On a Six-Part Travel Show

On a six-part travel show on PBS

I see the ravages of war in Kashmir,

the contested area between Pakistan

and India, the lush and beautiful

in-between place.

Farther along I see Tibetan Buddhism

practiced in exile safe for now from the

long arm of oppression.  Monks paint

Tibetan images to keep the memory alive.

Metal sculptors beat

the heck out of emerging images to keep

the memory alive, too.  Children sing and

dance and celebrate Gandhi’s birth in trad-

itional Tibetan language.  The exiles yearn for

home but fear war and death.

The U.S. drones down targets in Pakistan,

Afghanistan, still Latin America after all

this time and considers surveying American

citizens on their home turf solely for national

security the powers-that-be assure.

Bodies are torn apart in torn apart places of

elephants, rats and roaches trying to be true

to their calling so they can move up a notch

or two next time around and I just got through

an argument with my

wife that has left me with acid reflux, rising blood

pressure and a really big desire for world peace –

I mean the whole, darn world including my little

six-hundred-sixty square foot domicile before it

becomes a homicile,

and I know that’s not a word, but you get the idea.

Thank heavens, she is a soft fabric sculptor and not

one of those with hammer in hand who bangs the

blazes out of the tin man.

Easter Sunday

It’s seven-fifty two a.m. and I’m thinking

about making a pot of free trade, organic French Roast coffee I found at a

reasonable price but actually had a hard time finding

because of all that yesterday and maybe whip together an everything-but-the kitchen-sink

omelet incorporating the leftovers from the grilled

pork tenderloin dinner I grilled last evening to go with the fresh

farmers’ market vegetable casserole my wife baked

and the great greens salad with pickled beet juice and oil dressing.

I’m listening to Rutter on the radio and having

mixed emotions about the feelings the music is evoking. I’m

reminded of a particularly hard parish and a

tough time in the parsonage. I find myself eager to get to church

this Easter Sunday to hear a word of hope.

I will find myself weeping halfway through a wonderful message

of Jesus’ ever-rising-eternal-all-embracing-love

as I do every time I sit on the hardwood bench, and I will watch the

rainbow coalition of the wounded, halt and lame

in body, mind and spirit get up and gather around the communion

table and as I hear the voices of the choir

and the congregation and the playing of the organist and the pianist

as we all lift a joyful noise unto the Lord

I will get up out of that seat and join them.  From the distant past,

I will hear Peter whispering in my left ear,

“Jesus, where else do we have to go?  You have the words of eternal

life.”  But before all that I have to get up out

of a cushioned chair to make

the pot of coffee.

Good Friday at Augusta National

Good Friday at Augusta National

Where holes are named

Flowering Peach,

Yellow Jasmine,

Carolina Cherry,

Chinese Fir,

Redbud,

Camellia and

Holly.

They are the only girls allowed

On the course to play with the

Boys. Did anyone nail

Golden Bell’s hole in one?

Maundy Thursday

Part I.

It was Maundy Thursday for us Christians

And the day before Passover for our Jewish

Friends and our church back home had a near

Full house we were told for the Seder which

Meant twelve people. I asked my friend how

It went and he said fine.  It was his first Seder

Ever and he thought it went on a bit long but

Because it was his only Seder, he didn’t know

If that was to be expected.  I asked if there was

An empty chair for Elijah and he said there

Were two empty chairs – one for Elijah and one

For me even though I was two thousand miles

Away. I said that was nice and had a glass of wine

Anyway. He said that because he was there and

There were only eleven others, he guessed that

Made him a disciple.  I suggested Judas. He laugh-

Ed his infectiously, Falstaffian, belly laugh and

Said they wanted to keep things light, so after they

Sang some light-hearted hymns, Judas told an off-

Color joke after which the other eleven just shook

Their heads while staring straight down at the re-

Maining scraps of matzoh on their plates, and no-

Body paid him thirty-pieces of silver for the joke.

Part II.

It was the day of Passover eve for our Jewish

Friends and Maundy Thursday for us Christians

When my wife and I stopped by the condo of

Our recently widowed secular Jewish friend to

Ask if she wanted to go to lunch the following

Tuesday, the only free day we had before leaving

For home and to tell her that we wouldn’t see her for

Seven more months, Lord willin’ and the creek don’t

Rise.  She begged off telling us that she couldn’t go

Because it was the continuation of the holiest time.

