A prayer for Zelda, a feline friend of brief acquaintance, a fellow creation

It was an old cat, and, the owners said before leaving her with us while they vacationed, a blind one.

Zelda was her name. She was affectionate; her charcoal and silver fur still soft and beautiful, though stretched over a thin, frail frame.

Monday night, my wife Barbara and I went over for the twice-daily check of our neighbor's condo, to play a bit with, and feed and replenish water, for Zelda and her companion feline. But when called, Zelda didn't come. As silence continued to our calls, a frantic search began.

Finally, we found her, unmoving, stuck between some fallen objects in a bookcase. The poor creature was barely conscious, and drenched in its own urine . . . but breathing. Rushed to the vet's office, she seemed to recover a bit, groggy but responsive.

The vet said Zelda has suffered seizures, but appeared to be coming out of it. Watch her through the night, she said, and bring her back in the morning. Nothing more to be done until then, just keep her comfortable, she said.

And so we did. Zelda got a sponge bath and was cuddled through the evening. But as night fell, she became more lethargic. Her legs stiffened in another seizure. 

Barbara wept. I had some tears, too. No one wants to see an animal suffer, and especially one that depends on human companionship for comfort in times of fear. So, bundled in towels to keep her comfortable and warm, I took Zelda gently from Barbara's arms, and into my own.

Lit candles, burned some incense. Before my icon corner, prayed for mercy for this creation of the God we each, in our own way, worshipped.

The old cat relaxed and slept, occasionally moving its legs from time to time, its tail slowly swaying to some unheard music as we settled her into her bed, next to our own.

Our two small dogs sniffed her, then settled in a short but respectful distance away, as if on guard against the night.

Every now and then, through the night, a flashlight beam revealed Zelda fast asleep. But at dawn, she was still. She was gone.

Mercy had come in the moments before sunrise.

Barbara broke the sad news by video chat with Zelda's "companion human," still overseas. She was sad, but grateful.

As for Zelda, and all those beloved pets we share love and wonder with for too brief a time, why not "heaven"?

Orthodox Christian thought does not rule it out for these icons of "unfallen nature." They share with us the "breath of life," and also have souls specific to their intended created natures.

Animals are not just part of the planet's furniture, but special, unique expressions of the Ultimate Love that bursts forth in life, beauty and joy from the void.

I had felt a kinship, the fallen man with the innocent creature, as I held Zelda for those moments, both of us in the presence of Our Creator.

Orthodox Christians seem to have a prayer for all of life's moments, those of joy and sadness alike. And I found one for Zelda, and for all those animals we love, and are loved by, during our sojourn in this mortal dimension:

Prayer at the death of companion animals

Holy God, Holy Mighty, Holy Immortal, have mercy on us. Glory to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Spirit, now and ever, and to the ages of ages.  Amen.

O God of all spirits and of every flesh, everything that has breath praises you both in this world and the next.  Heaven is full of the sounds of creaturely voices in a great cacophony of praise and thanksgiving.  Day and night your creatures praise you, without ceasing and with joy.

In your all-encompassing mercy, O God, we now commit the life of this our beloved friend and companion to eternal fellowship with you. Create within us a spirit of gratitude for the life of (name). Give rest, O God, to (name) who lived among us and gave us freely of (his/her) love.

Holy Father, your Son Jesus Christ taught us that not one sparrow is forgotten in your sight. We ask therefore for you to provide a place of green pasture where (his/her) praises will be heard in your presence and where (he/she) shall be free from suffering and pain.

God our Creator, hear our prayer and let our praise unite with those in heaven into one long song of eternal thanksgiving:

Glory to You, O Christ our God, the source and destiny of all living things. Glory to You, O Christ our God, Who bears the wounds of all suffering creatures. Glory to You, O Christ our God, Who transforms all suffering into joy.

St. John saw the new heaven and earth; a place without pain, sorrow or crying; for the same God who creates, is the same God who reconciles and redeems all creation.

Glory to You, O Christ our God and Saviour of the Universe: in Christ shall all be made alive.

___________

The need for a new, truly honest and Christlike 'counter-culture'

The Mueller Report.

