Inquiring Minds want to know

I am wrestling with a book called Becoming Wise by Krista Tippett.  I want to like it because my friend Sue gave it to me and she likes it.  I read the first section called Flesh and I found it cloying and annoying.  It was somehow too precious maybe because it talked about food a lot.  I probably missed the point entirely.

Anyway, then I tackled the section on Faith and I love it.  I especially liked the way she framed Faith within her own religious experiences as a child. Church and music and breath all folded into one as faith.  I love that gathering up of the whole experience so it’s not just an intellectual exercise, or the pasty faced priests of the past but a real living breathing, noise making experience.  She celebrates the incarnation of Faith.

I was raised in the Catholic church:  dogma, rules, moral certitude.  It was the mystery that I liked.  I loved the cadences and singsong qualities of Latin, I liked the noise of the incense burners and the smoke that issued from them.  I liked the way the rosary beads slipped through my mother’s hands and her murmured prayers I could not quite hear.

I also loved nature—the bugs and bees and clouds and trees and dirt and stars and stuff.  Earth stuff.  Where does it come from?  How does it work?  What about gravity and the tides and the planets.  To a child, it is all a mystery.  Curiosity didn’t kill the cat.

Tippett quotes Robert Coles:

“…I think there is no doubt that a lot of the religious side of childhood is a merger of the natural curiosity and interest the children have in the world with a natural interest and curiosity that religion has about the world.”

So then we have religion as a mystery, a quest, not a codified system, but a journey into the life of the universe:

Why are we here?

Who made me?

What is our purpose?

What does it mean be be moral?

Why is the sky blue?

What is dark matter?

Faith and mystery and inquiry go hand in hand.

Tippett quotes Flannery O’Connor: “…mystery is a great embarrassment to the modern mind.”  What a great quote.

So, where am I in all this?

I am a person embarrassed by mystery.  I am a person intrigued by mystery.    I run hot and I run cold.

My Uncle Dick used to tell a great story about a thermos.   This person is trying to explain how a thermos works keeping hot things hot and cold things cold to which his friend responds”How do it know?”

Mystery, my dear friends, mystery.

 

 

 

 

 

Skinning the cat

I have entered the twilight zone.  I received a cut-off notice from AT&T.  I had already received my monthly bill for May that I scheduled with bill pay.  The cut-off notice has one account number and my regular bill has another.

I called AT&T and after about thirty minutes of wrangling with pin numbers and and phone numbers and last four digits of my social security and blah blah blah, I was told I would have to go to a brick and mortar AT&T store with my photo ID to close this account.

I said “To close an account which I don’t have with numbers I don’t recognize?  That doesn’t make any sense.”

To which the very pleasant lady replied “That’s right.”

Oddly enough, I didn’t lose my temper.  I thanked the kind lady for her help (why not, she doesn’t know what the fuck is going on), hung up and reflected on the fact that I’m not surprised when I go around and around in cloud cuckoo land.

I am not surprised.  I simply have to find a way to skin this cat.

Anna and the angry ducks

For some reason that last post reminded me of Anna E., a client I worked with in New York.  She was old and fat and bearded and pissed off.  All layers of her shook with rage and frustration.

Anna was a widow, living in an SRO (single room occupancy) hotel on the Upper West side of Manhattan.  She was a big old angry baby.  She had no idea what was happening to her because she had no memory left.  She was in a perpetual state of NOW.

Each time I would visit her, she would say “why don’t you ever visit me?” and I would say “but I was here yesterday” and get defensive.  I realized later that she had no memory of me ever coming, she had no idea who I was or who she was or why she was in this small room.  She was in a waiting room.

An emergency room waiting area is chaotic and confusing, peopled by strangers.  You are prodded and poked and have no idea where this will all end up.  Waiting for what, you don’t know.  Waiting for who, you have no idea.

So here I am, young, inexperienced and feeling defensive and helpless in the face of this woman’s rage.

It wasn’t rage, was it?  It was fear.  Anna was agitated and scared to death.  All her referents were gone.  Her GPS was on the blink never to return.

Poor Anna.  I wish I’d known then what I know now.  Life is scary without the protective cloaks of our mind, our family, friends, surroundings.  What happens to us when we are in a vacuum?

It must be like the Fun House at the carnival.  I hated the Fun House when I was a child—tilted floors, distorting mirrors and scary noises.  It makes me cringe thinking about it.  I want my floors flat and solid, my mirrors reflecting back reality,  and my scotch straight up

So the next time a duck attacks you, think of Anna.  Be gentle, don’t argue, give that duck a hug.  They are only frightened and have their backs against the wall.

When ducks attack

I don’t know why I’m posting this.  I suppose it reminds me of all the rage filled irrationality out there swirling around.

Take a breath, let it out, and laugh.

Who were you?

 

 

I am watching a disheveled and unclean young man with few teeth and dirty hair playing the piano.  The caption said “never judge a book by it’s cover.”

The phrase: “who were you?” popped into my head as well as the lyrics from an old song “…he was some mother’s son.”

Hank Williams wrote the song:

“Only a tramp was Lazarus sad fate
He who lay down at the rich man’s gate
He begged for the crumbs from the rich man to eat
He was only a tramp found dead on the street.
He was some mother’s darlin’, he was some mother’s son
Once he was fair and once he was young
And some mother rocked him, her darlin’ to sleep
But they left him to die like a tramp on the street.”

We were all fair and young and beautiful once.  We were beloved.  May that small shred of common humanity, inform the manner in which we judge others.

There is plenty of ugliness to go around.

 

 

Duck Tales

Women over 50

I was looking at Facebook this morning and ran into an ad that said:  “Women over 50 never wear make-up again.”

So as I just said I’m sitting on my computer in my pajama bottoms and a polar fleece having just been outside helping Rob separate baby kale plants.  My hands are muddy and there isn’t a speck of makeup on my face.

Might I suggest to women over 50 that they do as I do and just crawl out of bed as nature intended, and go putter in your garden in your pajamas.  You’ll never wear makeup again.

Now, just because you’ll never wear makeup again doesn’t give you license to do this:

Sorry Mis Papelicos.  I couldn’t resist.  And I do like those peekabo shoes.

I have a big red pot sitting on my stove full of soup.  Even when it’s not full of something, it sits on my stove.  It’s not because its too big to fit in the cupboards.  It’s because it’s just too  beautiful and bold and useful.

Now how many things can you say that about?  Not many.

My sister Chris has this pot on her stove and so does my sister Jane.  Now me.

Many people could say “So what?” but when a trend sweeps through my family (Where are you John?), it needs to be acknowledged.

SobSister

“The sun is out

the skies are blue

There are no clouds

to spoil the view

but its raining

raining in my heart.”

-Buddy Holly-

I found myself singing this about twenty minutes ago.  Why???  My sister Jane went home this morn and Tessa is gone and Emily is working and I am left kinda sad.  Now before you all weep for me I had Jane for a week and Tess for five days and Em for weekends and after my surgery,  and Kate whenever I need her, so really there’s not anything to complain about.

But I’ve been spoiled.  Spoiled by love.

So I don’t know if you’re interested, but here’s a great picture of Buddy Holly.