Since I am home with the crud, and I cannot talk to myself or anyone else, I decided to get my old blog reestablished on my new computer. I haven't done anything with it for a couple of years, and the last item was titled "My One and Only Political Commentary." It was written on inauguration day, and I listed five things the incoming president would need to do to cause me to respect him as a man worthy to be president of the United States. I have given him two years and here are my thoughts on the same five points:
Point number one advised him to lose the junior high Twitter account...Grade: F. Irresponsible tweeting has brought the world to the brink of war and made this country the laughing stock of the world. Friends have had dreams smashed because of his irresponsible behavior toward other countries, and most of the behavior is being expressed in tweets.
Point two concerned the equal value of the First and Second Amendments to the Constitution, how freedom of the press, religion, and to assemble were of equal value with the rights to own weapons...Grade: F. The White House has never let up on the press and accusations of "fake news" on both sides have made it difficult to know what is actually going on. Non-Christian religions are badmouthed, and anytime any group the White House doesn't like assembles, there are howls (and tweets) of protest. In the meantime, concerts become massacres, first responders die, and the Battle of the OK Corral mentality has taken over.
Third point: Immigration and the fact that every single person in this country who is not full-blood Native American is an immigrant and without immigrants we would be nothing...Grade: F. After the comments of last week, I don't even need to explain this grade!
Point four: the value and power of women. Grade: F. The Twitter attacks on members of Congress, and the current tidal wave of exposure brought on by the "Me Too" movement has indicated to me that nothing has changed here.
Finally, the fifth point has to do with honesty and if I could give and F- that would be the grade. Is he actually as stupid as he appears to be, or is he clever like a fox? People focus on the blatantly ignorant comments emitting from the White House and lose sight of what is going on in the background. Every single time an outrageous comment comes from his mouth, something is done behind the scenes which is far more important than what was said.
Now I am fully aware that all of the crap going on in Washington is not just in the White House. The Capitol building is equally full of it. But last November's elections are heralding change, and I am reading of more and more career politicians who are planning on "retiring" before this year's elections. Could it be that some have finally recognized the emperor's new clothes??
One other comment I made two years ago: "If  'make America great again,' means 'make America white again' I want no part of it." Apparently that is what it means, and that makes me very, very sad.
So...the midterm grade for the man in the White House today is lower than it was two years ago, and he gets the distinction of being the least respected man in the oval office during my lifetime... At least Nixon had the grace to resign.

The First New Year

    One of the things I like to do at the first of the year is clean things up...make an effort to get organized so I can start the year with a clue. The problem is there are two places in my world which need to be cleaned up---my work space and my home space. Together they are a pretty big mouthful. but the good news is that I get two shots at them!

     November 30 is the first Sunday of the season of Advent in the life of the church and it is sort of considered to be a new year's day of sorts. That means I can spend this week cleaning my office and then wait a month before I tackle my desk here at the house! My office looks sort of like an explosion in a box factory. I have been accumulating boxes in anticipation of the coming move and they sort of got out of control. Then there is my two email boxes and the paper chaos known as my desk...I worked on it some today and at least subdued some of the boxes, but I am not sure tomorrow is going to be enough. I really would like to get it knocked out a bit more.

    I suppose I could declare any day to be new year's day, or even better, not let the mess get out of control in the first place, but I have spent my whole life trying to get organized and it hasn't happened yet. There is a great deal of adventure in living in a world where every room is an archaeological dig! And the really good news is that I can throw away the stuff on the bottom of the pile because if it has been that long since I have seen it, I neither need it nor want it!!

    So let the boxing, cleaning, and throwing begin...happy new year!

Reflections on November 22

      November 22, 1963, dawned pretty much like any other day. I was in eighth grade, and while I don't have a specific memory about the early morning, I most likely drug my feet as we were getting ready for school. Mom was a teacher so we did not have to worry about catching the bus...but we did know if the bus went by the house and we weren't ready, it was going to be tight. I probably discussed with my mother about how appropriate it might be for me to take my transistor radio to school, and I won that one...the radio went into my pocket where it always was.

      About 11:30 or so, my class was in line to get into the cafeteria for lunch, knowing that when we finished lunch we were to go to the gym where we would spend the playground part of lunch hour, for someone from either the seventh or eighth grade had poured glue and thumb tacks all over the seats of the art room, and since no one would talk, both classes were to spend the recess and lunch break time in the gym, in the bleachers, doing nothing. Then mom did something she had never done before...she sought me out and wanted to know if I had my radio. She looked worried, funny, and she had never before gone looking for me during school. Everyone knew who she was and who I was, but she tried to honor my space, and I loved her for that...but on this day she came to me.

     The radio was in my locker, so I gave her the combination, wondered briefly why there was not a radio in the teacher's lounge, and then went about my lunch and the subsequent punishment. We were astounded when we arrived in the gym to find the whole school there...there had to be something going on, because the elementary kids had not been involved in the great glue caper. When we were all in our places, the principal told us the news: President Kennedy had been assassinated in Dallas. The little kids did not really know what that meant, but we older ones did. I remember thinking, as school was being dismissed, that there had been a shift in the universe...that somehow things would never be the same...that something more than just the president had died on that day in Dallas. The seventh and eighth grades went ahead and attended the dress rehearsal of the high school play that afternoon, and then we were also sent home. We had just gotten a television, and for three days, we were mesmerized by the events across the country.

