lifeisshortbekind

[lifeisshortbekind]

"Be joyful, though you have considered all the facts"

Wendell Berry

[lifeisshortbekind]

My Old Man

When I was young, my father lived on the streets of DC. Sometimes the railroad tracks or in dumpsters but usually the streets. Back in the day homeless were called bums. Homeless came around about the time of Mitch Snyder and Community for Creative Non Violence.

My mother would take us to the old downtown on Saturdays, mainly to window shop. Once in awhile she would put something away on layaway and make a weekly payment. We usually saw homeless guys. My mother gave them money and told them that she would pray for them. She'd ask them if they had seen Pat. That was my father's street name.

For every homeless guy I saw I'd say to myself, "That's my Dad." I'm 63 years old. To this day when I see a homeless guy I still say to myself, "That's my Dad." Most of them are someone's dad. I always think about their kids and wonder if they ever see them.

My father finally sobered up while in jail. The jail wouldn't let him in the recovery program because they said he was hopeless. Well that pissed him off and he never went back to drinking. He was ornery that way.

He was a sober liquor store salesman. I'd see him once in awhile in high school. Wrote a prayer for him.

"Our Father, who art in the liquor store, hollow be thy wallet."

Now the funniest thing about the prayer is that he never paid child support. Not a dime. In fact when he was going back to Ireland to see family, my grandmother made me give him money for his trip. This was my mother's mother. My grandparents were accepting of the 'weakness' as alcoholism was called.

He was one of the smartest people that I've ever known. When junk bonds made a return in the 70s, my father went off. "They tried that in Venice in the 1530s and look how that turned out." He went on to describe Venice in the 1530s like they were NY wiseguys in the 60s. My sister asked him to stay on this side of the 1600s because no one is going back to the 1500s.

I describe him as a crazy uncle. My grandfather was my father. My father wasn't someone I trusted or liked when I was little. Drunks can do that to you. I learned to like him later in life. He was old and more vulnerable, not much but more. Still the damage was done. I never trusted him but respected him as a human being.

His life was difficult. He was born in Greenwich Village in the 20s. The Depression hit. After the Empire State Building was finished there was no work for his iron worker father. They moved to Ireland but moved back to the States 4 years later when there was work. At 13 my father was sent back to Ireland to go to seminary school. It was 1938. The war was getting going. He was stuck there until he was 19 or 20. Took a Norwegian ship back to the States during the war.

Everyone one has a story no matter how damaged they may be. I've made a peace with him because he is half of who I am. To not make peace is self hatred. It's amazing when you see the world through another's life. It smooths out all the rough places.

[lifeisshortbekind]

"Change the story and you change perception; change perception and you change the world."

Jean Houston

[lifeisshortbekind]

"Change the story and you change perception; change perception and you change the world."

Jean Houston

[lifeisshortbekind]

"You are a part of me I do not yet know."

[lifeisshortbekind]

"Those seemingly ordinary moments of wonder in life - when you are arrested by the sunset or swell of music or your child's face, and the line between you and everything blurs - are not throwaway moments. They are portals into the sacred nature of things.

[lifeisshortbekind]

"Not everything that counts can be counted and not everything that can be counted counts."

[lifeisshortbekind]

"It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding." Upton Sinclair

[lifeisshortbekind]

Good News for Modern Man

There was a reflection in the missal I read when young.  My favorite one said, ”It’s as if someone put high prices on all the cheap things and low prices on all the valuable things”.  Here we are.

On July 1st, the great State of Virginia will require proof of age for online pornography.  Interestingly enough, their gun laws will stay the same.  More children die from guns then any other way.  Perhaps the Consumer Product Safety Commission should get involved.  They recall things that may harm children.

The less than Supreme Court consists of several cafeteria judges.  They pick and choose decisions based on their personal beliefs and possibly whims rather than precedent.  Not a lot of gravitas but plenty of bravado.  They live in a legacy environment and that’s how they like it.  The rest of us can go to hell.

