The sun retreats, the ice creeps; of lakes and memories

A walk today around Decker Lake.

Actually, a couple circuits on an unseasonable cold (20 degrees) morning.

My fancy hearing aids allow audio streaming from my iPhone 7-plus, so I put on the Eikona recording of Orthodox Christian prayers and walked for the next hour.

Reminders of generations, petitioning the Divine
for forgiveness, mercy, understanding, and acceptance of weakness, made strong by faith and actions . . . however weak and seemingly ineffective.

Only two other people were on the pathway around the lake. To the East, the Wasatch Mountains towered, the first snow caps of autumn clear on a crisp, cold late-morning.

Ducks had waddled into the water further from shore, skidding across think sheet of translucent ice into the still-open waters.

Overhead, a vanguard of Canadian geese circled over the lake, seemingly discouraged by the encroaching bank ice, and flew further to the northwest. Seconds later, some 30 more geese, locked in triangular formations, followed their lead.

The skies were clear, a canopy of powder blue, and the sun, mockingly, shone bright but offered little warmth. A  breeze underscored the changing of seasons, so rapidly from autumn to the first chill breath of winter.

The brown leaves, just a month ago so vibrant and green, then for a glorious couple weeks golden and orange, lay at my feet -- brown, decaying and disintegrating.

It all reminded me of my parents. My father died in January, my mother passed in June.

I imagined the snow covering their graves in Eastern Washington, where it is colder, grayer, bleaker as brief autumn gives way to the arctic winds with a sigh this time of year.

As I listened to the prayers of the Ancient Faith, chanted over the millennia by the believing hopeful, I thought of Mom and Dad. Memories flowed,; and I tasted those still-warm recollections, resolute in my hope of safeguarding who they were.

And now, I am the earthly receptacle of those memories, so few, so precious, and so much of the quality of neuronic snapshots of the epics that were their lives.

Kyrie eleison.

Lord have mercy, indeed.

The Journey of Faith: Beyond 'Convertitis,' hopefully deeper in love and humility

It's been a couple years now since I left the Evangelical/Pentecostal upbringing of by childhood, and indeed, the faith foundation of most of my life, and was baptized an Orthodox Christian.

It was not a decision taken in haste, but after much introspection, study, and yes, prayer. The ensuing years since that life-altering choice has been glorious, painful, lonely, and also wonderful in the sense of a new family I've found at Sts. Peter and Paul Orthodox Church.

Like new convert to any faith, there is an initial period of zealous commitment. That is both good -- a joyful, all-in commitment to suddenly exploded horizons of belief and understanding -- and not so good, i.e. the temptation to vigorously "defend" one's new revelation of truth as not just closer to fully right, but to blithely dismiss anything "less" to be heretical, or at least inferior.

The late Fr. Seraphim Rose

The late Fr. Seraphim Rose, likely to someday be glorified as an Orthodox saint, called it "Convertitis."  He was particularly aware of the tendency toward criticism and self-righteousness. In summary, Rose saw such an attitude as a potentially fatal poison to the newly-acquired, precious ancient faith of the apostles.

From his notes for a proposed, but never published (that I could find) “Manual for Orthodox Converts," there is this pearl:

"Such attitudes are spiritually extremely dangerous. The person holding them is invariably in grave spiritual danger himself, and by uttering his mistaken, self-centered words he spreads the poison of rationalist criticism to others in the Church."

Thankfully, my experience with that new convert attitude faded quickly (but still too long, and yes, I confessed it). In a nutshell, I have known, in my 66 years on this planet, too many people of genuine intent and faith for me to presume to judge anything about their relationship with God. 

One can be convinced of one's faith, and its potential to grow in knowledge of the Truth, without judging another's journey.

To so the latter is to usurp the domain of the Divine, an error of ignorance, and a grievous sin. I've learned that the moment I presume to judge anyone's journey of faith, that is the time to confess, repent, and love. I know that . . . but I remain imperfect, and only more convinced of my shortfalls in love and humility whenever I even flirt with judgment.

