Jacob and his Ladder

Genesis 28:15 - I am with you and will watch over you wherever you go, and I will bring you back to this land. I will not leave you until I have done what I have promised you.


In facing the morning I search for a portent that the day will be good. Sometimes it is simply enough that the breakfast ritual flows without a hitch. Sometimes it can be the simple act of noticing with clear eyes something that had been sought but was partially obscured. Some days I turn to scripture or to other meditative thoughts to give me that bit of augury.

In reading from Thomas Merton’s journals there was a bit on today’s entry about every being discovering that they are at the bottom of their own Jacob’s ladder hearing God’s promise. Merton implied of course that we had to be listening. Isn’t that just like Merton? This sent me scurrying to the Bible Gateway online to find the tale from Genesis.

In speaking to Jacob in a dream God reaffirms the promise made to Abraham about how divine blessing will flow to the people of earth through their family. But God does not end there. He makes a promise to watch over Jacob “wherever” he might travel and I am assuming that encompasses journeys made physically, mentally and spiritually. To have the Divine caring for us would be nice and comforting. This promise that that oversight and care would be present “wherever” is so broad so all encompassing.

There is a balm in the hope of Divine intervention. Whether it is real or not the mere existence of such hope makes a difference. Hope opens up the promise of this day.

Small Movies Reviews-Nothing Current

Over the past few days with Primus and my wife out of town I have been watching a number of little movies on the television.  One movie I saw that was kind of interesting, flawed but interesting, was Liberal Arts.  A second little movie I got caught up in was 28 Hotel Rooms.  A third was Venus with Peter O’Toole.

Of the three the most perfectly executed was Venus.  Peter O’Toole turned in a subtle tour de force in this very small movie about an aging actor who is also a letch.  It is a very English movie filled with several character actors you will surely recognize.  Maybe I really liked this movie because I empathized with the main character, the whole old man and the letch thing.  Maybe I am still thinking about the film is because I like nuanced performances.  Venus is a drama but there is warmth too.  If you saw My Favorite Year it is sort of the end game for that character.  It is however performed with far less yuks and far more emotional realism.

I liked the film because it is the complete package, not because O’Toole character endures prostate cancer surgery (uh like me).  If I remember right O’Toole was nominated for an Academy Award for his performance.  It was well deserved.  I think he lost to Forest Whitaker, for his role in the Last King of Scotland.

The second film 28 Hotel Rooms is a flawed movie with lots of sex and relatively realistic depictions of conflicted emotions. Adultery, mental and physical is at the film’s core but so is the subtle sub textual tale of how hearts, souls perhaps search for real meaningful emotional connection. 

28 Hotel Rooms is bittersweet and its conceit is somewhat strained.  Two young relatively attractive but not knock out gorgeous people meet in a hotel bar. The male is an up and coming writer and the woman is an actuary/accountant numbers geek.  After a few drinks they sleep together; it is the whole zip less fuck thing.  However this spontaneous encounter between two lonely road warriors gets more complex.

On another trip they meet again and then they keep meeting. As they keep hooking up their lives evolve with each taking a spouse and facing their own personal successes and failures.  Each of the participants at times seems to more drawn to their relationship. There are numerous fights and while some of the dialog feels awkward some of it has some real resonance.

I had never heard of the movie before it showed up on the Showtime schedule, maybe it was the Movie Channel. Ultimately I have to say I enjoyed this movie more than I thought I would but it is not light fare. 

On the other hand Liberal Arts is to some degree pure mental floss.  The first thirty minutes or so show real promise but then it devolves into a standard romantic dramedy.  However it has the wonderful Richard Jenkins in it.  Jenkins was nominated a few years back for a best actor Oscar for a film called The Visitor.  If you have not seen The Visitor rent it at once.

The other stars of this film are Josh Radnor and Elizabeth Olsen.  Josh Radnor is playing a variant of his character in How I Met Your Mother.  Elizabeth Olsen has far more talent that is required of her in this movie.  She is the second strongest actor in this film.  Her portrayal of a 19 year old college student lusting after a mid thirties man is fairly well developed and fun.  The best scene in the film is a conversation between Radnor and Jenkins in a dark college bar. His comments about aging and boundaries are spot on. I guess my comment on this film is ultimately this; the movie is fun and awkward and has Richard Jenkins in it.

