Category: Religion

One thing and another

Yesterday… I mean apart from getting ZERO done on my life list, I had something resembling a perfect day.  I got to see my kids and Paul as we chatted about the job hunt for the kids (got some things straight). I got fed a yummy tortilla lunch which Paul and Keith and Katie assembled; later I did a kindness for someone which triggered him buying me sufficiency of beer for the nonce.  Happiness is a fridge full of Corona.

I got to visit with Tre.  Logos, but that’s one cute babby.  Battery and Tanya and Jeff and I laughed and chatted and had a very pleasant time while I got the grisly details of the birth, none of which are for public consumption.  The result, a calm but busy 6 week old who developmentally is a month ahead (REALLY strong), is what counts.

Margot couldn’t stand the lack of focus on her, and came into the livingroom to (very ladylike) hork up some grass, because the babby was being changed at the same time…

The weather, after a little overcast, was perfect all day.

Then, hung out for a while not doing much of anything and Mike came by and took me and Keith and Jeff to the Richmond Night Market, where I bought nothing but REALLY GOOD kettle corn, and where I watched my beautiful son metamorphose into a steely eyed killer (there was a mini-midway, and he shot enough pins to get me a little purple bear (not exactly worth the five bucks he paid to play…. but I digress as usual and besides, Miss Margot is eviscerating it as I type, so its purpose has been revealed)) and after we drove away Mike took us to his cefu’s traditional chinese martial arts club (Mike corrected me, Jack is NOT his cefu, Galen is.  Men can be so STERN when you get things wrong) in an industrial park in Richmond (and boy, has he done a pile of work on that place to help Jack get ready) and then I got to watch the north shore skyline etched against a sunset sky while the wind whipped through my hair.  Ah, convertibles. And I cried a little bit, because I am so happy, and so grateful to be living here, surrounded by such loving friends and family. Side note, John Caspell trained with Jack.  Everything is deeply intertwingled.

When we got home, TrueBlood.  Not enough Eric; no Pam, not enough Jessica.  But considering what the first four episodes of the season were like, I am willing to cut some slack.

Can you tell I had a perfect day?

And today, instead of working, I’m going with daughter Katie and Mike to the beach.  My happiness is like a golden thread.

I would like to give special, extra, crunchy golden props to Jeff, who has been leaving the real for real audio of the Apollo 11 mission running for the last couple of days during waking hours.  It’s been an ongoing reminder of why I’m an atheist.

Until we saw the Earth rise over the moon, I don’t think the fundamental unity of human life, and its fragility, had ever been so starkly drawn.  And it wasn’t the Pope or Mohammad, peace be upon him, what got us there.

Fluttery

I am feeling a bit fluttery about Miss Margot’s operation today.  She has a strong heart (Persians sometimes run to heart trouble) and her pre-op screen came back okay, but I’m still unhappy, and listening to her cry for her lost dinner and breakfast is making me sad.  Wait til she comes home reeking of anaesthetic, loopy as all get out, while the boys gather round goggling at her.  They’ll be happy to have her so subdued …. And so will the rest of us, she’s about to go into heat. (Noiser, more affectionate and really anxious to go out).

Jeff has just left with Miss Margot.  There was a flaw in my cunning plan… I didn’t give him my credit card to pay for it all, so I think I will just go there at the end of the day and Jeff can drive us both home.  Continue reading Fluttery

Too Long; Didn’t Read

One of the many useful internet acronyms is TL;DR.  That’s when your truncated attention span decides to step out for a soda.

Continue reading Too Long; Didn’t Read

Thoughtful

I’m having a Niebuhr kinda weekend – Niebuhr being a forebear name, and also the name of Reinhold Niebuhr, the prominent theologian of the last century.  He’s the dude wot wrote the Serenity prayer.

In its original format, the first part of the prayer goes like this:

God, give us grace to accept with serenity
the things that cannot be changed,
Courage to change the things
which should be changed,
and the Wisdom to distinguish
the one from the other.

Alas, everybody and his dog, including AA, got hold of the prayer.  It has been stuck onto all kinds of consumer goods and started a song by Sinead O’Connor…. her version:

God grant me the serenity to accept the things I can not change
Courage to change the things I can
And the wisdom to know the difference

Niebuhr’s daughter Elisabeth Sifton wrote a book called “The Serenity Prayer” and I URGE anybody who’s interested in social justice to read it.  The dragging down of Germany into Nazism is detailed from a theological perspective, and there were so many times I put the book down and said, “But this is what’s happening in the US right now!” I became quite sad.  The book is amazingly well written.

Hymn to Cthulhu

Without its corruption, nothing can rot and be remade.

It is the wisdom of stars and the patience of aeons.

It is the power to return and master us at any time.

Before it science means nothing,

reason is a faithless servant,

and devouring disregard is our puniest allotment of punishment

as time slows to absorb the madness.

None dare approach it in its indifference,

let alone its wrath.

Before it gods go mad and flee;

none but we fear-raddled mites

upon its immense and glistening form

may approach the abyssal boredom of its majesty.

Marcus Aurelius

Chipper sent this link to me under the rather cryptic header “Big Head”.  Marcus Aurelius was a great writer and his contribution to the philosophy of Stoicism should not be forgotten. Here’s a link to the Meditations.

I’m off to see Music Man tonight.  I am starting to think about writing a musical and rather than having a discernable plot, it’s a thirties style attempt to jam about 100 songs with the most minimal amount of plot or discursive linking possible into 2 hours. Like, my parents hate the plot and fast forward to the musical numbers.  Eddie Izzard in an enormous red ball gown as the Master of Ceremonies?  A little girl asking for pirates and ninjas, and she gets the pirates but you never see the ninjas? Of such is the coloured marzipan from which I wish to confect a musical….  A giant squid sings a sad song about the depths of the sea, with its limbs operated by the cast members?  I even have a name for the opus.

OMG. Gizmo, when he’s cleaning his nether regions, makes a noise like the quacking of a really subdued duck.  He just gave about five demonstrations in a row. The quack he emitted on the sofa last night cracked me and Jeff up.

Soon, the mandolin lessons.