestion of gray. My Precious.

I’m still that kid. My God, where is life going?

Mountainous questions are on my mind lately because I’m leaving the folks I’ve served as pastor for the last fourteen years, moving on to a small congregation. There isn’t any dishonor in my departure, but it’s not quite the way I wanted to go. I expect my exit on October 25th will be loving, but probably not celebratory.

Yesterday afternoon I went to an art show in downtown Erie. A couple of friends have work displayed, and I figured abandoning myself in shape, color, texture, whatever would be therapeutic.

IMG_3878When I arrived at the old Boston Store, a spacious building that used to be home of one of Erie’s proudest establishments, my first priority was to find the men’s room. It’s tough to get lost in art when your Kegel is clenched. The show would wait a few minutes.

I walked mindfully past a cluster of radio stations that now squat where women’s shoes or sheets and comforters used to be displayed. When my eyes fixed on the great clock hanging at the center of the place, I remembered that my mother, dead seventeen years now, worked at the Boston Store.

After confirming my suspicion that in all the acreage of the grand department store there was no obvious place for a middle-aged man to pee, I returned to the clock. “I’ll meet you under the clock,” Erie-ites used to say. For a while, a restaurant used that name and location. Now, all that’s left is an expanse of tan tile floor.

I looked up, checked the time, and missed my mother. In my mind she walked under the clock, no hint of arthritis yet, tastefully dressed, mascara and lipstick perfect.

The silence was of a comforting dream. I’m not too proud to admit that when I’m going through changes, trying to keep my footing, I want to be with my mom, to connect with the love that held my head when I puked and endured my adolescent travail.

Could Mom still abide in a great cradle of Eternal Love—the Love I invite each day to take hold of me, still the crazy waters, lift my anvils, and use me for Love’s sake in this wonderful, stressed world? I couldn’t feel her presence, but as I breathed in and out under the clock and received the quiet of deserted space, she seemed to live.

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Wrong

My God, where are we all headed? And how much time is left? The great clock was no help—four clocks, actually, one on each side. Only one was correct. Two others agreed but were wrong, as was another that lagged two hours behind, or rushed ten hours ahead, depending on how you figure.

The art show, when I got there, was as good as any collection can be when a guy is pressed at his equator. My friends’ works were so compelling that I’m looking at them again now, behind closed eyes. (Thanks, Mary and Mike.)

In today’s sky, wisps up high seem fixed, while full white clouds just above me ease to the southwest. Over Lake Erie, a long gray assembly floats in the same direction.

Where has the time gone? I may as well ask, “Where are the clouds going?” Rhetorical questions, sighs of the soul.

I didn’t make it to the church this morning. There’s much to do before I leave, but this week of telling loved ones that I won’t be their pastor for much longer has me feeling like the tender, gentle, awful sentimental Tin Man after Dorothy kisses him goodbye: “Now I know I’ve got a heart ‘cause it’s breaking.”

Always breaking, always healing back up, I suppose. In the end, I’m content to ask questions without earthly answers, breathe them up to the sky and let the wind blow them from sight. I’ve built my life on the promise that clouds, souls, and mysteries find their way to a loving place.

Now, the promise tells me to go home, take a nap, do dishes, and pick up Kathy from work. In other words, the Promise says, “Go, now, and join the day you’re given.”

P. S. A note to blogging friends: For the last couple of months, I’ve been guilty of what I call selfish blogging; that is, posting without reading much. Please forgive me. I’ll try to catch up soon.

Report from California

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Off and on over the years, I’ve thought travel writing would be a great gig: get expenses covered, see what’s on everybody’s bucket list, flirt with unfamiliar cuisine, generally live it up, and report on the whole experience.

As I sip an iced Americano at Starbucks, the truth is finally setting in that I wouldn’t make a good travel writer. First, I dislike flying. Xanax keeps my anxiety almost tolerable, but the only time I’m at ease on a plane is when I’m picking up my bags to disembark.

