I had a long week at work and a very busy Friday and Friday night, so I took it easy this weekend.
I read broadly from this collection of Damon Runyon stories,
and enjoyed it very much if I do not say so myself. Old Runyon has a voice like no other, and the stories, which sometimes involve murder and revenge and heartbreak, are always diverting and stress-reducing in their politically-incorrect way.
I recommend it highly.
Otherwise, I puttered around the house, cleaning and straightening.
And the Christmas cactus is blooming!
All will be well.
May you be made strong with all the strength that comes from his glorious power, and may you be prepared to endure everything with patience, while joyfully giving thanks to the Father, who has enabled you to share in the inheritance of the saints in the light. He has rescued us from the power of darkness and transferred us into the kingdom of his beloved Son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.
–Colossians 1:11
And by the way, next Sunday is Advent I! Can you believe it? Enjoy the short work week!
Here we are halfway through November and Thanksgiving is a week from today! Let’s get serious about having thankful thoughts! Here’s some Walt Whitman to help with that.
Thanks in old age—thanks ere I go,
For health, the midday sun, the impalpable air—for life, mere
life,
For precious ever-lingering memories, (of you my mother dear
—you, father—you, brothers, sisters, friends,)
For all my days—not those of peace alone—the days of war the
same,
For gentle words, caresses, gifts from foreign lands,
For shelter, wine and meat—for sweet appreciation,
(You distant, dim unknown—or young or old—countless, un-
specified, readers belov’d,
We never met, and ne’er shall meet—and yet our souls embrace,
long, close and long;)
For beings, groups, love, deeds, words, books—for colors, forms,
For all the brave strong men—devoted, hardy men—who’ve for-
ward sprung in freedom’s help, all years, all lands,
For braver, stronger, more devoted men—(a special laurel ere I
go, to life’s war’s chosen ones,
The cannoneers of song and thought—the great artillerists—the
foremost leaders, captains of the soul:)
As soldier from an ended war return’d—As traveler out of
myriads, to the long procession retrospective,
This was a busy weekend pour moi. I went to the rummage sale at the Episcopal Church I attended growing up. I went to a funeral at Grace, to see “Steel Magnolias” performed by the local theatre guild, and back to church on Sunday.
The boy accompanied me to the funeral because it was for a member of the church choir and he knew him from back in his choir days. (It is sometimes necessary to remind the young the importance of attending funerals. I remind myself as well.) It was sad because the deceased was relatively young (with one son still in college) but it was a lovely Rite I service and the members of two church choirs sang.
We went out to dinner after the funeral, and then the OM and I went to the theatre. You will recall that “Steel Magnolias” is a play about six southern women and it takes place in a beauty parlor in Chinquapin, Louisiana in the 1980s.
Our friend was playing Ouiser, the “Shirley MacLaine part.”
As Ouiser says at one point: “I do not see plays, because I can nap at home for free…” I tend to agree, but I am a good friend.
I was a reader at church on Sunday. I read St. Paul and got to say: “Brothers and sisters, do not be weary in doing what is right.” And what is doing right? Well, Paul says, Do your work quietly and earn your own living.
Photo courtesy of the Missouri Dept. of Conservation
“We pray for the big things and forget to give thanks for the ordinary, small (and yet really not small) gifts.”
–Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Life Together
We’ve quoted Bonhoeffer before on the subject of thankfulness, but can we ever say it often enough? Probably not. It is so central to our well-being.
November is a good month to take a look at the things for which we are thankful, so I plan to do that.
Meanwhile, here’s a poem by W.S. Merwin:
Thank you my life long afternoon
late in this spring that has no age
my window above the river
for the woman you led me to
when it was time at last the words
coming to me out of mid-air
that carried me through the clear day
and come even now to find me
for old friends and echoes of them
those mistakes only I could make
homesickness that guides the plovers
from somewhere they had loved before
they knew they loved it to somewhere
they had loved before they saw it
thank you good body hand and eye
and the places and moments known
only to me revisiting
once more complete just as they are
and the morning stars I have seen
And I am thankful for the flyover view.
