Perspective: It is everything, when you want to value the journey -- in an RV, or just plain Life

When embarking on a veritable sea change in life, and doing that late in life, perspective is everything. It can feel like those memorable moments, whether experienced in a second, minutes, or hours, are what make it so.

A beautiful sunrise turning skies red, orange, and gold; the lapping of the waves on the Colorado River’s shores amid the Mohave Desert; that feeling of being at peace and rested, stress and sickness things of the past.

Well, those moments can be decorative snapshot of eternity -- if you work to make them such, and accept them as such.

But there are other "moments."  There are those breakdowns of motorhome equipment, that winter chest cold that takes a month to finally clear your lungs, a twisted knee especially determined to make what formerly was a day or two recovery into an unwelcome handicap of weeks from a 72-year-old body.

Perspective can get lost in those moments. The key is knowing it will always be there, if sought, and recognized, and embraced.

Adventure can be bliss, and also have its detours of maddening Homeric Odyssey. That flight the soul and senses takes through crisp, early-morning desert canyons? The exhilaration may disintegrate when windstorms and cloud bursts rock the RV and collapse tents.

Perspective must evolve when you are experimenting with long-term RV life that may morph into full-time living in that Abode on the Road.

In the past five months, for us, such perspective – and faith in our Maker, and each other – were initially under-appreciated treasures for Barbara and me, but we have found in Arizona, camped between Parker and Lake Havasu.

The “slide out” that becomes our bedroom failed the first week, and fixing it took a bite out of our carefully, and wisely set aside emergency fund. Another week, and the tow bar system used to pull a small car behind us shorted out, resulting in a fire that baked the Ford Fiesta’s transmission and engine. The car was hauled off as scrap by a junkyard truck.

A rugged start, ambushed twice by metaphorical brigands on the trail, as it were. The emergency fund, though depleted, at least had served its purpose.

This week, perspective was tested again. Our electric awning decided not to open for the shade needed as Arizona's "winter" turned to temperatures in the 90s. That gets fixed in a few days, and if we were wondering, now we know where at least some of that coming tax refund will be going.

So, when the blackwater tank connection came loose this morning it seemed a minor setback. Heck, poo perspective, perhaps . . . but an hour's worth of labor, bleach, shoveling, and gravel Clorox, cleaned it up. 

Long showers did the same for us.

All that recounted, you’d think the “big picture” of fullt-time camping, or at least longer-term RV trips in our (not so) golden years would be a wee bit spattered as well? Oddly enough, not the case. 

You should not measure your dreams merely by monetary losses or derailed expectations. Or ... crap.

It has been a season of anxiety, frustration, and doubts at times. It also, upon quiet reflection, embraces our appreciation for the beauty around us, in us, above us and in others.

There is that inexplicable yet real peace of faith realized, too, on a personal pilgrimage Barbara and I  share.

That journey, for this couple of 52 years, is not over. It’s just begun.

Family, Faith, Politics, and Perception: Finding the Pathways of Love

 It's been quite a month.

I entered the past several weeks beginning what I've called my "medical marathon," a series of blood tests, MRIs, X-rays, C-scans, and exams that, finally, thank God, led to cardiac, brain, kidney (and assorted gut companions) being cleared for healthy futures.

For this 72-year-old grandpa, I now can look forward to my wife Barbara's long-delayed retirement being reality. 

However, reality brings new challenges: how to deal with, plan for, and pay for long-awaited time together . . . at home, on the road in our RV, and, in finding ways to now explore beauty around us, in us, and among our families of both blood, adoption and spirit.

We're making a good start. But perfection being a mortal illusion, of course not all of these challenges will be, or are being met easily.

What's married life, though, without learning new ways to communicate, to love, to realize that our "golden years" will stir issues only addressed with respect each other, and our freedom to independent expression and practice?

Faith, for example. I left our joint Protestant Evangelical upbringing eight years ago. I thought, in those first years as a newly baptized Eastern Orthodox Christian, that eventually wife and family might join that journey, too.

Hasn't happened, and I've accepted that it may not. Faith has become a confusing, I admit somewhat lonely, continuum for me. Oh, not just in terms of that denominational one I learned about in college sociology classes, but of a tricky trek along metaphysical and philosophical forks along the cosmic road?

Nonetheless, acceptance and respect seems to rule this particular familial microcosm of perception, belief, doubt, and practice. Love is the catalyst; and only God, who I have been taught is Love eternal that is beyond comprehension, knows the hearts of each and all.

To varying degrees, Faith has become a matter for avoidance at family get-togethers and conversations, whether in person or on phone calls and chats. Same with Politics.

It all come down to Truth. That is a real thing to me, but I know perceiving it is never complete.

