A rant about 2024, and the hopes for a better New Year

OK, 2025. Let's try a new theme this time around, OK?

If the caricaturistic Baby New Year arriving as the Old New Year troll departs is what springs to mind, let's give the new kid some steel-toed combat boots to use while 2024 empties his cosmic Depends undies into the commode of history.

War, everywhere. Terrorism abroad, and on New Year's Eve in New Orleans. 

Family homelessness up 40 percent under the soon-to-depart Democratic rule of the past four years.

Crime surged, especially among the tens of thousands of illegally arrived convicted criminals, narco-gang members, and human traffickers that flowed across our broken borders; inept and misdirected immigration law enforcement played no small role, as directed and crippled by "progressive" far-left Democratic Party policies.

Then there were gender identity debates that tossed reason and biology to the winds of emotions and manufactured civil rights diatribes. Too often lost in the vitriol was the idea that every human being is worth something, loved by God, and is, for various reasons and the vagaries of life, in need of individual respect.

Finally, the voters may have rejected the lemming-like rush to the abyss, but will the pendulum now swing too far toward over-zealous retribution?

Will enforcement of the consequences of the years of deteriorating values and the resulting hate and division end up not fulfilling promises to restore moral and civil sanity . . . but devolve into our species' all-too-familiar patterns of revenge and retribution?

So, there's that to mull over, from a societal, even global perspective. By this time next year, we might have a clearer, and I hope more encouraging perspective,

Personally? My 2024 was one of hearing loss, the remedies -- hearing aids adjustment, possible yet-to-explored medical options -- seemingly in a frustrating, inconclusive stalemate.

Heart problems continued, treated with new prescriptions when electrical shocks failed to reset irregularities, and then a couple weeks ago by "ablation" (zapping from inside the heart, via arterial catheter). 

So far, docs say, that last procedure worked; they seem confident (and I pray) that all this did indeed cure those stubborn atrial flutters.

So, may 2025 see me turning 72 feeling better than I have in several years, and building new memories of love with my wife and family and leave those worries behind.

As for family, we all suffered as 2024 wound down. Thanksgiving and Christmas get-togethers here were unavoidably derailed.

Thanksgiving turkey dinners went into the freezer, instead of the mouths of gathered family. Christmas was not filled with the delighted shrieks and laughter of family opening gifts with us, or of packing our condo with hugs.

The stockings, which lined the fireplace mantle, were unfilled, that Jolly Old Elf a no show.

But Facetime video visits helped, digitally uniting grandparents in Utah with children and children-in-law (?) both nearby (but sick), and grandsons newly moved to Arizona from Maryland, and our granddaughter still in Baltimore.

Gifts went from being under the tree here, to being UPSed to their recipients, arriving a couple days late, but still appreciated. Whew.

Barbara, my mate of 51 years, and I endured a flood of Christmas TV movies. There was holiday music enjoyed as it played from the stereo, as we watched the fireplace, and how  its flamelight reflected and flickered along green holiday wreaths and manger scene miniatures.

Barbara helped with the Christmas programs and celebrations for kids and adults alike at her Evangelical church in West Valley City; I found my peace, awe, and loving fellowship amid echoing chants, clouds of incense, bells, prayers, and a constellation of candles at my Eastern Orthodox church in downtown Salt Lake City.

Lessons? 

St. Paul put it this way:

"Brothers and sisters, I do not consider myself to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and reaching forward to what is ahead." -- (Philippians 3:13)

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If the Ford Edsel was human, I'd see it . . . in a mirror

Getting older is a lot like doing maintenance on a Ford Edsel, decades after Ford shuffled it off into discontinued models with the sincere hope it would soon become a fading memory.

But those who fell for the initial public relations and marketing hype were not amused. And while most of those buyers in the purported innovative, evolutionary motor vehicle of their dreams were just plane pissed—there were a few who stubbornly clung to the Edsel, willing to spend on the repairs, upgrades, and maintenance with hard-to-find parts needed to keep their "classic" vehicles shiny and with lines and looks that bely the sales and initial advertising disasters that followed the brand.

