Long Time, No See!

Hi folks.

Yeah, I've neglected this little online journal this past summer. In the main that is because things have been going well.

Started dating a gal. Real sweet one. For a little more than a year.

Loved her kids too. Every Monday all summer they came over and we worked on a tree fort.

But... that's over.

Hey, it ain't that bad. Ain't that good, but, I'm a big boy, and I'm OK.

We are working on transitioning to friends. It's a little awkward, but I think it will be fine. She's on vacation with her kids at Disneyland and I'm dog sitting for her. See? It's cool.

She did me a lot of good. Helped shake me out of habits I've had for years, echoes of my marriage. It feels like I'm on the road for being my own fella.

It also feels a little sad. A little like failure.

But, as I said, I think it's good.

She has been pretty independent for a long time. On her own. And I think she may be a little more independent than the kind of relationship I want.

If I remarry I want it to be with a full partner, a full sharing. Best friends. Shared lives to the grave.

So... That's that.

In other news...

Jeremiah has been reevaluated by the State of Oregon and deemed not to need the level of care he has been receiving, so he needs to move somewhere cheaper. Hopefully that will be worked out soon.

Isaac is in Job Corp at Tongue Point in Astoria, Oregon. Today Jeremiah and I went to see him (it's about a 2.5 hour drive). He has a friend who went with us. We went to Fort Stevens, and the Astoria Column. Had pizza. I took him shopping for a few things he needed.

Isaac & His Friend (Just Friends, honest)

Fort Stevens - Firing Reproduction of Civil War Cannon

Atop the Astoria Column
(We threw Balsa Wood Airplanes into the Forest!)

That was today...

Earlier this summer my buddies and I had another moon howlin'. It was a good one. I intended to write about it, but it never happened (I remodeled my bedroom, worked on my house...).

We fired a spud gun, and shot a target with a rifle, had a beer, cooked hunks of meet on sticks, talked serious, spiritual... We told stupid jokes. In fact, I said something that we all felt we could take away from the night. After laughing really hard at a really dumb joke, I said... "Keep in mind guys, sometimes STUPID IS IMPORTANT."

We might have to put that on T shirts.

I've lots of other stuff I could say right now... political, scientific, spiritual... but, I reckon that's enough for now.

Update

Life is good.

Sometimes strange.

Sometimes not what I would choose, but if it were left to me to script my life it would be so comfortable I would never grow.

Overall, it’s been good. That is why I haven’t posted much of late. When things are good there isn’t such a need to vomit up the toxins.

So, I’ll just post a little catch up stuff.

Jeremiah is going to move again. The State of Oregon reassessed his needs and determined that he does not need the level of support he has been getting, so they reduced the funding for him and that forces him to move to a home with less support staff.

I think this will be good because the other residents where he live have such great handicaps that he never connected with them. Never made friends with them. He made friends with the staff.

They will be letting me know about some other places Brenda and I can visit to choose his next home.

I spent six hours with Brenda on Tuesday.

Kid stuff again.

Isaac was accepted about two years ago for the Job Corps and finally moved in to Tongue Point Job Corps at Astoria, Oregon.

Brenda was going to drive, but I quietly insisted. “I’ll just pick you up on the way,” I texted.

It’s two and a half hours there and I dreaded the trip back alone with her.

Simple solution: invite Jeremiah along.

The place is a lot like a military base.


Check in at the gate. We were escorted to the dorm, followed a military style truck... They seemed a little surprised at how Jeremiah, Brenda, and I came in with him for check in. They went through Isaac’s bags. The only thing not permitted was the mouthwash (contains alcohol).

On the way back Jeremiah fell asleep in the seat beside me. Brenda, in the cramped back seat of the Mustang, started apologizing again. She said she had made a huge mistake, that she was sorry for all the hurt she caused me. She cried.

There was an awkward silence.

I didn’t want to open any doors, not even a crack.

“Thank you for saying that,” I finally said.

I always want to comfort those who hurt. This time though... this time if I showed any movement toward her or her feelings, well, she would take it the wrong way.

We stopped and ate.

The house is too quiet.

I’ve heard about empty nesters going through adjustments.

