Both Hands Before the Fire

Left: Theodore Roosevelt As A Rough Rider
by Vincent Monozlay

Right: Robin Williams as Theodore Roosevelt
in Night at the Museum

**********

Not Roosevelt's last words, but very nobly spoken
merely a year before he himself died relatively young:

"My sorrow is so keen for the young who die
that the edge of my grief is blunted
when death comes to the old,
of my own generation;
for in the nature of things
we must soon die anyhow and we have
warmed both hands before the fire of life."

Theodore Roosevelt Jr.
October 27, 1858 ~ January 6, 1919 (aged 60)

**********
As Halloween approaches with its emphasis on honoring our ancestors,
let us contemplate the magnanimity of Roosevelt's observation, along with these words of wisdom from Keanu Reeves:

Stephen Colbert:
"What do you think happens when we die?"

Keanu Reeves:
"I know that the ones who love us will miss us."

My Niece Jessica's Awesome Firepit
[And My Nephew Aaron's ~ All Souls' Night]

Believe It Or Not

Palm Sunday Sunrise

Notes toward next year's Easter Sermon:

1. Cassandra. Be sure to liven things up a bit, shed a little doubt, spread a little worry, a little realism, a little heartbreak.

2. The friend (ordained, Wise Woman, Spiritual Advisor Extradorinaire) who paid me the compliment of likening my blog posts to sermons.

3. The friend (self - ordained, priestess, Earth Angel & Goddess Among Women) who told me something she remembered from childhood -- when "a preacher came to our church when I was a kid, part of whose credentials read "self-ordained." HA! That's me, I think, in the advice department." Me too, though such a faithless one at times, as well as self - certified primary health care provider; I know best! (gmail: 2 / 28 / 09)

4. A Prayer for Owen Meaney: "Lord, I believe; help thou mine unbelief" (Mark 9: 24). Doesn't that say it all? Especially for a Gemini -- belief / unbelief -- what's the difference really? They go together.

Vernal Equinox Over the Wabash

5. Statement of belief from an introspective friend:

"Sometimes I wish I still went to church. But the boys picked up early on that I wasn't really connecting with the creeds, like I think you should if you're going to say them. And I couldn't satisfactorily answer their excellent questions. But I'm still somehow the "mascot for God" in our family, because I sometimes want to say grace or go to a church service, or talk about the Mystery in some form or fashion! That qualifies me, among this apostate crowd! Of course I do believe every second that God exists and wishes me and everyone else every good and perfect thing, and I am thankful for these blessings in a pretty steady stream of beatitudes. It's a faith that just comes out, moreso than goes in, if that makes sense." (gmail: 8 / 28 / 06)

6. Subversive murmurings and how I feel about repeating some so - called truths about mysteries that I can never really be sure about, e.g.:

God from God, Light from Light, True God from True God -- yes
of one being with the Father -- no
He will come again in glory -- okay
to judge the living and the dead -- no
his kingdom will have no end -- yes
We believe in the Holy Spirit -- yes
who proceeds from the father and the son -- no
We believe in the resurrection of the body -- well, not really
and the life of the world to come -- surely yes, in some way or another . . . (such as, "then shall I know . . . ")

7. I know that everyone is always quoting the "Faith, Hope, and Love" part, but I have always liked the "Knowledge" part best:

"For we know in part, and we prophesy in part. But when that which is perfect is come, then that which is in part shall be done away. When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things. For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known. And now abideth faith, hope, charity, these three; but the greatest of these is charity / love."
1 Corinthians 13: 9 - 13 (KJV)

I actually do believe that "now I know in part, but then shall I know even as also I am known." I like to think that someone out there somewhere knows more about me than I know about myself, and that one day I'll be able to see the complete picture of my own life in a way that I just don't have access to right now. One day my partial (i.e.,"imperfect") knowledge of this entire puzzling, chaotic universe shall be made whole (i.e., "perfected") and that will be heaven.

Rise and Shine Over the Atlantic

8. Some other things to believe in: Christmas, the precession of the equinoxes, the miracle of oxygen, the lifelong quest for truth and beauty, and of course the pursuit of knowledge. "All who seek the truth are welcome here." "None forbidden, none compelled."

9. The wisdom of refreshingly cynical kids, blurting out things like, "Okay, now remind me again just what is so important about Jesus." Or "Well, maybe that's just not any of God's business!" On the April 29, 2008 episode of the Colbert Report, author Anne Lamott quotes her ten - year - old son Sam as saying, "God has to sort of let life do its thing." I think my sons would agree.