Second, adventure isn’t really my thing. Ah, to be a man’s man, to dig white-water rafting and wear t-shirts saying something like, “I kicked the OMG Rapids in the ass!” To own sinewy, tan, muscular arms sticking out from short sleeves, my whole image punctuated by a forearm tattoo that roars, “Testosterone!” Alas. Enjoying the burble of my immersion blender in an Alfredo sauce while kibitzing with friends, lifting a bit of wine, that’s my speed.

And third, the sites that stir this homebody’s heart don’t have much to do with popular vistas. For the most part, the views that make me say “ooh, ahh, wow” don’t depend on geography. The point: what follows is the least useful travel essay ever.

Wife Kathy and I are bunking at generous friends Karl and Jennifer’s place in Citrus Heights, a suburb of Sacramento. Their daughter Claire, coming up on three, is the blessed home’s center of gravity. After a couple of days at their place, we left for four days in San Francisco, a look at the ocean, a stroll through the redwoods, and now have returned to our friends’ base camp. Tomorrow we’ll fly home to Erie, Pennsylvania. This trip, funded mostly by a travel voucher we won at a fundraising Vegas night, has been more than worth our time and outlay of cash.

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I asked this guy at San Francisco’s Fisherman’s Wharf if I could take his picture. He nodded at a sign to his right indicating he just got married and was charging $2. I felt both suckered and obliged.

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One of the senior sea lions at Fisherman’s Wharf. They fill the floating docks by the dozens, nap packed in cheek-to-jowl, crawl all over each other for no apparent reason, and constantly snort, bark, bare their teeth, and posture. Kathy stared at them for forty-five minutes. Five was enough for me.

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What’s a tour of San Francisco without paying homage to the Summer of Love? Strolling the streets, Kathy and I probably inhaled a joint just in second-hand smoke.

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Kathy ready to bike the Golden Gate Bridge.

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Redwoods at Armstrong Redwoods State Natural Reserve.

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Kathy in the hollow of a redwood.

No, we didn’t ride a trolley car or catch the ferry to Alcatraz, but we took in our fill of destinations. I have to confess, though, that none of them grabbed me by the lapels as much as several inconspicuous moments did–nonchalant and passing as a breeze.

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Light art on the ceiling of our room at the La Rose Hotel in Santa Rosa.

Moment: After a long last day in San Francisco, Kathy and I landed at a hotel in Santa Rosa. We had biked the Golden Gate Bridge and walked the city’s famous hills, so we were glad to flop for a while. As I dozed, Kathy talked to our son Micah, who was back home tending dog, cats, and a chrysalis nearly ready to unfold and make for Mexico. What Kathy said was obvious, but I could hear only Micah’s voice, not his words. But that was enough. Surrounded by West Coast walls, I took in a distinctive sound of home: my boy’s enthusiasm in telling a story, some humor or absurdity of his day. I wasn’t sad, but filled with gratitude that I look forward to being home, to seeing all of our beloved faces in one space.

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Claire

Moment: Karl and Jennifer took us horseback riding near Lake Tahoe, followed by chili and a walk around town and down by the water. When we returned to Citrus Heights, I was fit for red Zinfandel, a couch, and nothing else. But young Claire was ten kinds of psyched to have us back–spinning, sprinting, squealing psyched. Through my fog of fatigue I heard Kathy say, “Do you want to read, Claire?” I couldn’t muster the energy to burp, but my wife was game. In the middle of one book, Claire looked at Kathy with a grateful smile, full of peace and wonder. The big bridge is cool, but that kid’s face, shining and sacred, is eternal.

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Far from home and yet, suddenly, right at home.

Moment: Kathy made it clear weeks ago that come what may on this vacation, she was going to put her feet in the Pacific. We wove along Route 1, found steps to the beach, and headed for the water. Cold. She was excited and giggly. Our stop was no more than fifteen minutes. My blessing came when I was facing away from the ocean with my eyes closed–kiss of the long-married, ahh of the soul’s landscape.