“Grumbling and gratitude are, for the child of God, in conflict. Be grateful and you won’t grumble. Grumble and you won’t be grateful.”
―Billy Graham
It is November, but it doesn’t feel like it, that’s for sure!
I mean really.
We had a quiet Halloween. No one knocked at our door. I watched the Halloween episode of Angel, season 5–“Life of the Party”–the one where Lorne works around the clock to throw the ultimate Halloween party at Wolfram & Hart, but problems arise when he has his sleep removed. Then I watched two more episodes for the heck of it. Not a bad way to spend Halloween.
I guess it is time to put away my festive (and very vintage) Halloween candles.
I should note that today is the birthday of the great American pioneer Daniel Boone (1734-1820)
who…
Of all men, saving Sylla, the man-slayer,
Who passes for in life and death most lucky
Of the great names which in our faces stare,
The General Boon, back-woodsman of Kentucky,
Was happiest amongst mortals any where;
For killing nothing but a bear or buck, he
Enjoyed the lonely vigorous, harmless days
Of his old age in wilds of deepest maze.
Lord Byron wrote those lines in Don Juan, Canto 8. Old Dan’l was a pretty famous guy! Anyway, I will remind you that Boone spent those latter days in my flyover state in the appropriately named town of Defiance.
As Boone said, “I firmly believe it requires but a little philosophy to make a man happy in whatsoever state he is. This consists in a full resignation to the will of Providence; and a resigned soul finds pleasure in a path strewed with briars and thorns.”
I concur. Discuss among yourselves.
*Fred in the “Life of the Party” episode of Angel, season 5
Even the most cursory of diaries can be of incalculable value. What the weather was doing. Who we ran into on the street. The movie we saw. The small boy at the dentist’s office. The dream.
Just a handful of the barest facts can be enough to rescue an entire day from oblivion — not just what happened in it, but who we were when it happened. Who the others were. What it felt like back then to be us.
“Our years come to an end like a sigh . . . ” says Psalm 90, “so teach us to number our days that we may get a heart of wisdom” (w. 9,12).
It is a mark of wisdom to realize how precious our days are, even the most uneventful of them. If we can keep them alive by only a line or so about each, at least we will know what we’re sighing about when the last of them comes.
~ Frederick Buechner, Beyond Words
The illustration of parked cars on a residential street is from This is New York by Miroslav Sasek.
“What do you think has become of the young and old men?
And what do you think has become of the women and children?
They are alive and well somewhere,
The smallest sprout shows there is really no death,
And if ever there was it led forward life, and does not wait at the
end to arrest it,
And ceas’d the moment life appear’d.
All goes onward and outward, nothing collapses,
And to die is different from what any one supposed, and luckier.”
― Walt Whitman, Song of Myself
I went to a memorial service yesterday at the Unitarian Church on “Holy Corners” in the Central West End.
You can see the Christian Scientist and Methodist churches in the background, built in better days around the turn of the 20th century.
The Unitarian Church was built on a more humble scale and added to accordingly. It turns out it was the church of William Greenleaf Eliot, the founder of my flyover university and also of the girls’ school I attended. Not that he would recognize this congregation.
Anyway, I had never been to a Unitarian memorial service before. The music was pretty bad and there was only one scripture reading–a terrible translation of Psalm 39–and one prayer. (We never even said the Lord’s Prayer.) The minister gave a long homily about the mystery of life and how everything dies, and a long eulogy about the deceased, and the husband of the deceased gave a long eulogy. Like her parents, she was a lifelong member of the church and a serious Unitarian and social justice warrior. She and her husband were also big supporters of their partner church in Transylvania–yes, there are Unitarians in Transylvania! They are the second largest group of Unitarians in the world! It is amazing what one doesn’t know about people.
Well, it all got me thinking about old Walt Whitman’s lines about death in Song of Myself, which seem very Unitarian in spirit to me but are more meaningful than anything I heard in the service. I like to think that my friend is alive and well somewhere, although I guess that’s not what she expected.