I have a lot to empathize with the Ford Edsel, B. 1957 D. 1959, but like the re-imagined "Lost Cause" of the Confederacy, Edsel has survived, albeit as an obstinate, delusional proud automative cult flipping the middle gear to the motor vehicle historians.

But so much for "Edsel." It's metaphorical analogy (is there such a thing. If there is not, there should be). Anyway, I'm and Edsel.

 Twelve years ago, it was open heart surgery to replace a congenitally defective aortic valve with one made of metal, plastic, and bovine tissue. A year ago, it was a replacement, this time less dramatic surgically, implanted via femoral artery to the heart, in effect smashing the old artificial aortic valve with a new one.

In between those procedures, the cardiac heartbeat regulating nerves deteriorated—not an unusual side effect for open heart valve replacements—so I got a pacemaker stuffed into my chest.

Then, headaches and vision loss led eventually to a benign brain tumor diagnosis. Brain surgery excised a 7-centimeter menigioma. I recovered, cognitive functions intact, vision saved, but a persistent minor left-side weakness as a reminder.

In a week and a half, I get an "ablation." Seems an irregular heartbeat is now the cardiac "must do," to keep me going. 

Hey, as an Eastern Orthodox Christian convert (six years now), I've learned humility is an underappreciated gift.

And, of course, I go in tomorrow to make my periodic confession to my parish priest -- and ask his blessing for the upcoming procedure.

I've learned it's mostly ineffective to explain such things, especially in terms of faith, but it's who I am. Live with it; I do.

At least for now.

And if I do not, at some point, "live with it," well that's what faith is about. Don't try to figure out the rest, folks.

Our ramped up simian brains are remarkable, but they have a really hard time contemplating the cosmos, eternity, and the limitless essence of Love.

That latter part, it's a God thing.

beauty, steps, breaths, and ancient prayers -- perspective, and peace

Here, I've learned, is what to do if you wake up in a funk today.

I recently did, and decided to follow my parish priest’s (Fr. Paul Truebenbach’s) recent prescriptions for depression: prayer, exercise, focus on needs of others.

So, there I was, in the early morning trek through the icons of nature, the words of the Trisagion and Creed on my lips, as I hiked through and around forest trails, flowers, wildlife, and streams around the Wheeler Farm Historic Site.

For me, the beauty, steps, breaths, and ancient prayers culminated in perspective, and peace.

About my 'big sister,' the times and seasons of life, and love eternal

 Her name is Carolyn.

She has always been my "big sister," being born three years before me.

But because of her oxygen deprivation in the womb, and the cerebral palsy she was born with, it was my role from a young age to be her "big brother."

She needed surgery to correct her crossed-eyes as an infant, and physical and often painful strap on leather and metal braces to hobble a few steps. I was five years old when Mom took me outside on a warm Norwalk, Calif., day and explained why my sis still could speak only short sentences, and then only with intensively exhausting stutters.

"Carolyn is what the doctors call 'mentally retarded,'" Mom said softly. "She won't be able to learn like you. And since she is crippled, people stare at how she walks, and some kids will even tease and try to hurt her."

There were tears forming in Mom's eyes. "You will be her 'big brother,' more and more as you grow," she said, trying to smile encouragingly.

And so, I tried to be just that. Protecting my sister from neighborhood bullies got me in my first fights as a young boy, and the violence escalated from a punch in the stomach for a kid who pushed her to the ground, to blood and chipped teeth for both me and one, sometimes more bullies as I grew into adolescence.

But I could not protect Carolyn from the emotional swings and physical tantrums that came as she grew, too, though physically handicapped but strong as an adult. Still, she had the cognitive limits of a 4-to–5-year-old.

Mom, barely 5-foot-2, would try to keep the larger Carolyn from biting chunks out of her own arms in self-destructive rages; and often, Mom, too, would end up with bruises and lumps from my sister's kicks and bleeding, whaling fists.

When the rage subsided, a confused Carolyn would see, but not understand injuries to herself and Mom. Sis would cry, "S-s-s-orry, Mom, S-s-orry!" Mom would wince, but always hug, whispering loving assurances, her own face wet with tears.

Half a century ago, there were limited choices to address this crisis. Special Education classes then were little more than dumping grounds for any and all mentally and physically handicapped kids. 

