Ouch! Gribbet Snort Gaheez! Mmmmmmmm...

A little update...

Earlier this Summer, early July, I caught a large piece of furniture from tipping over. It took a few months to figure it out, but I tore a tendon that afternoon.

It was a typical stupid, male move. God created men and women to balance each other. On our own men tend to do dumb things. We don't ask for directions, we never read the instructions, and we are always ourselves putting ourselves in a position where we are faced with handling something too large for us.

Came out cool though.

Wednesday I had surgery on it. They made a few small incisions, shaved off a bone spur, sliced open the tendon and pulled it over two screws put in the bone.

Ouch!

So, I'm on pain killers. I'm not much for turning myself into a drooling, loopy, invalid, but it helps me to relax and therefore, heal.

So, I lie here in bed, wearing an oxycodone smile and muttering "Gribbet Snort Gaheez! Mmmmmmmm..."

It'll be better soon.

:)

Sharing

On a business trip I found myself l alone in Orlando, Florida for a few days. I had to kill some time (well, perhaps “spend” is a better term; I don’t want to be accused of chronomicide), so I went to Disneyworld.

It wasn’t much fun. I stood in lines, once in a while making small talk with the families and lovers around me. After a ride I’d bounce down the path, momentarily thrilled, which quickly evaporated.

I like movies, but they are a little shallow when I see them alone. I want to share the plot twists, talk about the actors’ skills, the directors’ choices.

Reading books, listening to music, going on hikes, camping, are joys deepened by sharing.

Not everyone is like that. I know people who do such things alone and enjoy them thoroughly. Not me. I prefer to savor experiences with someone.

I’ve a lot of freedom now. Single. Kids moved out. I need to go home to feed Bogie, my mutt from the pound, but my schedule is completely filled with my choices.

I’m not going to the movies. I’m not going out to eat. Such things feel empty without someone beside me.

Oh, I’m fine puttering around my house, doing little projects. I’m comfortable with myself, and Bogie seems to enjoy my explaining to him what we’re doing next. :) It’s just not a full experience.

I think God understands this. I know He does. First, He made me, and He “gets” me (glad someone does!). But, I think as omniscient and omnipotent God is, I think there is something He needs.

God is love.

Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love. 1 John 4:8


God IS love.

Love is giving oneself to another.

Love requires something.

Love requires someone to love.

God requires someone to love.

This makes sense. Before He created Earth, before He created Angels, before He created time, He was.

Forever. There was eternity before there was time. And in that eternity there was only God. A triune being of pure love.

We have a little trouble with the idea of the trinity, a being three in one. Sometimes it helps to use the metaphor of being a two dimensional being observing the intersection of a three dimensional being who place three fingers of a single hand on his universe (was that unclear? I can go into greater detail if you like.).

Perhaps a better metaphor for myself is the parts of myself which view the universe differently. There is my mind, which likes to observe, measure, record, define, ruminate. There is my heart which, admittedly, is a little soft. It reacts more slowly than my mind, responds to the grief of others, responds to the hardships of others, responds to the joy of others. There is my spirit. (This is the slippery part.) My spirit senses things the other parts don’t. That part senses beauty and eternity and God.

Perhaps that is the closest I can come to imagining how a single being can be three.

Perhaps that is how I can understand a little how God is love, something that requires someone to love, when He was there before there was even an eternity to share with angels.

Yes God, God don't never change
He's God, always will be God
God in the middle of the ocean
God in the middle of the sea
---Blind Willie Johnson

Interesting that creating angels was only the first part of His desire to share His love with others beyond the community of a triune self. He went on to create a race of beings who are inherently self centered, capable, even disposed to, being selfish. Perhaps winning the love of the selfish is sweeter.

All this is beside my point (sorry for the rabbit trail). My point is, I long to share my life. (You know, I’m NOT sorry for the rabbit trail!) This isn’t about being codependent.

I just want to share.

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