Perchance to dream

Driving home the other day, I had on my oldies station and a song started:

I could stay awake just to hear you breathing,
Watch you smile while you are sleeping,
While you're far away and dreaming.
I could spend my life in this sweet surrender.
I could stay lost in this moment forever....

And so on.

I thought, I guess his girlfriend doesn't snore. And after another moment's thought: Or drool.

Yet, is a woman who snores and/or drools less worthy of a love song than one who sleeps quietly and prettily?

I'm awake just because you're snoring,
But still I look at you, adoring.
A damp spot on the pillowcase
Is underneath your pretty face.

I snore. I know this because I've asked for honest feedback from, say, my sister, when we share a hotel room. Occasionally I become aware of it on my own because I hear myself snore, just as I'm dropping off to sleep.

I don't drool much. I have drooled in my sleep upon occasion. It seems more likely when I fall asleep on a couch during the day, rather than during my long sleep at night.

Once my sister and I were watching the movie Key Largo, with Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall. In one scene, the characters have been confined to one room overnight and have fallen asleep in their chairs or, in the case of Lauren Bacall (if I recall correctly—it's been a long time) sitting on the floor, laying her head on an ottoman. She wakes up in the morning and lifts her head from where it rested. She looks beautiful because she's Lauren Bacall and that's what she does. I said to my sister, "If that were me, I'd be like this," and I pantomimed wiping my mouth and face.

In the song I heard in my car the other day, the singer goes on quite a bit about how great it is just to watch her sleeping, but towards the end of the song he ratchets up the drama and hoarsely screams some of the lyrics (because he's Steven Tyler and that's what he does). If she were sweetly sleeping, she'd surely wake up at that point, unless she had in earplugs.

Here's my preferred song for invoking loved ones going to sleep:



And may I wish you, Dear Reader, sweet dreams till sunbeams find you.

Mystery

Sometimes I like to read a mystery series. It spares me wondering what to read next; just get the next book. A year or so ago, I read all the Miss Marple books, in the order in which they were published. Now I'm doing the same with the Inspector Lynley books, by Elizabeth George. I'm on the second book, Payment in Blood.

In a mystery novel, they have to introduce a lot of characters early on, so that you have a good line-up of suspects. My trouble is, I'm bad with names. So, as I read, I often confuse one character with another. Now is this the victim's brother-in-law or the detective's ex-girlfriend's new boyfriend? So today during lunch I went back to the beginning and paged through (on my Kindle) writing down each character's name, key facts, their age if mentioned, and their relationship to other characters. I didn't quite get them all, but I've got a start, and when I'm done then I can quickly check who's who as each character shows up with their alibi or lack thereof.

Sidetracked

My out-of-doors goal for today was to sweep the steps that lead down from the driveway to my deck and to rake up all the wind-blown branches, twigs, and leaves from underneath the Noble Fir next to the steps.

These were going to be my "before" pictures:

"Before" sweeping the steps.

"Before" raking under the Noble Fir.

I did a rough sweep of the steps, and then I needed to get a rake and also a pair of clippers from one of my sheds. (Thanks to my dad, there are three sheds in our yard.) The shed door had blackberry vines growing over it. Blackberries are very, very prickery. The vines had also intertwined with a rose bush by the shed, and an unwanted pair of holly bushes were growing under the rose. Everything with prickers.

The Distraction

I did have one pruner with me that we used in December to take the lower branches off my Christmas tree. I used it to cut at the vines until I could open the door, then I pulled out a rake. I raked up the prickery vines and used the rake and pruner like tongs to pick them up and put them in a wheelbarrow.

Spring thoughts

March comes in like a lion and goes out like lamb, so the saying goes. It kind of did roar in. We've been having unseasonably wintry weather at a time when we should be seeing signs of spring, as February ended and March began. Days on end of northeastern winds from that darn Fraser Valley, and repeated snowfalls. Significant snowfalls, too, not just the "dusting" we might typically get in late winter.

Significant February snowfall

Today, there is still snow on parts of the yard. It's melting slowly because temperatures have stayed quite cold, freezing overnight.

But we've had a few sunny days now, and surely spring is on the way. I looked back a few years in my Facebook feed and saw that my forsythia has bloomed in mid- to late March before. Here's a picture I took on March 14, 2015:



I purposely planted that forsythia where I could see it from my living room window. It's one of the earliest plants to bloom in spring, and I am color-starved by the time winter ends and want to feast my eyes on the yellow flowers. The 14th may be particularly early; elsewhere, I have a photo from March 25, 2017, where it's just starting to bloom.

