Fat Tuesday and The Impending Lent Hiatus

I seem to be read by a few people on this and my other blog, according to the counter which I recently attached here. That satisfies my ego. Which brings me to today's last entry for the next 46 days. Easter is 46 days from now, and before that there is Lent, the time of the effort to meditate upon the extraordinary gift of God's sacrifice we Christians believe saved us from eternal suffering. The suffering now, the legacy of the sin of Adam and Eve, still persists, but joined by He who broke into Time, we have hope. As my pastor says, weak beings that we are, we fail in that hope all too often despite the absolute objective certainty of that act of salvation, and Lent is an opportunity to reconnoitre spiritually. Not only is there to be meditation, but some acts that demonstrate our commitment to faith, to the meaning of the life, death and resurrection of He who loves us so much he chases us despite our constant rejections of him---my constant rejections of him.

I have had some vague ideas of what this Lent, as opposed to the multiple failed Lents of years past, might be. No point trying to detail them here, since they remain somewhat unformed and I don't want to make any promises publicly, let alone privately.

There is one thing I intend to do and that is to minimize my entwinement in the electronic world. Can't do it totally. I have a work computer. I have to be reached sometimes. But, some things just aren't critical, as much as I may enjoy them. One is this blog and the one that features stories and reminiscences about my dad. So, those few of you who do read these blogs, and thank you for doing that, my ego requires some taming, and I am going to go on a hiatus until Easter. If by some chance I extend this to all uses of my personal computer, like e mail, if you don't hear from me or I don't respond, know that it isn't because I am ignoring you. I am on a small quest, likely one that won't find me far from home literally or figuratively. And maybe I'll learn something from it and return to these pages a bit more spiritually whole---more connected to the meaning of the puzzle that is the life of each one of us.

Failure of Gratefulness

A week or so ago I was watching The Discovery Channel or some such cable station. The story was rather tangentially related to medical science, about a 7 year old child, known as the "Mermaid Girl". Her legs, well, really, there is only one, are fused. They cannot be separated because of an implication of her kidneys. She has dialysis. She can't, obviously, walk. When she was younger, and the medication that she takes had not yet caused enormous weight gain, she could use her upper body to drag herself along the ground. But now, she has to be carried or be in a wheelchair. She is smarter than the average 7 year old given the enormity of her short life's experience. Her mother wonders whether she did the wrong thing to allow her to be born.

Then this week I had the occasion to encounter in my work a most profoundly disabled person, a victim of a truly paralyzing palsy. It occurred to me that in all my life, I had never been that close to someone in that circumstance. And that close up, I experienced not merely empathy and sympathy, and some awe at the amazing functionality of the person, but a shame in the face of my perpetual failure to be grateful for the wholeness of my body, and my very being. That sense had only risen slightly in seeing someone on television with a medical condition of such savagery, likely because it was observed at a safe digital distance. But merely two or three feet from someone who lives unable to do the basics you and I take for granted without assistance and instrumentation, I left the room tense and a bit disoriented.

And, of course, promising to be grateful for my comparatively small problems. It put me in mind of a kind of Christian religious parable, I guess you would call it. A man prays to God that God give him a smaller cross to bear in his life. God responds. He talks to the man. He takes the cross from the man and points him to a room where there are crosses of many sizes from which he can pick to replace the one he has heretofore borne. The man goes into the room. The wooden crosses are of many different lengths, and widths and textures. He takes his time and finally finds the smallest one that he can. "This, this is the one that I can accept." He leaves the room. God says, "But that is the cross you came here carrying."

After my television and real life views of the life of others, I was momentarily certain that I appreciated the small cross that I bore in relation to a multitude of others in my community, in the world. Yes. The little annoyances of the work day, of traffic, of the wild wanderers of aisles in the supermarket, flashing lights from every form of electronic equipment begging for a response, my nearsightedness, my loneliness, my weight, my aches, my losses of family and friends, that litany of complaints that populate my dialogues and my writing and my thoughts, and have so populated them since I was old enough to say, "What about me?", surely now, I knew that I had been spared, for reasons having nothing to do with my goodness to be sure, up to here, and I should take and run with that present gift with smile and thank you to our, to my, Creator.

But as in all things touched by my human weakness, instead I was angry at not being given credibility by some colleague, about my perpetual indecision related to my goals and actions to which I attributed fault to the universe, about some free floating anxiety of my own internal orchestration. The cognitive dissonance of what I hoped I had learned against the reality that I had not learned anything at all--enraged me more. "Who ARE you?" I ask myself, not really wanting the answer. I know. Even Peter and Paul, saints, fell, and frequently. It is hubris to expect that I could even approach their recognition of sin. But could I not hold onto gratefulness for more than a day, and maybe this time, this time, have an aha moment that sent me in a progressive direction, not backward instead? Even as I write, I have several problems in typing something and the F-word flies forcefully from my apparently unrepetent lips. Why would I become enraged over something less than trivial?

It is impossible. I am impossible. There is only one solution. The things that are impossible with man, are possible with God. There is only prayer. "Lord, take my anger, and grant me your Grace to be grateful, always, for the gift of my life, the gift of my health, that you give me. Let me be grateful too, when you decide that it is no longer mine to have."

