Quiet Joy

Normally I rise and start work between 3 and 4a.m., courtesy of God’s blessing of prostate cancer, but Saturday morning He granted me the grace to sleep till five.

I pad out to the living room and boot the computer to begin my day’s work.

Our miniature grandfather clock ticks away minutes and chimes the hour. My fish swims back and forth in the aquarium beside my desk. Ginny’s useless bird, Fancy, preens in his cage.

Outside darkness melts into a gray dawn. Ground fog drifts outside my window obscuring view of other houses down the street. That mist dissolves into a low drizzle of rain. Were I filming a Dracula movie, this would be a perfect day to shoot.

I intended to mow the lawn today but the rain cancels that project. I feel the comfortable pleasant relief you feel when something you planned to do but really didn’t want to gets thwarted by outside circumstance.

As I thought and prayed through my morning devotions, God Almighty did not fuss at me for a change.

The news tells me that a city council in England, in a movement to be all inclusive, has made applications to drive a taxi available in Braille for blind people. Once, the church I sometimes attend initiated a campaign to be “All Inclusive” in our community. Everybody in the pool! I see a parallel between the church’s movement and the one by that city council.

But as I started to get critical in my thinking, I also pondered that invitation in the last chapter of the Bible: “The Spirit and the bride say, Come . And let him that heareth say, Come. And let him that is athirst come. And whosoever will, let him take the water of life freely”.

Whosoever will may come.

And I pondered Mark 8:34 where Jesus said, “Whosever will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me”.

An exclusive all inclusiveness.

A no nonsense all inclusiveness with barbs.

But, not being a blind taxi driver, I need not concern myself over much about such things. The Lord knoweth His own.

I hear the clock radio in the bedroom beep 6a.m., Ginny’s usual wake-up time. She ignores the sound. After ten minutes, I go in and punch the button to stop the thing. She mutters a sleepy, “Thank you” and snuggles down under the covers for another couple of hours.

I answer a handful of e-mails, read blogs and news, think about work on the will of God manuscript and about the transcribing of Barbara White’s Prayer Diary.

I hear the rain on the roof falling heaver now.

Ginny wakes and comes out in her robe for coffee; her sleep-tousled white hair forms a silver halo around her face in the lamp light. She zombies awhile, sipping coffee as we discuss going out for breakfast. Decide not to.

As she started cooking, I shave, shower, and dress in tan slacks with a favorite tan wool sweater, loose enough to be comfortable, warm enough to be cozy.

In the kitchen I find her at the stove wearing her sweats. I slip my hands under her sweatshirt. She slaps my fingers away with a smile of pleasure and promise. At the sink I wash yesterday’s dishes as she fries bacon, cracks eggs, and stirrs grits.

She serves my bowl of grits so hot they could smelt iron ingots. Just right! Touch a pat of butter to those grits and it disappears into a pool of gold. Ginny fills the pepper shaker and I sprinkle a constellation of black stars on the white surface.

The Lord Jesus has granted me a morning without my hands shaking today so I can spoon my food without slopping it all over me. Thank You, Lord.

I lather jalapeno jelly on my toast. Ginny’s mother bottles this green jelly and sends me a few jars every Christmas. This morning feels more like Christmas than Christmas did.

We retired to our chairs in the living room. Ginny reads her Martha Grimes novel; I hold a musty volume of theology unopened in my lap, a book which interests me but would not keep me from drowsing off.

I run bristled cleaners through my pipes. A fresh pouch of Toasted Cavendish rests beside the steaming coffee mug at my elbow—my Saturday-morning coffee mug, the one with the Vargas girl in the red swimsuit.

An atmospheric inversion, or whatever, causes my pipe smoke to float in visibly layers a few feet below the ceiling. Wind blows outside. I hear oak branches scrape against the wall of the house. Our electric fire logs flicker.

For God only knows what reason, Ginny starts to clean out the hall closet by the bathroom. I hear her muttering to herself in the background, saying, “Why in the world are we keeping this”?

No answer needed.

A few minutes later I look over to see an alchemist at work. She’s intent on combining partially empty bottles of shampoo. I snap a photo with my new keychain camera:

I don’t disturb her.

I open Kierkegaard’s diary on my lap, but stare into space instead of reading..