Lord have mercy, indeed.

The point? Focus on your own faults, working out your own salvation. The best "witness" of the gospel for most of us is to simply live it, to love others . . . and to trust God to touch every heart where it happens to be on its unique journey -- whether dormant, just beginning, lost, or clinging to what they know, through pain, experience and love, to be the Truth.

Do I believe, with all my heart and soul, that the ancient church of Christ is preserved in its purest earthly, yet still imperfect form within Orthodoxy? I do.

But there is one judge of humankind's soul.

It ain't me. Or you.

Questions? Rather than arguments or theological debates, if you are interested in the ancient faith of Christ, I can only offer the advice I once received -- Come and See.

Painting my kitchen: It sure isn't art, but a lesson in humility

Painting, Pablo Picasso said, "is just another way of keeping a diary." 

Vincent Van Gogh, a preacher's kid, like me, declared that, "painting is a faith, and it imposes the duty to disregard public opinion."

Let's face it; they were both at least not of this world, if not just plain crazy. So, there's that. And if they were talking about house painting, well, certifiably insane.

I sing of the paint brush dripping, not the body electric. (Sorry, Walt Whitman). But this is my brush. The kitchen of our condominium, its paint faded and spattered from past cooking experiments, is the "canvas."

But even if I had the skills of a professional interiors painter, this would not approach art. One coat should have sufficed, but then there were the drips. So, there was the second and third coat. At least the prep -- sanding and taping -- kept the new paint (mostly) within bounds.

Ah, you should have hired a professional, you say? Sure, the result would have been better, no doubt. But if you are retired, $1,100 to freshen up a kitchen just doesn't convince.

So, a second or third coat, whatever it takes.

That's how I roll. Which actually is more to the point. I should have rolled the paint on, my wife shared (with a bit too much glee, however subdued), not used a brush.

So, this is me, watching paint dry. And thinking I just may have to roll, if I want to rock this project.

Another lesson in humility. We Eastern Orthodox Christians are told one can never get too much of that.

Writing: Still love it, and thank God, still got it

After spending more than 40 years as a reporter and editing in news wire service and newspapers, I produced, on average, at least one story a day. On one wild, dizzying, heart-thumping day a few years ago, I had 17 bylined articles.

Crazy, that. And far as I know, still a Salt Lake Tribune staff record. But what was I trying to prove that day? What was one more story about squatters starting an abandoned house in fire, or another 7-Eleven holdup?

Idiotic, I eventually, decided. And yet, I didn't know that, a year and a half after getting the ax in the massive downsizing at the Tribune in May 2018, some vestige of that drive would still be defining a portion of my self-worth.

There's a rush when you report, interview and then write up and hit the send button on a story. From the first time I experienced that feeling -- at age 20,working up piece about local farmers hunting rattlesnakes in central Washington -- to my last feature for the Tribune, about the last few octogenarian monks at a remote Trappist monastery, I guess I took that fix of accomplishment for granted.

In my semi-retirement since, I've done some occasional online magazine articles and copyedited a few books. But it had been months since my last gig. A few weeks ago, I started having nightmares where I would sit down to write, only to discover I had lost the ability to find the lead, compose a narrative, or even do an interview.

It was an anxiety that rode my shoulders into awakening, a couple times at 2 a.m., and haunted me when I finally got another assignment. What if the dream was not just than groundless fears?

Today was judgment day. Having done the interviews and research for a new assignment, I sat down to write. When I identified the lead -- in this case contrasting the hard work of Romanian immigrants in building a community of faith in Portland, Oregon, with the success of their American-born children building on that -- I felt a physical wave of relief.

Really. The endorphines kicked in. Shoulder knots relaxed. A budding migraine faded. I took a deep breath, a gulp of home-brewed dark roast java, and soon found the "nut graph," transition to background and a secondary source, and . . . the rest flowed!

The subsequent "polishing" and "tightening" of the piece, grammar and spelling tweaks, and even the task of providing of Web hot links were not tedious chores; they were like making literary love.

