Danger verses spitefulness

Sometimes I wonder why people are so intent on controlling other people's lives.

If it doesn't hurt anyone else, it should be okay in my opinion.  Rather than making certain things illegal, why not just regulate them to make them safe?  And cheaper!

There isn't going to be an underground for legal things, or at least not a really lucrative one.

Let everyone worry about their own eternal soul.  If you are that worried about it, pray for them, but don't send them to jail for it. 

You can't really protect most people from their own vices, because many of them don't believe their particular vices are that and because they will just find another sneakier way to indulge.

People, especially children and the disabled,  need to be protected from predators.  Stealing from people is wrong.  Injuring any living thing is wrong.  These are all very broad categories that should be treated the same across the board no matter who you are or how much money you have, but a lot of the other stuff people go to jail for is pure spitefulness on the part of power mongering busy bodies.

We could save ourselves a lot of time and money (and actually make some money too) if we revamped our thinking a little more.

There's a time and place

Everyone experiences it sometimes; that moment when, after hours of silence, everyone calls at once, or after waiting forever, THE call comes when I am not available. Shopkeepers know it from dead times followed by a rush of customers.  It can be good or bad.

I have been told it is coincidence, but how often can something happen and be coincidental?

Every day, all day long, I expect phone calls, or texts only to have them come when I decide to go ahead and shower, or after waiting three days I get THE phone call just as my favorite television show comes on, or after hearing from no one for a very long time, everyone calls me within the same five minutes?

It is like being in the army. Hurry up and wait.  I spend hours, days, weeks, alone and then am bombarded with attention so varied and so great I can do none of it justice.

Do they have a sixth sense that ties them into the vast collective unconscious that says, "now is the time!"  Or does the universe have a sick sense of humor that says, "Wait . . . wait . . . wait . . . NOW, she's busy so go!"?

I suppose it is possible that I am aware when I am about to get a call, or text, and, sabotage myself by moving away just before it arrives.

Whatever it is, it puts a crimp in my social life, making me feel rushed when I least want to.

Looking for God

I used to like that old idea of looking into the faces of people going by and searching for the God in them, or at least the good in them. That is harder for me than it used to be.

I used to think people did many things out of ignorance and if they could just be given a chance they would become more enlightened, or at least not so stupid.

I don't believe that anymore.

There are people in my world who are ignorant by choice.  In fact, if pride is a sin they are also sinful because they seem to cherish their ignorance.  They are not naive. They are simply people who prefer to live without thinking, or even purposely avoiding learning about those things that might be inconvenient to know.

People repeat "truisms" and pass on hateful things they see on social media.  They boast about their ignorance as if it were a badge of honor.  And it is not harmless or cute.  I don't have a problem if great Aunt Mary wants to walk miles rather than use her cell phone, because she thinks it's gonna blow up her brain.  That's up to her.

The people who upset me are the ones who disrespect the president of the United States and think it's funny, or try to justify their racist and homophobic actions by declaring God told them so. And there are other people who try to pass their actions off as ignorance, when it is simply selfishness, or spinelessness on their part.  These people cause undue suffering in our world.

I try to look at these not so harmless people as "fools to be pitied," but it is hard.

Human and the beast

Today has been one of paradoxes.  Great joy and great sorrow all emanating from the same source, human beings.

 I sometimes wonder if we aren't the greatest pestilence to ever over run the earth, destroying the air, and water, the other living creatures and even each other in a greedy, mindless, rush to claim power, amass things we value more than life and invent ways to destroy almost anything.

The intelligence so many tout is used to twist absolute truths so that we create a hierarchy of those who are better than.  Why?  I don't know, but I think it must be one of our baser instincts to want to "lord it over" those we can.

Human beings can be so dark and I am talking about their minds and hearts, not the color of their skin, or hair.

But today I saw a dawning, an actual bit of hope coming from the eastern part of our United States.  Our President, and the victims of a senseless human hate crime, stood up talking about love instead of retribution and hate.  Our Supreme Court, stood up for the idea that all people are created equal and now allow those who love each other to have the same rights no matter what sex they may be.

If there are going to be churches and religions and they are going to continue being a force to reckon with, I hope they will all stop being among the hate mongers, and find their God in 1 Corinthians 13.

Because our only real hope comes when we can tame the beast.