Bellingham, where I work, is oceanside and has a milder micro-climate than Lynden, where I live, which is about 15 miles inland. Every spring, as I drive to work, I see forsythia blooming in Bellingham and then along the road to Bellingham before my own finally blooms.

This year, I am resolved to return to container gardening on my deck. For the past few years, with my parents' decline and deaths and my post-water-damage remodel, I haven't had the energy. Last year, I bought some plants, planted a few, then left the rest in their little store pots, where they still are now. This year, I want to make the effort to once again make my deck a beautiful, fragrant place to spend time.

My own heart let me more have pity on

My own heart
Gerard Manley Hopkins

My own heart let me more have pity on; let
Me live to my sad self hereafter kind,
Charitable; not live this tormented mind
With this tormented mind tormenting yet.
I cast for comfort I can no more get
By groping round my comfortless, than blind
Eyes in their dark can day or thirst can find
Thirst's all-in-all in all a world of wet.
Soul, self; come, poor Jackself, I do advise
You, jaded, let be; call off thoughts awhile
Elsewhere; leave comfort root-room; let joy size
At God knows when to God knows what; whose smile
's not wrung, see you; unforeseen times rather — as skies
Betweenpie mountains — lights a lovely mile.

I came across this Gerard Manley Hopkins poem a week or so ago, and immediately the first line went straight into me. "My own heart let me more have pity on." It's a variation of what I try to tell myself and what I sometimes tell others, "Be kind to yourself." My sister tells me, "Be a friend to yourself." Would you treat a friend this way? If not, don't treat yourself that way either.

Love me, love my dog

I'm taking a little break from housework, which is unusual for me—not taking a break (that's usual), but housework. I've been washing by hand some pots and bowls that have been in my sink for an incredibly long time. If I told you how long they've sat there, you wouldn't even believe it, but it would be true.

In a little less than an hour, I will drive to the Fred Meyer store in Bellingham to pick up some groceries I ordered online. This has pretty much become my standard method of grocery shopping. I pick out everything I want online, pay for it with my debit card, and schedule a time (an hour window) to pick it up, usually the next day. The nice thing is that I can take my dog with me because I just sit in my car in the specified parking lot, call the store on my cell, and they bring it out, all bagged, and put in in my trunk. They charge me less than $5 for the service.

I have not left my dog in his crate at home alone since we vacated my house more than a year ago. When we lived in a hotel, at first I took him to work with me every day. I had permission to do that for the three months it was supposed to take. After that, I took him every day to doggy day care at the Hyline Hotel for Dogs. I could not leave him in the hotel room because he has separation anxiety and would certainly have barked and howled the whole time I was gone. At Hyline, he has company, which is all he needs. It has made him less neurotic.

When I moved back into my house, I did not have the heart to resume the crate routine we used to follow, where he was in his crate for nine hours while I was away at work. So I have continued bringing him to Hyline. He likes it there. I can tell because he happily jumps out of the car and willingly walks in with his tail up. (As opposed to at the vet, where he nervously jumps out of the car, and has to be coaxed or carried into the exam area, with a droopy tail, and in fear and trembling.)

This close bond between us to some degree limits what I do. If I am going somewhere in the evening or on the weekend where dogs are not welcome, then I have to arrange extra time for him at Hyline. Their drop-off and pick-up hours are 7:00-10:00 a.m. and 3:00-6:00 p.m. So, for an evening outing I have to put him in Hyline's boarding service overnight, which means packing up his medicine and food for them to feed him.

If putting him at Hyline is not feasible, then I don't go wherever I might have otherwise. I know with my mind that putting him in his box for just an hour or two while I would go away really wouldn't do him any harm, but I can't do it. I guess I'm the one now with separation anxiety. Although I don't fear separation for myself, I just feel like I would be betraying his trust. I'm doubtless projecting something on him.

Asparagus fern

I brought a plant to my office. I've had it a long time. I can't even remember when I got it. It used to stand among a number of other plants near my kitchen window, just to the left of the sink. There's a small bit of counter there that's fairly difficult to reach and make useful, so I put my plants there, where they could receive light from the west-facing window over the sink.

My sister used to ask if I really wanted plants there and why. This was when she was helping me get more organized than I usually am. She suggested that, since I had so little counter space to begin with, I should not waste any of it on a bunch of potted plants. When she asked why they were there, I said it's because that's where the light is.