Group homes for their care did not yet exist where we lived in Eastern Washington. But the situation with my tortured sister could not continue, and eventually medical and social workers consulted advised placing Carolyn in institutional care -- a nearby state-funded dormitory facility where she would be cared for along with 80 others "like her."

Mom and Dad reluctantly agreed. I was 12 when my sister was moved to a multi-story, brick Lakeland Village. Oh, we visited her there often, and holidays she would join us at home -- for a night or two -- but then would come time for her to go back, and still sometimes, not peacefully.

Over the ensuing years, Lakeland Village gradually placed its charges in smaller group homes. Physicians would now prescribe medications to ease the mood swings, social workers arranged regular outings and crafts, exercise, trips to the movies and church services.

The years passed. Mom and Dad would regularly visit Carolyn, keeping track of her clothing, medical, bedding, and growing stuffed animals collection. But then came their own aging, dementia, assisted living and then nursing home care, finally ending with their deaths in 2019.

I could not qualify under Washington state law to myself serve as Carolyn's legal guardian, since I had lived and worked 800 miles away in Utah for several decades; my sister came under the care of professional state-appointed guardians.

I have been able to talk with her on the telephone often and visit her in person on several occasions over the past few years. I saw her health deteriorating, her mobility requiring first an aluminum walker, and then a wheelchair. Her breathing became increasingly labored, and then in the past few months, trips to the hospital and long-term nursing care before a brief return to her own room and belongings at her residential group home.

I have been able to talk with her on the telephone often and visit her in person on several occasions over the past few years. 

Her breathing became increasingly labored, and then in the past few months, trips to the hospital and long-term nursing care before a brief return to her own room and belongings at her residential group home.

Last night, the call came from the director of her home. My "big sister" may not make her 74th birthday in July. 

Again she was rushed to the hospital, where doctors found her unable to safely swallow, her blood oxygen levels in the low 80s. She was put on supplemental oxygen, and a feeding tube inserted to stabilize her.

Once that is done, it was hoped Carolyn could return to the comfort of her group home room, in her own bed, surrounded by those stuffed animals, and what had become her caregiving sisters and family.

"Comfort care," was the term. It was an echo for me, being the same words that had been used to govern the final journeys of our parents, before they passed away in their sleep, just months apart a few years ago.

Despite my lack of legal status in Carolyn's case, her caregivers have been willing to keep me regularly apprised of her status. The immediate future, and how it unfolds for her, and me, her distant "big brother," is known only to the God we both love.

And so, once again, I wait, and I pray. 

I ask for physical healing, knowing that even if it comes for her, it will be a brief reprieve. Rather, I pray, too, for her ultimate healing -- a peaceful, painless release when the time comes -- and a heavenly welcome and embraces from Mom and Dad.

Love, after all, is eternal.

A year of medical recovery cycles, and forced -- yet blessed -- contemplation

 

  This year doesn't end for several more months, but already it has been one of my toughest ever.

  That's saying something, As of June 9, I marked 70 of those trips around Ol' Sol. In March, it was brain surgery, several months of recovery from removal of a benign tumor. In August, it was heart surgery, a re-replacement of a failing aortic valve. More recovery ahead, a 12-week hospital-run exercise and dietary program.

  Barbara, my 68-year-old wife, has completed her cataract surgeries this year, too; now, doctors have decided they want to do some precautionary tests on her heart as well. The past year-plus has been especially tough for her, too -- her father died, the subsequent emotional rollercoaster of grief and unraveling his estate, my medical crises, the usual marital dramas of our kids, the inevitable growing pains of grandchildren, etc.

  Trying to decide whether to do so, and then make inquiries about writing/editing freelance work on my own part has been an on-and-off again endeavor. I get recruited to write or edit by a travel news outfit here, or invited to apply for freelance gigs at an Orthodox Christian media company there . . . and then ghosted by both.

  What has been the one consistent priority in my 2023 life has been my faith, even with illnesses also plaguing those at my parish, clergy and staff alike -- resulting in last-minute cancellations of services, meetings, studies.

