You are the potter, I am the clay

Traveling mercies

Two and one-half hours into what would normally be a 45-minute drive, I am at a standstill in bumper to bumper traffic in a snow & ice storm. I shift my Honda into park and tell myself I will not waste this time with impatience or complaint.

I imagine calling someone, anyone, but I've left my cellphone at home on the kitchen counter. Besides, I don't really like to talk on the phone; one reason why I often forget to bring it along.

I imagine making up stories, like a friend of mine does, but I'm no good at that. Would I be if someone had read me stories as a child?

Finally I settle on prayer. I thank God for anything and everything I can think of: for having been raised in the Midwest, where I learned to fill the gas tank and use the bathroom before heading home in a storm; for new tires, windshield wipers that work, and a cloud cover that keeps my favorite station in tune; for food and drink, should I need them, thanks to a stop at Costco; for road crews wherever they are; for friends, pets, family, my writers’ group (the reason I’m on the road today), health…
I scribble a message in pencil on a McDonald’s napkin: "908-496-xxxx. Tell Ed Marcia is OK. Stuck on 46. Will be home when traffic clears." I open my door, dash to the car in front of me, and knock on the driver's window.

“Do you have a cell phone?”

“Yeah.”

"Here." I thrust the napkin at a thirty-something guy. "Would you please call my husband?” He raises his hands in a sure-why-not gesture.

The driver of a car approaching from the opposite direction yells, “You guys are f----d! The Hackettstown hill is closed...turn around," he traces a U in the air. "Make a left at the light and another left at the stop sign. There's a back road...”
What the heck. Traffic is a mess anyway. I get into my car and, like the caller ahead of me, make a U-turn. At the light I turn left. There's a stop sign about a mile further down. The guy knows what he's talking about.

The road runs parallel to, then intersects, 46 at the crest of the Hackettstown Hill. The plows and salt trucks are finishing their work. After three traffic light changes, I turn right and descend the hill. An hour or so later I’m home.

“Did you get my message?” I ask Ed.
“What message?”
“The one I gave a guy in the car ahead of me. He said he'd call and give it to you.”
“Nope. No message.”
Hmm. Maybe he figured we'd both cleared 46, so... No matter. Just imagining it made the trip easier.

The Sanskrit term sādhu ("good man") refers to renouncers who have chosen to live a life apart from, or on the edges of society in order to focus on their own spiritual practice. They have left behind all material and sexual attachments and live in caves, forests and temples. This sadhu was photographed in Nepal.

photo: John Jantak

On autopilot?

On radical acceptance

Persons wiser than I have noted that when we are ready to learn, the teacher will come.

I learned this week that I can still get stuck in a place called shouldn't be, if I perceive a situation as hurtful to someone else or to me. Shouldn't be is a space of frustration, exasperation, anxiety, or occasional despair. It is reactionary. A refusal to accept reality as is.

I know better. Or at least I thought I did. Until I heard myself -- through another's imagined ears --distraught with shouldn't be. It was an aha! moment.

No doubt shouldn't be will rear its ugly, dissatisfying head again. But I might just catch myself as the should-d-d-d-d starts. And, I hope, stop.

Radical acceptance.

Being open to life as it presents itself.

Maybe, just maybe, I'm learning to live.

Divali

Hindus prepare for Divali, the annual festival of lights.

photo: Amit Dave

Bless this ice, O Lord, we pray

NASA's Aqua satellite shows the state of Arctic sea ice on September 10, 2008. The ice slipped to its minimum extent for 2008 on September 12, when it covered 1.74 million square miles. It now appears to be growing as the Arctic starts its seasonal cool-down, according to the National Snow and Ice Data Center.

Catholic nuns from the Missionaries of Charity order (Kolkata, India) sing hymns for a special prayer during the eleventh anniversary of Mother Teresa's death.

Brotherly love

Twelve-year-old lion brothers Tonyi (L) and Tombo lie next to each other at Werribee Open Range Zoo, west of Melbourne. The photo was taken by a camera that was triggered remotely in a hide.

REUTERS/Mick Tsikas

Patterns

Migrating stingrays, Gulf of Mexico.

Triathalon participants, Hawaii.

Hawaii photo: REUTERS/Hugh Gentry

War is not healthy for children...

This Cambodian girl, her family, and livestock are forced to leave the disputed border area between Cambodian and Thailand. A study by Deborah DuNann Winter confirms that war damaged environments "lead to children's physical and psychological harm, especially through disease, displacement, landmines, and soldiering."

In the words of the 60's poster, War is not healthy for children and other living things.