Part of me resents that this time in my life, the time I had fantasized about, when the kids are gone and it is just me and my spouse, has been thrown away by someone I trusted.

I’ve been in a bit of a funk all week. The house is too empty.

Last night I was texting a friend who asked how I was doing.

“I miss Isaac.”

Those simple words made me choke up. Before that moment I had made comments about how strange it was to have the house so quiet. I said things about the absence of helping someone with meals, or sharing the bathroom. But those simple words, “I miss Isaac” seemed to so clearly say what was really at the heart of my funk, I choked up a little.

I remembered the key moments in raising him. The clear spirit-led guidance that brought us together. And moments of his life with me. His first joke. Teaching him to ride a bike.

The moment I first saw him... I was standing in the living room of the orphanage. Looking out the sliding glass door, across the patio to the bedroom filled with cribs... and there he was, jumping up and down... “Daddy, daddy, daddy!!!” he was shouting.

This is a challenging time of the school year. The tasks, the lessons, the projects coming due, are all made more difficult by the many culminating fields trips of various courses and programs, and by the behavior of the adolescents wound up by the nearing Summer Break, the good weather, and the chemical imbalances nature sometimes inflicts on the brains of carbon-based life forms during Spring.

School ends in a little over a week.

I’m adjusting to an empty house and the changing schedule.

It’s all good.

How to Combat Froo Frooism

Things are going well, so I have less to write about... Or at least, it isn't dramatic anyway.

Which is a good thing. That melodrama I was living was tearing me apart.

Brenda doesn't appear near my home any more. she has learned that the closest I want her to come to my house is the park around the corner (to pick up Isaac) and that I'm not thrilled about that. She needed that clear a boundary.

I've been going out with a gal... a real belle inside and out.

She's got great kids. It's fun hanging with them.

Last weekend we went to a museum, The John McLoughlin house, and spent all afternoon there.

Once a month they have a gaggle of ladies in to do demonstrations on some froo froo Victorian skill. Saturday they were displaying needle books.

The ladies were all decked out in clothing and jewelry... all of it "period." Nothing outside of the 1840s & 50s. Even their language.

They were showing folks, a few ladies who had stumbled in from the 21st century, how to make needle books. Needles, dangerous tools of reconstruction, are easily lost, and these books with felt pages were a good place to store items that could take a year to replace if ordered from England.

I, and one of the boys I was with, thought the fish needle book was cool. Two pieces of "paste board" were carefully sewn into fabric, stitched together, and a ribbon is pulled out which holds the needles.

He and I sat down and bravely picked up the piece of naked "pasteboard" and cut a "fishy" fabric into pieces that might fit.

It was quite the project. We began at noon. The boy's brother and mom had to leave before 2:00, but we wanted to plug on.

They gave us all sorts of tips. Always thread the needle with the end of thread that was the lead off the spool. How a pattern of stitches that backed up over the previous stitch made for a strong and straight seam.

My favorite trick was the knot. I used to repair my clothing (and sleeping bag, and tent, and backpack) with fishing line when I was on my youthful adventures. And the way I put a knot in a thread I just wound the thread around a meaty forefinger and rolled the tangled hoop off with my thumb, pulling it into a snarl that could not possible pass through any fabric.

But not anymore. Now I delicately lay the end of the thread across the needle, wrap it three times against the glittering nearly invisible spike, and pull it smoothly down to a satisfyingly neat knot at the end of a silky thread.

I could see the victorian ladies were amused at the two of us transgressing the gender barrier.

The boy looked a little uncomfortable at one point.

"A real man does what he does and doesn't worry about what anyone else thinks," I told him.

He smiled.

"And besides, if this whole thing seems to get a little too froo frooish, just do something extra guy like."

"Arrrrr arrrrr arrrr arrr! Ooooh arrrr! Uh! UH! ARRRRRRRRRRRRR!"

We thought grunting a lot would suffice.

So, throughout the afternoon he and I would break into grunts for a moment or two, making clear to all at the table that we were guys.

The ladies seemed amused.

At 4:00 p.m. we had to stop. We hadn't quite finished. But he and I made a pact to continue our projects Sunday afternoon.

