That neighborhood witch

I suppose every neighborhood has its haunted house. There was such a house two blocks from my childhood home. It was mostly dark at nighttime, usually with only a lone light burning dimly in the middle of the house; it was largely unkempt, with few signs of life; there were no pets, no vehicle for transportation. Rarely would we see the very short, rotund little woman with wildly waving gray hair who lived there. She was, according to all the neighborhood kids, a witch.

My parents divorced when I was eleven years old. The four times weekly church attendance and oppressive religious upbringing of my youth ceased immediately at that time. So did the ban on Halloween, and that very year was the first time my little brother and I went trick-or-treating. On a dare my brother and I decided to enter the fenced in domain of our neighborhood witch in order to obtain candy. Our friends laughingly moved on down the street.

A knock on the door and a few seconds wait brought us face to face with the witch. She greeted us with a soft, warm, kind voice. She put candy in our bags and made small talk with us. As she did I remember her slowly slipping her arm around my shoulders, pulling me gently close to her, and lovingly stroking my back. She continued this the entire time we visited with her For a few moments we were the sole focus of her universe. She told us her children were grown and lived far away, that her husband had died, and that she missed them. Even as an eleven year old boy I recognized immediately that this was no witch, but a kindly little lady, all alone, who missed her family and longed for days of yore. The unkemptness of the house and her shabby dress and wild hair were no doubt because of the fixed income she was attempting to live on. The single nighttime light was certainly another attempt to cope with limited finances. Still she had money for Halloween candy in the hopes she could visit with children and for brief moments relieve the loneliness that had become her constant companion.

That was the last time I saw this lady. In short order her home was in the hands of someone else and was fixed up. I suspect she either died or went to a nursing home. In all these years I never forgot her, and I have lived since then with an uneasy feeling that I wanted to go see her again, but being so young and shy at that young age, I didn't know how to go to her door for "no reason."

Halloween tends to be controversial among religious-minded folk. It was a big no-no when I was young and was thought of as a satanic holiday. But I know now, and have known since childhood, that there is real opportunity for blessing to both giver and receiver involved in this yearly, magical ritual. Anyone who reserves time every Halloween to show kindness to children this way is displaying the caring that makes human existence worthwhile. How could that be a bad thing?

Don't play ball ... I don't care

Baseball. American as apple pie. I was first introduced to the game in 1968 by my big brother. We were searching for something to watch one Saturday afternoon when he decided NBC's Game of the Week would do. I still remember the game: the Cubs versus the Cardinals. I don't remember much else or even who won that particular game, but it was the start of my love for the game.

Soon we were collecting Topps baseball cards. How I wish I still had those cards! We started obtaining equipment like bats, ball, and gloves. Soon we were holding our own games of the week in our neighborhood.

That was a magical year for baseball. Denny McClain won thirty-one games for the Detroit Tigers. I remember watching some of the games greats play on TV: Mantle, Aaron, Mays, Marichal, Killebrew, Yastrzemski, Clemente, Gibson, Rose, Bench, and so many more.

Well do I remember rushing home from school every afternoon to watch the World Series between the Tigers and the Cardinals. I usually made it by the second or third inning. I've never made the adjustment to the World Series being played at night. Like most everything else, greed dictates, and the series games are now played at night in order to increase revenue. Screw the folks, like me, who must be at their jobs early.

1968 was the last simple year of baseball. There were simply two leagues of ten teams each. The season ended at the end of September or the first of October, and the World Series was over in early October. Unlike now, when with playoffs and all the series could last until November.

The game I watch now - which I rarely do because it's just not the same game anymore - is much inferior. I hated when they introduced the designated hitter rule. There are too many teams and too many players now, and I think this has lowered the level of competition - although they have tried to make up for this with steroid use! I abhor interleague play: what's the point of the World Series now? It used to be exciting to watch the best of each league meet each other for the first time in the series. Now the contestants might have already played several times during the year. Ho hum. And the uniforms! What is up with those ground-dragging pants legs? In '61 Roger Maris went through hell in passing Babe Ruth's single season home run record of 60 homers. An asterisk was even added to his record because it took him eight more games to hit his mark than it did Ruth. All of a sudden homers are as common as bacteria. Again, ho hum.

Now it just no longer matters to me. I don't care when or if the World Series ever resumes. No interest at all in who wins. Millionaire baseball players just don't cut it for me. The game was better when most players worked another job in the off season and played baseball during spring and summer for love of the game. Ticket prices were cheaper then too, with cheap seats for even the poorest fan. I for one do not feel the players are better today, but that the game has become increasingly inferior. Count me no longer a fan of the game.