(PEACE AND CONFLICT: JOURNAL OF PEACE PSYCHOLOGY, 4(4), 415-428Copyright © 1998 , Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc.)

photo: Andrees Latif/Reuters

GoodShop.com

You may already know about this website. If not, it's a brilliant way to donate to your favorite causes. www.GoodShop.com lists 700 stores that donate a percentage of purchases to the charity of your choice.

Example: If I want to buy something from LLBean, I'd first go to GoodShop and indicate the charity of my choice. The website will then open LLBean's website. I purchase, I pay, and my designated charity receives a 2% donation. The percentage varies from store to store. Among the dot coms participating: Amazon, Best Buy, Barnes & Noble, eBay, LLBean, Target, Toys R Us, Kohl's, Zappos (6%), Macy's.

In today's economy, this is a great (free) way to give!

The ethnic Guere gather to ask for forgiveness and blessings from their ancestors by saying prayers and performing sacred dances during this annual ceremony in Western Ivory Coast. The country is divided into two parts following civil war in 2002/3.

photo: Luc Gnago/ REU

We're all afraid...

In her book The Places That Scare You, Pema Chodron tells of a friend whose elderly parents live in an area of Florida where there’s poverty and hardship. Their way of relating to this is to live in a community that is walled, protected by guard dogs and electric gates. The longer they live there, the less willing they are to travel beyond the walls. They pay someone to do their shopping. They’re anxious about the persons allowed through the gates: service and repair personnel, gardeners, plumbers, and electricians. They are becoming increasingly unable to cope with an unpredictable world.

The truth is we’re all afraid of something, and we’re all at risk of becoming imprisoned by our own fears. Who hasn’t overstayed a job, due to a paralyzing anxiety we’d not find another? Who hasn’t delayed a visit to the doctor, fearing what tests might reveal?

God continually calls us to new life, which oftentimes means we must go to the places that scare us. Places where we will discover inner strength and courage we didn't know we have. Places where our presence, our skills, our insights are needed. Places where we will grow in faith and in love.

Courage is not the absence of fear; it is the making of action in spite of the fear... M. Scott Peck

Notes for today's sermon

Like everyone else, I struggle with the big existential "Why?" Why me? here? now? An unresolvable mystery, yes. But I have a working theory: I'm here because the great I AM wants me to be.

To what end seems more clear: it's about growing in love and extending that love to others. I'm not voicing 60's "love, love, love" hype. I understand love to be more than a feeling. Love is work. Ask any parent, partner, or spouse. Love involves attending to another; listening; confronting; encouraging; asking; forgiving/seeking forgiveness; urging; nudging; suffering with; rejoicing; comforting. Love is a verb.

M. Scott Peck, author of The Road Less Traveled, speaks of love as an act of will, as both an intention and an action. "Love is as love does."

God loves me. Here. Now. God is at work in my life: attending; listening; confronting through those with whom I am in relationship. I am a work in progress. God isn't finished with me yet.

Each time I open myself to another; each time I step out of my comfort zone into the work and messiness of relationship, I am enlarged and given new opportunity to learn and to grow.

1 Cor. 13: Love never dies...We know only a portion of the truth, and what we say about God is always incomplete. But when the Complete arrives, our incompletes will be canceled...We don't yet see things clearly. We're squinting in a fog, peering through a mist. But it won't be long before the weather clears and the sun shines bright! We'll see it all then, see it all as clearly as God sees us, knowing him directly just as he knows us! But for right now, until that completeness, we have three things to do to lead us toward that consummation: Trust steadily in God, hope unswervingly, love extravagantly. And the best of the three is love.

On balance

When I was growing up, my three older sisters and parents weren’t particularly interested in me or in how or where I spent my time, so I’d wander off -- on foot or on my bike -- to the library, the field behind our house, or the cemetery across the street. Sometimes I would give chalkboard talks to an imaginary class in our basement. It was a childhood of solitude, tinged with sadness, though I didn’t know the word for what I was feeling at the time.

Not long ago, at a retreat center in the Poconos, I walked a labyrinth. I entered the circle berating myself for having spoken ”too much” (my personal judgment) during the morning’s discussion. Several loops into the labyrinth, I caught a glimpse of the child I once was, curious and talkative, qualities my mother disliked and discouraged. It helped me to feel compassion for the girl who felt she had to be apart from others in order to be herself.

I don't like being isolated, but I do have an abiding fondness for solitude. I also need and enjoy companionship.

Sometimes I manage to get the balance right.

Puppy breath, anyone?!