Yeah, I smiled to myself. Still got it.

Thanks for that, God. My hair is gray and thinning, my waist a memory, my knees tyrannical, and the days of hitting 3-pointers off a pull-up jumper from the top of the key are ancient history . . . but I can still read, write, and wonder.

The Cruise: A visit to hallowed ground, and going home

On Saturday, our final day of cruise vacation, we checked our cabin to be sure all has been packed away in our airline carry-on bags. The night before, we had labeled and tagged our checked luggage, and by the time we had our final breakfast aboard Anthem of the Seas, they had been loaded onto our group's bus.

With that, we headed down the gangplank to the pier and boarded the bus for the New York City finale: a mostly walking tour of (or what's left of, about a block) Little Italy, Tribeca, Greenwich Village, Soho, Union Square and Washington Square parks; the weird yet impressive Oculus, a  mammoth combination train-subway terminal and retail shops and office complex; and what I most wanted to visit -- the 9/11 Memorial grounds, where honor is paid to the 3,000 who perished in the 2001 terrorist attacks that destroyed the World Trade Center's Twin Towers.

The bittersweet, yet also oddly comforting heart of the site has to be the Reflecting Absence Memorial, the largest man-made waterfall.

Encircled above by the names of the victims inscribed in bronze on the parapets, some marked with birthday flowers; the water disappears into darkness, symbolic of the void left in the souls of families, countrymen and survivors alike.

By hopeful and defiant contrast, above looms the new One World Trade Center, better known as the Freedom Tower -- at 1,776 feet the tallest building in the Western Hemisphere. Plans eventually call for the "Ground Zero" complex to include, in all, five high-rise office buildings.

We did not see Central Park, a tentatively planned stop on the final tour; Manhattan's horrible traffic made that impossible, as the bus driver ended up getting us to JFK with little time to spare for lugging our bags through the airport's labyrinthine terminals to finally board our plane home to Utah.

After a half-hour's delay once more on the tarmac -- a bookend of flight frustration as it were -- we finally lifted off. It was near Sunday morning when, happy but exhausted, we landed in Salt Lake City, retrieved our luggage and got a lift home from our ride-share friend, Big Jim Coleman.

Be it ever so humble -- and to some, by comparison to the Big Apple mundane -- there truly is no place like home.

The Cruise: New Brunswick, the Bay of Fundy and the case of the reversing waterfall

Caves on beach at Bay of Fundy

Day 8 arrived, and Barbara and I splurged on room service coffee, tea, oatmeal and yogurt, watching the sun swell from the Atlantic horizon, adding color to the gray scale of dawn.

The good ship Anthem of the Seas had arrived in the night at Canada's third-largest port and largest ship-builder, St. John, New Brunswick. Of greater interest to us, however, was the Bay of Fundy, home to the world's highest tides . . . and the prospect of seeing the St. John River reverse its course, and its falls flow backward with the Atlantic pushing into the bay with such force that the tides rise more than 40 feet during a roughly six-hour cycle.

Sue: best guide ever

Our colonial dress-clad, moose hat-wearing guide, Sue, was proud of her Scottish-Irish heritage, and an avuncular, (fast) walking encyclopedia of facts about her "town" of 67,000 souls.

Historically, St. John's is Canada's first incorporated city; when the British lost the American Revolution, it also became refuge and new home for loyalists fleeing the fledgling U.S.A.; riots in the 1840-60 era, between Protestant Scots, Anglican Brits and an influx of Irish Catholics were rampant; and the Fire of 1877 blackened 40 percent of the city.

Today, St. John is a city amid revitalization downtown, and slow, considered suburban growth further out. It seems, with its garden-quality medians, clean streets and thriving arts community -- and some uncharacteristic (these days) community pride -- a great place to live.

One (I suppose) tartan-wearing fly in the chowder would be its high tax rates. The Canadian government's social welfare and single-payer national health insurance comes with a price, and the Province and municipality add their own demands. All told, more than 50 percent in taxes on income, Sue told us.

