Like A Prayer

All of my life, I have wanted to keep a journal.  I’ve started one at least 35 times.  When I was a pre-teenager, nothing would do but a diary with a key.  My mother had a 5-year diary.  It was dark green with gold lettering, and she wrote in it sporadically starting at the age of 11, from 1934-1936.  I still have it.

On June 16, 1934, she went to see “The Thin Man” with William Powell.  She noted “I spent most of the time to-day [sic] writing.  I am writing a jungle story.  I think I will call it ‘The Killer Camera Expedition.’”  Sounds like a promising title, but I doubt if she ever really wrote the story.  The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.  I once thought I should try to publish a book full of all the  great titles and first lines I’ve thought of, and nothing else.

As life rolled on, I kept buying journals that I never kept up for more than a week.  Friends gave me beautiful blank books, covered in suede or tapestry, which I was afraid to write in.  When the word-processing age began, I typed journal entries with enthusiasm and a sense of fulfillment until the long vacation weekend ended, and then I was back to sleeping, eating, working, chores; sleeping eating, working, chores.  Sometimes I jotted quotes and tucked clippings into yet another lovely journal.  Cheaper, spiral-bound notebooks turned into pages of to-do lists and scrawled phone numbers.  Nothing became a steady practice. 

A year or so ago, I read Phyllis Theroux’s wonderful book The Journal Keeper, and Sheila and I even went to hear her talk at the Library of Virginia.  Ms. Theroux was incredibly inspiring, and I seriously thought about buying the same blank books she uses and the same Sharpie pens.  I didn’t, though.  And I didn’t begin another journal.

In September, I signed up for a small group at church called “The Seeker’s Path,” which I wrote a little about here.   One of the suggested spiritual exercises was journaling in the manner described in the book The Artist’s Way.  That journaling method sternly recommends writing first thing in the morning, without any coffee, for three pages every day.  No typing, either.  However, I’d tried that over a decade ago, and it didn’t work for me.  I was working ten-twelve hours every day, and I sure as hell didn’t have time to write three pages.  Three words, maybe.  Plus, no one is going to tell me I can’t have coffee if I want to, or order me to write three pages. 

But some of the questions we were asked to respond to in a journal intrigued me.  In Week One, we were asked to describe our most profound experience of God; and what one thing might we commit to pursue over the next nine weeks that might significantly enhance our spiritual lives.  I decided to commit to journaling.  It was just nine weeks, but even that would be beyond any regular writing I’d ever done. 

I went to the grocery store and bought a black and white cardboard-covered composition book with lined pages.  I decided that I would get a cup of coffee and drink from it while I journaled.  I would use a plain old ballpoint pen that moved smoothly over the pages.  I would not attempt to answer every single question or prompt posed by Sam, our group leader.  And I would definitely write only until I was done, whether that was one page or four pages.  I decided to sit in the wing chair in the office, with the afghan over my knees.  Miss T decided that she would sit with me, on my lap.  And we promised we would do it every day, come hell or high water, for nine weeks.

That was September, and this is the middle of January.  I’m on my second black and white composition book.  I’ve made an entry every single day, except for two of the days we were in Philadelphia.  I don’t grapple with theology or the concise issues of my “spiritual development” on a daily basis, although I think more of our lives than we realize are directly related to our spiritual paths.  I do write about what my place in the world in relation to others could be, what I do and do not understand about a person or a situation, what frightens or saddens or angers me, what I found beautiful or moving or important or funny the day before, and what that spark of the Divine inside me may be trying to tell me or show me if I will but listen.  Some days I have written only three quarters of a page.  Some days I have gone on for four or five.  I know when I am done.

Sheila has read a few things out loud to me from her book of the diaries of Dorothy Day, the great social activist and advocate for the poor and underprivileged.   Dorothy Day said that for her, writing was like a prayer.   Right on, Dorothy.  She said "The greatest challenge of the day is: how to bring about a revolution of the heart." Yes.