This is the day which the Lord hath made…

Why can’t they all be like this?

Who Needs e-books?

This morning’s :London Daily Mail newspaper announced that the Portsmouth City Council now makes applications to get a taxi driver’s license available in a new mode—in Braille.

Seven Years Ago...

Although I’ve converted my files so my books are available in both print and e-book editions, I’m concerned about the dangers of e-books.

You see, yesterday I picked up four garbage cans full of fallen branches from our yard and afterwards I took a bath; and while laying in the bathtub reading a murder mystery, I fell asleep.

That got me thinking…

What I wonder is—if you fall asleep in the tub while reading an e-book, will you get electrocuted?

Steve Jobs did not address that possibility when he unveiled his new Ipad reader the other day; and the folks selling Kindles don’t talk about it either. Are they hiding something?

I prefer real books with ink and paper myself, but then, I’m old fashioned.

Besides picking up sticks yesterday, I also worked preparing more of my friend Barbara White’s old diaries for transcription. Her Along The Way series of books is also available at www.bluefishbooks.info. Last year she entrusted me with the 14 spiral-bound notebooks containing her prayer diaries and I’m transcribing and editing them for future publication.

I see one of my rolls as a writer is to preserve old diaries which might otherwise get lost and I’ve devoted a lot of energy to that end.

Here is a scanned page (click to enlarge) from Barbara’s entry for December 19, 2002:

That page caught my attention because it mentions Ginny and me. It got me wondering what my own diary for the same date might say.

So I dug back in the closet to pull down my own diary from seven years ago and here is what I found:

Wednesday, December 18, 2002

A few minutes ago, about 8:30 a.m., my brother David called on his cell phone saying he’s driving up to Shand’s Gainesville for his lung transplant as soon as he arrives. Months ago I agreed that if he survives the operation I will go to Gainesville, take the training and be his caregiver for a week or ten days.

So much for the Christmas plans Gin & I made last night.

We’ll see what happens.

Anytime the phone rings, Ginny and I both say, “Oh goody, there’s somebody with plans for our life”….

However, in spite of all my bitching, on some level I want to be 100% at the disposal of Jesus Christ. And if He has holiday plans for me different from my own, I don’t like it but I intend to follow Him to the best of my ability. I won’t win any points for being a cheerful giver, but I will try to fit into His plans. Damn it.

It would be nice if I could pray like Tomas A’Kempis in Of The Imitation Of Christ for real:

"O Lord, Thou knowest what is best for us, let this or that be done as Thou pleaseth. Give what Thou wilt, and how much Thou wilt, and when Thou wilt. Deal with me as Thou thinkest good, and as best pleaseth Thee, and is most for Thy honor. Set me where Thou wilt, and deal with me in all things just as Thou wilt. I am in Thy hand: turn me round, and turn me back again, as Thou shalt please. Behold, I am Thy servant, prepared for all things; for I desire not to live unto myself, but unto Thee; and O that I could do it worthily and perfectly!

Amen to that, Brother Tom.

Barbara White took me to lunch at Silver Star. She says she feels she has a discerning spirit which indicates that I am in danger of burn out or some kind of health problem. While we were there, Barbara felt that Peggy, the young waitress who has served us for years, was in pain; when she and Peggy talked, it turns out that Peggy has a large tumor which requires an operation scheduled for next month.

While I was out, a library in New England called Eve (our daughter who was home from college camped in our tv room during the holidays) for an hour-long job interview by phone. She feel good about it. She sounded so professional on the phone; I’m very proud of her.

Eve, Ginny and I went grocery shopping at Publix; while they were in the store, I sat out on a bench smoking my pipe. It was the most peaceful experience I’ve had in weeks..

When we got back, there was still no word from or about David. Not knowing whether or not I’ll be here for Christmas, I took a present over to Chris for the new child she and Rex are taking in.

Being mean and cruel I chased Eve out of her room so Ginny and I could watch West Wing tonight. I also asked her to make arrangements to stay with Jennifer this weekend if possible so Ginny and I could have some time together; recently I’ve wondered if our sex life is over altogether.

Thursday, December 19, 2002, Jennifer’s Birthday

Again today I went over my Will of God ms. (Yes, this is the same manuscript I’m still working on here in 2010, I’m a slow writer) It feels good to be nosing around serious work again.