That Midas Vibe

A culture puts its money where its beliefs are. The American aristocracy is one founded on money.  It is our way of gauging the value of everything and everyone.  The more money we have the better we think we are, the more entitled we believe we are, the wiser we think we are, but in the end more money is only that.

There is money in this country. 

We don't need more money.

We need better distribution of the money we have.

We need to reassess what is really important to us.

We need to admit it if we just don't care that there are people working full time who can't afford to feed their families decent meals, provide homes that are sanitary and safe, and clothing that is good enough they can apply for real jobs. 

When we want to take back social security from people who paid into it all their lives and take services away from the disabled rather than skimming the fat off the top,  we can stop hiding behind the pretensions that say, "we are Christian," or "we care," because that just isn't true.

Money spent only to make more money is a scary thought . . . it has that Midas vibe.

Real

The dream makers, the listeners, the givers,
the people who walk into our lives
and open doors we never knew were there,
are kisses from the universe.
Little pecks on the cheek
we never expected but should not ignore.

A neighbor I just met, one whose has suffered the worst thing that can ever happen to a mother and is moving on with a determination and love that inspires others, left me a surprise on my deck this morning.  We were talking about the plants on her deck and I mentioned that when my foot was better I wanted to find a fern for my deck.  When I opened the blinds this morning, there was a sweet little plumosa fern planted in a coffee cup sitting on my table!

Later on a friend of mine sent me a recording of a song he is practicing for his grandma's memorial service.  It just happens to be one of my favorite hymns from my childhood, one that I have played on the piano more times than I can remember.  I cannot listen without my eyes filling with tears.  And what makes it even more special is that it is his rendition of it and this particular recording is interrupted by his dog trying to lick the guitar!

I love the real things in life. The sweet, simple kindnesses that touch me more deeply than a million gold necklaces.

At its best

I hear people say they love ice cream, or balloons, or comic books and so many other things that it might seem as if the word, "love," is over used and meaningless.

Except that it isn't meaningless and when it is used correctly, it means more than any one word, or a dictionary worth of words could ever say.

Everyone I know loves someone and a few people set the standard so high that they touch our hearts to the core.  These are the people who always seem to see the best in us; who reach out no matter how inconvenient, or difficult it may be, just because that is who they are.

These are the people who find the time to put the icing on the cake when no one else even feels like baking a cake. They set their own feelings aside to honor the dead, to lift up the living and redefine our culture's ceremonies and rituals so that their true meaning comes forward in a time when so many mega productions seem to swamp our old traditions.

They don't put the rest of us to shame, because it would shame them in their own hearts to do such a thing.

A grandma dies and as everyone prepares for her funeral, one of the grandchildren is asked to provide the music.  Out of the mists of time love finds a song that has melted hearts for generations.  Found. Updated. Learned, played and sung in a way that honors everyone's feelings in the short space of time allotted, it touches hearts and eases the transition of loving someone who is here to loving someone who now lives in our hearts.

Unassuming and sweet it personifies love at its best.

Look and look again

I have wanted some things so badly that I was willing to do almost anything to attain them.  I have tried things I believed in and things I wasn't sure about, sometimes even things I was pretty sure I didn't believe in -- all in a desperate attempt to achieve what seemed impossible.

All of these things appeared to work to some degree, but the biggest difference between what really worked and what sort of worked was how badly I wanted it and how open I was to something new.

A primary example of this was wanting children.  I tried for years to have a baby.  Finally a friend told me about St. Gerard and I began praying fervently.  It was a last resort.  I needed a miracle.  Instead, it suddenly occurred to me that we should adopt a child and I wrote to all the agencies in our area.  They promptly wrote back saying to wait a year and write again.  Once more I felt so defeated, but then it also occurred to me that I had nothing to lose by writing right back and I did, telling them why I thought we would be good parents. Less than a year later we had gone through all the interviews and tests and counseling and on October 1, 1977 we were parents!

Miracle or not?  No one can ever prove it one way or the other, but that's not important and it isn't the point.

Sometimes the road to success is as simple as taking the right detour, doing ordinary things in unexpected ways for extraordinary reasons.

Decisions decisions

One of the first things I learned in debate club is that it is possible to make a case for either side.  Another thing I learned early on is that I missed the comfort of thinking there was someone who knew it all.  I wanted an authority I could count on, but by the age of eleven I already knew that everyone was fallible.

I think most of us realize these things -- until -- we feel really bad.  Then, like sick children, we start looking for someone to make it better.