I have one western window (in the kitchen) that gets the afternoon and evening sun. I have one eastern window (in the guest room) that gets very little sun because of trees outside. I have two sunny southern windows (in my bedroom and library), but when I tried to keep a plant in the bedroom my dog knocked over the stand it was on and the pot broke. That was not the first time my dog had caused the destruction of a flower pot. And my library was still in transition from being my dad's office to becoming a library, so I didn't spend much time in there and didn't have a place to put plants. (I have no northern windows, because that wall is underground.)

Then there's my living room. My "front room" as we often call it in Lynden, except my "front room" happens to face the back yard. It also has south-facing windows, but they get no sun, because the upstairs deck overhangs the lower deck there. That's nice for my container gardening on my deck; I have both a sunny, hot south-facing area, and a shady, cool area, so I can grow both sun-loving and shade-loving flowers. But my living room does not get enough sunlight to grow anything. I tried keeping some plants that require very little sun, but even they could not hack it.

Anyway, when my house was torn apart for water damage, my indoor potted plants got shuffled around the place as work progressed. I used to come to my house every Sunday afternoon and walk through to see what was happening. At first, I watered the plants wherever they sat. When they got covered by tarp, I gave up on them. Eventually the pots ended up outside on my deck. Two hardy plants survived this treatment. One was my asparagus fern and the other was a spider plant.

The asparagus fern actually throve once it spent the summer out in the shady side of the deck. This past week, we did go down to a freezing temperature one night. The asparagus fern (let's just call it "Gus") was sheltered enough by the overhanging deck that it did not die in the frost. But the next morning I took it with me to work, cleaned the pot off, pulled and cut out any remaining dead twigs, and set it with my other work plants on the bookcase that serves as a partition for my workspace.



It's a pretty purple pot, as you might see. The glass globe for watering was already in the pot all the whole time since it had been in the kitchen, so I kept it with. I washed it off and filled it up for this fresh start in a new space.

In the smaller, dark-to-light purple pot is a somewhat struggling succulent. It's getting a little spindly, but it hangs in there. And then is my African violet, which does very well in this space and blooms a lot. I believe I bought the African violet to put on my brother's grave at one one time and then brought it into work. The light source here is a skylight in the ceiling above, so the African violet (let's just call it "Vi") leaves reach upward to the light more and don't lie as flat as they usually would. But the beautiful dark purple blooms keep happening.

So, to make a short story long, that's how "Gus" came to live in my office.

It happens that way sometimes

I took my dog out this morning to walk him around the back yard to take care of his needs. It was a lovely autumn morning. The lawn is covered with yellow and brown leaves, and some still hang in the trees, but the branches and twigs are becoming more visible. The sun shone and every dew-covered thing sparkled. I paused, as I often do, near the opening in the shrubs where I can watch the creek flowing by. It's getting fuller and swifter. As I stood enjoying the beauty, my dog suddenly chucked up his most recent meal. We moved on to complete his walk.

Life.

Twenty years after

It's a very rainy Thursday in Lynden, my home town. I've lived in this town, and this house, longer than I ever lived in one place continuously before. Actually, now that I think of it, it's kind of my 20-year anniversary in Lynden. I vacated my apartment in San Jose, California, on October 31st, a Saturday, and I preached a farewell message at my dearly loved church, Friendship Agape, on Sunday, November 1st, and, on Monday, I started the drive up to Lynden, Washington. It was a two-day trip, so I guess November 3rd is really my 20th anniversary of living in Lynden. I moved into this same apartment I'm living in now, in the downstairs of my parents' home.

I had been a part of Friendship Agape Church for seven years, helping out a small, young congregation by teaching and assisting in any way I could. It was thrilling work to see people come to Christ and witness their transformation and growth. The work led me to seminary. I went two years to Fuller Seminary's Northern California Extension Campus. I went to school half time while working full time, which was exhausting. Also, as much as I loved Friendship Agape Church, I felt drained. One day I was sitting in traffic in San Jose. It was the morning commute, and I was in a line of cars waiting for the metering light that would let us on the freeway at 30-second intervals, where we could crawl along at half the speed limit. I thought, Why do I live here? I had moved there a couple years after college because my sister and her family lived there. But I was spending half my wages on rent and putting in almost an extra work day per week in commute time. Meanwhile,  my parents were in Lynden, I had a brother and his family in Lynden, I had extended family in Lynden, and I had always loved Lynden. When I was a girl and moving from place to place every few years, I dreamed of living in Lynden forever.