  And so, I pray, finding continuity and solace in candles, incense, and venerating those people and events depicted on my corner wall of icons. For me, it is an experience enveloped by and daily taking spiritual flight within the recitation of ancient praises, petitions, and the words of communion, and my far inferior yet sincere outpourings of gratitude, pain, love, and anger, ignorance, and epiphany -- all punctuating a silent inner dialogue on behalf of human beings living and departed.

  I read and learn from those brothers and sisters of faith present, sharing thoughts and insights in audio, video, and other modern media . . . and from reading the millennia-old lives and wisdom of those St. Paul referred to as that "great cloud of witnesses" supporting us just beyond the veil.

  And you know what? Those glimpses are into the timeless, eternal, and immortal environment in which we live, and breathe, and move, and have our being.  

 There is beauty, even in this mad world of ours. It can be in the words of a poet, or the prose of a gifted writer (hey, see, I know at least a couple!) who weaves beautiful accounts of history, culture, heroism, and the artistic miracles of mortal men and women that transcends their creators' lifetimes.

Beyond words, there is music. Beyond instruments and sound, there is nature: a breeze-caressed forest, the lapping of ocean waves on a rocky beach, fireflies scattering on a warm, humid night, and the untainted delight on the faces and in the eyes of children who chase them.

In a way, all these other things are good, and if you see the glow or hear the whispers of the sacramental with them, even holy -- if they are embraced amid the cadence of our heart beats and breaths.

These, too, can be our fleeting tastes of eternity.

 My wife and I look forward to experiencing such moments by soon resurrecting our RVing plans so delayed this year by life's unexpected events.

 

 

 

 

Getting older: Walking through the valley of the shadows

 
 "Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me."  (Psalm 23:4)

   In the past couple months Life has had me glancing at the shadows in that valley we all begin walking through the day we are born. The shadows have taken recognizable form of late, along with that feeling of having far more years behind me than ahead.

   It is a growing realization not of fear, nor unease, even as it is a bittersweet, decreasingly vague recognition.

   In May 2018, it was the too-soon demise of a lifelong career in journalism, scythed by economic imperatives of a newspaper industry on its knees. About half of the staff  eventually accompanied me out the door, a sort of death, professionally. I endured the cycle of grief in my own fashion -- sort of in reverse . . . internally forced acceptance, but inevitably spattered by the sense of loss, anger, depression. 

   "Closure" took months, and if I am honest years to process.

   But that was nothing. In 2019, I lost both my parents to dementia. It was not unexpected, and they were both in their 90s. Still, their "golden years" were anything but; along with the grief there was relief the ordeal -- theirs and, ignobly my own -- was over. 

   Last year, two beloved aunts passed, as well as an uncle I considered something of a second father. A couple weeks ago, my father-in-law, his long battle with cancer and pain over, died in hospice care.

   Live long enough, and the circle of mortality closes around you, slowly, like a lazy but persistent, patient fog.

   Finally, you are confronted with the perils of aging, and medical surprises. First, it was learning the artificial heart valve I received 11 years ago was wearing out; it will have to be replaced at some point in the near future. I'm a good candidate for the procedure, whether the same open-heart operation I had the first time, or an arterial insertion of an implant, a far-less invasive prospect.

   But it won't be the heart problem that puts me on a University of Utah Medical Center operating table this coming Thursday. That will be brain surgery to remove a meningioma pressuring my optic nerve. While believed to be benign, it has grown incrementally since being discovered by an MRI; not life-threatening, but eventually my eyesight could be at risk.

   Headaches, double vision, and brief but increasing bouts of vertigo have born witness to what that second MRI confirmed some weeks ago.

   As the neurosurgeon told me. removing my cranial interloper is a highly successful procedure. A few days in hospital, then home to recover for a few weeks.

   In a follow-up this week on the heart issue, my cardiologist assured me the valve replacement was not an immediate need, and we can revisit that after I recover from the brain surgery. So, that was good news.

    "What you need to understand is that both of these things are readily treatable. You have many years to look forward to," he said with a smile and pat on my shoulder.

   And, I do believe he is right. I am at peace, and my Eastern Orthodox Christian faith is a comfort that I am, have been and always will be, in God's hands. (As are we all).

   The point, and I know I have taken way too long to get to it, is that Life -- perhaps especially in one's sixth and seventh decades -- has a way of spotlighting those mile markers along the path through the valley of the shadows.