My Sunday Debriefing

When you work for the government, there are holidays galore. You name the holiday, and we've got it to take. I am not complaining. Contrary to the opinion of many a consumer, I work hard when I am at my job, and it is one where our customers, let me call them that, the consumers and various professionals have no compunction about being confrontative or manipulative from the get-go. That alone can be wearing upon a middle aged public servant, more than it was upon me as a young go getting public servant, merely by virtue, perhaps of the repetition. So days off I can always use, to recoup, to damp the anger that gets fueled by being required to take abuse without equal response at least at that moment (Thus I do, again, apologize to that Verizon operator who got a misdirected bit of the buildup--I think her name was Jasmine).

On Thursday, there was Lincoln's birthday and tomorrow is the melded Presidents' Day, and it seemed that with one day of vacation, I could make it into a five day hiatus. And so, I did it. I had all sorts of plans in mind, none of them urgent, some of them I accomplished.

I suppose "vacation" began on Wednesday night. Three of us have had a round robin on our birthdays for some years, picking a Zagat rated restaurant, and two taking the one out. We have hit some wonderful places over the years, Geoffrey's in Malibu, Republic in LA, Lucques, Shutters' restaurant on the beach in Santa Monica, Ivy at the Shore (really the only one that was horrible, although I was inebriated and it worked might fine for me), places that came and went, but always a good time had by all. This time we went to Dal Rae, which was perhaps one of the best environments and even better food, and was limited only by one drawback---it is in Pico Rivera, not far from both huge strip malls and railroad tracks and warehouses.

Sleeping in is perhaps my favorite of a day off, and so I did, to well past 10 a.m. the next day. After attending daily Mass, something which I particularly enjoy because I so rarely get to do it, I went to Home Depot and bought indoor and outdoor paint, for two ongoing projects. I wrote a letter to a young recruit at Parris Island, South Carolina over which I had been procrastinating, for no particular reason. And then, somehow my mind goes blank for the activities of the rest of the day. I may have been lolly gagging, probably was. I meant to do some oil painting. I have had a sketch of two blown palm trees sitting about since August and a trip to Hawaii, but haven't put brush to canvas, despite many internal promises.

Friday. It rained. Heavy. And the chill was enough to remind me what a wimp I had become since I moved to California. I couldn't take more than a day or two of this wind and wet. I surely could not take what people navigate in the east with nary a thought. A second day of daily Mass. Got the stamps for the letter to North Carolina, picked up a belated birthday card for another friend, and had lunch at Dupar's reading the TV Guide and the Enquirer for my intellectual enhancement In the evening I dined at a friend's, treated not only to lovely conversation and tales of days in the fashion industry, but also to a gift of several items of clothing and shoes from a woman who knows the business and who somehow managed to remind me that even at my age, perhaps because she herself is twenty plus years older, it isn't all over, and maybe I am more attractive than I have ever given myself credit for, if only I did not run from the possibility. I had this feeling, too, that in some way I was being looked out for by my now both gone parents, although the exact direction this will take remains to be seen.

It does seem that in a way, since dad died, I have been adopted a bit by a few people, and I can't say that I don't like it.

Saturday was a drive to Long Beach for my usual color and cut, accompanied by blue sky and three dimensional white cotton clouds and a bright sun that only slightly warmed things up, a delightful rummaging and purchasing at that gourmet's delight Bristol Farm, in Beverly Hills, and then a full screen view of that never old oldie, "The Philadelphia Story" at the Alex in Glendale. Stewart, Grant, Hepburn. Seventy years later, and they are as good as ever, young, and bright, and witty. They were as yar as the sailing True Love that bound C.K. Dexter Haven and Tracy Lord.

Sunday. The day of rest. No, really.

Mass, the third of the week and I am glad. I needed the rest of spirit as well as the rest of body. And breakfast with my church mates at the Silver Spoon that lasted well into the late afternoon. I refiled my shirts and pants as the day waned. And here I am making long overdue entries in my two blogs, with still a whole day off tomorrow, during which I intend to do some more painting at my dad's apartment to the sounds of my reloaded I-Pod.

And in between I will continue my rereading of the life of Gerard Manley Hopkins, Jesuit and posthumously famous poet, who will have an entry of his own shortly.

And the picture above? Clearly, it is not me. 1. I am not a him and 2. I am not at the shore. But the hammock, that says it all!

Where O Where Have I Ever Been?

My Toshiba laptop had been giving me agita for weeks, if not months. Slow. Slower than slow, stuck in a mechanical electronical quagmire that raised my rage. And then one night, I did it. I whacked it. I did not intend to kill. I quite literally, just whacked it. Hit it. Hard, like one hits a candy machine to dislodge the already paid for M and Ms that refuse to drop. But effectively by whacking it, I truly "whacked" it. It never would reboot. Not on any safe mode. It changed colors.

I was appropriately ashamed of myself and shall confess the sin, not of whacking the darn thing, but of the anger which is the worst of the seven deadly sins, one Saturday soon. But for now, I needed a new computer, which usurped all my consideration, even the spiritual ones.

Today, finally, my new hardware baby has been brought home. My shiny, quiet HP Pavilion dv4-12222nr Entertainment Notebook. Small and compact. With bells and whistles up to and including a remote that I have yet to figure out (or read, if I will only do that, the directions) how to get out of its hiding place on the left side of this thing.

To say that I was bereft without a computer. . . .well that would be silly. But it was a sense of helplessness at the very least that tormented me this last couple of weeks.

But order is restored to my little world with this entry, announcing that I am back again to my sporadic entries on my two blogs. I missed it. I shall have no illusion that you, whoever you are, missed me.