There are Christmas and Easter Only Christians, at

Least One Passover Only Jew that I now know of

And I’m sure some Ramadan Only Muslims and

Something-Or-Other Only Hindus, Buddhists and

Shintos, for that matter, too.  Are there High Holy,

Or perhaps more accurately, Unholy Only Atheists

Who for the rest of the year are just ordinary, run

Of the mill agnostics like so many of the rest of us?

We Moved All the Furniture

We moved all the furniture out-of-the-way of the carpet layers

except the really heavy Ethan Allen

love seat sofa-bed we keep in the living room so it can function as a second

bedroom in a one bedroom

condo in case family or friends visit or we are having an argument.

Two big guys can lug it off the old

carpet onto the tile in the little dining area.  Almost everything else is Ikea-lite –

credenza, end tables, lamps.

We put stuff on the tiny balcony, stuffed stuff in the dining area and

watched T.V. the evening

before the carpet layers arrived on the new 32 inch, flat screen, H.D.

T.V. on a wicker basket

with a left over tile from the dining area on top which just happens

to fit perfectly.

I sit in the 300 square foot living room part of the 660 square foot

condo which now with the

furniture out feels like a mansion.  My wife just walked out of the previously

teensy and now

cavernous kitchen, stepped an infinite number of steps across the once really small dining

area, reached up to the heavens and

turned off the light. She stepped out of the deep, deep tunnel of distance

into the now huge

formal living area.  I could hardly see her coming.  She seemed so far away.

I’ll be so glad to get

our little condo back after we move the Ikea-lite stuff back into place

along with the heavy

Ethan Allen love seat so I won’t feel like an exploiter of the earth, a grabber

of great gobs of real

estate and the Duke of an English nineteenth century Dukedom.

Because of global warming

and an obscenely warm last week in April back home in West Michigan

where the tulips are

now gone and the officials wait for the start of the dreaded stem

festival, I, still in the parched

desert, start to think seriously about the possibility of the last twenty

years of life in a

10’ by 11’ Dick’s New Year’s Day $40 special Coleman tent with access

to electricity in the McDowell

Regional Park camp ground for watching DVDs on an old worn out Mac

and plugging in the little

space heater to keep the cold out when the sun goes down in the

desert with a bathhouse close

enough for nocturnal visits when the slightest sound evokes a chorus

of coyote calls and morning

showers before I stumble in the dust, fall and gasp my last breath as the

hundred-year-old Chocolate Lab

licks my face as I give up the ghost just as the last twenty years were

getting started and

the guys were moving the Ethan Allen love seat back into place

on the new carpet.

The Ads on the Golf Channel

The ads on the Golf Channel are, by and large, no pun

intended, for erectile dysfunction.  Seriously? Go figure.

While six or seven white collared or

yarmulked men, obviously, seriously of the cloth, who kept their hands

in plain view on the table (this is no sophomoric joking matter), testi-

fied in a very serious manner

and got aroused by the heady dialogue, doctors of divine law called by

secular legislators to testify authoritatively about the mons veneris

in their minds and

wherever else they could stick their probing teacher’s black-board pointers

to titillate and tickle the clitoris, rub the vagina and just stroke that

whole soft, sweet and salty honey pot

of an area before piercing it in a very medicinally appropriately

ultra-sound silent way completely, completely without permission

of the one spread legged on the table.

It sure had the feel that the ecclesiastical guys were so profound in

their testimony with such subsequently piercing and penetrating

dialogue that one

could almost feel the tingling and twitching going on under the table

of the women’s last supper.  And then there was the womb-man legislator

who got up and left,

refusing to attend such a last supper purported to be an above-board,

obviously, objectively public inquiry into the female pubic and

aforementioned, previously private parts;

and there was the female law student who just wanted to mention

her friend who grew obscenely large ovarian cysts if she didn’t

get birth control pills, which would stop

the cysts in their tracks.  Hell, she wasn’t even talking about sex.