A lifetime mulling what IT is has only brought a plethora of presumptions ranging from mildly nuanced to as diametrically opposed as in that ancient parable about the blind men describing their first meeting with an elephant.

And so it goes.

For me, Orthodox Saint Gabriel of Georgia gives a nudge onto the right path. 

You live your journey, he says, in loving non-judgment of others; if your "light" shines and loved ones, friends, and strangers ask ... you share through example, and answers that don't devolve into argument and ego-driven debates. 

We need to remember, Saint Gabriel suggested, that "In the Last Days a man will be saved by love, humility and kindness. 

"Kindness will open the gates of heaven; humility will leaded one into heaven; a man whose heart is filled with love will see God.

'This is my last will and testament: raise your prayers for everyone; your prayers will love mountains.

Love each other."

I'm trying, Gabe.

The Joy and Sorrow of Symbols, Perceptions, and Ignorance

 I recently wrote some about the search for beauty and those simple moments of purpose, faith, and pure human and natural interaction.

Saturday, a Memorial Sunday liturgy at Sts. Peter and Paul Orthodox Church in downtown Salt Lake City, I went looking forward to that. Candles, prayers, chants, the rhythms of worship common for millennia in languages living and dead, sung, whispered, shouted from the lips of millions across our globe.

But first, I had to park my 2019 Ford Fiesta in the tiny parking lot behind our more-than-a-century-and-a-half-old church, once a synagogue,  and meander down a narrow alleyway toward the front entrance.

"No Trespassing" signs, occasional police patrols, fencing, even some security cameras do not keep the homeless and drug dealers and their meth-addled victims from finding a way in during the dark hours. And with sunlight comes the inevitable stacks of bottles, cans, emptied syringes, the occasional broken crack pipe . . . and piles of human feces, near the urine splashes and stains against the bricks of our building.

This morning, as I went to light candles and say prayers for my departed parents and other loved ones inside, I had. to dodge two still-steaming mounds. One, protruding well into the narrow alley, would pose a slip-and-fall threat to a child or grandparent (one slightly less foot-sure than I), so I grabbed a stick and tried, with mixed success to move it.

My search for beauty? Now, there was a challenge. Took me well past the mid-point of the liturgy to once more focus. So much for sainthood for this old angry, smoldering, fart. 

What was I supposed to do, I eventually quipped with myself: grab a flower from the altar display and plant it in the remaining pile outside?

What a stack of fertilizer! Why, it could be a blossoming tree within days, right? 

Argh.

So,  there was that.

All a bit of a detour from a sadder, perhaps, definitely more bizarre dive into derailment of human interaction through just plain ignorance, minus intentionally defecating on sacred ground.

Earlier this week, we finally got our new flooring installed by Lowe's contractors. Two men, one a bit older than the other, of Middle Eastern origins and with little English, did a fine job. Arrived with smiles . . . until they saw the T-shirt I was wearing.

It was an old one, a black short-sleeve with a symbol the seller told me years ago was representative of the Antiochian Eastern Orthodox Church, the one I'm associated with here in Utah.

Our church is Greek Orthodox in liturgy, traditions, etc., and its mostly multi-ethnic membership in the U.S. dwarfs its primarily Arabic parishes back in its ancient stomping grounds -- Lebanon, Israel, Syria, Iraq, etc. But our Patriarch in still back there, and our Archbishop, although in New York, is Lebanese by birth. 

The symbol on the T-shirt? Your typical Orthodox three-bar cross, though imbedded inside an Aramaic-originated letter. In Hebrew, it is the letter "Nun," and pretty much identical to the Arabic version, pronounced "noon." In Hebrew, it is associated with "faithfulness," "inheritance," "fish," or "seed."

But it eventually was adopted by Arabic Orthodox Christians to evoke the "Nazarene," Jesus, and -- like the Star of David treasured by Israel was used by the Nazis to identify Europe's Jews for death camps during WWII -- the radical Islamic death cult, ISIS, has used the Nun symbol to identify Christians for torture and death.

I knew that thousands of my spiritual siblings in the Middle East have been slain by such terrorists in the "Holy Land" over the past few decades, but the "Nun" use by ISIS was a sad revelation to me.

So, finally, back to this story.

My flooring installers, seeing the symbol on my T-shirt, abruptly became silent. They hurried through their work, wouldn't make eye contact, and said nothing more until the older one, in a monotone, asked me to sign the paperwork. They rushed to pack up their gear and left.

Did the T-shirt offend him? Was he angry? Ashamed? Afraid? 

I'll never know.

But my own ignorance . . . now, that bothers me.

Passing torches, or at least, a candle or two

 Hit 72 years old to begin this week.

Don't know why, especially, but I felt a resolution to finally do some of that "pass the torch" thing. 