Watching the "spin" and polarizing vitriol on both sides of the political spectrum -- while the rest of us (the "silent majority?") remains baffled and rudderless about whom or what to believe -- I muse about what happened to truth, and in our culture today, the Truth.

I look at the "progressive', fading Protestant denominations, scrambling to beat each other for dwindling numbers of parishioners by tossing out their scripture-based standards (however misinterpreted, but that's another blog topic some day) to adopt whatever new, more comfortable moral and behavioral "standard" is out there.

And, I sigh.

I look at the retrenching, fundamentalist Evangelical churches who choose to fight cultural, social and spiritual devolution by just shouting louder, condemning with increasingly desperate conviction, and turning even more to political power as the answer -- even if that means backing a man (yes, I do mean Mr. Trump) who courts their views on trigger issues (abortion, traditional families, nationalism), while his private life (often made public) mocks the very morality on which they stake their high ground.

And, I sigh again, and deeper.

Where is Christ is any of this? Where is the western Christian culture that, will all its flaws, did so much right in providing the spiritual and moral foundation for so many ideals we say we hold dear: public education, social welfare programs, community building, jurisprudence, to name a few.

Nicholas Kotar, a deacon at Holy Trinity Monastery in Jordanville, New York, fantasy writer, and a fellow J.R.R. Tolkien aficionado, recently explored the need for a new Christian culture -- one based not on political but spiritual strength, not on imposing legislation but living by example, and ultimately, one truly based on Christ:

"There was a time when society itself was inspired by Christian principles. Art, government, society itself  emulated, as much as possible, the search for perfection dictated by the call to virtue. Christendom’s grand experiment had both peaks and troughs, of course, something beautifully explored in Fr. John Strickland’s forthcoming book Age of Paradise. Ultimately, however, the twentieth century’s many disasters and Christendom’s failure to stop revolution and world war, have discredited Christianity itself in the eyes of many.

"Nevertheless, I am convinced that only Christianity can revitalize a culture that has lost most of its connection with beauty and that glorifies banality, variety, and diversity as ends in themselves. In my opinion, this would not be a retread of historical Christendom, but a new vision, predicated on the new realities of an increasingly neo-pagan and transhumanist West. Only a revitalized and renewed Christian cultural vision of the world can attract people once again to the Light So Lovely."

*I highly recommend you read the entire blog by Kotar.  Just click on this link.

Reflections on a stormy, early spring day along the Jordan River Parkway

OK. I have no idea what this is.

A poem? Prose?

A cawing of a crow in its poor impersonation of a songbird?

Whatever. You tell me.

Here it is, from a stormy early spring afternoon, thoughts written down from my outdoor patio, two dogs at my feet as rain drenched the Jordan River Parkway.

           ______________

Too Early

Spring is newborn

Rain falls, but winter's breath lingers

Cottonwood bloomed

Too early

Not hail, unconvinced slush

Gray raindrops end on new grass

Days-old white blossoms

Stripped

A sigh, a silent wet landing

Ivory perfection one breath, then

pedals decapitated, slowly interred

Mud unmarked

But not forgotten

Life, so brief, fragile, beautiful

I saw your advent, your decay

Remembered

Fly fishing: So, here it is -- a river runs through . . . me

"Many men go fishing all their lives without knowing it is not fish they are after." 

That's from Henry David Thoreau, in many ways a self-centered jerk when it came to interacting with his fellow humans, but the man knew nature.

And, as I learned Saturday, holding a fly rod in my hand for the first time, Hank the Crank knew fishing, too.

My previous fishing experience was as an 8-year-old. My Uncle John took me along with my cousins, Marty and Gregg, to do some live-bait pole fishing in a creek out in eastern Washington's farmlands. 

I "caught" three catfish (thanks, unknown to me for years, Uncle John hooking some of his own catches onto my line when I was distracted).

I remember Mom frying them up in a cast iron pan on the stove in a second-floor apartment, central Spokane, Washington, neighborhood, where our vagabond preacher's family was staying at the time. 

The catfish tasted great, and I was so proud to have brought back a meal for my family from the great outdoors.

That defined my fishing experience until this Saturday. When I wasn't slipping on the icy, mossy rocks in the Provo River and getting drenched, there I was, now 65-year-old man, taking fly fishing lessons from a savvy, 20s-something river guide. (A gift for Barbara and me from our son Rob, wife Rachel and grandson Joshua).