Our neighbors' 5 week old border collies

photo: mkbilyk

God's basic instinct

Joe Eszterhas is a Hollywood screenwriter whose box office hits (Basic Instincts, Showgirls, Flashdance) have grossed over $1 billion. He is known for work that is dark and violent:

Seven years ago, I sat down on a curb near my home, sobbing, and asked God to help me.
I had just had surgery for throat cancer. I still had a trache in my throat. I had been told that if I didn't stop smoking and drinking immediately, I'd die. I desperately didn't want to die. I adored my wife and children.
But I knew I couldn't stop. I'd started smoking when I was twelve and drinking when I was 14. I was now 57 years old.
I cried and begged God to help me . . . and He did. I hadn't prayed since I was a boy. I had made fun of God and those who loved God in my writings. And now, through my sobs, I heard myself asking God to help me . . . and from the moment I asked, He did.
I didn't at first understand why He did. I didn't deserve His help, I thought. I was unworthy. I ignore Him for forty years and then suddenly I ask Him to help me and He does? It took me some time to understand that God helped me because He loves me. Because even though we don't deserve God's love, God loves us - all of us.
Not only did He give me the strength to be able to defeat my addictions, He saved my life. My throat surgeon, Dr. Marshall Strome, told me seven years after the surgery that I am "cured." Not that I am in remission, but that I am cured. That my throat tissue has regenerated so remarkably that even a doctor examining my throat wouldn't be able to tell that there was ever cancer there. Dr. Strome, who had removed about eighty percent of my larynx, called this "a miracle."
I call it that, too...

Posted by Joe Eszterhas on September 9, 2008. See the complete post at: http://newsweek.washingtonpost.com/onfaith/guestvoices/2008/09/my_base_instincts_and_gods_lov.html

Sleep enhances creativity

Steven P. Jobs, the chief executive of Apple, once defined creativity as "just connecting things." Sleep assists the brain in flagging unrelated ideas and memories, forging connections among them that increase the odds that a creative idea or insight will surface.
(NYTimes, Leslie Berlin, 9/27/08)

illustration: Night and Sleep, Evelyn De Morgan

McKaley, a one year old golden, is Parker's favorite playmate.

Sometimes, when winded, she plays the "dead dog" card.

Attendance at church yesterday was down due in part to the 2nd annual Knowlton Township Tractorcade. I caught up with the event after worship, but my photo efforts weren't very successful. (I don't feel much emotional connection with tractors.) I did encounter a six month old puppy, a Chesapeake Bay retriever named Smokey, who was happy to pose for me, with his father Teddy Bear in the background.

Grandpa

Grandpa came to live with us when Grandma died. He was different from the Grandpa who had given me pony rides on his knee and taught me German from his past. He sat hunched on a metal chair in our garage and chain-smoked cigarettes. I didn’t know what to do when he cried. I felt as helpless as he did without Grandma.

At the breakfast table we wait for Grandpa. When I see his red striped pajamas peeking out from his trousers and shirt, I know Mom will send him back to his room to change. I hate to see the confused look on his face. He doesn’t remember that she told him about the pajamas yesterday and the day before.

Grandpa has forgotten how to remember. He doesn’t know when his glasses or his teeth are missing, or where he’s left his shoes. I hear the impatience in my mother’s voice as she searches for them, and I want to yell, “He can’t help it, Mother.” After she finds his teeth, tucked beneath his mattress, and has left the room, I coach him, “Grandpa, put your teeth in the glass Mom gave you. Right here, by the bed.”

I feel guilty I can’t make Grandpa better, and I’m worried that he, like Grandma, is going to die. My sisters and I coax him to eat, but nothing works, not even the TV dinners we talked Mom into buying. He nodded yes to them when we went shopping, but maybe he just wanted to please us. “Look, Grandpa! They have TV dinners like Grandma used to make. Which ones do you like? Chicken? Macaroni and cheese?” He hardly ever speaks.

Grandpa burns holes in his clothes when he smokes, and Mom is worried about the furniture and the house. She knows Grandpa will wander if she sends him outside, so she unfolds a chair in the garage and watches from the kitchen. Sometimes, when she is changing laundry loads in the basement or vacuuming upstairs, he slips away, and we have to look for him. Once or twice, the police bring him home. It’s embarrassing to see him in the backseat of their car. His hands are stained yellow from the black walnuts he has gathered in the cemetery. He’s been looking for Grandma, even though she is buried more than 200 miles away.

The day I see Mom standing at the kitchen sink, shoulders shaking as she cries, I know things are about to change. She and Dad make phone calls and take Sunday drives. A place becomes available for Grandpa at the Lutheran Home in Ashland. I don’t want to see him go, but there’s a big yard with the kind of trees he likes, a young man who speaks patiently with him, and a sunny dining room for the residents. Maybe he’ll eat if he has company his age. I plead with him silently, “Please, Grandpa, behave, so they don’t send you away. The man told Dad there’s a trial period.”