   We need to be aware of death, not with fear, but with sober acceptance that it comes to professions, loved ones, and us. And, as I've contemplated this of late, I am not ignorant of the all-too-human tendency to see the deaths of our loved ones, even ourselves, as somehow an especially grievous wound on the Cosmos.

   It is not entirely a sort of spiritual narcissism to feel thus. Still, when it comes to the grave, we often lack perspective. Tens of thousands of Turkish and Syrian innocents died in the recent earthquakes; tens of millions have been sacrificed on the altars of Nazism, Communism, and in endless wars large and small. 

   Suffering is humanity's common currency, not the dollar or Euro, Yuan or Yen.

    And in a matter of degrees of suffering, how many of us -- too often outraged at the vagaries of our mortal existence in a society where shelter, food, comfort, medical care, and mindless entertainment are considered our due -- dare to compare our sufferings to the myriads of those who perish horribly who so rarely enter our thoughts?

   It shouldn't, then, be a matter of "Why me?" Really, it is "Why not me?"

   For me, my faith has become not the expectation of divine rescue from trials and tribulations, but rather the expectation and belief that we are truly never alone -- and that life's detours and pain can, however unbidden or unwelcome, birth a sort of wisdom, deeper compassion, and banishment of mortal fear.

 

   St. John Chrysostom put it this way:

   "What is dying? Just what it is to put off a garment. For the body is about the soul as a garment; and after laying this aside for a short time by means of death, we shall resume it again with more splendor."

   In the meantime, we live. We love. We comfort. We judge ourselves harshly, even as we forgive liberally.

   Whether I have weeks, months, years or decades ahead, I want to live this way. That is my prayer -- borrowed from St. Philaret of Moscow and posted on the wall of my home office:

"O Lord, grant me to greet the coming day in peace. Help me in all things to rely upon Your holy will. In every hour of the day reveal Your will to me.

"Bless my dealings with all who surround me. Teach me to treat all that comes to me throughout the day with peace of soul and with firm conviction that Your will governs all. In all my deeds and words guide my thoughts and feelings.

"In unforeseen events let me not forget that all are sent by You. Teach me to act firmly and wisely, without embittering and embarrassing others.

"Give me strength to bear the fatigue of the coming day with all that it shall bring. Direct my will, teach me to pray. Pray You Yourself in me."

 

                                                    ______________

   UPDATE:  Going into my fourth week since the operation, my recovery is steady and on its own schedule. Swelling along a much-larger-than-expected incision (running from the crown of my skull across to my right ear area and down to my ear lobe) was significant until the last few days, and is now all but gone. So far, the headaches, vision and vertigo symptoms are gone, and the moments of memory gaps -- in verbal expression, but not written, oddly enough -- have diminished sharply. --BM

"Big In Heaven" review: At St. Alexander the Whirling Dervish Orthodox Church, saints have dirty faces

 

Growing up poor in a Protestant Evangelical Pentecostal preacher's family, I learned at an early age the meaning of "hypocrisy" long before I knew how to spell the word itself. 

 I found it in the hard eyes of those self-styled super spiritual guides populating the church board, who would weekly dissect the doctrinal nuances of Dad's sermons, and Dad himself if they could, even as they insisted his paltry salary should be enough to live on. 

 That he drove a school bus part-time while Mom worked as a waitress or in sales at J.C. Penney was a scandal! After all, the drafty old parsonage with a coal furnace that tended to cough up black smoke through the vents in the heart of winter may not be perfect, but it was free. 

 The nerve! After all, with a crippled and retarded daughter in his family, the pastor was indeed blessed to get the pulpit in any church teaching faith healing! Girl's not healed, after all. Pastor's faith must be lacking.

 So, I was surprised to find some painful, yet oddly inspiring similarities in the short stories penned by Fr. Stephen Sinari in his book "Big In Heaven." The tales of Fr. Naum and the all-too-human, sometimes saintly diamonds in the rough who comprise St. Alexander the Whirling Dervish Orthodox Church and the ethnic Philadelphia neighborhood it serves, are fictional. They are also true.