Wool socks, waders and waterproof boots made it possible to stand in the river -- still frozen over just a few hundred yards downstream where the Wasatch Mountains shadows remained deep -- for several hours. 

After I quit obsessing over trying to remember all the parts of the rod, kinds of flies, weights, names for the motions ("windshield left," "windshield right," "Statue of Liberty," etc.) and remembering to follow the float thingy with the rod as it drifted with the flow . . . I found myself in that "perfect moment."

That "perfect moment" is what I like to call those slices of time in our lives when, ironically, time stops. The moment and its beauty, its tranquility, fill your senses and encapsulate your mind and spirit in a sort of solitary peace.

I've experienced this before, looking out from a mountain ledge after a long hike, just before setting up camp for a night of wood fire and stars. Another time, it was with Barbara, on a silent-running ship in Glacier Bay, Alaska, watching icebergs calve, crystal-clear slices of bluish of towering, frozen mountains of water cracking in the stillness before sliding into the frigid depths.

These are moments beyond self, part of that album of a lifetime's vignettes -- looking into your beloved's eyes, exchanging vows; watching your child be born, holding him or her that first time; the acapella singing of hymns, chanting of prayers, incense and candlelight of an Orthodox Christian Vespers service.

This time, I caught eight fish, an assortment of rainbow and brown trout, some whitefish. Also hooked a tree branch; it gave me quite a fight before leaping out of the water.

All those fish were admired, a couple photographed, and released back into the river. Always wondered about that "catch-and-release" bit. A bad policy for illegal immigration, perhaps, but a very satisfying culmination for fly fishing.

A mini-perfect moment then: reeling in a 14-inch rainbow after several minutes of fight, removing the hook, gently lifting it from the net, lowering it into the water and watching it swim away and into the darkness of the river's depths.

Certainly a "transitory enchanted moment," for me (OK, quite a liberty on my part appropriating that from F. Scott Fitzgerald's "The Great Gatsby" . . . but this is my blog, and my moment, so there).

But there was more beneath that now treasured memory. It was discovery of a state-of-mind that was uniquely tied to the experience itself -- that aforementioned "solitary peace."

For nearly four hours, my mind was enclosed is a bubble of serenity, immune to worries, aches, pains, grief. My world was the river, the rod, the sound of the water, the snow capped mountains around us, the laughter of Barbara, Rob, Rachel and Joshua.

Just watching the line float downstream after each cast was a meditation, each cast a wordless prayer of a sort.

It was a very good day.

And now, I know more of what novelist Norman Maclean meant when he wrote "A River Runs Through It":

"Eventually, all things merge into one, and a river runs through it. The river was cut by the world’s great flood and runs over rocks from the basement of time. On some of the rocks are timeless raindrops. Under the rocks are the words, and some of the words are theirs.

I am haunted by waters."

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

Of old bicycles, old cars, old(er) guys

Old bicycles. Old cars.

Old(er) guys.

I guess I'm the latter one. Going to turn 66 in another few months. Been "retired" for almost a year.
Thing is, I don't feel old(er). 

Well, I don't feel older in mind or soul, at least.

I wake up with that eternal youth still welcoming the day . . . until he looks through old(er) eyes into the mirror.

The gray, thinning hair. The silvery stubble not quite in need of a shave. (Or is it, and I just could care less?) The jowls, the wrinkles, and the bags under the eyes.

Fire in the furnace, snow on top. Yada yada yada.

But enough about me. More than enough; makes me tired to think of it.

Let's discuss the old bicycle. Gears caked with dust and grease from winter storage, brake pads brittle with years heat and cold and use. Tires worn, but still in fair shape.

At least, on the latter, that's what Taylor's Bike Shop tells me. Cleanup, tweaking, greasing and making those tires all-but-puncture proof will be just shy a couple days and $130 to realize.

Then, the young soul in the old(er) body will be safe to ride the winding reaches of the Jordan River Parkway, thumb at the ready to ring the bike bell on approach to mindless walkers and roller-bladers drifting into my path.