10. If my life depended on it: "I believe, I believe, I know it's silly, but I believe."

The Ecclesiastical / Paschal Moon

Oh, Goddess, how long?
May the Goddess hasten the day!

The Size of Grief

Dodie's Cat, Mittens
Rest in Peace ~ 29 June 2014
You can see how she got her name -- look at those big fluffy mitts!
In the same vein, Ben & Sam used to refer to our cat
Josef's front paws as his "muffins"
and his strong back paws as "jack rabbits"!
My cousin Dodie writes: "Mittens was a great cat and has been a member of the Foothills Barton Family for about 7 years. She was an awesome hunter (run gophers, run!) and a fun, playful kitty. We loved her very, very much and miss her dearly. She had a different sort of pattern and her coloring was a great camouflage for our area!"

********************
For the past few years whenever friends or relatives of mine have lost a dear pet, I have shared with them my favorite lines from a wonderful book-- My Cat Spit McGee by Willie Morris -- that I happened to read not long after my 19 - year - old cat Josef died, back in 2007. You may remember the Kevin Bacon movie a few years back: My Dog Skip, based on the book with the same title? Well, Spit McGee is the sequel.

Before beginning the story of Spit McGee, Morris refers briefly to the loss of Skip and a later dog Pete. He says: "I wish Skip and Pete had known each other. Someday if I make it to heaven I plan to go looking first for my mother and father, and my grandmother and grandfather, and Skip and Pete. I speculate now: How would my cat, Spit McGee, have gotten along with Skip and Pete? And in the very elemental asking I believe I know: they would have been an honorable triumvirate" (10).

Morris also includes this passage, which he quotes from "The Once Again Prince," a story in Separate Lifetimes by Irving Townsend: "We who choose to surround ourselves with lives even more temporary than our own live within a fragile circle, easily and often breached. Unable to accept its awful gaps, we still would live no other way. We cherish memory as the only certain immortality, never fully understanding the necessary plan" (see Spit McGee, 140 - 41).

I have typed, photo - copied, mailed, emailed, and posted these passages any number of times before today. But this morning, when I read about darling Mittens, it occurred to me that I should organize them into a blog post in her memory, and in honor of my cousin Dodie and her daughters Miranda and Clarissa who are grieving the loss of their special little friend.

I'm also reminded of the following poem, which came into my life around the time that we had to say farewell to Josef's brother Marcus. I am intrigued by Borges' idea of affection (and surely grief as well) being the size of the thing it's felt for. I know there can be tragedies more vast and many times worse, yet so often our grief is precisely the size of a dearly loved, recently departed, and much missed pet -- the size of Mittens, Marcus or Josef. I think the sentiments of this poem are appropriate to any number of situations, and I have a feeling that you will like it as much as I do and find a place for it, just the right size, in your heart:

The Disappointments of Childhood

"Perhaps a bird was singing and for it I felt
a tiny affection, the same size as a bird" ~Borges

Imagine now, an affection the same size
as the thing it's felt for: for the seed,
seed-like emoluments of liking and,
for the rain, droplets of tenderness
clustered in puddles at your feet.

And now remember how, as a child,
someone is telling you they love you.
"How much does daddy love you?" they
ask and you, childlike, spread
your arms as wide as a child can.

Little do you know it then, but the rest
of your life will be spent measuring
the distance between "that much"
and what love, in fact, is capable of --

The narrow width of a man or a woman,
their terrible thinness,
their small bones
growing constantly inward
from your spreading arms.

by Michael Blumenthal

A similarly intriguing thought
on the size of grief
by Stephen Colbert:

“The interesting thing about grief, I think, is that it is its own size. It is not the size of you. It is its own size. And grief comes to you. You know what I mean? I've always liked that phrase ‘He was visited by grief,’ because that’s really what it is. Grief is its own thing. It’s not like it’s in me and I’m going to deal with it. It’s a thing, and you have to be OK with its presence. If you try to ignore it, it will be like a wolf at your door.”

A sweet CD
recommended by my sister Peg:

Dear Old Josef, in his Retirement Years

“What sort of philosophers are we,
who know absolutely nothing
of the origin and destiny of cats?”
~ Henry David Thoreau ~

PS ~ October 2014
Precious Little Beaumont
an artistic tribute from my friend Jan Donley

Loving America the Al Franken Way

Entrance to what used to be a rural Indiana cemetery --
now adjacent to our Menard's parking lot
"Loving American the Al Franken Way"
Chapter Five in Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them
by Al Franken

"I've made a list that takes a good, hard, if quick, look at our great nation's history, pointing out the good and owning up to the bad. It's not meant to be a complete list. For example, I've left out the Gadsden Purchase of 1849, which was something of a mixed blessing. This list is more a bittersweet love song to the world's only remaining superpower, that majestic, though slightly flawed, country that I call home.