As for the culinary brand of chowder, we had the best we ever tasted at the tiny Bay of Fundy village  of St. Martins. Then we took a long walk on the beach to some ancient caves; nearby colorful fishing boats rested on wooden cradles in the low-tide mud, awaiting the rising of the inbound Atlantic to get them afloat.

Our Irish balladeer

Back in St. John, we stopped at an Irish pub, packed with customers and welcomed as guests with glasses of golden,  Moosehead lager while a middle-aged Irish balladeer sang folk songs imported from the Emerald Isle itself.  (Sue, fueled by her own ale and her moose-antlers hat firmly affixed to her gray locks, laughed and danced behind our Hibernian crooner.)

The outing concluded with the promised incoming high tide. And sure enough, there it was: the St. John River reversing its course, its many waterfalls disappearing to flow upstream as the Bay of Fundy swelled.


So, sometimes, boys and girls, water does run uphill.

And that is kind of encouraging for those of us unwilling enlisted by the unrelenting passage of time within the ranks of the malodorous, yet revered Scots Order of Auld Fairts.

(*Next: Back in the Big Apple, on the way home)

The Cruise: A day at sea, and perspective from on high

The North Star gondola in action (Royal Caribbean)

Day 7, a full day at sea for Barbara, me, and 5,000 or so our of shipmates on the Anthem of the Seas.

This is a day for us to catch our travelers' breath, and inhale, full-lunged the breezes coming off the Atlantic. The ocean is choppy this day, its energy stirred by the vestiges of yet another tropical storm further to the south. The play of white, gray and slate clouds, darting seagulls, the roar of the water as the ship plows onward, and the intermittent sunlight dancing on the whitecaps are mesmerizing.

Barbara and I get in our Fitbit steps, and then some, walking the top deck circuit, joyfully exposed to the elements. By late-morning, we queue up for our reserved ride in the ship's North Star observation gondola.

North Star: 300 feet up

The glass-enclosed capsule fits about a dozen people, including our host, a tall young Scot who amiably chats with us.

He also gives us the facts: Adding in the 150 feet or so of the ship itself from ocean to top deck, the North Star -- rising on its steel arm above the deck -- will give us a view of the ocean from 300-feet plus above sea level.

 Heights are not my thing. Elevators are fine, as long as it doesn't involve looking through a glass floor; observation decks on tall buildings, which sway in the wind, or the precipice of the Grand Canyon, however, again -- not my thing.

Heights: Barb loves, me not much

The things we do for love. And Barbara loves this stuff. So, there I was, gripping the handrails and moving ever-so-carefully as the North Star growled to its apex. The view from on high was impressive (when I was able to suspend visions of cracking glass, a wailing, hard, short fall, and the crunch of spine and skull just before The Darkness).

Barbara? All smiles,"ooohs" and "ahhs." Had the gondola been open, she'd have been leaning out and laughing.

Back on deck, it was another stroll, pausing to claim deck chairs for quiet and the Atlantic horizon. Then we took a few minutes to watch other seniors relive childhood behind the wheels of electric bumper cars.

Seeing a silver-haired octogenarian burst into laughter after hunting down and slamming into another bumper car driver is . . . uniquely amusing, as it is something of a tear in the Time-Space Continuum.

Dinner, conversation with others in our group, a leisurely amble back to our room, and sipping a glass of red wine (that was for one; Barb does not imbibe) on the patio as darkness fell.

I watched the light fade to where only the white caps fluttered into view, touched briefly by moon beams. Such are the moments best expressed with a simple, deep sigh.

(*Next: New Brunswick, the Bay of Fundy and the case of the reversing waterfall).

A day at sea

The Cruise: Halifax and Peggy's Cove, Nova Scotia

Day 6. So quickly have we passed the midpoint of our Royal Caribbean cruise of the Northeast Coast, having arrived in Halifax, Nova Scotia.

Halifax is no small city, with a population in excess of 400,000, and it is a major economic and commercial center, benefiting from its shipbuilding and deep harbor (or, "harbour," in their Queen's English parlance). But it is Nova Scotia's stubborn grip on its (surprise!) Scottish heritage culturally, its maritime history and prominence, and mesmerizing. beautiful coastline that brings in the tourists (and cruise ships).