     Every generation has a moment in its history, where memories stick like glue...December 7, 1941; November 22, 1963; January 28, 1986; September 11, 2001...those days which changed our world and leave memories time can never erase.

A Very Odd Day

     Today has been a very odd day from an emotional standpoint, and it started in a very strange way. We had our annual church conference today, and while it is a business meeting, it is also a time of reflecting on the past while looking to the future. I have been to a lot of these things, and they normally follow a fairly standard routine. About half way through the meeting today, it dawned on my that this was my last one, the last meeting in which I would be the participating pastor. I nearly lost it, especially when my colleague who was conducting the meeting encouraged the people there to share their thoughts about me with me. I have never been good about accepting complements, and it got to be a bit overwhelming. It has been a season of lasts (last Fourth of July here, last county fair, last Thanksgiving celebration...) and they have all carried the requisite feelings, but this one nearly got me.

     Then I came home to cook dinner. I am really trying to cook meals and eat in a more healthy manner, so tonight, I decided on scrambled eggs and turkey bacon. I had prepared my eggs and poured them into the skillet and started to put the bowl on the floor before I remembered that Macaiah is no longer with us. Egg bowls were one of her favorite human food snacks, and tonight was the first time I had cooked eggs since we lost her. It was a painful moment....

      So it has been a much more emotional day than I expected, but I have learned that there is nothing wrong with emotions...it is all in what I do with them...so I am a little soft tonight. It is a good night to stay home and count blessings, for the blessings are far too numerous to count....

It Was a Dark and Stormy Night...

       It is indeed a dark and stormy night here on the north coast, and I am grateful I don't have to go out...my original plans were to attend the local theater production of "The Glass Menagerie" but I will save that for tomorrow or Sunday. I don't see well in the dark, and when it is dark and raining, I really am a menace. Besides, I want to stay close to the phone tonight.

       The day has been a mixture of good news and not so good news. My brother in law has been undergoing chemo in preparation for a stem cell transplant in January, and everything is on schedule and going well. I am glad. The not so good news is about one of my favorite folks in the congregation who is preparing to leave this world for the next one...the medical folks give him a few days. I went up to the hospital to see him and his wife this afternoon, and while we all knew this day was going to come sooner than later, it is still a tough call and a part of my job which drains me...another reason for staying home tonight.

      Days are seldom if ever all good or all bad, and we need all of the parts to make a whole...so tonight I stay in where it is dry and offer up prayers of thanksgiving, peace, and hope....

Thoughts on Time

    I was not here yesterday and I have an excellent excuse...I slept in on a work day! I am not a huge fan of sleeping in to begin with. I try to go to bed at the same time every night and I need about the same amount of sleep, so I normally wake up at the same time...around 7:00. For some reason totally unknown to me, my body decided to sleep until 8:00 yesterday which threw the whole day out of whack. Several things did not get done as a result.

      I have never been a huge fan of alarm clocks, and for the last twenty years or so, I have not found it necessary to use one except on very rare occasions. As I said before, if I get to bed on time, I will wake up on time. Part of this comes from growing up on a farm where life was not governed by the clock but by the sun and the seasons. My dad used to rage about daylight savings time because it forced us to run the farm on a time schedule different from the world until we could get the cows adjusted to the new time. About the time they got it all figured out, we would have to change again, and cows do not change habits willingly!

     Time is all relative....who says that a day must begin at a specific time? Modern culture wants to start the day with morning, but our Jewish brothers and sisters start the day at sundown. I have been know to restart a day at 10:00 in the morning when it has become evident that if I continue to do what I have been doing, I am going to have a very bad day. A bad day is simply a continuation of a bad moment, and if I start a new day, the bad moment has no continuity. I also rather like the circular notion of time rather than making it linear...that means that days don't start or end...they just sort of roll into one another. No one point on the clock is any more valuable than any other, so that means my sleeping time has the same value as work time and play time.

      A final thought: many cultures have an attitude about time which can be roughly expressed as "start when you are ready and finish when you are through." I really like that idea, and am so looking forward to retirement when a part of my life can be run in that manner...it really sounds good, the idea of losing the clock for a while!

One More Road Trip

     I am really getting tired of driving and going places! Today I had to go to Eureka for a meeting, and while I have lived here long enough to know that the 85 miles to Eureka really doesn't qualify as going somewhere, it surely felt like it today. I was tired when I left Crescent City, tireder when I arrived in Eureka and tiredest when I got back home...then I had to sit through a meeting, and while the meeting was interesting, it did nothing for the tired part...The saving grace is the beauty of the world through which I get to drive.

     So now I am home and in my jammies and thinking about going to bed at the crack of 8:30. Since the first part of October, I have driven to Auburn for a meeting, Sacramento for a meeting, and Anderson for a meeting, as well as two trips to Eureka...my bottom is becoming car shaped! So I am going to use this time to complain a little bit....a mini-rant as it were. I am entitled to do that once and a while, and it is really better for me to complain here that gritch at George!!

     Tomorrow will be a better day, even as I give thanks for a job (even though it requires road trips) and a dependable car in which to travel!