Friends are quick to support us, even encourage us to feel worse and arm ourselves against dangers which have not reached the gigantic proportions television and movies portray as everyday problems.  And once we buy into this there are a plethora of counselors, self help books and groups to fuel the flames.  Most suggesting sweeping, life changing solutions that will rock everyone in our world from the youngest baby to the oldest grandparent.

When all these things start redefining who we are and who we thought we were, when they begin to re tell our stories and histories with new outlooks, when they change the reality of what we once believed -- life becomes very confusing.  Like cults, certain people are very good at manipulating others, egging them on, stirring up false assumptions.

I am so suggestible and when I don't feel good I am easy to sway, especially if the people talking to me sound sincere, loving and caring.  I forget how many people like to be saviors, how they fall into the role of rescuing even if they need to fan the flames before putting them out.

Rash actions almost never serve anyone.  If something is worth doing, it is worth doing in a slow methodical, meticulous way because you will never regret minimizing the carnage.

The best hardest job in the world

Father's Day is tomorrow and it made me stop and think about all the kinds of fathers there are.  For all the bad ones, there are so many more good ones. and today I am thinking about the most modern.

Imagine growing up, going to school, getting the most advanced degree and thinking that fatherhood is not for you.  You are a thinker, an analyzer, you know who you are and you know being a father requires a lifetime of love, patience and sacrifice.  You doubt you have enough of any of those so you opt out of the designation, "father."

Then, because of an ultimatum and your huge love for another human being,  you decide to take up the challenge of being a daddy and like everything else you do, you want to do it right.

That means being the stay at home dad, because she makes more money.  Done right it is a real job, the hardest, most time consuming, job in the world and if there are two children close together, which there really should be for their sake, it starts out with years of diapers, cloth diapers that need washing, sunning folding for little bottoms that need wiping cleaning and kept dry.

Your world revolves around unreasonable little people who have no sense of anything but self for the next three years.  The television stays turned off, the electronic gadgets are not unpaid babysitters, you are the first teacher your children will ever have and you take it very seriously.  The programming of their brains, the way they will think and learn depends on you.

The job of raising your kids falls exclusively on you.  A trained nanny gets money for doing this.  A stay at home dad doesn't even get credit, because so many people think it is perfectly fine to farm children out to under educated people who look upon them the way others do writing contracts.  It's a job.

It is just a job and maybe not even that for many people.  It is also the biggest sacrifice anyone can make if it's done right.

Hooray for the stay at home parents and especially dads, because they are forging new ground against incredible odds.

Belonging

History is full of examples that both inspire us and terrify us.  To be different, to stand apart, to follow your own inner soul can make you a leader and being the leader can make you a target.

If you don't want to be a leader, you can follow another leader, someone willing to stand up for what they believe in and take on the consequences for you.

Belonging is almost as alluring as being a leader.

Many people love the idea of being different -- like all their friends.

There is nothing like a cause to unite people.  They will take arms against almost anything if it makes them feel like they are part of a larger, more important plan.  There is the good feeling of camaraderie, the sense of safety in numbers, the feeling that they are working for the "common good," meaning the good of that segment of beliefs, and the hero worship we are prone to experience for bigger than life leaders.

Most famous (and notorious) leaders in history realized they needed to come up with something a mass of people could love, or hate, if they wanted a zealous, nearly blind, following.  And much harm has been done in the name of these things.

Somehow it is easier to hate than love.  Hate can be done without much, if any, thinking and it feels so empowering!  Hate feels righteous!  It offers tons of ways to feel better by hurting someone and then feeling better because you are doing the right thing! 

United in hate is belonging at the lowest level.  It requires no thinking -- just reacting.  Like a baby tossing his peas off the high chair, the results are immediate and satisfactory -- as long as you don't think.

Beware of being too comfortable while belonging . . .

The root of the problem

My generation, the baby boomers, have been accused of selling out, of giving up our ideals for a world we said we didn't want to live in.

I agree.  We grew up, realized that all other things being equal, life is easier with money than without it and like all generations, some of us went too far the other way.

Yet, we raised the next generation and we are grandparents to the one following that. Change does not come whole and unfettered.  It always requires time.

I like to think that we planted the seeds even if we didn't harvest the first crop.