And, maybe in the process of pedaling and huffing down the paths,  I'll improve the cardio, making the artificial aortic heart valve and pacemaker worth the effort . . . and lose some weight.

So, there's the bicycle part of this story, a rubber, aluminum and steel metaphor for senior citizenry if I ever heard one.

The car. The 1999 Honda Civic sedan, four door, 4-on-the-floor manual transmission, rescued from salvage by mechanical/sales genius Michael Westley, is once more cleared for travel in the "Life Elevated" state of Utah. (That's the slogan, having replaced the ill-advised "Utah: A pretty, great state" theme of a few years ago).

The Honda, victim of an unevenly applied repaint job mixing aqua marine with sea green, is near 135k miles and still running fine. The door locks even work, if one is patient with the keyring remote and adept at finding just the right angle to click.

About 40 degrees and within 5 feet seems best so far.

Thursday, April 4, 2019. Remember this date. It was a day when things old, stubborn and still with some good wear in 'em triumphed.

Well, at a cost, to be sure.

But victory, baby.


Dylan Thomas knew about it:

"Youth calls to age across the tired years: 'What have you found,' he cries, 'what have you sought?" 'What have you found,' age answers through his tears, 'What have you sought.'"

Grief: A sneaky, relentless foe, demands to be heard and felt

Grief is a sneaky, relentless foe. It fades, then suddenly reappears, trumpeting its arrival in emotional cacophony . . . demanding to be recognized, to be felt, to be heard.

I buried my father’s ashes last Friday on a sunny spring day in Spokane, Washington. I blessed his grave, a 2.5-foot deep hole in the dark, damp earth, with holy water from my church, Sts. Peter & Paul. Said prayers of the Trisagion.

Lord have mercy, we Orthodox Christians plead repeatedly. Glory to the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, both now and ever and unto ages of ages, amen.

 Dad was not Orthodox, but I am. And so, I prayed for him from my new tradition. Somehow, I know he appreciated it.

Heavenly king. Comforter. Spirit of truth. Everywhere present, filling all things. . . . . Save our souls, O Good One.

We mourners offered our words to Dad, each other. Memories were shared. Tears shed. Hugs given, and received. Farewells. The urn was placed in the ground, freshly turned earth packed over it, leaving a rich, dark brown mound interspersed with grass blades and pine needles.

Goodbye, Dad. But not goodbye to the grief.

Yesterday afternoon the Box arrived. It contained the few mementos, packets of photos, this and that saved from Dad’s nursing home room and shipped to me in Utah from Washington by UPS. I opened it, and with it, once more, opened the grave. Or so it seemed.

Having contemplated it once more, I will try again to close the grave with the soft soil of my heart. Not to forget, but to honor. Grief does not end, I’m learning.

It is, however, transformed. And transforming. Grief will take me where it will, and with prayer serving as my hand touching paradise, I will step ahead through the miles left in my own life.

I will do so with, I pray always, more and more love, and less sadness.

A eulogy for a very good man

*This is the eulogy I gave at my father's graveside memorial on Friday in Spokane, Washington. -- BM


Growing up, one of the things the family of the Rev. Robert Mims did a lot of was pack
up and leave places. We moved from one neighborhood to another, from one state to another. 

 By the time I was 11 years old, I had been in 13 different schools.

In each move, something would get lost. Toys. Pictures. Maybe a dish, and on one move there was a loss than made my mother cry: during the move from Spokane to Wilbur, a tiny central Washington farming town with an even smaller church, my parents’ large framed wedding photo was lost.

In the past year, my son, Rob, and I moved Mom and Dad from Lilac Plaza Assisted Living to the Cheney Care Center as their health, and dementia, grew worse. Like all the moves before, this mean some things got donated to charities, others were put in storage, and a few treasured items were lovingly safeguard by family
 
At home in Utah, recently, I finally opened boxes I’d brought back. There were Dad’s collection of several worn Bibles, his notes in the margins of passages of scriptures he’d used in sermons. A pressed flower in the pages of one Bible, and in others, handwritten notes and reminders of events and people long since passed.

Then, in a box Mom had treasured, there was a bundle of letters. Love letters, it turned out, from Dad, written while he was traveling as a banjo-playing evangelist throughout the post-WWII Pacific Northwest. They were handwritten pages filled with endearments, dreams and love for the future they would soon begin as a married couple.