I considered that I would only go to seminary one time in my life and that to be too worn out to learn well and study deeply was a waste. I remembered that my dad had always told me that if I ever needed a place to live I could live in their downstairs. It has its own kitchen and bathroom, a living room, two bedrooms (one of which was my dad's office), and its own door in and out. So I called my folks and told them I wanted to move to Lynden, live in their house, and go to seminary full time at Regent College in Vancouver, British Columbia. Lynden is just a few miles from the Canadian border, and Vancouver is closer to us than Seattle. Because they were wonderful parents, my dad and mom were actually thrilled by the idea. My dad immediately went out and bought a gas stove to keep the basement warmer and had gravel laid along the side of the house so I could park there. I told them I thought I would probably move the next spring, around March or April 1999.

But, looking back, I think the Lord saw how tired I was. At the end of September I was laid off from my job. I didn't think it practical to look for a new job when I was planning to move in six months anyway, so I brought my plans forward early. I gave my landlord a month's notice that I would vacate at the end of October. My parents came down from Lynden to help me move.

On October 31st, my sister and her husband, my dad, and kind members of my church packed my worldly possessions into a U-Haul moving van. I had two cats at the time, who both hated riding in the car. Whenever I drove them to the vet, their desperate claws would cling to the lattice of their carriers, and they would yowl the whole way. So I consulted the vet and got some tranquilizers to give them, so they could sleep through the drive.

My church, which was still small and relatively young, was sorry to see me go. When I spoke to them that Sunday, it was the one time when I preached when I really felt the Holy Spirit gave me the message. I spoke more fluently than I can now remember to encourage them to rely on God, the true builder of the church.

The next morning, we started out in two vehicles. My dad and my kind, generous brother-in-law drove the U-Haul. Or, more accurately, my brother-in-law drove and my dad kept him company. I drove my car with my mom as a passenger and my two doped-up cats in their carriers in the back seat. We drove all day Monday, and stopped somewhere to stay in a hotel Monday night. I don't remember where. Then drove all day Tuesday and got to Lynden. I remember bits and pieces of the unpacking.

I put my cats into an unfinished little room that housed the furnace and hot water heater. I didn't want them to be scared by all the coming and going of people with furniture and boxes. My cats were frightened of most people except me. They had been feral kittens when I took them in. Even in the furnace room, they apparently were terrified and disappeared into the walls behind the drywall that didn't quite meet the ceiling. After everyone had left and I was calling them, I could hear them meowing inside the walls. I wanted to keep talking so they would hear my voice and come to it, but I ran out of things to say, so I sat on the floor in the hallway and sang the verses of Amazing Grace until they came creeping out to me, their whiskers full of cobwebs.

Boo

So, because of Halloween, I surmise, my Kindle store has been coughing up a lot of ghost stories and the like under "Recommended for You." I don't like creepy or gory things, but I did see a title I decided to buy: The Ghost and Mrs. Muir. When I was a kid, there was a (probably regrettable) TV series of this name. I remember watching it, but I don't remember the show itself. In the 1940s a good movie version was made with Rex Harrison as the ghost. I bought the book and read it. It was quite short. I think I read it in the course of a day (breakfast, lunch, and evening). A likable book.

Changeable as the weather

The skies were busy today. When I got up (rather late) and took the dog out, the ground was wet from overnight rain. When I drove to my sister-in-law's house at about half past noon, the sun was out and all the leaves were gleaming from the rain. With the fall colors, it was gorgeous. After I ate dinner with my sister-in-law and her grandson, she and I got out our needlework. I looked out the window and commented on how it had clouded over during my visit. Pretty soon, we heard thunder. It started to rain, then it hailed. We went and stood in the doorway to watch it. We could see the lightning flash and heard more thunder. After a while the hail stopped, and the storm blew past. By the time I left for home, around 3:30 p.m., half the sky was blue again. As I drove through the countryside, I went through some patches of light fog. As evening fell, fog rolled in. If variety is the spice of life, this was a spicy day, weather-wise.

So very accomplished

I accomplished several things today.