Each tiny step towards a more tolerant, less violent, more loving world, is a step in the right direction and no matter who sells out along the way, as long as there is some progress we are headed the right way.

It is relatively easy to make sweeping changes in the veneer of a civilization, but to really reach down into the roots and engineer a true change requires a deep understanding of all the problems and their wide spread ramifications. 

In a world where the three second lag of my Internet seems endless, patience is hard to come by, but it is still a very necessary part of bedrock change.

More

Bad things happen to good people doing good things for the right reasons all the time.  That is simply a fact of life.

We can have squeaky clean habits, never miss a day at work, never forget to dot an "i," inoculate our children and ourselves for all the known diseases, change the oil in our cars right on time, love our mothers, walk our dogs -- and things can still go wrong.

How wrong?  Very wrong, but living with that doesn't mean if I do more, or less, it will change.

Living with it only requires me to accept that life goes on -- until it doesn't.

The only real decision is what do I do with what I've got?

Everyone loves the stories of poor little boys growing up in poverty and abuse and neglect, who turn out to be the pope, or perhaps Mother Teresa!

Those are the exceptions.  Most of us aren't going to do that. We do, though,  have the ability to still find purpose, joy and love in a moment to moment existence.  Ask any child under the age of six and they will tell you about something good, or exciting, or wonderful that happened not too long ago

Children expect less, so perhaps they feel like they get more -- and perhaps they really do.

Of the people, by the people, for the people

We are entering another one of those most dangerous of times in our country -- the changing of the guard, the choosing of who will run for president of our country, the picking of those who will become candidates to lead the free world.

I don't care who any of them sleep with, or what clothes they wear and their race and gender is irrelevant to me.

I care very much whether or not they come from one of our political aristocracy.  I care if their family helped hide the fact that our country had a secret police who tortured people.  I care about their feelings on what I consider personal liberties, things that concern my body, who I can marry, the separation of church and state.  I care if they are indebted to any of those great lobbyists who have an agenda above and beyond what they claim.

I want someone who cares more about what the people think than what votes they can finagle.  I want a person who listens to their advisers and to us, the American people, but is not a puppet for those advisers or a political party.

I believe a leader needs a certain amount of leeway to lead.  That is why we choose a president.  Some one has to make the hard choices, but I want those decisions to reflect the integrity of the constitution and not the twisted kowtowing of personal interest groups.

In short I would love to see the next president be a person of  honor, intelligence and common sense.  And I would hope that our country will do the honorable thing and stand behind this president who is elected no matter how many petty politicians try to make them do otherwise.
 

The great Silence

I sit in the silence for the first time in a long time.  Breathing in, breathing out.  Letting thoughts go with the whisper of a breath -- again and again.

Listening, opening, letting go of wants and needs, desires, dreams.  Letting go of my need to control.  Thy will not my will.  Emptying myself of me . . .

Making room for healing, for listening, for the greatness of something beyond me and my understanding.

Trying not to be anything but empty and at first it is difficult.  I come back to myself again and again.

Until I don't.
 
I had forgotten how beautiful the emptiness is.  There is no throbbing ankle, no aching heart, no regret, no hope. 


Absolute peace of being.


This is not the place to look for miracles, or cures.  In this place there is no need for those things and if I find them when I leave?  Well, so much more of a reason to come back.

I open my eyes, thinking that once more I have succumbed to my inability to persevere, that it has only been a few minutes, but I discover it has been forty minutes!

I am so relaxed, so okay in this moment.  I need to remember that.  I need to come here more.

Reality

There is so often a sound track to my life and today it is The Hobbit's theme from Lord of the Rings.  The plaintive sound of a flute singing of real love and real limitations, of the pain of love and joy and living through the reality of a world that is not necessarily kind.

I want the fairy tale ending and I want it quickly before the main characters suffer through the dark side and doom descends upon a world once so full of promise.

I want the wise wizard to materialize and lead everyone to a sane and reasonable end.

I want rainbows that promise no more floods.  No more floods of grief, or words, or hopelessness.

I want children focusing on who they can be and what they can do, not weeping into their pillows for what has gone before.

I want a world where Aslan and the Snow Queen become one without sacrificing so many innocents.

And the haunting dirge of that flute plays my heart away from my head.

Horror stories

It is easy to see the dark side of Satan, or Godzilla, or Jaws, but to find that same side in Mary's little lamb, or the beautiful blue bird singing outside the window, or your partner, is a truly terrifying.

