Take me to the river

Both of my children were baptized when they were ten.

Jayna wore the same blue ribbon of "truth" that I wore when I was baptized at Fairwood in 1974. I found the ribbon, still on its original pin, pressed between the pages of my scrapbook in the attic. I had tears in my eyes as I fixed it to her little collar. The words felt like paste in my mouth as I explained "the truth" to her. I knew I wasn't qualified. And, I stood convicted as she went into the water with her father to complete the Christian tradition of my youth.

I didn't take communion with her that day. Or any day since. My heart was too far from God at the time, and when my heart found its way back home, it was she who would not partake.

Jared asked hard questions before he was baptized. "How do we know that our God is the only God?" and "What if we had never been created?" These were questions I asked myself before I fell asleep at night when I was younger than he was, but I would have never dared ask them aloud. They were questions that struck fear in my heart, and I wasn't sure I wanted to consider the answers.

It was a nearly a year after he went into the baptismal waters that I took communion with Jared. My soul ached as I stood in the circle to receive the bread and wine. And, there was a bitter sweetness in offering my son the elements of the ages knowing the questions in his heart.

I do not know that I have done a good job in the spiritual training of my children. For so long it hurt too much. I wonder now if it is too late. I pray for them. I love them. And, in the end that might be the best that I can do.

Take my hand

Take my hand when you are worried
Take my hand when you're alone
Take my hand and let me guide you
Take my hand to lead you home

Take my hand...

Take him by the tail

...hope arrives in a simple sound when we least expect it. I heard a bird calling from outside the window when I woke this morning. Like a little messenger of joyfulness, it stirred hope and shot little tendrils of anticipation through my heart. I love that feeling.

I chose my quote today from Josh Billings. He wrote under the name: Henry Wheeler Shaw. He was a humorist in the late 1800's--who couldn't spell worth a damn, but is still worth quoting.

"If we had no winter, the spring would not be so pleasant: if we did not sometimes taste of adversity, prosperity would not be so welcome."

The following is also attributed to him:

"Don't take the bull by the horns, take him by the tail; then you can let go when you want to."

I like that sort of common sense.

Where do you weep?

Sometimes a picture is worth the postcard upon which it is printed. And, the words, well, they are worth the ink. Check out Post Secret.*
*Warning: Not rated E for EVERYONE.

Don't be jealous...

I know that you will all be green with envy when you hear that someone from Wilayah Persekutuan, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia has been reading my blog.

With the Malaysian bot crawling through the posts on Daughter of Divagation, I have hereby become Blog Queen of the Universe WITHOUT splitting my infinitives.

Take me out to the ballgame

Our seats were in a field box right on the first baseline. The Red Sox were playing the Kansas City Royals, and it was my first visit to Fenway Park.

You have to realize that I am a Tiger's fan through and through-- although until the World Series last year, I hadn't followed baseball since Cecil Fielder was breaking records for Detroit.

These tickets were given to us though along with a free pass for parking in a lot right next to Gate A on the corner of Yawkey Way. I took Jared and two of his friends.

After all, I have lived in New England long enough to consider splitting my allegiance. Just a little. Maybe. And, who couldn't love Fenway Park?

There is something about a stadium, be it on the east coast or in the Motor City, that gets me right in the gizzard. The green, green, green of the grass. The fans bedecked in their caps and jerseys. The smell of beer and hot dogs and peanuts and cotton candy. And, all the excitement of a major league sporting event under the wattage of the field lights on a summer evening.

It was a good game even though they lost. Poppi, Ramirez, Veriteck, CoCo. The lineup was all there in their hometown glory.

The Boston fans surprised me in the bottom of the first inning when they "boooooooed" Red Sox player #20 after his third strike at the plate. Bad form. Bad, bad form. The jeer surely must have been aimed at the ump's call, I thought. Then the next inning the same player hit a ball to right field and got on base. It wasn't a home run or even a triple, but it was a decent hit. I thought. Yet, the crowd still called, "Booooooooooo."

Imagine 50,000 fans booing you. I wasn't at all okay with the lack of respect for this player. I was indignant. We might "blawg" in Michigan, but we would never boo a Detroit Tiger no matter how badly he played. Never.

It took one more roar from the stands before I realized that they were, in fact, saying "Yoooooooooooouk," and not "boooooooo."