I "retired" in mid-2018, forced into it a month shy of my 65th birthday by the massive layoffs at the failing Salt Lake Tribune. Took the severance package, rather slim for the decades served, but better than could be expected of a a paper hovering near bankruptcy. Social Security, and a pension vested from a previously 20 years at The Associated Press helped.

But I never really, in my heart and soul, felt "retired." I freelanced -- editing, ghostwriting, copyediting, a bit of travel writing -- before A.I. and ideology-driven agendas combined to kill the wisps of that journalistic wraith that remained within.

For the past seven years, though, I served my Orthodox Church parish council and priests as best I could. But you get older, and with the phenomenal growth on our numbers -- and the influx of sharp, younger souls deserving their turns to serve -- I knew in my heart of hearts, it was time.

Hey, if John the Baptist, an exploding quasar in the spiritual cosmos of Christ Eternal, could say of Our Lord, "He must increase and I must decrease" before he faded from this world (minus his saintly head) . . . then I, by such metaphorical comparison a mere speck of occasionally glowing dark matter making its way to the nearest black hole abyss event horizon, can do the same.

Though I have my head, for what it's worth.

Kind of. Sort of. OK, not even close. But I did pass the torch to new parish leadership blood.

Or, more likely a match or two. Perhaps just a palm-full of warm ashes.

But it's what I had.

And, my prayers.

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.

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

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.

How faith rescues an addict, and launches a ministry

I was particularly pleased with this freelancing assignment. It was an honor to find such humility and honesty, and to be able to tell this young man's story.

https://news.ag.org/en/News/Addict-to-Pastor

A simple truth: For a developmentally disabled older sister, Daddy's death is not complicated

How do you explain Daddy's death to your" big sister," who has the intellect of a 4-year-old due to oxygen deprivation in the womb?

Keep it simple. And, keep it true.

The alleged "simple of mind" recognize truth, perhaps better than the rest of us. I have become convinced of that.

You see, ego plays no part in their judgments and acknowledgement of reality.

It was enough for my 67-year-old sister, Carolyn -- a group home resident in Washington, with the intellectual age of 4, and crippled by cerebral palsy -- to know that Dad was "with Jesus, and praying for us."

Indeed, that sums up Orthodox Christianity rather well, too. And, it sums up the Pentecostal/evangelical faith we were raised in, too (in my case, prior to my conversion to Orthodoxy last year).

Today, through shared tears, it was enough for my big sister, Carolyn. And today, that was all that mattered.

Daddy was dead, but like always, he was watching out for us, his children.

Well, of course he was.

After all, what would make more sense?

You don't have to be a genius to grasp such a simple truth, however complicated your metaphysics may be.

Transitions: Finding Purpose when 'Retirement" Comes Early

Nearly three months ago, I found myself thrust into retirement.

I had begun months before making preparations and inquiries about 401K rollovers, Medicare, Social Security, etc., feeling (providentially, as it turned out) compelled to get a head start on a process. I did not expect I would have to pursue for at least another year, if not longer.

Actually, I was sure I'd have another year: time to think about what retirement for a lifelong journalist, writer and editor would look like, and how to make that transition.

I was wrong. On May 14, along with 40 percent of the already dwindling staff at The Salt Lake Tribune, I was let go. Thanks, they said, for the 20 years; you did great work, but the newspaper can no longer support the staff numbers with advertising tanking, and the online model still adrift in the becalmed, profit-poor seas of the Internet.

Sixteen weeks of severance pay was nice, albeit not even a week's worth for every year I had worked to the paper. Medical insurance was yanked in two weeks -- a real blow for most of the stunned victims of the "reduction in force" not fortunate enough as me to be just a few weeks shy of their 65th birthdays, and thus Medicare eligibility.

It was nasty, but it was not personal; managers giving the bad news in some cases teared up. But for all of us, it was what it was. And it hurt, perhaps in a weird way, more so since it was so abrupt, and in many ways nonsensical in choices made about what beats (and people) stayed, and which/who remained.

Still, I imagine many of my fellow sacrificial lambs on the altar of failed newspaper economics would happily trade their current anxieties -- income about to run out by now, lack of medical coverage, lack of prospects in a disappearing industry -- for mere malaise over such nebulous matters as "purpose."

But that's my cross to bear, as it were.

When your work was your purpose, when exploring and exploring, mulling and reporting on Life and Faith and Trauma and Love and Setbacks and Triumphs defined your raison d'être, the world -- or your tiny piece of it -- made sense.

Now, I find that was illusion. Oh, it was an amazing ride -- exhilarating, maddening, challenging, frustrating, fulfilling, revealing glimpses of ultimate Truth, between epiphanies of the limits of mortal intellect.

But, Purpose? No, it never was. Actually, I now believe, it was something of an escape and counterfeit for Purpose, speaking in the ultimate sense -- it filled up my thoughts, desires, goals, emotions and self-image, allowing me to put off the Big Questions.