It is the thing we fear most.

My worst nightmares as a child were ones in which my mother turned into a werewolf coming up the steps at school, or where she flicked her fingers in the air and fire appeared out of nowhere.

In fact I read a study about mothers once.  It seemed that as long as they were relatively predictable, their children were comfortable with them.  Even if that predictability was cruel.  It is the unexpected that stirs up all of our insecurities.

When a trusted one's dark side peeks through, it steals our security and if they follow through and whip the rug out from under our feet too, the world becomes a dark and scary place.

Life is unpredictable, unknown, unbearable.

But it is only the beginning of a new story.  On the other side of all this horror is a better story.  One of resurrection and strength from having survived the nightmare.

Hide and seek

Sometimes life feels like a game of hide and seek.

I know I am looking for something, but I have no idea where it might pop up.

Not knowing and knowing that I don't know is actually a pretty good thing.

I find myself watching and waiting for that "thing," whatever it will be.

And if that isn't good enough, it also tends to distract me from the darker things that I still can't do anything about.

Try to sit still for a little while every day and seek that "thing" you may not even know you're looking for.

Happiness needs

It seems nearly everyone I know is needy right now.  Including me. That frustrates me, makes me angry, almost hopeless sometimes.

Life could be so simple if everyone could be honest, straight forward and more generous than selfish.

Almost all the problems I can think of would be less of a problem if people did not value so many unimportant things.

People are told they should seek happiness, but that is an elusive thing.  If by some stretch of the imagination I think I have reached it?  Then its definition changes.

The shiny new car, the beautiful new lover, the salary I have dreamed of, all become stepping stones to other cars, lovers, salaries, and quickly become meaningless if I lose a child, or other loved one.

Happiness is more likely to be reached briefly through the back door when something terrible looms before me.  Great loss makes whatever is left more precious.

Of course it never really is all or nothing.

Life is a mixture of good and bad and the scales tip precariously all the time.

If I can keep my wants limited to my needs, my needs reasonable, and my heart as open as possible, I can create little bubbles of happiness in the most unlikely places.  Life will never be perfect, but it can be bearable and sometimes happy and often content.

Is it love or just a whim

There is nothing worse than feeling helpless. Whether it is because I can't get around on my bum foot and ankle, or because I can't help people I love very much.

It is hard to imagine that one person can wreak so much damage on so many people's lives. 

A moment's mid life crisis suddenly becomes, in hind sight, reason enough to turn the world on its head. 

Innocent children are caught in the rush.

Families all across the continent are left feeling like their guts have been scooped out by a saw toothed spoon.

Years of good faith are tossed out on a whim.

Obligations turn inward and chaos reigns.

I can't believe

The universe has a sense of humor. . .

I am sure of it.

It may be a bit quirky though.  I wonder if it is sitting somewhere chuckling?

An example?

I love talking and texting with certain people, but this morning after I thought I had done this with everyone, I took a shower.

Thank goodness I left my phone within reachable distance because four people called or texted in the five minutes I was in there (sitting on my shower chair)!  That's more than I get in whole days sometimes!

Now, before you tell me that I do not have to be that close to my phone all the time, remember that I have been virtually stranded in this house since April 2.

I am like a starving lion.  I don't care when or where the food lands . . . I don't wanna miss it!

Digging deeper

Once upon a time I thought I wanted to be an archaeologist.  Then I gave it up. Now I wonder if the time has come to resurrect that interest and apply it to my own life.

Time to dig through the layers of trash and debris, the strata of mixed memories and emotions, the bedrock of times gone by.

Time to sift through each layer, looking for the bones and teeth of something big enough to eat me alive. And allow the rest to fall into a pile of detritus where it will be re-assimilated back into the dust from which it came. Not that this is not important, just that I can only deal with so much in the life span left to me.

Will these bones explain why my family tends to eat its young alive and spit out the fragments of all those who do not escape?  Or will they verify that I was something worth keeping and therefore allowed to go on and raise my own offspring in the hope of creating something even more worthy?

I think it is the latter.

I think that any creature capable of reinventing itself is a good step for survival of the species.

Those distant ancestors with their gnashing teeth and long tails for balance have evolved and continue to evolve into less and less and it takes more and more to really understand them.

Few things are really what they seem and that is terrifying.

Perhaps this digging is not a good thing.

