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.

Peace? Not on the Web, on TV, or the news? How about . . . in your heart?

And so, peace.

You won't find it on the streets, where criminal illegal aliens -- too many of them murderers, rapists, human traffickers, drug cartel operatives -- hide behind hordes of victimized innocents, families seeking better lives, driven by desperation and the winks and lure of corrupt American business and politics to skirt immigration law, as all are belatedly being rounded up.

Blame can go back generations, greed crosses political and corporate lines and national borders. But the faces of victims are still haunting, and this gallery is seemingly endless. Justice is not only not balanced, but it is messy, and painful, beyond understanding.

Past political failures in our nation's capital, while primarily of one party and presidents who spent their terms putting off the inevitable push back on radical islamic apocalyptic visions of nuclear explosions over Israel, have been met with what could be the beginning of a planetary end game -- our nation's attempt this weekend to destroy Iran's nuclear arms dreams.

We pray, hope, wonder if the end game will be met with Iran folding its mushroom aces. . . or if the horror has just begun.

"For when they shall say, 'Peace and safety,' then sudden destruction cometh upon them, as travail upon a woman with child . . .,'" is a verse (1 Thessalonians 5:3 KJV) I recall from my childhood Bible study. (End Times verses, often out of context, were a big thing in Pentecostal Fundamentalist 'The End is Near' theology).

Well, we'll see. Fear makes headlines better than hope, so in a way, it makes sense it only took minutes for a particular news organization to report rumors that maybe Russia would give nuclear warheads to Iran! 

And of course, they also reported that with the Biden administration having let in millions of unvetted illegal immigrants -- thousands believed to be on terrorist lists -- we can expect "sleeper cell" attacks.

Last bit might be more likely, I don't know. Hope neither is, but we have had more than a few of those so-called "lone wolf" attacks over the past weeks, months, and years.

So, back to that peace thing.

Not on TV. Not on the radio. Not during rush hour on "road rage" plagued freeways. Locally, not in our neighborhood parks during community celebrations -- we've had a number of deadly gang-related shootings here in Utah, and during a "peaceful protest" downtown in Salt Lake City.

Peace, then in your heart? 

Tougher and tougher to find.

But still possible.

A walk along a forest trail, hand-in-hand with your loved one. The water cascades from streams nearby, bees float amid flowers purple, gold, orange, gold, silky white, emerald, and nestled in wreaths of green. The air is filled with perfume of pollen and pine; sunlight and shadow dance thrown tree limbs and rock.

Or, a candle is lit, bee's wax slowly descending its shaft as wisps of incense rise in a smoky circuit to saintly icons on the wall. Your prayers, whispered at first, are swallowed in silence echoed in your mind, and eternity.

Peace, and your focus finds the stars.

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.

I see the light. I did not create it.

I see the light. I did not create it.

I hear the wind, the music, the rain, the thunder, the chirping of birds, the sighing of my wife in the night.

These sounds exist without my awareness, or with them.

The olfactory bliss of flowers, on trees or bushes, in vases or urns; drifting in clouds of incense from censers, bowls, cones or sticks glowing, alight.

Memories recalled, recent and ancient, of the soul, of the primordial mists.

Is this where Truth begins?

 

Hemingway sought 'one true or perfect sentence.' I'll settle for a word. Then, another.

 

Sometimes, it's just an exhausting, ultimately depressing, and a desperate challenge to write.

When you are approaching 72. When a once exciting journalism career, and a couple years of book- writing, copy editing, and freelance writing wither in a market eroded by A.I., a flood of soulless content writing, and media pursuits increasingly driven by mindless ideologies.

It's tempting to just throw up your hands and declare, why try? Who cares? Who wants to read this? Or who will pay for it?

Ah, then you realize. Before the jobs, the paychecks, the mortgages, car payments, and pursuit of things . . . there had been that urge for art. 

Or, at least, there was that thrill, that yearning for the occasional taste of the words, the molecules of truth revealed, of beauty described -- if they only amounted to a single leaf on a flower, one of thousands in a meadow, sprouting beneath a forest of redwoods, sentinels nourished by the mists and waves from endless oceans stretching beyond the horizons.

Ernest Hemingway's tortured life ended in suicidal despair, but not before it  celebrated flashes of literary brilliance immortalized by his quest for that "one true or perfect sentence."

He did that well.

I'll settle for just one true perfect word. Then another.

Let's see how this goes.

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.

The Donkey History Museum: something to bray about

 I don’t know about you, but my spouse has occasionally warned me, “Don’t make an ass of yourself.”

Now, visiting Mesquite, Nevada—and its quartet of casinos tempting Arizona, Utah and Nevada I-15 travelers to detour for a bit of gambling—might pay off or deplete that RVing gas and groceries budget.

Hence the risk, amigos. Dreams of fortune versus, in my case, the wrath of my wife, she of Norwegian ancestry and the dormant genes of the Valkyrie: DNA and ancestry best left to rest in Valhalla—trust me.

So, on an overnight stay in this Virgin River Valley town of 20,000 on the northeastern fringe of the Mojave Desert, I found the perfect—and an educational—compromise: the Donkey History Museum.

*to read more of this article and see more photos, click here:

Swansea Ghost Town: A rough road to faded desert dreams

Having set up camp alongside the Colorado River near Parker, Arizona, my adventurous wife, Barbara, decided to take our trusty “toad” compact car to see a real ghost town.

It was a pleasant and warm day, barely a cloud in the sky. But we did not take our 2019 Ford Fiesta to the Tombstone “ghost town,” where the Shootout at the O.K. Corral made Wyatt Earp famous in 1881, and where tourists today can see a tamer, bloodless reenactment of the same while sipping on a cold craft brew.

No, not Tombstone. We also passed on a slew of other deserted Old West settlements in Arizona. We chose the remote La Paz County ghost town mining community of Swansea, AZ, our surrender to serendipity becoming a bumpy, dusty, and rough 65-mile round trip odyssey.

*To read the rest of this article of mine, and see more photos click here

First visit to Red Butte Garden: a long glimpse at earthly paradise

 It was my first ever visit to Red Butte Garden, more than 100 acres of botanical and hiking bliss along the foothills of the Wasatch Mountains that provide the eastern boundaries of Salt Lake City.

I know. First visit for me, courtesy of my son, Rob, to a glimpse -- and long one -- of earthly paradise.

Yes, I repeat with chagrin, my first visit, and I've been in Utah since 1982, when my journalistic career brought me first to the Salt Lake City Bureau of the Associated Press, and later The Salt Lake Tribune.

Now 71, and retired, I finally made it.

Thanks, son.