 

How To Live Forever

A stack of books just crashed to the floor from my bedside table.  It was a sign.  Every year about this time, I anxiously await inspiration to strike so that I can write our  annual Christmas letter.  It hasn’t struck yet, and I’ve decided to keep procrastinating loosen up by describing the books on my bedside table, as I did almost a year and a half ago here.  Uh oh, I have changed bedside tables since that post—I now use the top of an old wooden trunk—and I have a lot more space.  Yeah.  That’s why one of the stacks just gave up and fell to the floor.  The books here can be divided into several categories:  re-reads, dip-in-tos, poetry (always a re-read), and new books waiting to be munched on.  You’d nod off long before I listed all of them, so here is just a sample.

My favorite re-read is almost always at my bedside:  Yearnings:  Embracing the Sacred Messiness of Life by Rabbi Irwin Kula.  Here’s what Mitch Albom had to say about it.  “This wonderful book…embrace[s] the magic of day-to-day living, the spirituality that can be found in our questions, our mistakes, and our doubts.  Life is indeed messy, but as Irwin Kula shows us, sorting through it is what transforms us to higher ground.”  Of course I would love someone who encourages me in my favorite activity:  sorting through things in my head.

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance is a re-read from almost 40 years ago.  But for me, it’s a whole different book now.  Do you ever feel like even though you’re decades old, you just woke up last week?  I feel that way all the time.  What was I thinking 40 years ago?  I don’t think I had a glimmer of insight into this book.  When I read it then, I became fascinated by the idea of buying a motorcycle and traveling across the country.  And that’s about it.  I was a clueless dork, and I’m just a tiny bit less dorky now that I’ve been awake, alert, and alive for a week or so.

Right now, I’m reading these books for the first time:  No Death, No Fear, by Thich Nhat Hanh; Farm City:  The Education of an Urban Farmer, by Novella Carpenter; and The Nine:  Inside the Secret World of the Supreme Court, by Jeffrey Toobin. 

A dip-int0-start-reading-anywhere book is Jack Smith’s LA, a collection of essays on the city of angels by the long-time and much-beloved columnist of the LA Times.  Jack Smith made me laugh out loud for years and still does.

Poetry books roam the trunk, because I usually grab one and read a poem before I go to sleep.  Right now there is one by Billy Collins:  Picnic, Lightning; a poetry anthology edited by Billy Collins:  180 More:  Extraordinary Poems for Everyday; and a collection of poems by Mary Oliver:  Thirst.  I love them all, as well as their brothers and sisters on the nearby shelf.

Having a big stack of books yet to be read is a hedge against dying, at least for me.  I admit it.  As long as all those unread pages are within arm’s reach, I get to keep living.  It’s like sleeping with the light on if you’re afraid of the dark.  Here are the latest still-to-be-reads:

Tortilla Curtain, by T.C. Boyle; Mattaponi Queen:  Stories, by Belle Boggs; No Death, No Fear, by Thich Nhat Hanh; The Anthologist, by Nicholson Baker; The Corrections, by Jonathan Franzen, and not because Oprah likes him; and Look at the Birdie:  unpublished short fiction, by Kurt Vonnegut.

I’ll live a long time yet.

Christmas Poem

I was looking for a poem about

Christmas to send to a few people,

whether they liked it or not.

I wanted one with cold and clear stars,

A voice singing something about

Angels;

And animals waiting to speak at

Midnight.

And love, which I believe really is

All we need.

Bilingual Turkey

When we lived in Mexico, we both made a concentrated effort to speak Spanish to the Mexicans.  (They tried equally hard to speak English to us.)  Our efforts had mixed results. 

In general, my Spanish vocabulary and grammar exceeded Sheila’s.  She is half Mexican, but she is from Michigan and was raised as a non-Spanish speaking Midwesterner, whereas I spent a good part of my childhood on the Tex-Mex border. 

Prior to our arrival in Mexico, She only knew such important words as taco, enchilada, margarita, cerveza, gracias, corazon (heart) and alma (soul).  Just a few words, but they took her places and won her friends. 

We arrived in October, and by the time Thanksgiving was almost upon us, Sheila had learned the Spanish word for “turkey,” which is pavo.  She had also somehow caught on to the word polvo, which means “dust.”  You can sense where this is going, can’t you?