So, or rather, sew, we added an additional 45 minutes to our task and got the job done.

Here is mine:

My fish (tongue with needle inside)

Tongue Out
Notice the needle! Cool!

Easterly Thoughts

Christianity, the faith of God incarnated as a tortured sacrifice for the sins of humanity, seems a bizarre belief... eternal damnation and eternal paradise mixed in the hearts and lives of mortals, flawed people who sometimes wonder if they are buying salvation with their belief, with good deeds, perhaps with money in an offering plate.

It does seem odd... Why would a loving God, a being of glory and purity and joy and love, mix suffering and death and punishment in the mundane time and place of a criminal's death at a somewhat obscure backwater outpost of the Roman Empire?

Perhaps this is made strange because we are strange. ...Because we are looking at the whole thing from the wrong side of reality.

Consider this story of divine redemption from a different perspective.

Consider an existence not fueled by consuming food, of physical bodies functioning by a fight to make order out if disorder, driving our animated flesh from dissolving particles of plants and animals.

Consider an existence based on physics which are alien to us because they existed before the laws of physics which run this universe.

Consider what it may be like to live an existence that is not held to the standards of an outside perspective because there isn't any outside. There isn't (wasn't) sin, of doing wrong to others and having wrongs done to us, which is the result of individuals wanting what is not theirs, or doing what is not good for others.

Consider an existence which lies solely upon a perspective of what is, to us, an emotion. An "emotion" which is the foundation for existence itself. Consider the perspective of eternity, of a timeless forever which stretched beyond linear time, interrupted by the brief existence of our universe, which flows from the desire, the need to share the most intimate, ultimate part of ourselves: our "heart", our love.

From that perspective, the view of eternity longing to expand the embrace of Love, even to selfish beings of flesh... of, really, animals with minds, and souls which might sense a reality truer than one based on hydrogen, oxygen, and carbon.

From that perspective, Love became flesh to provide base beings, creatures who are more space, more nothing than matter (for there is far more to us that is empty than the solidity of the mass found within protons, neutrons, and electrons).

From that perspective Love became flesh as an example of pure selflessness so we might look past our own weaknesses, past our predilection to wanting what we want when we want it.

For Eternity to clothe itself (Himself) in base, vaporific matter, and to suffer the worst we can do, is the personification of Eternity in a fashion we might, just might, be able to understand.

Perhaps the events of Easter, of God made flesh, of that flesh suffering and dying, and God demonstrating He can overcome the simplistic nature of our universe's physical laws, isn't so strange from the perspective of Eternity.

Saturday Sushi

Dragon Roll

Change of Heart

I've a question for you.

Do you feel your heart, your emotional center, is changing?

I'm sure it is different than when you were a child. I'm sure that when school let out for the summer the warmth of the sun shone on you a lot like the way your heart shone its joy of being alive and free and... well, of being eight.

It changed along the way. There were hurts and joys, mysteries and discoveries, all shaped how you felt.

I feel my heart changing.

It isn't just the big changes that have happened... It seems an ongoing process. I feel my heart changing in a steady way that makes the swift changes just obstacles along the road of my life. The movement on the road has always continued.

Two great sorrows, the death of my child and the death of my marriage, broke my heart, but it mended. Major changes which reformed me the way a smith's hammer on hot metal.

But the other changes... the ordinary changes... Like what I am feeling now, I'm fascinated by them.

I feel my heart changing steadily. I find myself loving everyone, everything, a little more each day.

I have especially noticed a deeper emotional response to worship. When I worship my mind and heart fill with the scope of existence, the galaxies spread across 20 billion or more light years; I imagine the tiny strings at the deepest skein of the fabric of the universe, following the shuttles of physics in the loom of all things; I picture in my mind's eye the pulsing death throws of Beetlegeuse, swelling, deepening, preparing to die... I imagine the deaths of quasars and of may flies and my heart swells.

Even in talking or writing of such things my pulse quickens, my tongue grows thick, my eyes moisten. It is all so lovely.

And it seems to me, there is something about my heart, something about my life, that continues to change, continues to grow.