Salem witch trials -- bad

Revolutionary War -- good

Slavery -- bad

Ending Slavery -- good, but hard

Civil War reenactments -- weird

Massacring Native Americans and breaking our treaties with them -- bad

Indian casinos -- ?

Child labor during the Industrial Revolution -- bad

Child labor mowing lawns and babysitting -- character-building

Labor movement creating the weekend -- good

Land grant universities -- hot

Rural electrification -- hotter

Social Security -- hottest!

Dictating pop culture for the world -- mixed

Selling Saddam Hussein chemical weapons in the eighties -- In retrospect, bad

Louisiana Purchase -- bargain

Grand Canyon -- wonderful, though we really can't take much credit for it -- no wait:

National park system -- really good

Leading human genome project -- probably good

Genetically engineering super race of unstoppable killers -- bad, but probably inevitable

Winning World War II -- wow!!!

Creating democracy in postwar Germany and Japan; laying groundwork for European peace and prosperity in second half of twentieth century -- right on!

The Greatest Generation -- greatest!

The Greatest Generation -- best - seller

Liberty -- good

Justice for all -- would be nice

Bill of Rights -- great! but Second Amendment could have been clearer

Putting man on the moon -- awesome, if true

Supporting vile dictatorships in Iran, Indonesia, Iraq, Dominican Republic, Guatemala, Congo, Paraguay, Haiti, El Salvador, Bolivia -- bad

Parades -- wholesome fun for whole family

Gay parades -- exuberant expressions of individuality often featuring highly imaginative floats and costumes

Conducting horrific medical experiments on African - Americans in Tuskegee -- bad

Japanese Internment camps -- good. Wait, what were these?

Truman Doctrine -- smart

Vietnam -- mistake

Winning Cold War -- credit all around, to postwar Republican and Democrat presidents alike

Gross human rights violations in name of winning Cold War -- credit all around, except to Jimmy Carter

Women getting the vote -- good . . . for women! Just kidding. It's good for everybody!!!

African - Americans getting the vote -- good . . . for African - Americans. Kidding again. Good for Democrats!!!

Making mistakes -- bad, but inevitable

Correcting mistakes -- good, but not inevitable

Calling those who point out mistakes "unpatriotic" -- itself unpatriotic

Owning up to our mistakes -- brave

America -- home of the brave" (24 - 27)

Happy Independence Day

Old Cemetery in Tippecanoe County, Indiana

P.S. Al Franken for President!
Dream Ticket: Colbert & Franken (in either order)!

Too Funny

David Sedaris is another author (like Bill Bryson) that I look forward to reading, book after book. The first one I read was Me Talk Pretty One Day, back in the summer of 2001. You know how some movies or books have such great and funny and apt lines that they just don't go away and you keep incorporating them into your life and conversation and laughing over and over? Well, that's Me Talk Pretty One Day! When I had this book open, I could not stop laughing - even while sitting all by myself on a public park bench. I may have looked a bit on the crazy side, but I couldn't help myself. He is that hilarious!

A couple of summers later, I was reading his book Naked while traveling, and the same thing happened again, yet another bout of suppressed (as best I could) snickers and snorts. Coincidentally, this is exactly the kind of thing that Sedaris loves to write about, i.e., what to do when you find yourself seated beside a nutcase on an airplane.

If you're into books on tape (CD, IPOD, whatever) it is especially fun to listen to Sedaris read his own works. He is very funny, of course, and so sincerely modest and unassuming; there's a touching sweetness in his tone that I wasn't really expecting.

For additional listening fun, try Stephen Colbert's I Am America (And So Can You!). Colbert, like Sedaris, has a built-in shit detector (see column to your right hand) and he's not afraid to use it! You can plug these books in, do a few miles on the treadmill, and let everyone else at the gym wonder what the heck it is that you're chortling about!

FOR MORE ON SMART WITTY DAVID SEDARIS
READ THE LATEST POST ON MY BOOK BLOG:

"CATCHING UP ON SEDARIS"
KITTI'S BOOK LIST
www.kittislist.blogspot.com