There is a crisis in housing, healthcare, violence, schools, etc..  The churches are silent about poverty and injustice.  Their only concern is the groin sins.  The only mention of sexuality in the Gospels is the woman who committed adultery almost getting stoned.  Jesus said, “Let the one without sin cast the first stone.”  The Gospels were clear about our sins.  Sex wasn’t one of them.

This leaves us very alone in the quest for a human life.  I don’t think that God wants us to be saints.  I think God wants us to be a mensch.  Hunger and thirst for justice.  Be a peacemaker.  Be merciful.  

I heard compassion described as “shared brokenness.”  If we can accept our brokenness, we can accept our neighbors brokenness.  Our sins of the flesh do not keep us from God.  Our sins of the soul keep us from God.  Our pride, our greed, our envy, our lust, our anger, our gluttony, our laziness all keep us from God.  We are the problem, not our neighbor.

A monk said once, ”Our sin is that we know the third world exists and we don’t care.  Everything else pales in comparison.”  Welcome to the Third World.

[lifeisshortbekind]

“The Best They Could”

As a mother, one of the biggest crocks is telling kids that their parents did the best they could.  I, for one, did not.  There were days that I phoned it in.  That wasn’t my best even on a bad day.  That’s what I felt like doing.  Sometimes you need to dig deeper.

It seems the only aspect of our life where we are expected to dig deeper is athletics.  I think that we need to dig deeper intellectually, spiritually and emotionally.  

The most that I can say is that I did what I did.  Make your peace with it.  That’s why there is therapy.  Anything else is bullshit.

[lifeisshortbekind]

I love my creative life more than I love cooperating with my own oppression.

[lifeisshortbekind]

Walk your walk of lament on the path of praise.

Rilke

[lifeisshortbekind]

Lucky Girl

A late summer morning before the sun comes up is a beautiful time.  The work of the day hasn’t started.  I sit on the porch with a cup of hot coffee and a smoke looking up at Orion’s Belt.  Others will be up soon, with their traffic, construction and urgency.  But for now it’s me and the stars and the birds. 

The first hint of sun and the hummingbirds are the first to be urgent.  Their feeders are empty again.  I bring the feeders inside from the dark and boil water for their nectar.  The hummingbirds are the most impatient of birds.  They hover just out of reach demanding food.

I said to my younger daughter, “God has always been good to me.”  She is puzzled by this.  “I look at your life, Mom, and I don’t see it.”  How to explain the subtle glories of life.  As the old song says, “I’ve got the sun in the morning and the moon at night.” 

Life goes as it goes.  “You play the hand your dealt”, my grandfather would say.  He never cheated at cards and came in respectably if not the winner.  Living life respectably doesn’t seem to be a goal anymore.  I don’t know another way.

I believe that God made us to be kind, loving and merciful.  I really have no idea what the heck everyone else is talking about.  I do not see another way to live.  So I will continue to sit in the dark and watch the sky reveal ever new secrets to me.

[lifeisshortbekind]

Light is in both the broken bottle and the diamond.

gratefulness.org Mark Nepo

[lifeisshortbekind]

Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passion, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence.

John Adams

[lifeisshortbekind]

To sacrifice somethig is to make it holy by giving it away for love.

Frederick Buechner

[lifeisshortbekind]

Forsythia Time

After dinner, the clouds and wind were ferocious.  The forsythia soldiered on.  In the room next to me, in a hospital bed my aunt is dying.  She seems unaware of the clouds, winds and forsythia.

My aunt would visit her parents, my grandparents, once a month.  I would run from the house before she could get out of the car yelling, “When are you leaving, when are you leaving?”  She would joke with me often that it wasn’t as inviting as I may have thought.  She knew that I meant how much time do we have?

There was never enough time.  My aunt would stretch out on the floor and play solitaire.  I would sit on her back second guessing her every play.  My grandfather, godmother, aunt and her partner would play cards until the middle of the night.  I would fall asleep at the table not wanting to miss anything.  In the morning, hung over, she would sit in front of a plate of bacon and eggs her mother had made for her.  I would pepper her with questions.  She was always kind to me in her misery.

I sit with my aunt now, holding her hand.  “When are you leaving, when are you leaving?”, I wonder.  She knows that I mean, “How much time do we have?”