Sing it solo

This is going to be a stupid post. I freely admit it. Perhaps it shows how my strange mind works.

Anyway, I was driving home from work yesterday and listening to a country oldies radio station on the way. The Oak Ridge boys came on singing "My Baby Is American Made." Don't know if you're familiar with this song, but the chorus is:

My baby is "American Made"
Born and bred in the "U.S.A."
From her silky long hair to her sexy long legs
My baby is "American Made"

This is an old song which I had heard scores of times. I didn't like it when it came out years ago and age hasn't improved it any, in my opinion. But for some reason, for the first time ever, the sheer ridiculousness of four men singing about one woman struck me.

Oh, I know it isn't meant to be taken that way. I am supposed to suspend belief and hear only a man singing about his girl with the additional voices being merely an innocent harmonic device. But I swear, I couldn't focus on anything else but four guys singing about their one girl. How ribald!

Hey, I'm a big Beatles fan. I've enjoined many times hearing the four of them singing about a girl whose hand they all wanted to hold, or a girl whom they wanted to please them the way they pleased her, but again, it never hit home until yesterday.

And the Everly brothers dreamed about the same girl who had lips like wine and that they could make theirs any time night or day!

Or perhaps these guys are all experiencing the exact same (I love redundancies) feelings about totally different girls. How likely is that?

Aw, just give me the lone balladeer any day. Perhaps I need to find a talk radio station to listen to on the drive home.

Dear old golden school days

One memory which is indelibly etched in my memory took place on a beautifully sunny, very late summer morning, as my mother walked me the six blocks to my elementary school. It was the first day of school for my second year. I was seven years old.

Early on we encountered an elderly woman out puttering in her garden. She must have been in her sixties, well on her way to seventy (if not already there). We stopped to exchange pleasantries, and I remember her making the statement, "My, I wish I were back in school."

I couldn't fathom that!

Fresh from a summer vacation which consisted of staying up late on a regular basis, watching endless television, and playing outdoors just about everyday, of experiencing what was to me an almost unrestrained freedom, school seemed an unbearable drudgery. I thought to myself that the lady must have been speaking facetiously.

Now many years later and facing yet another unpleasant week of job stress, I look back on that morning and think "My, I wish I were back in school!" It wasn't so bad, I now realize. One of the schools I attended had a sign in the lunch room which read, "These are the good old days." How true.

It's not really that I hate my job - although sometimes I do, or at least I hate aspects of it. Actually, I'm truly thankful that I have a job and the ability to remain solvent because of it. With the economy in the shape it's in, I know that mustn't be taken for granted.

But no doubt, adulthood has proved more stressful than childhood. Now don't get me wrong, I'm happy to be in better control of my life than when I was a child, and I wouldn't want to go back and relive it. But sometimes I wouldn't mind returning for a day or two. Like today, for example. I feel as if I would rather be walking to school with my mom instead of getting ready to leave for work.

The really scary thing is remembering once when my disabled father (now deceased) looked at me preparing to walk out the front door on my way to work and remarked, "I wish I could go to work again."

Life!

Where have I been lately?

I'm almost completely a creature of habit. The habit of blogging on a nearly daily basis, once formed, was easy to maintain. Then once I slipped into the habit of not blogging everyday, that also became a habit easy to maintain.

Well, here is what happened. First, the economic situation and the changes it is forcing on my place of employment has been an emotional drag on me. I have been involved in the planning of laying off several of my department's employees. Plan after plan has been discussed and a "hit list" (not a good term, but then this isn't a pleasant situation) was submitted. Upper management was not altogether comfy with the selections, so an alternative plan for deciding for whom the bell would toll was implemented. I feel this has only muddied the waters. Meeting after meeting has been held to weigh the issues involved, but nothing has been settled as the clock continues to tick. By November the changes must be made.

On top of this, I contracted an upper respiratory infection that has laid me low the past week and a half. I haven't missed any work, but "lousy" is an understatement for how I have felt. And for those who think I normally have a somewhat dark personality, you would be surprised how morbid I am when I am ill. Not a good time to put my thoughts down in writing.

Anyway, I felt I owed my small - but very cherished! - company of internet friends, who regularly come here to read my bizarre ramblings, some word of explanation for my absence. Everyone seems to be getting along just fine without me I see, but I have missed you guys and our exhanges. That being so, I'm gonna try to get back into gear. If my cynicism shows more than usual, the above are the reasons. Actually, I'm really feeling better physically, but the emotional drain of my job situation will probably continue for a while yet.