1. I set up my wifi. When I first moved back into my house after the deluge and subsequent repairs, I could not get on the internet at all. Then my co-worker educated me as to using my phone to create a wifi hotspot. I used this for a while. My phone would ding every few minutes with a message from my provider that I had used up my data but they'd added more at my expense. Eventually I realized (I'm slow on the uptake) that I could at least connect my laptop directly to the cable, and I did. So my laptop had internet access but my Kindle did not. Whenever I wanted to download a new Kindle book (which happens frequently) I either had to be at a place of business that offered wifi or use my phone again.

Part of my slowness in setting up my home wifi was ignorance. I had never set it up myself in the first place. My sister visited a few years ago and, discovering I had no wifi, went to Radio Shack, bought whatever was needed and set it up for me. She even set up a network name and password that would be ridiculously easy for me to remember.

When I had to vacate my home, at first I left my wifi, phone, etc. in place, thinking they could sit around during the process, but the workers ended up having to put them aside, so two phones for my landline, an external hard drive, a surge protector power strip, my wifi thingy, and a number of cords and cables ended up just bundled into a small wastepaper basket, where they became coated with dust. Really coated. So when I did come across them, I was reluctant to touch them, thinking that first I'd have to clean them off and then perhaps just be frustrated by being stupidly unable to set them up correctly.

But today I finally did it. I was motivated by the fact that I heard a good speaker on Friday and I wanted to buy her book, but my phone was being wonky and I couldn't get a mobile hotspot set up with it. So I decided I had to take on the wifi job. With wet rags and disinfectant wipes (or as we call them in my workplace "wipies") I got everything cleaned up, although it made my hands feel gross.

Then I found (to my relief) that it was ludicrously simple to plug everything in correctly. Easy on the brain, that is. Somewhat hard on the body when it came to getting down on the floor, crawling under my desk to plug and connect things, and then getting back up again. Try not to picture it.

2. I went to the vet and bought a renewal of my dog's medicine. I had a pill for today and one for tomorrow, which is a Sunday, when the vet's office will be closed, but none for Monday morning. My vet's office is open just until noon on Saturdays, so there was a good chance I'd forget to go get his meds on time. But I remembered. I rock. This medicine is called Denamarin, and it addresses my dog's liver problems. Without it, he gets sick and shivers and curls up and is miserable. With it, he is just as goofy as he always has been. He has to take it in the mornings before he eats, so it was important I remembered.

I'll spare you the lengthy account of what it takes to get a pill inside my dog.

3. I voted. My ballot came in the mail and I filled it all in this evening. I put it in its "security sleeve" and then in its mailing envelope. Tomorrow I can just drop it in the mail. I consider it my duty to vote my conscience.

Given my low spirits and general sense of exhaustion, lethargy, and acedia over the past year and more, accomplishing three things is a good sign that perhaps I am climbing out of an emotional hole. Does accomplishing things make me "accomplished"? Mr. Darcy might not think so.

The basic necessity of coffee

A couple days ago, I ran out of coffee K-cups at home. To backtrack, when I moved back into my home this spring, I bought myself a Keurig coffee maker as a housewarming gift, and I gave my drip coffee maker to charity. Thursday and Friday, I picked up a cup of coffee at a stand on my way to work. Saturday, I made a special trip in the morning just to buy a cup of coffee.

Today I didn’t feel up to leaving the house. I did have to take the dog into the back yard, and I will have to do that again. Also, I’m scheduled to pick up groceries from Fred Meyer in Bellingham in a little while, so I’ll have to go there. (A box of coffee pods will be among the items I bring back.) But mostly I’ve been either on the computer, or reading, or knitting (two rows), or contemplating. Thinking a lot about my parents. While I was trying to knit, I realized how uncomfortable, headachy, and crabby I was feeling. I finally made the brilliant leap of diagnosing my ill-ease as a lack of coffee.

When we had our family reunion in August, I bought a little container of ground coffee to use in the big coffee urns to provide coffee for my relatives.



I still had some, so I put a couple cups of water in a pan and spooned in some coffee and put it on the burner to boil. Eventually it did so, and I tried to pour it through a paper coffee filter into a mug. I made quite a mess, but I did get a cup of coffee out of the experiment. Also, when I mopped up the spilled liquid, my stove top was cleaner than it had been before.

Now that I’ve had coffee, I do indeed feel better, physically.

Old dog, old tricks

My dog comes up to me when I’m sitting at the computer, and he makes some noise so I notice him. I reach out my hand to pet him but he dances away and prances around as if I’m about to get up and take him for a walk. Which I’m not.