Captive to Culture

Tuesday, April 02, 2013
I have begun a campaign of cultural terrorism. In the facility where I work there is an unused shelf directly across from the toilet. Each day for a week now I have been placing cultural items on that shelf across from/in front of the toilet printed large enough be read from the stool. One day it was quote from Spinoza. Today it was a poem and a short analysis from a 20th century poet laureate of Britain. Another day the posting was something from Camus.
Most people in their day to day life don’t seem to delve into anything beyond the headlines or the gossip. My thought is that you are prisoner there on the wc for a few moments. It the only thing available is a post on a wall that says something about eternity or how to interpret something aesthetic well maybe the reader is a little better off. Cultural terrorism it is.

Naked on the Lawn

Friday, March 29, 2013


Okay there was this one guy, and I admit this is a digression from my usual metaphysical waxing, who told me a sex related story in the course of my job. Remember when he is talking to me I am trying to decide if this guy is ever going to drink again.


The story began after the pro forma start of the hearing stuff had been conducted. The pro forma stuff means asking if his conviction dates for drunk driving were valid and whether he had every injured any person while intoxicated. After these questions were answered I had asked the gent when he realized he had a problem with alcohol.


The facts were pretty clear the gentleman previously had a raging addiction to alcohol. He was in bars most every night. He drank Jack and Coke to the point where he lost track of how many he was drinking. Life was paycheck to paycheck and most of that check was going into his bar tab. The claim was made that since he quit drinking he was able to buy a house and a small fishing boat.


The guy was not unattractive. A construction worker had that wild but buff roughneck look. Well anyhow this stud had spotted what he described to be the hottest woman he had ever seen in a bar. This Venus (backlit with the alluring glow of a neon sign flashing Budweiser) despite his proffering of free drinks and a line of well polished talk didn’t want anything to do with him. According to his testimony the spurning of his advances made her ever more the prize.


Over the next several months the gentleman chased this woman from bar to bar. Each time he ran into her he tried all the techniques he could muster. Despite flattery, free drinks, the application of the cold calculated logical approach (your attractive, I’m attractive, it could be fun), hard to get, etc there was still no action. But still he persisted.


Eventually something clicked. Maybe the lass developed an interest as to what this wild man-child had to offer under the covers. Maybe for her it simple a lack of other suitable options on a given night, but something happened. Whatever that something was one night she gave in and took him home with her. As he told the story he related he was clear in stating he did not know what had worked the trick. He told me was very, very drunk that night and the hours before the bar closed were very, very foggy.


I was curious and so I bit. I asked how if he had “gotten lucky” after so much drinking did that become the epiphany for him about his alcoholism. The gentleman looked down and responded that it wasn’t really that night but rather the next morning that he realized he was a raging out of control drunk.


At this point the Petitioner’s voice got kind of hushed and his eyes began to tear up. He told me that when he awoke it was kind of cool and the light was very, very bright. The bed was not very comfortable either and no shifting around seemed to make a difference. He decided he had to get up.


Opening his eyes that morning the storyteller realized he was naked and lying on the front lawn of the woman’s house. Strewn about him were the sheets from the bed. At this point the storyteller was absolutely almost inaudible. Apparently according to his telling of the tale what had happened was that he, having had his way with the woman, fell into a deep sleep. The sleep was so deep that when Mother Nature called as she is wont to do after many, many drinks he did not arouse himself to seek relief in the bathroom. Nope he just let the flow go, right there, yep in her bed.


Apparently he was so out of it that the pissed off (pissed on?) lady of the house was able to drag his virtually comatose body out to the lawn without his having due cognition of what was going on. After depositing his spent unclothed carcass there she then stripped the sheets and threw them out on the lawn too. Apparently she did not feel a need to cover him in his raw altogether state.

I was stunned. I really didn’t know how to respond. There were some questions I would have liked to have answered like were his clothes out there. Where were his keys? How did he get home? Why hadn’t the police found him by the time he woke up? You simply don’t ask these questions of someone who is sobbing. What you do is accept as true that this moment was a fulcrum that moved him into sobriety.

Twitching Toward A Sun

Monday, March 25, 2013

The air inside my office is cool. The computer fan hums low so low as to be almost imperceptible. My ears are ringing a bit more than they usually do. When I left my space to go get lunch the air was hovering around the freezing mark. Such are the days of March.


It is in this period between and betwixt the real spring and the harshest of winter that I long most for warm sun. In Michigan we can have many false springs. On the days of promise bright little dewdrop like flowers will appear. On days of despair they will then be buried under six inches of snow. These blossoms will survive and reappear again. Song birds will be present suddenly one day and then gone the next. The trilling will reappear.


On days like this I want to scream and rant. On days like this I want to be a shaman and do a dance that will bring the season of birth into full force. I rage at this in-between. Cabin fever? You think so, eh? Me too.

I Know Nothing

I am the wisest being alive, for I know one thing, and that is that I know nothing. Socrates in Plato’s Apology.