Sondra, a young neighbor whom we employed as a three-times-a-week maid, spoke less English than Sheila spoke Spanish, but by and large they managed to communicate with smiles, gestures, and eye rolls, the latter sometimes launched in my direction.  They bonded.

A day or two before Thanksgiving, Sondra arrived in the morning and started sweeping the tile floor.  With the usual smiles and gestures, Sheila proudly trotted out her new Spanish word, pavo, and sweetly informed Sondra that there were many turkeys on the floor over by the windows.

Now Sondra had respect for her elders and her employers, and she was also patient and gracious with mistakes in Spanish.  But at the startling news of the many turkeys on the floor, her normally kind and serene expression turned to total mystification mixed with concern.   Her new boss was perhaps a little loco.

Sondra turned to me for help, and saw the big grin on my face as I choked out “No es ‘pavo’!  Polvo!”  before bursting into giggles.  I explained that Sheila was thinking about the gringo custom of Thanksgiving, Dia de Accion de Gracias, where one serves pavo, when she meant to say the word for “dust.”  Sondra’s face cleared with relief.   “Ay, Senorita Cheela!”  she laughed and clucked, shaking her head with affection.

We have never forgotten the Spanish words for turkey and dust, and I had to share the memory with you.  May your pavo be delicious, and if there’s a little polvo on the floor, who cares?  It’s the corazon that’s important.   

I Saw It On Fox News

We’ve all kind of wondered, right?  Did Lee Harvey Oswald really act alone?  What about the detailed symbology in Dan Brown’s popular suspense thrillers?  For me, those are fun reads.  I think it’s perfectly normal to be intrigued (briefly) with potential conspiracies from time to time and there’s nothing like a good old edge of the seat conspiracy thriller at the movies.

Then there’s the wacko obsessive paranoid crazy person, combined with a dash of pathological liar.  We met her on Saturday.  A neighbor of ours asked us out to lunch with another friend of hers, who will be pet/housesitting our friend’s dog next week.  We were unprepared, as it turned out, for the meeting. 

For two plus hours, “Tamara” held forth.  If we had been able to break free from horrified paralysis and interject a comment or two, it would have been difficult to interrupt her stream of consciousness monologue on the following topics:  microwaved water (poisonous), scalar weaponry (You don’t know what that is?  I will tell you, and let you know the five countries that employ it),  Jesus’ face on the ocean floor, the successful manipulation of weather by They and Them,  the meaningful “fact” that cell mitochondria (she called them  “mitrochondria”) are supported by cross-shaped structures, the purposeful connection between Jewish holidays and the conception and gestation of a human fetus, and the cause of her brain aneurysm and subsequent miraculous survival.  Oh, and this woman drinks decaf expresso.  Because, she asked rhetorically, can you imagine someone like her on caffeine? 

I will make just a few comments now that lunch is mercifully over.  Microwaved water is not poisonous, and no, it does not stunt the growth of plants.  Really.  Scalar weaponry, which apparently involves electromagnetism and invisible domes similar to the ones used on Crest toothpaste commercials decades ago, does not exist even though in 1986 “they” did a practice run over Atlanta, Georgia.  You would have known about the scalar dome over Atlanta, but you didn’t, because it was only a practice run, see.

If you look it up on the Internet, a tracing of the alleged face of Jesus allegedly seen on the Ocean floor shows a humanoid with a low forehead and a receding chin, more like Neanderthal Man than the commonly accepted artists’ renditions of Christ.  I told She that if you could see this face on the Ocean floor and you thought it was really an image of Jesus, it would change your whole relationship with Him.  And not for the better, in my humble opinion.

If you don’t believe Tamara about the successful and ill-intentioned manipulation of weather, it seems that somewhere  there is a weatherman who used to be with an NBC affiliate in Pocatello, Idaho, and he knows that there isn’t a single flood, hurricane, drought, or even earthquake that wasn’t planned and executed by Them.  And if you are still skeptical, consider this:  Tamara saw it on Fox News!  Yes!  It was on Fox News!  How could you ever doubt?