Hair care

I can think of at least two movies in which women radically changed their hairstyles as a mark of a new stage in their lives. One was Waiting to Exhale. Angela Bassett's character goes from long, flowing hair to a very short cut after her husband leaves her. The other was Sliding Doors, with the same change (long to short) along with a color change for Gwyneth Paltrow's character after she breaks up with her boyfriend.

I've been through a few. Just to go back to my early 40s, I was without regular employment, and therefore without regular income. I grew very long hair without much intention just by not having enough money to go to the hair salon.



After I became a legal assistant, I got my hair cut. I pretty much stuck with shoulder-length, more or less, first with bangs and then growing them out, and gradually I colored my hair. I would go more dark red in the winter and more strawberry blond in the summer. Going to the hair salon every six to eight weeks was a symbol to me of my prosperity.



In July, 2016, my mom went to the hospital. I had to cancel a hair appointment because I was taken up with my concern for her. I never rescheduled. My mom went from the hospital to a skilled nursing facility, my dad moved into the assisted living facility next door to hers, my mom went into hospice care, my dad became more ill and weak, my dad went to the hospital and then to the skilled nursing facility, my dad went into hospice care, my dad died, and my mom died. By that time, it was April, 2017, and I had not had my hair professionally done in nearly a year. It was getting long, with blond ends and darker root (but the "roots" were pretty long, too).



I went to Super-Cheap Clips & Cuts, or whatever it's called, and had it cut to shoulder length. That took away most of the blond, but there still was an inch or two. Finally yesterday I went back to Super-Cheap and had it cut again. There may still be a fraction of an inch of color, but mostly the artificial color is gone.



This current haircut symbolizes my desire to simplify my life. I'm ready to go gray, if it's time for that. (Hiding gray was never the reason for my coloring; I colored because I thought my own color was uninteresting.) I'm going to let it grow. I look forward to being able to put it in a simple french braid or some easy updo. No fuss.

Your beauty should not come from outward adornment, such as elaborate hairstyles and the wearing of gold jewelry or fine clothes. Rather, it should be that of your inner self, the unfading beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which is of great worth in God’s sight. (I Peter 3:3-4)

Something in the air

Can you tell the difference between the two photos in this post? They both show the road in front of my car (picture taken through my dirty windshield) in the hazy north Whatcom County countryside.

In this one, taken August 21st, the haze comes from smoke from wildfires in British Columbia:

Air quality: Unhealthy, perhaps even hazardous

In this one, taken August 25th, the haze comes from clouds, mist, and rain:

Air quality: good

They may look alike in photos, but what a huge difference in the experience.

For weeks, it seems like, we had hot, dry weather with smoke drifting and blowing into Northwest Washington from fires in B.C. My sister was visiting and as we drove through the county I said, "If this were mist and rain, it would be just the kind of day I like." The smoke gave a weird cast of light to everything and induced headaches. Public notices kept increasing about the bad air quality and what do in response (stay inside, close the windows, run air conditioning on recirculate, get a HEPA quality air filter). Yuck.

Finally, late last week, the wind shifted so that it was blowing in from the ocean, pushing the smoke away from us. Then yesterday, O frabjous day, it rained. It was even chilly! What a relief. Today it's still rainy, cloudy, and cool. Yay.

Doggy, come home

A Facebook "reminder" came up today that it was 8 years ago today that my dog went missing. He got out of the house while I was at work, and I didn't find him all evening, although I was out looking for him both on foot and in a car.

I didn't sleep at all that night. I was online looking up the Humane Society and finally figuring out that in the City of Lynden animal control is handled by the police department. The next morning I talked to the animal control officer, and he had picked up my dog on Front Street at about 7:30 p.m.

I was so relieved that he was alive and found. If he had just disappeared, I would have tortured myself imaging how he might have suffered. As it was, I just had to pay a fine and pay for a license for him and get him back.

My dear parents were also relieved for me. They knew how sad and upset I would have been, and, like me, they feared he was gone forever.

Here he is earlier that same year:

Complaining about the heat

What could be more boring than complaining about the weather? But I'm going to do it anyway. It's been hot and dry for weeks now. On Friday I read that a big change was coming: cold air and showers and thunderstorm. Hooray! I hoped for no lightning strikes in our dry timber, but I did hope for cool, cloudy, rainy weather.

So this morning it still felt kind of warm and muggy. After a while, it cooled a bit and a breeze rang my wind chimes. Finally, I smelled rain. Ah. It rained just enough to wet the pavement.