Einstein speaks for me

Here is a quote from Albert Einstein that fairly well sums up my attitude towards religion:

We are in the position of a little child entering a huge library filled with books in many different languages. The child knows someone must have written those books. It does not know how. The child dimly suspects a mysterious order in the arrangement of the books but doesn't know what it is. That, it seems to me, is the attitude of even the most intelligent human being toward God. We see a universe marvelously arranged and obeying certain laws, but only dimly understand these laws. Our limited minds cannot grasp the mysterious force that moves the constellations.

Unlike so many of my fellow travelers, I realize, I fully confess, that I am groping an elephant in the darkness. Einstein was unapologetic in his use of "God" metaphorically for THE ultimate answer. I mean no less than that when I speak of God. How much more than that, I just don't feel I can say with confidence.

I seek to be open minded and fearlessly inquisitive at the same time. I like to think of myself as a critical thinker and a rationalist. Obviously, I don't find the possibility of God's existence irrational. Others believe it is, I know, but with due respect to their right to hold such an opinion, I do not.

While it is increasingly difficult for me to entertain the idea of a personal God, I am more than intrigued by the idea of Logos back of the universe. But I remain, as always, open minded.

I love the circus

I guess I've been neglecting my blog somewhat. The situation at my job has just been so danged stressful of late that my mind has not been in a suitable frame for philosophizing. Whenever I get overly stressed like this, I know it is time for some type of diversion. I had that last evening when my lady friend and I went to the Alhambra Shrine Circus (the Tarzan Zerbini Circus), which is in town this weekend for its annual visit.

Oh, the joy of watching incredibly skilled performers perform death-defying (or at the least, risky) feats while wearing loudly colored and quite teasing costumes!

Ah, the clowns. Well, their main clown, one Piolita, who absolutely possesses both an obviously great sense of humor as well as comedic talent, still managed to make me feel old. Clowning today is evidently much more sophisticated than the seltzer bottles and squirting flowers of my youthful memories. I miss the red bulbous noses and the traditional clown suits too.

And then there were the animals, my favorite portion of any circus. I suppose the highlight of the animal acts for me was not the lion tamer, but the elephants. It was funny because just as the three elephants had finished performing and were making their exit, Lori turned to me and said "I wonder what is going through their minds." No sooner did she utter this question than the last elephant emptied its bowels in a stunning display of excretive prowess. "Does that answer your question?" I asked in return. (I find humor in the strangest of situations.)

Mission accomplished: mood improved, humor restored, mind diverted. I think everyone should take in the circus whenever it comes to town.

Life's illusions

Some years ago I worked with a man who was involved in a minor fork truck accident. He was loading an eighteen-wheeler when it suddenly and mistakenly pulled away from the dock. My friend's fork truck fell to the ground, but being strapped safely inside the protective cage he was only shaken. Our company sent him to the hospital just to be certain. No injuries were sustained from the mishap but a cancer was discovered during the exam. Within a few short months the man was ravaged by the disease and died. I have had many friends, family members, and acquaintances die this way. Apparently fine one day, struggling for life the next. A deadly disease undetected suddenly leaps out like a lion from a thicket and reveals the stark reality of life.

Much of life is like that. We feel safe one moment and totally victimized the next. All it takes is a burglary, a mugging, an automobile accident, a fire in our home, the unexpected abandonment by a spouse or partner, a sudden illness, or maybe the loss of our job to make us think: Man, life sucks!

In my own corner of America during the past weeks we have seen layoff after layoff and some outright plant closings, amounting to over 2,000 lost jobs. For weeks I have known that another round of layoffs was on the agenda at the plant where I work. That was revealed to everyone yesterday, but I had heard my coworkers voice the fear of uncertainty for all these weeks. I know that in about a month I will have to help make the gut-wrentching decision about whose lives will be turned upside down. That really sucks! What's more, I realize that any day our plant could close like so many others around here, and I and the rest of my coworkers would have the illusion of security shattered for us.

If it were possible for me to know with certainty the future, I think I would still prefer not to and to take life one day at a time just as I do now. There is hope in uncertainty. Even uncertainty itself may be an illusion, I know, but it is comforting enough for me. As Jesus well observed: "So don't worry about tomorrow. Tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own" ( Matthew 6:34, New International Reader's Version).

Blake's The Tiger

What a contrast! The Creator of the ferocious tiger is also Creator of the meek lamb? Poet, painter, and mystic thinker William Blake puts this imponderable question to majestic verse in his poem The Tiger.


Tiger! Tiger! burning bright
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?

In what distant deeps or skies
Burnt the fire of thine eyes?
On what wings dare he aspire?
What the hand dare seize the fire?

And what shoulder, and what art,
Could twist the sinews of thy heart?
And when thy heart began to beat,
What dread hand? and what dread feet?