Kevin Youkilis, #20. Nickname: "Yoooooooooooouk."

Doh!

For Paige

Light a light for me...

Late and soon

The world is too much with us; late and soon,
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers;
Little we see in Nature that is ours;
We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!
This Sea that bares her bosom to the moon,
The winds that will be howling at all hours,
And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers,
For this, for everything, we are out of tune;

~William Wordsworth

Elvis Drinks Moxie

He used to sing in the men's quartet. His earnest eyebrows would rise and fall in time with his Adam's apple. And, his voice, rich and glossy like pulled taffy, brought heaven into the room. No one argued--Dick Parker had a gift.

I haven't seen him in years. And then...

At a Main street fair in Lisbon Falls amid a sea of orange Moxie t-shirts, Dick Parker was Elvis. He took the stage wearing nothing but a glitzy white leisure suit and wedged sideburns to croon to the afternoon crowd. The sunlight caught on his gigantic pinkie ring and the "bling" around his neck shook. He was soft at first, but he gained volume as his hips began to swing. Yes, Dick Parker SWIVELED from the waist down. He was a rockin'robinhounddog sort of guy. Now, THAT is Moxie.

My reaction was a mixture of delight and disbelief. Delight to see him doing something that brought so much fun to the little town. His family and half of Shiloh were there to cheer him on. Disbelief because...well...this was Dick Parker. It was like finding out that your blind date to the prom was your brother.

He performed a set of Elvis songs that used to make young girls swoon. And, then, when I least expected it, he sang "How Great Thou Art." Right there, on the street, in the hot afternoon sun, prickles went up the back of my neck, and I knew I was going to cry. Tears fell over my face faster than I could stop them. I didn't join the chorus although many people did. I stood and listened. Everything faded. The smell of fried dough and onions with peppers. The mechanical elephant at the Safari booth. The call of the vendors. The people.

It was just me and Elvis. And that voice.

Where he had been more timid on other songs, the tone was strong and full with no hesitation:

"O Lord my God, When I in awesome wonder,
Consider all the worlds Thy Hands have made;
I see the stars, I hear the rolling thunder,
Thy power throughout the universe displayed."

Who knew that it would take Elvis risen from the dead drinking Moxie to bend my heart close to God?

God

I am convinced that Neil Young was onto something...

We went lookin' for faith
on the forest floor,
And it showed up everywhere,
In the sun and the water
and the falling leaves,
The falling leaves of time.

I am equally convinced that God hates Powerpoint.

Jesus is my toolbar

I guess this would be one way to surf for Jesus.
Got phish? What's in YOUR history?

Dear Diary:

Today I made Jared laugh.

Maybe it was the greasy magic of melted cheese or the influence of caffeine after 9 p.m. Maybe it was neither. In any event, I made my 13 year old son laugh in public. He laughed in front of his friend, Matt. He laughed so hard that soda came out his nose. He even allowed his laughter to carry him out of the booth onto the floor where he gulped and gasped in spasms of mirth.

I need to point out that he wasn't laughing at me. Well, technically, he was laughing at me, but not in the usual way. I could try to write out what it was that I said. I might even attempt to phonetically include the accent that I used to deliver my lines, but it would lose something in the translation. You would say, "Yeah? And?"

What I said was beside the point. That he laughed--matters.

Jared and I have always shared a unique style of humor. Sometimes I think we are the only ones who "get" each other. He has a running shtick about Woody Allen that astounds me with its nuance. He is irreverent. He jokes about Hugh Heffner's kneecaps, W's foibles, teacher's styles, minister's meanderings, and most of all himself. He is not afraid to laugh at himself.

I sort of like this kid. I do.

I think we both sense that he is growing up. I understand the boundaries that leap up between us in the presence of others, but lately...

Pile it high, please

"Wishing to be friends is quick work, but friendship is a slow ripening fruit." ~~Aristotle

In some more scholarly incarnation of myself, I fancied the work of Aristotle. I have a notebook scribbled full of quotes and notes from a class I took many moons ago. I pulled some of it out to write here because:

1. I need to get sleepy.
2. It reminded me of some recent conversations about friendship and the limited capacity we have for taking on new "intimates" in our lives.

It was always interesting to me that more than anything else Aristotle considered human relationships vital to universal knowledge. He devoted much of his teaching to understanding friendship and the soul.