Eve rode downtown with Ginny to go to the credit union so I had a few hours alone in the house.

At 6 a.m. this morning Barbara called Ginny. Yesterday, she, Barbara, felt a premonition of some sort that I am in some kind of undefined danger, physically, mentally, spiritually, or all three and she wanted to talk with Gin about it. I don’t know what to make of this. Gin doesn’t either.

Still no word about what happened or is happening with David. (He survived the transplant and in 2010 is still doing fine).

At her office Christmas party today Ginny won the prize for decorating the best office door. She used the text of the editorial Yes, Virginia, There Is A Santa Clause as a center piece then surrounded it with various pictures of Santa from all sorts of countries and cultures all over the world.

Here’s the selection I offered for her door:

Take Up Thy Mug And Walk!

Yesterday I finished correcting the 470 proof pages of A Dirty Old Man Goes To The Dogs. That book is now available in both print and e-book formats at www.bluefishbooks.info .

I also entered the book in the Google Books Program, but it will take about two weeks to show up there.

Working with the e-book formatting drives me nuts.

It involves an altogether new discipline and I feel I’ve been disciplined enough already in this life.

It’s that bottle in the smoke thing all over again. I don’t want to learn new computer stuff. I know more than I want to know already, but I’m forced to press on learning more and more to make my books manageable and marketable.

There’s a lot to be said for illiteracy.

In fact, last Saturday a man and his son, a boy of about ten, came into the restaurant where Ginny and I were enjoying smoked turkey BBQ. The little boy read the menu to his father because the man could not read.

I thought that both sad and touching.

Good for the kid.

Anyhow, I hope my books begin to sell better, because we face a financial reverse. About 15 years ago the finance department where Ginny works made a mistake. An audit last November finally notice the mistake.

They came up with a plan to correct their mistake.

All they have to do is reduce Ginny’s salary by 11.6 percent (8.6 percent beginning next month and an additional 3 percent later).

Problem solved.

Their callous letter outraged me.

It was their mistake. Nothing to do with us. But we have to pay for it.

I told Ginny to get in the car. I’d drive her to her office so she could pick up her house plants and coffee mug. I wanted her to walk out. To quit on the spot.

Her reasoning is that 88 percent of her income is better for us than zero percent.

Besides, she’s doing something vital toward feeding hungry children and does not want to abandon them.

She’s both Christian and fiscally responsible.

I’m the pissed out of shape hothead.

Adding to my boil is that this week a guy, a foreign national, came by four times to talk with me about how a local church is exploiting him and his family—if the situation is truly as he portrays it, it borders on slave labor.

I inquired about the legality of what they are doing and it appears legal—but it is as sleazy as Hell. God save us from churches skirting that line between legal and right.

Of course whenever I feel moral indignation, the Holy Spirit reminds me in a flash of the times when I have done the same thing—on a smaller scale, but the same thing—that I’m indignant about. In the present case, I’m remembering times when I exploited guys who worked for me.

When I think of bad guys, it’s easy to see that they is me—only younger.

Jesus said, judge not that ye be not judged.

But I’m not judging, I’m being discerning.

See, there I am again skirting between what is legal and what is righteous.

Good thing Jesus keeps His eye on me because I haven’t given Him much thought recently.

Anyhow, I hope my latest book/e-book sells well. I’m consulting Donald and Helen later this week about e-book contracts, additional formats, and such.

Oh, by the way, about the kid in the BBQ place. At the next table sat a man in a group of people, apparently hunters, judging from their camouflage gear and boots.

This one guy sported an interesting tee shirt.

On first glance I thought he was an environmentalist or something like that because the top line read: God Made A Place On This Earth For All His Creatures…

Below that were vivid wildlife photos of a jumping trout, a leaping deer, and a flying pheasant.

And the bottom line read: Right Beside The Potatoes And Gravy!

A Bottle In The Smoke

The image of a smoking caterpillar sprang into my mind.

Yes, John Tenniel’s 1865 illustration of the caterpillar puffing on a hookah in Alice In Wonderland imprinted itself on my brain. But alas, it was the wrong image.