What the hammer? what the chain?
In what furnace was thy brain?
What the anvil? what dread grasp
Dare its deadly terrors clasp?

When the stars threw down their spears,
And watered heaven with their tears,
Did he smile his work to see?
Did he who made the Lamb make thee?

Tiger! Tiger! burning bright
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?

Embracing the silence

Mother Teresa said:

We need to find God, and he cannot be found in noise and restlessness. God is the friend of silence. See how nature - trees, flowers, grass - grows in silence; see the stars, the moon and the sun, how they move in silence ... We need silence to be able to touch souls.

This thought may have a different meaning to me than what she intended. When I speak of or write about God, I mean whatever spiritual focus or reality that is significant to you, the individual. That aside, I love this quote and believe it is a truism.

Who can think, who can do serious introspection, who can truly be in tune with their inner self and with the world around them amid the din of our hectic, modern life?

It was Ralph Waldo Emerson who wrote: "Let us be silent, that we may hear the whispers of the gods."

Maybe "God" does still speak to us today and we are just too distracted to hear.

Has the mother of Jesus appeared in Massachusetts?

The Virgin Mary pops up in a lot of places it seems. Well, hold on a moment. Does anyone really know what the mother of Jesus really looked like? Seems many people think they do, and the proof is the crowds of believers (or the gullible, as I think of them) who are flocking to (how appropriately) Mercy Medical Center in Springfield, Massachusetts to see her alleged image in a pane of glass..

This story says that

As many as 300 people, some weeping, gathered outside the building to take photographs, pray, and say the rosary.

And that

Deirdre Gogel, who came to see the image, called it comforting at a time of turmoil for the nation.

Really this has quite the opposite effect on me, causing me to wonder about the naivety of the masses. That is hardly comforting to me.

If you go here you will find a report that informs us

Officials from Mercy Medical Center said they will have a professional glass and restoration professional analyze the glass where an image of what some say resembles the Virgin Mary has appeared.

These experts will examine the window and evaluate the physical properties of the glass and the window frame. There is no word yet as to what will happen to the window.

Now why would anyone waste good time and money doing this? What do they hope or expect to find? I suppose if nothing else, this will keep the story alive.

Finally, you can go here to see a picture of the image, and to get what I think is the true explanation:

Although glass experts offer a logical explanation -- minerals in the glass caused an acidic reaction -- the window has nevertheless attracted thousands of spectators.

Frankly, I think it takes a whole lot of imagination to see a person at all in the glass. The Virgin Mary? No way!

As soft a place as I have in my heart for people with childlike faith, this is embarrassing.

Why doesn't God just go away?

Rabbi David Wolpe recently wrote:

Religion is no set of abstract beliefs. In different universities I have taught all the "proofs" for God: the ontological proof, the teleological proof, the cosmological proof. Never did a student come up to me after class, clap her hand to her forehead and exclaim "Ah, now I believe!" Belief is not a series of toting up the declarations in column A and column B. It is an orientation of soul.

Anyone who has ever discussed religion in depth with a serious believer in God knows this is true. It seems to be the case for the overwhelming majority of us.

For my part, God has never gone away, no matter how many doubts I have, no matter how many questions force their way into my thinking. I know what I find reasonable to believe, but I stop short of saying (even to myself) "here is the truth" about God and religion.

The matter does seem to be, as Wolpe says, "an orientation of the soul."

Andrew Newberg, MD has written a book Why God Won’t Go Away: Brain Science & The Biology of Belief that delves into this matter. A succinct statement from Newberg on his studied opinion is:

The main reason God won't go away is because our brains won't allow God to leave. Our brains are set up in such a way that God and religion become among the most powerful tools for helping the brain do its thing—self-maintenance and self-transcendence. Unless there is a fundamental change in how our brain works, God will be around for a very long time.

There is also the observation of Blaise Pascal, who said, "The heart has reasons that reason cannot comprehend."

There is an argument - one that doesn't seem to be anything like a "proof" that God exists, but is still a powerful statement of what I'm talking about - called The Argument From Desire, summarized excellently here by Catholic theologian Peter Kreeft:

1. Every natural, innate desire in us corresponds to some real object that can satisfy that desire.

2. But there exists in us a desire which nothing in time, nothing on earth, no creature can satisfy.

3. Therefore there must exist something more than time, earth and creatures, which can satisfy this desire.

4. This something is what people call "God" and "life with God forever."


We will never have a final answer in this life about this deepest mystery, and there may be no other life. But I certainly cannot number myself among those who dismiss the subject with arrogant finality. God just won't go away from me.