Maybe I should just bury all of this deeper, set a new goal and go forward with the knowledge that I am capable of becoming whatever I need to be if I work hard enough at it.

Feelings

I have heard and read so much about being in touch with my feelings. 

I believe that it is important to know what I feel, but the more I think about this subject and the fact that I  believe we are all irrevocably connected, the more intrigued I am about where these feelings come from.

I know that I am more connected to some people than others.  Not only do I love to share their joy, but I also share their sadness.  That is just part of loving someone. 

When I was part of a dream group I realized that it was possible for two people to share the same dream. These dreams would make a lot of sense to one person and often be a mystery to the other, but there was no doubt they were dreaming the same dream.  I think feelings might be the same.

One day I am inexplicably filled with immense joy.  Another I experience  a terrible depressing pain.  Both could simply be me, or they might not.  The one thing they have in common is the intensity that appears to have no real rhyme or reason.

As I grow older I begin to believe that my feelings are like arrows in the air, landing both in the universal subconscious and, perhaps more solidly, in the feelings and hearts of someone I am connected to at the root.

If that is the case, I need to learn to separate my own feelings from those of others and look at them more objectively.  It would serve both me and the others to do so.

It also means that I need to try and deal with my own feelings in more constructive ways, aware that they may be affecting the most vulnerable.  That's a difficult concept: acknowledge my feelings and their validity and then trying, not to deny them, but deal with them in the most responsible way I can. 

I would never knowingly run outside and pour poison in the ground.  I know the run off would kill many things.  What if my feelings are similar?

It is a complicated thought with so many ramifications, both good and bad.

Help

Planting a garden is a good solid way to help my family flourish, but different gardens grow in different ways, depending on where they are and what is planted.

If I truly intend to make that garden a major part of my family's future it makes sense to have a professional help set it up. I might be able to stumble through the first year or two, but the uncertainty of not really knowing what I'm doing will make a huge difference down the line.  I wouldn't go to a kid with a piggy bank to invest my money, so why would I risk my family's future on chance?

Everything in life is worth doing right and if it isn't, for even the best of reasons, problems are more likely to arise.

Always get the best help available and use it wisely.

Songs of me

Music wrings memories from me until there is almost nothing left.

Saturday morning, sitting in my recliner, flipping channels, gray hair floating down in a ray of sunlight that is amazingly unchanged.

The old country tunes come on and my heart aches.  I can barely stand to listen to these songs, these memories of my mother, of times when life was so sweet, so simple, so innocent.  My heart breaks and I move on.

John Denver pops up, a whole new era, college, peace marches, friends leaving on jet planes and coming back empty shells with no words left, the innocence gone, but the grandeur of this world swells in earthy love songs that have never left my heart.

Random artists, random songs, popping up on the radio and television, sneaking in here and there like ghosts in this evening of my life.  No wonder I can only listen to composers like Smetana and The Moldau, like minds, like hearts speaking to where I am now, without incredible pain.

How can the music I love so much make me ache so unbearably?  The sound track of my life touches nerves that words and pictures have forgotten even existed.

God the father

Imagination is part of being human.  I have no reason to believe it has ever been otherwise.

Of course sharing our thoughts and ideas now is easier than it was thousands of years ago and we can share them with more people than ever, which probably sparks more imaginative ideas.  I don't know why anyone would believe we need aliens to explain our pyramids and mythology.

Limiting God, to one man-like creature creating a little planet diorama in something as great as this place we call the universe seems like explaining a nuclear bomb as a big bang.

Stories are written by people who write according to the understanding of their time.  If evolution began somewhere out in space and arrived here with the seeds for all life, it is easy for me to imagine it being explained in a simpler version to people whose entire lives were probably limited to a very small part of this earth.

That doesn't rule out God, it only puts God in terms an undeveloped race can understand.  Much like the way we tell children stories until they are old enough to understand more.

A godly father fits into the idea quite easily.

A power great enough to create the actual building blocks of life probably is not limited by what I understand.

I like to think that this power, by any name, is greater than anything I can comprehend.  A discernible power whose enormity is beyond man's ability to describe.  A power put to shame by the small minded attempts humanity has made to describe this entity with all the human frailties and foibles of a power hungry father.

That being said, I have no problem with people giving God a gender and name that make it possible to speak about and to "him"  as long as they don't believe he is made in their image and speaks only to them.  That is where sacrilege starts and imagination sets in.