This came up last night during our devotions. For years Ginny and I nurture the custom of reading a short Bible passage and praying briefly after dinner practically every night.

Last night as Ginny read a few verses from the longest chapter in the Bible, we encountered these words:

I know , O LORD, that Thy judgments are right, and that Thou in faithfulness hast afflicted me.

Let, I pray Thee, Thy merciful kindness be for my comfort, according to Thy word unto thy servant.

Let Thy tender mercies come unto me, that I may live: for Thy law is my delight….

My soul fainteth for thy salvation: but I hope in Thy word.

Mine eyes fail for Thy word, saying , When wilt Thou comfort me?

For I am become like a bottle in the smoke; yet do I not forget Thy statutes.

How many are the days of thy servant? when wilt Thou ….

Whoa!

Back up for a minute there.

“Don’t you mean smoke in a bottle?” I asked.

That’s when I thought of Alice’s caterpillar smoking fine tobacco in a Turkish water pipe—the smoker draws smoke through water in the bottle to cool it

I didn’t think they were blessed with pipe tobacco back in Old Testament days.

“No,” Ginny said, “It’s not ‘smoke in a bottle’; it says, ‘A bottle in the smoke’. What do you suppose that means? Did they even have glass bottles back then”?

Seeking answers to our questions, just for fun, we looked up the passage in a couple of different Bible translations:

One renders the Hebrew text as, “There's smoke in my eyes—they burn and water, but I keep a steady gaze on the instructions You post”.

Another says, “I am shriveled like a wineskin in the smoke, exhausted with waiting. But I cling to Your principles and obey them”.

Another says, “I have become like a wine-skin black with smoke; but I still keep the memory of Your rules”.

Another, “Although I have become like a shriveled and dried out wineskin, I have not forgotten Your laws”.

And another, “I am as useless as a discarded wineskin; yet I have not forgotten Your commands”.

Oh, that’s right. In the old days they kept wine in a cured leather sack. To drink, you hoisted the pliable bag up, rested it on your upraised elbow, squeezed the bag, and squirted the wine into your mouth without touching your lips to the spout—very macho.

As a curio, you can still buy wineskins. Try a college book store or one of those Pier One or World Import places.

Years ago, when I was teaching the Gospel of Luke to an adult Bible class, we had a Breakfast With Jesus lesson because so many of the things Jesus said and did happened at a meal. I asked everyone in the class to bring in some food mentioned in the Bible. They brought pieta bread, figs, apples, smoked fish, cheese, roast lamb—and one person brought in a wine skin and we took turns trying to drink from it without getting soaked.

Great fun.

This photo of an Italian statue of Polyphemus drinking from a wineskin looks just like me trying it. I mean the sculptor Antonio Novelli might well have used me for his model of the Cyclops.

Well, not exactly.

But you get the idea.

But, He-Man statue aside, why did the Psalmist say he feels like a wineskin in the smoke?

Jesus may have had this Old Testament Scripture in mind when He said, “No one puts new wine into old wineskins. The old skins would burst from the pressure, spilling the wine and ruining the skins. New wine must be stored in new wineskins. That way both the wine and the wineskins are preserved”.

When a wineskin bottle is fresh and pliable, it expands as the wine inside does. But if the skin is left hanging around, say on a tent pole, smoke from the hearth dries out the leather. It gets stiff. It cracks. It shrivels. It gets old. It can’t hold the new.

Oh, now I’m getting the picture. The Psalmist is saying he feels like a bottle in the smoke, dried up, past his sell-by date.

I can identify with that.

For instance, for the last few months I’ve encountered the problems associated with transforming my print books into e-books. I resist. I’m old fashioned enough to only think of books as real books and those others as air books… yet publishers everywhere confront the popularity of e-books with a new generation of readers. I’ve been working on new formats and considering the implications of free-range books and digital rights management.

New wine for my stiff old hide.

New technology. New ideas. New formats. New wine.

I face similar factors in my spiritual life. I’m comfortable with the way I am. I don’t want change. I want the familiar. I like the old hymns, the old methods, the old sermon modes—all this new stuff I see expanding in religious circles makes me feel as though I have gas.

Swollen up.

Ready to pop.

Seems to me like organized Christianity needs a good fart.

But that’s a different subject.