She didn’t get to speak but because it wasn’t about foreplay, the

legislators and the doctors

of divinity probably wouldn’t have been interested anyway.  Anyhow,

she didn’t address the august body and while all that was going on,

the big cyst-

sister lost an ovary and may not ever be able to birth a child.

In a Phoenix strip-mall parking lot, sat a really attractive, rear

end, butt, bumper with a sticker that proclaimed,

“If you cut off my right to choice, may I cut off yours?”

Girls Are Made of Sugar and Spice

Girls are made of sugar and spice and everything nice

except when they get pissed and riled and spoken for

and down at by dimwitted boys made of snips and snails

and puppy-dog tails in suits pandering to fringe groups

who have Jesus in their hip pocket and shit for brains

when it comes to complicated moral issues and thinking

outside of the box.

It reminded him of one afternoon in high school when he

invited his new, really, really bright and independent

(Did he mention independent minded?) girl friend to an after

school meeting of Youth for Christ. He was nervous to begin

with not knowing how it would go. After all, her family

belonged to what seemed secretive to him – the Greek

Orthodox Church.  They did strange things

like put colored, hardboiled eggs, shells and all, in

Angel Food cake at Easter and hold handkerchiefs

between them as they dance in circles at baptismal

parties. Being a middle-America, middle-class,

middle of everything high school kid known for a great

collection of crew neck sweaters and Pat Boone white bucks

and who sang “April Love” while walking down

the hall between classes, he was really uncomfortable with the bells and

smells and the priest’s long beard and dunce hat.  His pastor wore a

three-piece suit at the morning and evening service. Given her background,

he wasn’t even sure she was a Christian but she had a great butt to

go with a great brain and he was a high school junior boy made of snips

and snails and puppy-dog tails, but he was even less comfortable

with some of his less than hip

super Christian classmates in Youth for Christ.  And, of course, Murphy was

right.  It went wrong. He introduced her; they sat in a circle and they

prayed around the circle in what was called “free” prayer.  There was

nothing free about it, at least you weren’t free to opt out.  Yes, his new,

really, really smart, really independent-minded girl friend would be

expected, no, required to pray, out loud and spontaneously

(That’s what evangelicals mean by free.).  Where was the guy in

the beard and high hat when you needed him?  He prayed for

bells and smells. The prayer chain moved counter-clockwise and

she was next in line.  He sat on the other side in Purgatory

descending quickly to the ninth circle.   It was her turn. He peeked

and in the corner of his eye saw her pursed lips and clenched

fists. They sat in an eternity of silence. He jumped in with some kind of

incoherent, delirious diatribe of mumbo-jumbo.

Impressed, others thought he spoke in tongues.  It was called free prayer,

but he knew in that moment that it would cost him dearly. You can sit in,

but you can’t opt out; you can check in but you can never check out

like Hotel California. They call it free, but it comes at a really big price.

And maybe, just maybe, that’s what might be on the sugar and spice

and everything nice minds these

days.

Recently, I Wrote

Recently, I wrote about twenty-

Five years ago next August when

Things were topsy-turvy and internal

Compasses were spinning out of

Control, so it was good to think

In terms of four lines at a time like

The four seasons, and round things

Like the moon and steady, reliable

Circles of time and direction, round

And round, externals one could imagine

And actually look at to stop the dizzy-

Ness in order to lend a little stability

And dependability and predictability

To minds bouncing off of walls.

However, as it turns out Magnetic

North isn’t the same as True North

And a bit of calculating depending on

Where one happens to be at a particular

Time, say the degree difference for

Someone in Zeeland, Michigan is

Crucial so one doesn’t wind up in

Lake Michigan without a touring kayak

Instead of the intended destination of

The Sleeping Bear Dunes, and the tick,

Tick, ticking of the clock Isn’t perfect either.

Otherwise, there wouldn’t be a need for Leap

Year and my friend Phil wouldn’t be just seven-

Teen while I’ll be sixty-eight even though

We were born in the same year. But

A compass and topographical map and

Some rudimentary skills in orienteering

And a good, old Swiss Army watch will

Still do in a pinch in case the satellite is just

Off kilter or the battery runs down in the GPS

Leaving one lost in the lurch.