In Ethics he defined three kinds of friendship:

• Friendship for pleasure
• Friendship for utility
• Friendship for good

Friendship for pleasure occurs when two people are drawn together not really because of who they are but because they have a common interest in an activity that they can pursue together. Their mutual participation in that activity enhances their individual pleasure in life.

These kinds of friendships might be the most frequent and easiest for me to establish. The "crush," if you will. For me, crushes have never been gender limited and are seldom sexual. They last only as long as they can hold my interest. They may be intense, but they are never
deep or connected.

Friendships for utility focus on what use the two can derive from each other--"What is in it for me?" Each party supplies something to the other on some very basic level. Someone might know something you need to know. Someone might have access to something you need to have.

I think we all have these types of friendships to some degree and they last as long as each has the ability to continue to meet the need of the other person or until the driving need shifts and becomes obsolete.

Friendships for good, however, are the most stable and perfect of the three types of friendship. These friendships come into being when two people engage in common activities for the sake of developing that which is good in the other. Pleasure and utility can reside in a friendship for good--they just don't sit in the front seat or get to hold the road map.

By the nature of our human selves, we can and do outgrow friendship types one and two many times in the course of a lifetime, but the soul takes root and grows forever in the soil of friendship type three.

Aristotle said, "Friendship is one soul living in two bodies." I suppose it requires attention, time and intimacy to develop one soul. And, such connections, as they should be, are precious and rare.

Success

“I find that that the harder I work, the more luck I seem to have.”

~Thomas Jefferson~

How cool is this?

Tibetan Wisdom

Autobiography in Five Short Chapters

Chapter I

I walk down the street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I fall in
I am lost . . . I am helpless
It isn’t my fault.
It takes forever to find a way out.

Chapter II

I walk down the same street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I pretend I don’t see it.
I fall in again.
I can’t believe I am in the same place.
But, it isn’t my fault.
It still takes a long time to get out.

Chapter III

I walk down the same street
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I see it is there.
I still fall in . . . it’s a habit.
My eyes are open.
I know where I am.
It is my fault.
I get out immediately.

Chapter IV

I walk down the same street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I walk around it.

Chapter V

I walk down another street.

~~By Portia Nelson, The Book of Tibetan of Living and Dying

If it sounds like it...

"You are the call, and I am the answer. You are the wish, and I the fulfillment. You are the night, and I the day. What else? It is perfect enough. It is perfectly complete. You and I." D.H. Lawrence.

I went through an infatuation period with D.H. Lawerence at some point in my past life. His style rested just on the edge of forbidden with a brooding sexuality that made me believe. He wrote of "blood knowledge" and finding it better to "...die than live mechanically a life that is a repetition of repetitions."

Sometimes I think I expect too much from my intimates. A soul perfection. Yet, if asked, I scoff at the notion of soulmateship.

If you read that fast enough, out loud, it sounds like "soulmate sh*t."

'Nuff said

More

All that was sacred and little bit that was wicked
Mixed with sunshine to fill the hollows of my heart.
A brimming chalice calling:
More. More. More.

Now pull me to your lips.
And, drink, oh Thirsty One, drink;
Swallow what you feel.
More. More. More.

Don't melt like cotton candy.
Really let me taste your soul.
And hold me. Breathe with me.
More. More. More.

Be large enough to keep me.
Be strong enough to tell me no.
But always give me:
More. More. More.

Be. Just BE.
More. More. More.

Dear Snodsy

Anne Sexton was famous for her prolific correspondence. (see previous post Razor's Edge.) I was always drawn in particular to the letters she wrote to W.D. Snodgrass. She would begin with "Dear Snodsy..." The words that looped and marched down the page after the salutation were sometimes clever, sometimes pathetic, but always real.

It seems to me that everyone should have a "Dear Snodsy" in their lives. For me, Snodsy embodies the call to the universe that gets caught in the clouds.

I don't imagine when she was manically scribbling all those years ago that she ever realized that the festering stew of her troubled soul would one day be published far and wide. That entire classes would be dedicated to parsing out her metaphors, mapping her rise to literary greatness, and diagnosing the recipe of her demise. That her words would be plucked like feathers from a Christmas goose leaving only bruised and shivered skin for the world to see.