Moment: Anybody who loves me knows that I’m often struggling, even when there’s no particular stressor at hand. Joyful as recent days have been, waves of worry and sadness have also rolled over me. Always something, I guess. In response to particularly rough water yesterday, I took in a long draught of prayer and meditation, which I finished off with a contemplative walk in Karl and Jennifer’s backyard. For twenty minutes I looked closely and stopped often: lemon trees, herb garden, ripening tomatoes, trumpet vine, flowers with names I don’t know. Breathing, breathing. The place in my chest that fills up when I kiss Kathy’s graying hair is also a bilge for angst.

But the walk was healing, the air, the sage and oregano scent on my fingers. As I stood still behind a circle of flowers, a hummingbird hovered at my feet, inches away. It sipped nectar, then flew off to a pine branch. “You can come back,” I said. Apparently, I’m not a bird whisperer, but one visit, so kind and close, was plenty.

A friendly hummingbird, a kiss, a sweet young face: not content that makes readers restless for new journeys. With middle-age stretching out in front of me, my modest travels aren’t about a blood rush or a stunning expanse. For as long as I can remember, I’ve been on the lookout for peace. Always peace. The peace that passes all understanding.

All other attractions are incidental. For good or ill, I’m always moving toward spiritual destinations.

Lament for Aylan Kurdi

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Sadness Alert! This post will be painful to read. 

He stood there biting his lower lip. “It is very difficult,” he said. “I cannot resign myself.”

He looked straight past me and out through the window. Then he began to cry. “I am utterly unable to resign myself.”

(from “In Another Country” by Ernest Hemingway)

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Citrus Photobomb of Pinot Noir

Close day in Erie, Pennsylvania, but central air pacifies me. So does a Smoking Loon pinot noir. A soprano (Callas, Sutherland, Caballe?) sings something from Madame Butterfly—I think. When hunger intrudes, I’ll walk a few feet to the kitchen, open the refrigerator, and decide what not to eat. That’s how stifling my life is. I have to eliminate meal options.

I’m inexcusably comfortable but for one trifle: Aylan Kurdi drowned. A photograph of a police officer carrying him from a Turkish beach appeared on the evening news. I recognized the boy immediately, his toddler legs. He was my grandson Cole. The tender calves, the tiny sneakers!

Two hours ago, he said, “Pop, come.” He had a tennis ball that he wanted me to toss high into the air. Into the humidity, above the young tree in his front yard, the yellow globe flew, then fell to the grass. Cole bounced. Or was it Aylan?

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Aylan Kurdi. Forgive me, friends, but can you make out your child here? Do you recognize the sneakers? (Credit: Reuters)

Now, as Jussi Bjorling kills some high notes from La Boheme, I comprehend: Aylan = Cole.

If my son-in-law fled bombs with my daughter and grandchildren and lost them to water, I would want nothing more than to join him, to sit beside their graves until merciful death arrived.

I cannot resign myself. I am utterly unable to resign myself.

Or as Aylan’s father Abdullah said, “I don’t want anything else from this world. Everything I was dreaming of is gone. I want to bury my children and sit beside them until I die.”

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Cole with Pop. Do you see Aylan’s hands? His little legs?

Hemingway’s Senior Maggiore grieved the unexpected death of his young wife from pneumonia after he had survived war, hand maimed but otherwise viable—the absurdity, the affront.

Syria is a hemisphere away, but geography is a rationalization. Aylan in the wet sand is Cole in the wet sand. To hell with similes. Any other conclusion is bullshit, for me and for the world. Our best hope is for Aylan to be my own grandson–and your very own, too. You feel this with me, don’t you?

I want to pick that boy up off the beach and love him back to life so badly my throat burns. You, too?

The Smoking Loon is gone, and I’m hungry.

Damn it!