*The painting is “Moonlight” by Fausto Zonaro (1854 – 1929)
I always think that the best way to know God is to love many things. Love a friend, a wife, something–whatever you like–you will be on the way to knowing more about Him; that is what I say to myself. But one must love with a lofty and serious intimate sympathy, with strength, with intelligence; and one must always try to know deeper, better, and more. That leads to God, that leads to unwavering faith.
Did you have a quiet weekend? I researched whether this pumpkin spice thing really has gone too far. And I got a lot of things around the house done and that felt good.
I went to church and read the first lesson–a not very inspiring passage from Sirach (one of those second-listed wisdom books from the Apocrypha). The second reader got to read from ITimothy–no fair.
Since it is that stewardship time of year, we had our weekly “stewardship moment,” which was delivered by a parishioner who is the producer of a weekly TV show. She was nervous about her testimony, so the two stars of her show came along for moral support and were seated in the congregation. Kind of sweet.
I went to an estate sale in the neighborhood and bought an “antique” wash stand which I put in my den, switching out a table that has never really fit there. I rearranged things and am pleased with how things look.
(Apologies for not having styled an appropriate vignette yet.)
I read quite a bit of Prelude to Terror, an old thriller (1978) by Helen MacInnes. After reading several books by Shirley Jackson, I was having trouble finding something to read. (Karin Fossum’s latest dreary Swedish mystery did not make the cut.) Helen seems to be just what I was looking for.
I watched Genius (2016) about the great editor Maxwell Perkins and the writer Thomas Wolfe. It was disappointing, despite having quite a primo cast.
Sigh. Well, here’s a little Wolfe to make up for the disappointment:
Some things will never change. Some things will always be the same. Lean down your ear upon the earth and listen.
The voice of forest water in the night, a woman’s laughter in the dark, the clean, hard rattle of raked gravel, the cricketing stitch of midday in hot meadows, the delicate web of children’s voices in bright air–these things will never change.
The glitter of sunlight on roughened water, the glory of the stars, the innocence of morning, the smell of the sea in harbors, the feathery blur and smoky buddings of young boughs, and something there that comes and goes and never can be captured, the thorn of spring, the sharp and tongueless cry–these things will always be the same.
All things belonging to the earth will never change–the leaf, the blade, the flower, the wind that cries and sleeps and wakes again, the trees whose stiff arms clash and tremble in the dark, and the dust of lovers long since buried in the earth–all things proceeding from the earth to seasons, all things that lapse and change and come again upon the earth–these things will always be the same, for they come up from the earth that never changes, they go back into the earth that lasts forever. Only the earth endures, but it endures forever.
—You Can’t Go Home Again
So it is Monday again and we are back at the salt mine. Make the most of your day.
Happy birthday to Viggo Mortensen (b. 1958) who is almost as old as I am.
We made a lot of jokes this past weekend about 28 Days (2000) and how we hoped daughter #1 would make a toast just like Sandra Bullock does in that movie and wear a black bra under her Maid of Honor dress,
and that made me want to watch it again. This movie was the last one Viggo made before he was launched into the stratosphere of movie super-stardom as Aragorn in The Lord of the Rings trilogy.
(Yes, we still have that poster hanging in the basement…)
Up ’til then Viggo usually played the second or third or (minor) male part. Frequently he was cast as a heavy and his career was all over the map, veering from Albino Alligator to Portrait of a Lady in one year. We made it a game for awhile finding Viggo in small parts in obscure movies–sometimes the movies were way inappropriate for pre-teens–but it was fun.
Anyway, I always liked 28 Days, even though it was not a hit. Which is typical.
So happy birthday to Viggo Mortensen.
P.S. My dual personality has actually met Viggo, since he is an alumnus of her north country university (where her DH is a math professor) and occasionally returns for events. I always thought Viggo kind of looks like that other north country alum…
Kirk Douglas! The chin you say, but not just that…
dual personalities 