Saint Paul once said, “If any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away ; behold , all things are become new. And all things are of God…”.

Yes, the Lord is always bringing new things into my life, new people, new ideas, new problems, new victories, new defeats, a new Heaven and a new earth. He stretches me beyond my present capacity.

But I resist.

Like the Psalmist I too feel like a bottle in the smoke. Dried up, set in my ways. Like the Cyclops I’m content to dwell in my safe little cave. Like Alice’s caterpillar, I all I want is to sit on my mushroom, smoke my pipe, and watch the world pass by.

I say, “Thanks very much, Lord, but that’s enough. You can stop now. I’m happy the way things are. I like me the way I am. Quit already!”

And He says, “Open your mouth wide and I will fill it”.

I suspect He knows what He’s doing.

The Psalm says, “My soul fainteth … Mine eyes fail … I am become like a bottle in the smoke”.

That’s my condition.

It also says, “Yet, I do not forget Thy Statutes”.

That’s my hope.

First Photos With My New Toy

Yesterday, Ginny bought me a new toy.

No special occasion, a just for the hell of it gift.

Now, I own a brand new Aries Mini Digital Camera, Model ATC-0103.

Hoot!

Of course, I snapped a photo of her across the table from me in a fast food restaurant as the first picture with my new camera:

Over our coffee we talked about how in the Bible God broke into peoples lives while the people engaged in ordinary, everyday activities—fishing, herding sheep, thrashing grain, filling out tax forms. The Lord of all creation is Lord of ordinary days.

My own ordinary activities recently involve correcting proof copy for my book A Dirty Old Man Goes To The Dogs. Two things impress me about this manuscript:

First, some sections are really good. That surprises me. Once I write a piece, I’m inclined to forget it and dismiss it as over and done with, so when I re-read it months later, it amazes me that I could have written so well. I mean this book is not terrible awful.

The other impressive thing is how many mistakes I make. I mean, I have gone over manuscript drafts before submitting it to the printer. Even so, I’m finding typos (our for out; and form for from are two I make all the time). I’m finding I misuse words that sound similar but have different meanings (such as fine and find). I’m finding inconsistencies in numbers. And I find that I should have stayed awake in seventh grade English grammar when they taught the use of commas…or should that word be comas?

Anyhow, such stuff occupies my ordinary activities over recent days.

Once we got home, I played with my new camera some. Here’s a photo of my pipes and ashtray:

The little camera works fine, but my shaking hands blur the picture. (An age-related nerve thing sometimes causes me to wobble a bit).

The camera’s best feature is that it has only two buttons: on/off and snap photo. That’s just my speed.

I mean we own this other digital camera that offers 837 features and settings. I think it has settings for taking pictures of flowers, one for pictures of mountains, one for portraits. I think there’s one setting for photographing male turtles and another for female turtles—it won’t work if you can’t tell the difference (fortunately, I can).This camera has a day/month and year timer and a setting for getting close-ups of coins. It will pop corn. It will calculate logarithms. I think there’s even a taser setting in case you want to take photos of unconscious people.

I can’t work that camera! I must have 600 photos of my own feet from when I lowered that camera before it finished focusing on the scene I was trying to photograph.

However, my new mini digital camera has advanced to the high point in technology that it only has two buttons and I can actually take pictures with it.

There is no flash attachment so the lens gathers available light—like so:

This morning, my friend Wes treated me to breakfast at one of the worst restaurants either of us has ever been in and I snapped this photo of him beside a waterfall/fountain in the dining room:

Again, it’s my shaking hands that cause the blurring.

One of the best things I like about my new toy is that this camera dangles from my keychain; yes it is that small. I can always have it handy in case I see something beautiful I want to capture. For instance, when we finally got out of that restaurant, across a parking lot, I saw this distinct weather front moving into Jacksonville:

It spanned from horizon to horizon—miles and miles of straight-line storm clouds, every inch with a bright silver lining in the morning sun.

Yes, I am ready to photograph anything I come across now.

That reminds me, Saturday while browsing over old diaries in a book store, I came across this anecdote about photography:

A reporter asked Marilyn Monroe, “Is it true that you posed for those pictures with nothing on at all”?

Marilyn replied, “Certainly that’s not true. The whole time I was posing I kept my radio on”.