Blogging has taken most of the personal elements of communication and made them public. Today none of us will have to wait until we are dead to have our most intimate thoughts and insights shouted from the rooftops. From the halls of Montezuma, our demons dance over cyber waves of pain. Our ideas, our projects, our children, our faith, our pieces, are strung like laundry to flutter in the breeze.

"DEAR SNODSY," we type in bold black font, "come play in my midnight garden."

And, we wait, for his reply.

Bicycle, bicycle

I am sure that the tune, "Bicycle," wasn't even a glimmer in Freddy Mercury's eye when I got a brand new bike in 1976. It was my tenth birthday. And, the bike was a Schwinn. Every spoke in the big round wheels promised to buy my freedom. In the way that fifth graders can still sorta believe in Santa Clause and the tooth fairy, I had a secret hope that my bike would change my life. (Of course, I also wished for acne, braces and glasses at that age, so you get a sense of my priorities.)

My parents had agreed to pay for half of the $60 needed to assure my place in the band of merry neighborhood bikers. For more than a year I had saved my money to pay for that sweet ride. I dreamed of the curved handlebars wrapped in miles of black tape-grip. The weight of the sturdy maroon frame. The handbrakes at my fingertips. The click, click, click of the gear shift in that the single moment that hangs you in nothingness before your pedals engage, and you gain solid traction again.

In my fertile mind's eye, my social standing would be transformed by the magic in this hunk of metal, rubber, chains, and bolts. I would be cool. Part of a club that mattered. A real MSBO (member of the society of bicycle ownership.)

Imagine my surprise when I realized that my parents would insist that I get a girl's bike instead of a boy's bike. Nowhere in all my fantasies had the bar between my legs been anything but straight. The vision I had of myself riding with no hands did not include anything so sissified as a the dip of a girlie bar. My inner tom-boy shrieked. It begged and pleaded against the injustice. It wept and wailed in a way that no boy would have ever done.

I don't remember how they changed their minds, but I know that they did, because that October I had the bicycle of my dreams.

My only other bike had come from the Drumore public dump that was up the hill and down the lane past the bottom of the pasture on Scalpy Hollow Road. My father had rescued it and brought it home for me to call my very own. He fixed the broken pedal with a wooden block, and tightened the rusted silver handlebars. He filled the little tires with compressed air until they were firm and true.

Under the shadow of the silo I learned to ride that bike in the barnyard outside the chicken house. While our cattle summered in the southern pasture, the winter's accumulation of manure was scraped free from the cement yard to leave a smooth place that was perfect for me to practice.

There were no training wheels for me. I would have none of that. Only my tip-toes would keep me balanced on the white banana seat while I gathered my courage to roll forward. I would teeter back and forth until finally, I picked up my feet, and I was riding. RIDING.

Bicycle, bicycle. I want to ride my bicycle. I want to ride my bike.

Round and round, I sped. As my confidence grew, I would race as fast as I could from one end of the barnyard to the other. I would slam on my brakes and skid to a halt. I can remember how proud I was to be handling my bike like a big kid.

The real test though was the steep hill that stretched from the bottom of our driveway to the top of forever. It took all that fall and winter to psyche myself up for the challenge. Then one morning in early spring found me at the top looking down at the house and barn. I took a deep breath.

One, two, three...

I pushed off and pedaled just a little. My purple Huffy gathered speed and rolled past the stubbled field on the left. The wheels were turning themselves, and the pedals were pumping my legs on their own by the time I passed the second field. The road slid by in a blur as my knuckles gripped the wobbling handlebars. The sign at the bottom loomed in front of me before it registered that I was still upright. I had not fallen when I had been so certain that I would.

Disbelieving my own success, I yanked my wheel hard to the right and leaned over on purpose just to fall and get it out of the way. Later, my mother picked the gravel from my knees and wiped the snotty strings from my nose while I hiccuped and snuffled.

I think it took weeks for my scabs to heal. And, my trusty bicycle leaned against the stoop for a couple of days before I tried to ride it again.

Today, there are times when someone I know really messes up. They make choices that can only bring heartache. And, I wonder what in the world they could be thinking. Then I am reminded that it was I who brought myself to ruin at the bottom of that hill so many years ago.

And, I wonder if it is sometimes about choosing HOW and WHEN you fall rather than waiting for it to happen.