Memories. Memories Mom and Dad lost, temporarily I believe, as their worlds shrank both physically and mentally over these past couple years.

As I have prayed about their situation, seeking wisdom for each decision came about their care and well-being, I wondered what happens to those memories, when we … forget.

“Nothing is lost in Me,” was the thought impressed on my mind. Love is not lost, nor are our loved ones. The ripples of blessing we start with each act of compassion are eternal; so are those comforting touches or embraces we give or receive, the wisdom we gain and share, and certainly the faith we live  and sacrifice for.

Mom and Dad didn’t need that wedding photo, as treasured as it was, to remind them of their love, nor their bond as man and wife, father and mother, grandfather and grandmother, and co-workers for the Kingdom of God.

You don’t need “stuff” to keep those good things of past. We will always have our yesterdays, even when we forget them in this earthly life.

I know this: even if our memories fade with the weakness of age and loss of cognitive function, on that Last Day, Our Lord will restore those memories to perfection – and that will be a perfection that is no longer distorted by the false concepts of past, present and future we wrestle with now.

In the eternal, uncreated light of our Lord, we will have a God’s eye view. Nothing of love is lost. Nothing committed to Christ is ever gone.

So, I know where Dad is today. And, I believe he knows all about us, here, as we honor his earthly years, and we ourselves glimpse Eternity. I pray for him, and he is praying for us.

And Dad today knows as tangible truth what we believe by faith here: The perfect, infinite love of God includes, sustains and restores His children, as the prayer goes, “both now and ever and unto ages of ages.”

In our sentimental memories -- those photos, videos, letters, old Bibles, the contents of cedar chests and dusty boxes -- we have our yesterdays. But in Christ, we also have our tomorrows.

A winter of discontent, a spring of hope and new life

When my wife, children, aunts and uncles and cousins gather Friday in Spokane, Washington to remember and bury my father, lilacs and other spring flowers should be in early bloom under a partly cloudy sky pierced by the rays of a freshening sun.

Saying goodbye to Robert Mims Sr., who died January 17 at age 96, while holding the hand of his wife, 91-year-old Katherine, will seem so much more appropriate as springtime unfolds rather than in the depths of winter, when his sojourn here ended.

It has been a tough year. Lost a job I loved, at the Salt Lake Tribune, after a mass layoff ended 20 years at the newspaper last May. Depression, a frantic search for meaning and purpose, followed. But gradually, buoyed by faith, family and friends, I once more began to move forward.

Then, Dad died. Not unexpectedly, but . . . still. 

This farewell comes after 40 days of the Akathist to Jesus Christ for the Departed prayer, as is the practice of my new Orthodox Christian faith. Dozens of candles have been lit for him, joining other remembrances of beeswax, wick and flame in the narthex shrine of Sts. Peter and Paul Church, adding their light to those lit for other beloved and mourned. . . their light flickering off the shiny surfaces of that "great cloud of witnesses" Paul wrote about, the saints, or at least their icons adorning the walls and ceilings of the temple.

Mom won't be at the memorial. In a wheelchair, on oxygen, unable attend to the most basic physical functions, her memories, ability to speak or understand have long since been robbed as late-stage Alzheimer's disease ushers her toward an end in increasing unconsciousness.

Neither will my "big sister," barely able to walk due to her age, cerebral palsy, and unable to comprehend Daddy's death so directly, given cognitive abilities of a 3-4 year old child. Dad is "with Jesus," my sister Carolyn knows, and that is enough.

I will see them both, my mother and sister, before I fly back to Utah. Likely it will be a final goodbye to the shell of what my once-vibrant, sharp-witted and quick-to-laugh mother was, yearning for a second of recognition. Regardless, she will get my love, a caress, a kiss and a prayer.

In college, I briefly wrote poetry. A professor liked it enough to give me an "A." A collection of those poems, scribbled on white lined paper and stuffed into a three-hole punch binder, have long since been lost, likely tossed during one of many moves over the past decades.