 In the four years since I was baptized into the Eastern Orthodox faith, I've learned our Truth is not limited to history and dogma but shines forth in parables, allegories and the stylized stories that buoy the holiness and sacrifices of our those saints and martyrs populating our icon walls and temples. The same is true for the characters Fr. Stephen shares.

 Still, I suspect that much in "Big In Heaven" borders on the autobiographical. After all, the author is an OCA priest whose nearly 40 years of ministry have spanned inner-city parish pastoral callings as well as extensive work on the streets serving the homeless, and at-risk and trafficked teens.

 "Big In Heaven" makes anyone with faith, and particularly those raised in or converted into Orthodoxy, consider anew the unfathomable depths of God's mercy and grace to his soiled children, staggering toward personal Golgothas and the hope of salvation and theosis.

 It was early in the book, where Fr. Stephen introduces Curtis, "an altar server who new the Liturgy in a way not even [Fr.] Naum could understand." Curtis "knew when to have the censer ready, how to cut the bread for the nafora, when to light the candles, how to ready the boys for the processions, when to boil the water for the chalice, even the best way to hold the cloth at Communion time."

 Curtis, Naum's bishop had once remarked, was the best server he had ever seen. This same Curtis, a 35-year-old born with Down syndrome deemed unworthy of believer's baptism at a local Protestant church due to his handicaps, but welcomed into Orthodoxy.

 Fr. Stephen's writes of a parishioner, seeing Curtis donning a hand-me-down cassock to enter the altar and serve, declaring: "Curtis is a genius over there, in heaven."

 That declaration brought tears to my eyes, and I remembered the childlike, halting voice of my now 70-year-old sister, rocking and holding a doll while singing "Jesus loves me, this I know . . . ."

 I highly recommend this book with one minor caveat: In future reprintings, how about some additiional parenthetical or by footnote definitions or context for the "inside Orthodoxy" and liturgical terms used from Greek or Slavonic languages?

Finding the beauty in the time of Covid-19 . . . around us, and in us

As a 5-year-old, I plucked a flower, delighted by its glowing yellow and white leaves and sweet scent -- it's very life -- and raced inside from the backyard to the kitchen, where I proudly presented it to my mother.

It just seemed right to present that flower, that fragile discovery of beauty, to the most loving and most beautiful person I had known in my then short life. (That an Orb-weaver spider dangled from it's stem was a development Mom handled with aplomb, and a quick shake of mycgft outside the back door).

Throughout my ensuing years as a child, teen and young man, I courted beauty and wonder by playing and later backpacking amid the creeks, brooks and rivers of Eastern Washington and Northern Idaho's mountain meadows, forests, and wilderness expanses.

The vibrant cycles of life in nature -- its unfathomable (to me, anyway) variety in living art, form, purpose and even the very fact of such intricate existence -- filled me with peace and a sense  of belonging to something inconceivably bigger than me.

Now, six weeks out from my 67th ride on Earth's circuit of Old Sol, I'm finally learning that every day spent in beauty -- where sight, hearing, touch, smell and taste cascade in sum to inform and overwhelms a sixth sense of wonder -- brings contemplation, meditation, prayer and grateful worship of the Creator of it, and us all.

This is my purpose in life. Maybe yours, too?

As an Orthodox Christian, I celebrate finding such observations are many in my faith's two millennia of saintly sages' visionary revelations, hymns and prayers. These works of theirs still echo those sentiments of wonder and gratitude today, with wisdom, awe, and love deeper and purer as both personal, and metaphysical prose and poetry that I cannot approach.

Still, to taste and express even something of the same epiphanies? And to share them? Personally priceless.

This is the time of Covid-19 and self-isolation, but if we will accept it, also the opportunity for stretching perception to discover the universe contained in a flower, bird, insect, or the way water falls over a mountain stream's rocks -- or on the face of a child, parent, a passing stranger, and yes, even in the heart belonging to that person in the mirror.

I know that beauty in nature, the cosmos, and the potential for growing it within as we see it cultivated and present in others, is a Truth that finds expression beyond Orthodox Christianity. Indeed, to varying degrees, it reverberates in myriad other religions and philosophies that seemingly draw on a primordial concept of humankind.