An hour or so later, the sun came out and the cool, cloudy weather system was done for. I just looked at the 10-day weather forecast, and while tomorrow should be a reasonable mid-70s temperature, after that it's 80s and even 90s as far as the eye can see. Noooooooooooooooooooooooo.

I hate the heat. And have I mentioned that I hate the heat. When will it end?

Meanwhile, I'm in a continual state of inelegance.

Hours and days and years and ages

Sometimes on Fridays, on my commute home, I'll repeatedly check my dashboard day/time display just to verify that it really is Friday evening. It seems too good to be true.

I love Friday night and Saturday morning because I don't have to care what time it is. If I wake up, I can get up or not, as I choose. If I doze, it doesn't matter; it's not like I'm going to be late somewhere.

When were clocks invented? According to Wikipedia, the first mechanical clocks were made in the early 14th century, which would be the 1300s—is that right? The 1900s were the 20th century, so, yes, the "hundreds" are one less than the "century."

I wondered about the timing (ha, ha) of clock inventions because I want to say my aversion to "clocking in" anywhere is the natural state of humanity, while structured and strict time are an unnatural aberration of the industrial age. For millenia, people woke up and did what they needed to do and went where they needed to go but without precision as to when they got there.

Biblically, timing was by the sun. Each day ended (and the new day began) when the sun went down. Rather than a specific time for sunset, I seem to have read that, for instance, a woman ceased her sewing for the Sabbath when she could no longer discern the difference between certain thread colors.

In the New Testament, there are references to the "3rd hour," the "6th hour," and so on. According to Wikipedia, the Romans had 12 hour days and 12 hour nights, but the length of the hours varied by season. In the winter, daylight hours were shorter and nighttime hours longer, and in the summer the other way around.

Another Wikipedia article fascinatingly says that for ancient Jewish people, it was considered night when the first three stars appeared in the sky. I love that. The third star begins the 1st hour of the night, and like the Romans, Jewish folks had 12 hours each for day and night, again varying in length according to season. Daylight began at dawn, prior to sunrise. The sixth hour of daytime was when the sun was at its zenith.

That's so much more natural than clock time. In the winter, when the mornings are dark, I have such a hard time waking up to get to work by the precise hour required. How much nicer if I could wait until daylight to get up. I would have to get up earlier in the summer, but that's easier. But then in the summer I would spend longer hours at work—but there would be the payoff of shorter hours in the winter.

Office life as it's experienced today—seven or eight (or more) hours of sitting at a desk—is a product of mechanized time. In pre-industrial times, only scribes and scholars, I would guess, sat for long period of time. In monasteries, though, the monks who copied manuscripts probably did not do so for seven or eight hours. Monasteries generally have a balance of time for study, physical labor, and prayer. Desk work does not engulf the whole day.

I guess pre-industrial women sat for long times when they sewed or wove or spun, but if they were doing that as part of the overall task of housekeeping, they too would not have the sedentary work taking up the whole day.

I am very sedentary. I sit at a computer most of the day at work. I sit for meals. I sit in my car. At home, I sit and read or sit some more at my computer. Sometimes I sit to do needle work of one kind or another. Not natural or healthy, but hard to change. This is especially true for these recent years of sorrow as my parents' health declined and then they died. Even mild exercise, like gardening, is hard for me to make myself do because grief and chronic depression have drained my energy. It becomes a cycle: I don't want to move, so I lose conditioning, which makes it harder to move, which further decreases my desire to move, which causes further loss of strength. I should make changes, but it's hard to summon the will. I don't know if even my spirit is willing, but certainly my flesh is weak.

Jesus said that his disciples' flesh was weak, though their spirit was willing, when they fell asleep while he agonized in Gethsemane. I like this prayer that covers us whether we sleep or whether we lie awake: Protect us, Lord, as we stay awake; watch over us as we sleep, that awake, we may keep watch with Christ, and asleep, rest in His peace.

What's in a name?

Most mornings, I listen to the daily readings that are put online by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops. Today's gospel reading was Matthew 16:13-23:

Jesus went into the region of Caesarea Philippi
and he asked his disciples,
"Who do people say that the Son of Man is?"
They replied, "Some say John the Baptist, others Elijah,
still others Jeremiah or one of the prophets."
He said to them, "But who do you say that I am?"
Simon Peter said in reply,
"You are the Christ, the Son of the living God."
Jesus said to him in reply, "Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah.
For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my heavenly Father.
And so I say to you, you are Peter,
and upon this rock I will build my Church,
and the gates of the netherworld shall not prevail against it.
I will give you the keys to the Kingdom of heaven.
Whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven;
and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven."
Then he strictly ordered his disciples
to tell no one that he was the Christ.