I thought Grandpa died at the home, but my sister told me several years ago I was mistaken. “Don’t you remember?” she said, “he died at Tiffin State Hospital.” I didn’t want to believe her, yet now I remember seeing him standing outside a white clapboard building. He doesn’t speak, even though we’ve brought him a new pair of slippers and a carton of cigarettes. Is he angry with us for having left him? “I’m sorry, Grandpa,” I whisper, as I kiss his stubbled cheek. “I love you.”

I watch as they place Grandpa’s casket in the ground next to Grandma, hoping that what they told us in Sunday School is true. I want Grandpa to be happy, like he was when Grandma was alive.
There were bright colored eggs in his garden for us at Easter, bowls of sweet cherries, and stashes of candy that Mom wouldn’t have allowed. But best of all, there were his hugs, his laughter, and the steady rhythm of his snoring that had protected us in the night when there were storms.

On hospitality

I grew up in north central Ohio, where our family enjoyed ice cream socials at the small churches that dotted the countryside. Seated at tables next to fields of soybeans or corn, we ate pulled chicken or barbecue sandwiches, homemade chicken soup, and dessert that included home baked pies and cakes topped with ice cream from a hand cranked freezer. The church folks who served us were friendly.

It pleases me that -- some fifty years later-- our small country church holds similar dinners: pancake suppers, an annual Strawberry Festival, and a chicken barbecue in the fall.

Recently, Myron and his crew built a charcoal pit behind the church, grilled the chicken with his secret-recipe sauce, and steamed corn on the cob in a huge pot. The smell alone was worth the price of admission.

It pleases me that the church folk are still friendly.

Parker

Parker came from a litter of 11 puppies. I was surprised -- and relieved -- when the breeder said he was the only one not spoken for. Then I noticed his left front leg, which was slightly crooked below the knee. Reason enough, I suppose, for the previous "shoppers" to pass him over. Yet as Parker grew, his leg straightened. Today he's a powerful runner, light on his feet.
Misfortune often morphs into fortune.

Parker got a good home, and I feel I got the pick of the litter!

My friends are not perfect - no more than I - and so we suit each other admirably. Alexander Smith

photo: mkbilyk

God is in the details - II

On joy

A sunny day.
A beautiful location.
Maggie's first off-leash hike since surgery in July.
Parker's run and swim.
Joy.

Our surroundings may be familiar, but they are never, ever the same. Columbia Lake, one mile down the road from our house, is different every time I see it.

The pear tree in the backyard is bearing abundant fruit, even after having shed over 200 premature pears a couple months ago. (I tend to count compulsively.)

Guess we all have to shed some of our excesses in order to yield mature fruit.

photo:mkbilyk

If you've ever wondered what a hickory nut looks like, behold!

Hickory nut was my father's favorite cake. Every fall he'd bring home a bag of nuts he had purchased at a roadside stand in Michigan. My mother dug out the small nutmeats while repeating her perennial complaint: "a lot of work for one cake."

I recently learned that the hundreds of black walnuts that litter our property are edible. It's acceptable to crush their thick hull by driving over them with your car. Hmm...

photo:mkbilyk

I've been photographing Parker since he was a puppy, vowing not to scare him by using a flash. Nonetheless, he and Maggie run whenever I have my camera. (Because I refuse to pay modeling fees?)

Yesterday Parker tolerated my experimenting with a new lens, but just barely.

I am a soul a brain a mind, I think

Look, I know it says in scripture that we should love God with all our heart, soul, and mind, but you and I both know that no one – not even Grissom on CSI – has ever uncovered a soul during an autopsy. The title of the movie “21 Grams” was based on an early 1900’s theory that a body loses 21 grams of weight upon death, thus accounting for the exit of a soul. I once found the theory intriguing, until I read the poor science behind it.
I’ve been present at the death of numerous people and have observed what one nurse referred to as the ”loss of personality.” There was once something there; that something is now gone. I’ve stood at the bedside of persons whose bodies were being kept alive by machines and had the very real impression while praying for them that their “soul” was no longer present. They were being kept alive until doctors could declare them brain dead.
Thus, I am inclined to side with Douglas Hofstadter, a philosopher, who uses the terms “self,” “soul,” “I,” “a light inside” and “consciousness” interchangeably. For Hofstadter, consciousness is thinking, the dance of symbols inside the cranium. Each human has his/her own distinct pattern of organizing the symbols. This pattern of organization is not lost at death. It merges into the greater pattern of organization (God?) leaving its residue, in the form of internalized patterns, behind in the brains of those closest to it in life.
So, are the mind and soul really two distinct entities? It's worth pondering. Which is one of the reasons why I am sometimes enraged by the primitive thinking that goes on in theological circles. Few theologians seem to be taking into account, let alone integrating, the most recent discoveries of other disciplines. Neuroscience, for example, is positing that the brain= the mind=the brain= the mind. Surely this has implications for our thoughts about God and the human soul.