Out of the darkness of ages past

One of the defining moments in my life was on this day in 1986 when my mother died.  I had known people who died before, but none of them had given me life.  Every night when I went to sleep I felt a stab of disbelief flow over me.  Every morning when as I started to become conscious I felt my stomach drop out as I remembered that she was gone.

There were other things going on in my life that were equally hard, but they didn't affect me as deeply as that moment, or so I believed at the time.

The darkness of the past can sometimes leak into the present.  It is as if the creator is saying, "You didn't figure this one out before so you get a second chance." 

Life is so much bigger than right and wrong, yes and no, black and white, good and bad.

Like the ocean, decisions spill over into everything.  They lap up against the edge of the earth and each other in unending cycles.  They muddy the tidal pools that seem protected and apart, erode the rocks that lie along their edges, change things that seem like they shouldn't be part of the equation at all.

The decisions I couldn't make years ago come back to haunt me.  Could things have been better, or might they have been worse?  It's hard to imagine them being worse.  Yet I know of similar situations where things were worse. The stakes are so high.

There is nothing easy about dismantling relationships.  They might even be bigger and more powerful than oceans.

Once more I find myself going to sleep and waking up in darkness and pain. Only now it never really goes away.  I still don't know the answers.  I still can't predict the ramifications.  I only know that they are enormous, huge, unfathomably incomprehensible.  I don't know what to want, or hope for, or pray for, or imagine.

Handing it off I think, "thy will be done-not mine," and hope that is not the ultimate cop out.

Equality

 Discrimination is still a huge and ugly wrinkle in our society.

Among all the obvious ones that hit the news each day, there are still many that are misunderstood and under rated.

In our courageous war to set women free, we forget that some women and some men are willing to sacrifice their lives in order to give their children the best start possible. 

Choosing to do this is an act of love, but that doesn't make it easy.  If a man moved a woman across the country and left her alone twelve hours a day with young children in a community where she knows almost no one, we wouldn't be surprised if she felt alone, depressed and isolated.

If her spare time was spent trying to fix up her house, living without plumbing, dishwashers, washers, dryers for extended periods of time because she could only fix them when the children were in bed, we would understand why she was exhausted and tapped out both physically and emotionally.

If her husband made new friends at work, but she hadn't made any at the local parks and playgrounds because most of the people there were fathers, we would feel a great empathy for her.

And if she seemed to complain constantly about these conditions we would call her a nag, or a whiny woman, perhaps a woman who needed help.

Stay at home fathers are no different.

Things

Trying to resurrect something that is dead may require a miracle, but there is also the chance that what I resurrect will more likely only be a sham of the real thing.  Look at Stephen King's Pet Sematary, or all the tales about zombies.  The bodies are there, but the soul is gone.

Dreams have a tendency to blow things up out of proportion.  Things appear better, or worse, than they really are.

When times are bad, it is time to dig in my heels and opt for reality.  As hard and cold as it is, at least it is real and real things have real possibilities.

Imagined things, or re-membered things are like lava lights, constantly shifting shapes in a pretty light that never amounts to anything more.

Real life requires real things.  If everything seems bad, maybe it is time for real changes.  Start at the bottom and work up.

You're probably already at the bottom, but if you aren't sure and don't know where to start, look at Maslow's Hierarchy of needs.  Start at the bottom of that and try working up.

Lots of things are possible. 

It's a plan. It's real progress.

Dreary days

I wake up before dawn remembering that I simply forgot things.  Things I have always remembered to do, like pay the rent early enough to get the discount, or that today is the day my monthly checks come in.

I know I have to make important phone calls today.  I hate making business calls, trying to keep cable television within bounds, being firm with my insurance company who thinks I should come in so the agent can sell me more insurance, finding the right doctor for my injured foot.

The wolf is always at the door and there is no one but me to keep him on the outside.

Part of my love for simplicity is due to the fact that I dislike dealing with these people who prey on everyone and anyone they can.

Life shouldn't be bogged down with so many mediocre things.  Even after getting rid of nearly everything except a car, bed, chair, desk, chest of drawers, television and computer, I still find the upkeep tiresome.

I do like nice things and I have pared my life down to the simplest I can manage.  I would rather have a few very nice things than a warehouse full of junk, but today even that feels like too much.

I made the calls and went back to bed.  I don't think that's depression, but it just may be avoidance.