Halifax also has its share of historical tragedy. Consider that while the survivors of the 1912 Titanic disaster were taken to New York, the recovered dead were taken to Halifax. One hundred and twenty-one of them were buried at the Canadian city's Fairview Cemetery, another 29 buried in other grave sites within Halifax.

Then, just five years later, in December 1917, a French munitions ship collided with a smaller supply ship in a narrow harbor passage. The munitions ship blew apart in an explosion said to be the largest man-made blast until the testing of nuclear weapons. Two-thousand people died and 9,000 were injured in Halifax, where all buildings within an 800-meter radius were leveled.

All of this sad history was shared by our tour guide, and we came to appreciate his pride in "Haligonian" (nope, not Halifaxian) resilience. Thank God, the somber bit soon gave way to the present, vibrant city, and then a leisurely stop at Peggy's Cove, a tiny (year-round population of 30) fishing village with world-famous lighthouse and eye-popping North Atlantic scenery.

Unresolved is how Peggy's Cove got its name. Some say it comes from St. Margaret's Bay, of which it is a part; another is that it simply got it's name from an early settler.

But most popular is the legend conveyed in Felix LeRoy Perry's poem,
"Peggy of the Cove."

There’s a lighthouse on the coast

about a hour’s drive from here

Built on the famous rocky cliffs

Familiar to those far and near.

Tis sad but true that many a ship

Have floundered on her treacherous reef

Some even say those silent gray rocks

Are washed with widow’s pure grief.

Now in this a wee fishing village

The people simple, hardworking and plain

Frustrated watched one such shipwreck

Helpless hearts filled with pain

It seemed no one could have survived.

But in the morn’s first dismal early light

They heard a little girl crying

She was such a wee pitiful sight

Though no one knew her name

She became one of their own.

Someone called the child Peggy

The village gave her a home.

Now friends when the waves crash,

To this very day across that cold rock

Some say you oft hear the spirits voices

Of that girl’s poor parents talk.

They smile at the kind fishermen

Who in deep waters must rove

God bless all the good people

In the village of Peggy’s Cove…

The Cruise: Bar Harbor (i.e. "Bah Hah-bah"), and Acadia National Park by horse drawn wagon

While Portland was a welcome segue to a slower, friendlier and more pleasant travel experience after the urban madness of NYC and Boston, Bar Harbor (that's "Bah Hah-bah" in northern Maine) was the epitome of New England charm, scenic vistas and an early, idyllic autumn.

Bar Harbor would be the only port of call that required "tender" boats (passenger ferries/excursion craft) to take us from ship to shore, where we had booked a combination bus and horse-drawn carriage tour of Acadia National Park.

Barbara and I were agreed: that Monday, when the weather broke to breezy, sunlight and clouds amid the lush forests and rocky coastlines of the North Atlantic, proved a perfect day.

On the back of an open-air carriage, the pine-scented air blessing us with rivulets of nature's perfume, the sight of the swaying branches, and rhythmic jostling of the ride, the sound of the horses hooves in a relaxed clip-clop . . . what a way to explore the beautiful forests, lakes, streams, and stone bridges of the region. (Video below)

Our guide and narrator was well-versed in local lore, happy to engage in light-hearted banter with the riders. The carriage roads, nearly 60 miles in all, were the brainchild of avid horseman John D. Rockefeller Jr., who wanted to retain the peaceful transit free of the encroaching automobile. The whole system, employing hundreds of engineers, stone masons, quarrymen and other laborers, began in 1913 and wasn't finished until 1940.

Almost all (45 miles) of the crushed-stone road system, still car- and bus-free, now belongs to the park, donated by the Rockefeller family. Our carriage ride hosts (Wildwood Stables) operates as a private business with a long-running concession to run the carriage trips on the park land.

(*Next up: Halifax, Nova Scotia, and Peggy's Cove)