And while I have no delusions about reprising any abilities in that form, here, however flawed, is an attempt, for Dad's sake:

We live, we die
We give, we fly
Leaving in winter
Returning in spring
Flowers and resurrection
We bring

Grief in short
Mourning long
Death comes in ice and snow
Life rides equinoctial song
Memories precious, bitter, sweet
gathered in time short, and long

Father has passed
Buried in soil
Dad is immortal
In dreams nocturnal
A being of love and light
Memories eternal

----------------------------------------

History: Are we doomed to repeat it, after all?

Philosopher/writer George Santayana is famously (infamously, on a deeper level) credited with the quote, “Those who do not learn history are doomed to repeat it.”

Well, he sort of said that. Like so many popular aphorisms, the “doomed to repeat” statement is more of a paraphrase/variant. To quibble, the genesis quotation actually is this:

“Progress, far from consisting in change, depends on retentiveness. When change is absolute there remains no being to improve and no direction is set for possible improvement: and when experience is not retained, as among savages, infancy is perpetual. Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”

I like to know from whence things came, and how they came to be. I also like to occasionally show off the results of inquiry. Forgive me.

All a tortured, too-long means of saying that however the more pithy version of Santayana’s observations developed, it remains true, nearly 67 years after his death.

We have a new generation, “informed” by the predominantly “progressive” worldviews of their public school teachers and university professors, that can weep for endangered whales and desert tortoise (good causes, don’t get me wrong), yet cheer abortion, and most recently even extending it to infanticide in cases of unwanted or genetically/intellectually “imperfect” babies who survive birth.

Various forms of socialism, some as potentially extreme in usurping individual freedoms as anything the failed USSR, Mao’s China, Castro’s Cuba or the chaotic disaster of modern Venezuela wrought, are being pushed by the extreme left (and currently loudest) wing of the Democratic Party.

Rational discussion about sexual identity, gender and all that goes with that has gone by the wayside. It’s not how you are born physically, but what you imagine. Put on a blindfold, it seems, and genitalia disappear. Question any aspect of that “self identity,” and you become a bigot, someone guilty of “hate speech” for stating the obvious:

You may be gay, but you are still male. You may be lesbian, but you are still a female. If you are transsexual, you can undergo operations to physically change to what you believe, perhaps, should have been born to be. Beyond that, it gets rather complicated;  a few years ago, for example, Facebook added no less than 50 “gender options” for its users.

The popular saying goes, “Sex is a matter of the body, while gender occurs in the mind.”

Well, OK. Let’s just say I question that. I think my skepticism about this, informed by both my faith and reason, is solid. That said, I will not condone treating anyone as less of a human being (after all, we all are created to bear the image of God) because their struggle for meaning takes them on, to me, are bizarre journeys.

I’m much too busy, as I should be, fighting to subdue and root out from my own mind and life the frailties and sins of my fallen, broken humanity.

So, back to history. I grew up in the Cold War period, the ashes of Nazi Germany’s crematoria and destruction of multiple millions of Jews, Slavs, Roma and others deemed undeserving of existence by Hitler. Millions more innocents died in the decades following WWII, among them many condemned for holding to their Christian faith in the purported Soviet socialist paradises of the USSR and China.

Yet here we are, well into the 21st century, and antisemitism, religious persecution, and philosophies and political movements dedicated to eradicating freedom of thought, belief and action all are on the rise.

Truly, we do not seem to learn from history, because we ignore it. Intellectual sloth and intentional concessions to political correctness gone mad, the kind of thing warned about (predicted?) by George Orwell – “Newspeak,” “thoughtcrime,” “Doublethink” all come to mind as hauntingly familiar today, in intent and application if not precise terminology.

In light of all this, let's return to Santayana, where we started – and some of his other thoughts seemingly applicable today?

“Fanaticism consists in redoubling your effort when you have forgotten your aim.”

“The truth is cruel, but it can be loved, and it makes free those who have loved it.”

And, this: “All living souls welcome whatever they are ready to cope with; all else they ignore, or pronounce to be monstrous and wrong, or deny to be possible.”

---

*Santayana defined himself as atheist, but he was no hater of God nor faith; a benign skeptic, he sometimes saw religion as poetry. Indeed, he spent his last decade of life in the care of nuns, He was a flawed human being, as are we all; for example, he held views about racial superiority and toying with eugenics.