Rock Star

I’ve been a religious rebel (the word “maverick” has been ruined for me by politicians) since I was young.  Perhaps this fact was foreshadowed when I played an angel in the first grade Christmas play.  You can easily see in the large photo of that occasion that my mother has pinned my wings on upside down.  The rebel made herself known during a slumber party I had at my house when I was 15.  I announced, prompted by what I do not recall, that most probably the first man and the first woman were not really named “Adam” and “Eve.”  A near riot ensued, and at least one girl threatened to call her mother to come pick her up in the middle of the night.

All my life, I’ve had trouble finding my footing on a spiritual path; stumbling over traditional church liturgy, much of the Bible, and even the prayer that all who call themselves Christian know by heart.  I’ve always felt alone.  My belief in the Source of Love has never seemed to be a good enough reason to feel that I really belong in any faith community.  And yet I persist.  I have longed for validation.

So it was that a few weeks ago, I signed up for a 10-week small group at church called “The Seeker’s Path:  Moving Beyond Belief.”  One of the major goals of the group is that “each participant will have been able to move beyond any traditional beliefs or practices that have hindered his or her spiritual growth and will have gained a new understanding of, and deeper relationship with, God.”

There are about ten of us.  Ninety minutes goes by in a flash.  We are safe to expose our hearts and minds to each other.  Safe!  We are encouraged, but not required, to do journaling and reading and homework assignments.  This week one of the homework assignments, #1 on the list of possibilities, was to “write a short poem, haiku, a very brief narrative or simply list key words that summarize your current relationship with God.” 

I thought I’d skip that one.  Not in the mood.  Too hard to pin down.  I’d feel a little bit shy.  OK, a lot shy.  Didn’t wanna.  Not going to do it.  But walking into the kitchen this morning to get my first cup of coffee, the image of God as a rock star hopped unbidden into my mind.  I have no idea where that came from.  Heh.  I sat down with the coffee and wrote this:

Note To My Rock Star

Love, we’re good together when we’re alone, or with my friends.

We can talk about anything, and we laugh and cry together.

You understand me better than anyone ever has in my whole life.

But when your groupies and go-fers are around, and you’re wearing costumes and makeup and the crowd is screaming your Name, I wonder if I really know you. 

I wonder if that song you’re singing was really written for me.

Oh, honey, I’m just bitchin’.

I know your gift is for the world.

Bedbugs

“Sleep tight; don’t let the bedbugs bite!” exhorted my beloved grandfather Mac every night before I got in bed as a child.  I knew there weren’t really any bedbugs.  It was our joke.  I passed the saying along to Tara when she was little, but apparently I wasn’t as trustworthy as Mac; she didn’t take kindly to the idea of bedbugs, joke or not.  Stories about Tara and bugs, existent and non-existent, are legend, and involve baseball bats and whole rolls of toilet paper.

Bedbugs are not a joke these days.  According to all the news media, if you don’t already have them, it’s just a matter of time.  Exterminators are paying $10,000 for specially trained bedbug-locating dogs, I saw on TV.  We are barraged with warnings and what-to-do on a daily basis. 

Yesterday CNN urged against picking up any “free” furniture from curb or alley discards.  The same caveat applies to yard sales and the eponymous flea market, I assume. 

Good thing we didn’t worry about bedbugs back in the sixties.  In my graduate year of college, four of us lived in an old house near campus, which we furnished with parental discards and the perennial brick and board bookcases.   The focal point of decor in our living room was the red and white-checked front seat of an automobile.  An old automobile.   Two of us were at a flea market when we spotted the seat.  Five dollars later, the prize was ours, and it never caused us a moment of worry.  We dragged home anything that wasn’t obviously breathing, moving, or sprouting at every opportunity.

It can cost “tens of thousands” of dollars to remove bedbug infestations, trumpet the newscasters.  For  homeowners, that’s just one more grim fact to add to the endless nightmare of ownership.  Your landlord won’t let you have pets or paint the living room red?  Move.   Homeowners have to worry about thousands of dollars for  leaking roofs, dead front lawns, falling trees, worn-out heating and cooling systems, rotted beams, termites, backed up sewer lines, faulty fireplaces, squirrels in the attic, and a plethora of other potential hazards.  I gotta say, though, that a bedbug infestation might be worse.

Sleep tight.