 
I am as part of a team of two people attempting to raise two children. Both are gifted and both are flawed. My guess is that these qualities make them somewhat like their mother and myself. No I am not implying we are smarter than anyone else but we did have our moments in our youth.


Both of our lads have always scored highly on standardized testing. The youngest was among the top 200 scorers in his age bracket on the ACT one year in our state. The oldest is the kind of kid where teachers and administrators pull you aside and say in a sotto voce whisper “He is really smart”. His ACT scores were solid but he has issues with testing. For ASD kids it is one and done and they don’t want to go back or to play to a teacher’s view of how things should be done. But when you talk to him you get it, he knows shit. The younger one never stops talking and if you parse out the Kerouac like stream of consciousness ranting you will see he knows shit too. Each knows different stuff. But they have a wealth of stuff inside those very different heads of theirs.


The child for whom the whispers come is on the Autism Spectrum. The child for whom the top end of the test scores come so easily is Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder. A gaze into their respective eyes reveals chaos and quiet, one has an impenetrable, inscrutable soul and the other a histrionic and hyperbolic persona. Exemplary of the challenges with these two distinct persons is that in each case messages from the school that are to come home to us are lost. In one case they are buried in the deep locker of the mind and in the other case they fly away tied to the legs of birds of fire circling in the air until all elements of the message are consumed in the fire and the light.


What was there that ever prepared me for this? My parents were old and their style of parenting was tired and laissez faire. In rural 1960s America this was probably okay. The risks then were beer, pot, baby making and blowing shit up. Today the risks are neural, viral and environmental. Harder nastier drugs abound. TV shows images of sex constantly and they knew by 6th grade what a hummer was.


I think that maybe I am too old to be raising even a normal teenager in today’s world let alone two very high needs boys. At various times I have been told one child has abused his computer privileges on the scale that the head of the school’s IT department has noticed and the other has melted down in class lying on the floor refusing to move. Ah the joys of youth. Give me the “I caught him drinking beer out behind the barn with those other punks” any old day.


Robert Thurman has said, “Wisdom and compassion are ultimately inseparable, wisdom being the complete knowledge of ultimate selflessness and compassion being the selfless commitment to the happiness of others.” Cleary I am not a wise being, I am fallible, I am confused and I am selfish. But I have been presented with diverse charges and in some senses challenging adversaries. But I care so much for my children. I really get the second part the “selfless commitment to the happiness of others.” Don’t most parents? I promise to live this day with my eyes open watching them take on the world I failed to conquer. Oh how little I know about what to do next.

A Potent Now

The Potency of the Present

Once we abandon the belief that there is a more spiritually useful moment than the one we are in, we have embraced our life and infused it with the energy for awakening.

- Rodney Smith, "Undivided Mind"



It is very hard to view a single moment in life as spiritually useful. Walking to the break room to get a cup of coffee seems so completely unspiritual. Even harder to accept is that a series of mundane moments spent in a vanilla box building doing office work is spiritually useful.

How can the acts of opening the door to the break room, finding my cup, pouring the coffee replacing the carafe on the heating element, walking out of the room, closing the door and returning to my office mean anything? But any sense that these acts are just killing time with insignificant matters isn’t true.

The coffee I use is a decaffeinated blend. I buy that because my cardiologist has told me that caffeine can cause my coronary arteries to spasm. The brand of coffee is Biggby’s Best. I prefer Starbucks blend but I buy Biggby because it is a local company and the owner is a friend to me. More importantly his son is a very dear friend to my son.


Each time I get up I am getting exercise and I sorely need that. This winter more than any other in my life I have been a couch slug and the weight has just piled on. The motion moves my blood and the blood moving makes my mind clear. The coffee maker is not mine and so I owe thanks to the person who brought it in, our clerical person here. She doesn’t even drink coffee. Her brining the coffee maker in is an act of unwarranted kindness.

On the way to and from the coffee pot I may run into someone who is suffering or fretting or otherwise in need of help or affirmation. By either Christian or Buddhist tradition I have to acknowledge them and offer something. I should do it if can help or perhaps lighten their emotional burden in any manner even if it is just by listening. The Lutherans go with “Into pain and suffering you are born…” and the Buddhists go with suffering as being the most basic of the elements of human experience. We are charged in either faith with working toward the elimination of suffering.

Being aware of the meaning of each step I take this morning, each step we take this morning, really does infuse our life with a sense of awakening albeit very small and slight. Sometimes that is all you get. Appreciating the complexities of what it took to put me in this place with a cup of hot dirty brown water in hand talking about someone’s grandson who is struggling, well this is embracing life. It is enough.