These are the times that test your faith, whatever form that takes. And that faith had better be real, grounded and strong once roused from the dormancy our busy lives impose on it. If it is not, you stare into the Abyss, and it looks back at you, whispering, "What have you really done with your life?"

Better to be able to find not the darkness and realization that a lifetime has all but passed on its march to loss of meaning, but to fall to your knees and see the Face of God.

That visage shines in a nighttime of stars, the waves of horizonless oceans, the way the wind caresses the fields of grass, the leaves and branches of trees, and brushes the banks of rivers and lakes with waves that ripple in light.

That face is of wisdom and love that defies our poor concept of Infinity, yet twinkles in the eyes of a child, the tears of those who mourn, the first breath of an infant, the last gasp of the dying.

All those things, yes. And for me, Eternity descends like a cloud of uncreated light and mercy during the ancient prayers of the Eastern Orthodox liturgy, and Love takes residence in the bread and wine of the Eucharist.

There is Purpose. But how to understand it? And now, at this stage of life, how does this Purpose become my life?

This road -- not a new one but largely, I confess a poorly explored one -- stretches before me, as the prayer says, "both now and forever, and unto the ages of ages."

That now has become my primary purpose. My secondary purpose? That would be how to express creativity and curiosity and to somehow use my acquired skills of a lifetime to still educate and encourage.

And that is what remains a work in progress.

Waiting for God

It’s been a crazy few months.

And I’m not just talking about Trump’s upset victory.

Before Thanksgiving, the sewage system serving our condo unit backed up, resulting in $11,000 damage to our unit. It was supposed to take three weeks; it took more like eight. The work, finally, was completed a week ago.

Then, my 94-year-old father’s condition worsened, his dementia and frailty forcing a move to a 24/7 nursing facility.

It was stressful, emotional time made all the more difficult by timing and distance, that is, it being the depth of winter and 800 miles away.

My son, Rob, and I trekked north in (what we later learned) was a rented minivan with bald back tires on snowcapped, icy roads from Utah to Spokane, Wash.  Heavy snowstorms closed down first one interstate route and then another, forcing us to make the trip — both there and back — on two-lane roads winding through the mountains of western and central Idaho through the Nez Perce Indian Reservation and then the rolling, barely plowed roads of the Palouse.

White-knuckle driving for my son, who was behind the wheel during a total 30 hours round trip, often at speeds no more than 35 mph.

A couple times, sliding semi-trailer rigs had near collisions just ahead of us, and we saw easily a dozen vehicles off the road due to misjudgment of black ice.

We had prayed for protection, though, and we got it.

We also had prayed my Dad’s move would go well and without a hitch. It ultimately did. Preparation beforehand helped a lot, too.


But it’s always painful to see a parent entered the deepening twilight of life.

We remember them when they were younger, sharper; a hero, and occasionally nemesis to a know-it-all teen or 20-something; clueless or profoundly wise.

More than a year ago, it was my mother — in the final stages of Alzheimer’s disease — who had to be transferred to a “memory care” unit, leaving her husband of close to 70 years behind, alone.
On Jan. 11, Dad joined Mom in the same unit, his room next to her’s.

Nursing staff tells me they both seem at peace. Mom recognizes Dad for a few seconds, but usually know him only vaguely.

But it’s enough for them. Mom can no longer talk, but she listens to Dad’s soft, tender words through the day as they hold hands at meals and activity times.

Dad, once recognized as one of the most talented banjo players in the country, spends the in-between times struggling to complete pure, resonant chords on a ukulele. His sight nearly gone, he sees music with arthritic fingers, tentatively exploring the strings and frets.


Back home in Utah, I went through the boxes of file folders, photos, knickknacks, etc., we brought back with us from Dad's old assisted living room. Bittersweet. Tears fell for what was lost, but also for lives well-lived.


Happy photos of a young couple, just starting out in the late 1940s, their lives stretching ahead of them. Pictures of my sister and I as babies, and kids. Our kids.


But perhaps most precious of all were the love letters. Long, handwritten letters from a 20-year-old Montana girl to her 27-year-old soul mate, professing longing and love. Letters back from Dad to her, from various small towns where he was holding evangelistic meetings, dripping tenderness, punctuated with his silly cartoons.

Letters laden with the innocence of their love and dreams, the strength of their Christian faith that would sustain them through so many heartaches, and a few triumphs, in the years ahead.

So many decades later, their lives have been distilled to a handful of heartbeats, the clasping of gnarled, parched hands, and murmurs of love that, somehow, has survived the loss of so many memories.


The decades have wound down now. Months? Weeks? Days? Hours? What remains for them as they rise to sunlight and yawn toward the dusk of their time.


Then they nap or sleep the nights away, waiting for God.