One of many such examples: "Beauty in front of me, Beauty behind me, Beauty above me, Beauty below me, Beauty all around me, I walk in Beauty," the Diné (Navajo) elders have prayed from pre-historic times.

While appreciating and treasuring such universal expression of seminal truths, personally, I find them most fully and clearly conveyed within my own faith.

"In Him we live, and breathe, and have our being," St. Paul wrote (Acts 17:28). "O Heavenly King, the Comforter, the Spirit of Truth, Who are everywhere present and fillest all things," Orthodox Christians intone, echoing the apostle in the daily Trisagion prayers.

But wherever you are in matters of faith, refocusing your gaze from our failed, manufactured "reality" of ego, entertainment, work, etc., to what exists independently of all that -- both around us, and within us -- is what our current crisis offers each of us.

And that is too good to pass up.

Prayer Walks: You never know what life, your feet, and faith, will bring you

I love to walk, to feel the blood pump through my legs and fresh air fill my lungs.

In warmer months, that happens in a T-shirt and shorts. In mid-December, with daytime temperatures in the mid-20s (F), that means warm socks, thick fleece pants, gloves, a sweater and a warm coat.

And lately, I combine the physical exercise with spiritual nourishment via recordings on my iPhone: maybe a monk reading from the Psalter, or Orthodox prayers chanted in Byzantine style by Eikona (http://www.eikona.com/prayers-for-orthodox-christians/), or podcasts from Ancient Faith Radio (https://www.ancientfaith.com).

Sure, I could walk on a treadmill in a nice warm Planet Fitness gym (I do have a free membership through AARP). But I like to feel like I'm actually going somewhere -- in both a linear and metaphysical sense.

Which (finally, thanks for waiting) brings me to the theme of this entry: You never know what life your feet, and faith, will bring you.

On Wednesday, for example, I was doing my few miles on the Jordan River Parkway when I came upon a young woman, in her late teens I would guess, sitting hunched over on the side of the trail. As I got closer, I could see the sadness, that look of hopelessness.

We've all been there. And we all remember how it feels. You look at the cold, gray skies -- and in this case the snow-covered Wasatch Mountains rising in the east -- and watch your breath as a wreath of mist, its warmth and hope gone before you can inhale again.

I couldn't just walk by. I mean, I probably could have done . . . but, for crying out loud, I had just heard a homily about the Good Samaritan through my earphones seconds earlier.

So . . . "Are you all right?" I asked, and tried to smile disarmingly. Shouldn't be too hard for a 66-year-old, gray-haired and -silver bearded, bundled up grandpa with a walking staff.

When she turned to look at me, her eyes were swollen, red, wet. "I live over there," she waived toward a residential treatment facility about a quarter-mile away. "I just needed some time to . . .", and her voice trailed off.

I stayed quiet. She looked back up. "I'm missing my parents. I can't reach them. I don't know how they are. They don't know how I am."

Loneliness is the worst, especially this time of year, when Christmas is so hyped as a time for love, gifts and everything bright, yada yada yada.

So, I told her to try to look at herself, from outside herself. "This feels awful now, but life changes, sometimes every time we just stop and look around. I get up, walk, sleep, and get up, and it's changed. Always. Sometimes not much and not for what seems a long time, but sometimes, you realize what hurt so much is yesterday, and today is new."

There was a glance of hope, or at least interest. She was listening for more.

"I lost both my parents this year. Just me and my sister left, and she's almost a thousand miles away," I shared. "I miss them very much, but I pray for them every day, and I know they pray for us."

I suggested that there are people who care about her, too. They may pray for her, they may think of her with love and concern, and that, too, is a prayer of sorts.

But we are not alone. Hope finds a way, and faith helps guide it within us.

"Things will get better, sooner or later. Trust it will, and until then, just do what you need to do to get where you need to be. God bless your day, young lady."

She nodded, sniffed, and seemed to calm a bit. "Thank you, sir." She took my hand and squeezed. We both smiled, and I resumed my trek.

Half an hour later, as I returned on the way home, she was gone. I whispered a prayer for God's mercy and protection for her.

And I wondered, had I done enough? I may never know the answer to that question.

What I did know, however, was that or this senior citizen, the day had a purpose.