From that time on, Jesus began to show his disciples
that he must go to Jerusalem and suffer greatly
from the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes,
and be killed and on the third day be raised.
Then Peter took Jesus aside and began to rebuke him,
"God forbid, Lord! No such thing shall ever happen to you."
He turned and said to Peter,
"Get behind me, Satan! You are an obstacle to me.
You are thinking not as God does, but as human beings do."

I was struck by the parallel conversations our Lord and Peter have, which are recorded right next to each other. Let's start with the two things Peter says initially:

"You are the Christ, the Son of the living God."
"God forbid, Lord! No such thing shall ever happen to you."

And then in the Lord's replies:

"Blessed are you....You are Peter [Petros]."
"Get behind me, Satan."

"Upon this rock [petra] I will build my church."
"You are an obstacle [skandalon = stumbling block] to me."

"Flesh and blood has not revealed this to you."
"You are thinking...as human beings do."

"My heavenly Father [has revealed this to you]."
"You are not thinking as God does."

So, first Peter identifies the Lord correctly as the Christ (= Messiah = Anointed One = one chosen for a certain task, e.g., prophet, priest, or king). Then Peter mis-identifies the Lord, he incorrectly says that Christ is not the crucified one. He does not perceive that the task for which the Christ is christened is to suffer, be killed, and on the third day be raised.

In response to the first, the Lord blesses Simon Barjonah and gives him a new name, Petros/Rock. In response to the second, the Lord utters what at first sounds like a curse and gives him a different name: Satan/Adversary.

The Lord responds to the correct identification by saying that on this petra/rock he will build his church. He responds to the incorrect identification by saying that he could trip on this skandalon/stumbling block. I looked for the literal meaning of skandalon and I found that it goes back to the thing one trips over that brings a trap down on one. And it developed so it could mean a stone sticking up out of the ground that could trip one. So when Peter identifies Jesus of Nazareth as the Messiah, he is the foundation stone of the church, but when he mis-identifies him as not the crucified, he becomes the stone that could trip Jesus and cause him to miss his calling.

Skandalon, you may know, recurs in 1 Corinthians 1:23: "we preach Christ crucified: a stumbling block/skandalon to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles."

When Peter correctly sees Jesus as the Christ, he is not thinking like an unaided human—flesh and blood has not revealed this to him, but he is thinking in the way revealed by the Father in heaven. When Peter incorrectly sees Christ as uncrucified, he is thinking like a human/anthropos, and he is not thinking as God does.

This is pretty much what came to me as I listened to the Gospel passage this morning and thought about it through the day. I went to online lexicons, dictionaries, translators, etc. to confirm what I thought (was "obstacle" a translation for skandalon? What does skandalon really mean? Am I recalling correctly when I think that Satan means "Adversary"?—by the way it also means "Accuser.") And while I was looking around, I came across a blog entry from 2011, by a gentleman named Brant Clements, who, according to his profile, is a Lutheran pastor.

He writes of the final verse in today's passage, specifically about the saying, "Get behind me"/Hupage opiso mou, and then looks at the next verse (not included in today's passage) in which Jesus says: If anyone desires to come behind me"/Ei tis thelei opiso mou elthein...he must take up his cross and follow me. The NIV translates "If anyone desires to come behind me..." as "Whoever wants to be my disciple..."

So when our Lord says to Peter "Get behind me," he's not saying "Get lost," he's telling him, "Go behind me, which is where my disciples are," and later he says, "If you want to get behind me, you too must take up your own cross and follow in the way I am going—the way of the cross." He's not cursing Peter, he's calling Peter back to his role as Christ's disciple. Christ's task for which he is christened is to suffer, die, and be raised. That is also the task for which Christians are christened.

When Jesus was tempted by Satan in the wilderness, Jesus said simply, Hupage, Satana. "Go, Adversary." But to Peter he says, Hupage opiso mou, Satana. "Go behind me, Adversary." Change from Adversary to disciple, to Petros.

When we oppose the way of the cross for Christ or for ourselves, we are Christ's adversaries. When we follow him in the way of the cross, we are his disciples, the building blocks of his church.

The next question is, What is the way of the cross for each of us?