Is this unique to me? Do others experience such change? I note my father seems to gentle as he ages... Do we all?

So, dear reader, do you feel your heart, your emotional center, is changing?

A Little Writing Before the Others Awake...

I guess I haven't written much of late because things are going well.

Not perfect, but well.

I'm at a youth camp this weekend with my son Jeremiah. We are volunteering, doing whatever work they would have us do in preparation for their summer season.

I've been awake many times through the night. Perhaps it is the bunk bed, or the snoring of other men, or simply the bizarre dreams.

My dreams were filled with trying to find sleep in corners of a nearly vacant city with strange tall, and strange small birds stalking about in the dark, police cars shining their lights down alleys, of large mirrors placed too high to see into, and dusty vacant buildings echoing with the sounds of meals which no longer exist.

I went to sleep peaceful enough.

There was a worship service last night, my heart was at peace.

A good thing.

It seems odd to be 53.

It seems odd to be single and to have a heart moved by the thoughts of spinning galaxies and breezes blowing over grasses of meadows covering fragments of continents which no longer exist.

It seems odd to have a heart which loves and wants to love and yet only shares my life in pieces with my children, with my friends, with my God, and with a woman I am greatly attracted to.

It seems odd to consider this life, this second life after a marriage which spanned the best part of three decades. I wanted to give 60 or 70 years to a marriage. I wanted to give everything to a future so it would add up to a past I was pleased to have lived.

Now I can only offer 30 or so years...

I think of what I have to offer... emotional, spiritual, even to a small extent, financial assets. That last part is strange... I prefer the idea of sharing all I have with someone who hasn't anything to give back, so the sharing can be freer, without feeling I might receive more than I give. I want to be generous in every way.

This person I am seeing... I don't feel free to write of her, of us, as I did while my marriage was shredding. I think when I was writing back then I was hoping she would read what I was saying and understand, find her way back. I asked her many times to read it.

But now, things are good, and there isn't the need to pull at the sinews of the relationship to see what is attached.

Not that things are perfect. It seems clear I am someone who can be hard to read, that my flat affect can be taken as displeasure or disinterest when it can actually be covering amusement or even joy. So, I have a long ways to go to learn how to share who I am.

But this blog isn't the place to do that. Not this time.

As I write the dreams of the past night swirl around me, float through my thoughts, their emotional responses cling to my heart like tendrils of a dense fog slipping back toward a river flowing just out of sight... Shadows of buildings, sagging chain link fences, crumbling cinder block walls... animals in the dark... more fearsome in the dark than when I swept a flashlight over their startled features. Of the man who slithered along the side of the van, turning out to be a friendly early riser out for a walk. Constellations I have never seen floating in thin strips of sky far above alleys...

I'm nine years older. It doesn't seem much, at 53. But now and then conversations reveal experiences, memories of events personal and historic... no matter.

Last night, at worship, I felt the certainty I often feel during worship, of realities of my relationship with God which prevent me from calling it faith. How can it be faith when I am so certain? Moses didn't have faith in the reality of God, not after being in His presence. That bush burned in Moses' heart long after it no longer burned within his sight.

When I worship I feel a connection to everything, to the great expanse of time which comprises this universe, the great expanse of space which comprises this universe, the great expanse of smallness which stretches from me through my molecules, my atoms, sub atomic particles, quarks, and the strings vibrating in dimensions far more plentiful that I can experience...

When I worship my heart feels large.

When my heart feels large, I want to share it.

I don't mean I want to go out on some evangelical mission, convince anyone of the truths I feel within me.

I mean I want to share my heart. I want to share my life. I want to be close to someone. I want someone to know me, and share joy.

Toward the end of this week is Good Friday. I usually watch The Passion on Good Friday, remind myself of the mystery of the infinite made finite.

Jesus was a guy like me. He grew tired. I suppose there were times when He was all the things I know in being a man. The stories of His life mention weariness, thirst, even fear or dread. I suppose He passed gas. I suppose that He had to read the Torah to have the foundation for His message, He didn't walk around with omniscience. It seems strange to think He dealt with acne and blisters and splinters.

But, He was a guy like me.

I know He longed to share His heart...