My trip begins today!

Here's a map of Air Canada routes. If you look way down in Texas for the one red line going northwest, that's the route I'll be flying to Calgary today. I'll be visiting Cousin Margaret and her family for the next nine days; then on October 9, I will fly one of those red paths from Calgary to Seattle! I will be seeing daughter AE and partner KA in Ballard.

I am not sure if Cousin Margaret has a computer at her house; I know she does not communicate via email at all. So I may not be on a computer until I get to Seattle. . . so no blogging until then.

I will return to Corpus Christi, TX on October 14.

Supporting the military?

Our local newspaper is pretty sad compared to bigger cities'. However, today they printed a letter from a local Navy wife who lives at the Navy Base here. This is a REAL person who has family connections with the military and tells, giving LINKS, of Obama and McCain's history of supporting (or not) military personnel.

Military's support

I am a Navy spouse and a proud member of a Blue Star and Gold Star Family. My husband is a JAG, and my brother-in-law was a pilot and one of three sailors killed in the Navy helicopter crash in January 2008 in Corpus Christi. I am proud to support Barack Obama for president.

Blue Star Families for Obama is a grass-roots movement of military families that has formed a collective voice in support of Obama's comprehensive plan for supporting our troops. We respect John McCain's military service, but his voting record is less than honorable when it comes to supporting our troops and veterans.

Most recently, Obama was a co-sponsor for the brand new GI Bill enacted June 2008, which McCain campaigned against. Obama has an 80 percent overall rating from the Disabled Veterans of America in comparison to McCain's paltry 20 percent. In addition, McCain received a "D" grade from the Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America (www.iava.org).

If you are surprised by McCain's lack of veteran and military support, visit the Blue Stars Web site at www.bsf4o.com for more info, and join the online community choosing Obama as our new commander in chief.

Michelle Gross

(Corpus Christi Caller Times, September 29, 2008)

Blogging Awards!

Thank you to Ruth for this sweet blogging award:

As a recipient of this award, there are rules to follow. I have to answer the following questions with one word answers and one word only! Then I must pass it on to seven others!--I already blew the one-word rule, so do what you want!

The questions are as follows:

1. Where is your cell phone?
Amazingly, next to me on the desk.
2. Where is your significant other?
Gone to work on the house he's remodeling two houses down from ours.
3. Your hair color?
Brown and gray.
4. Your mother?
Deceased
5. Your father?
Deceased
6. Your favorite thing?
Books!!
7. Your dream last night?
Being in a doctor's office.
8. Your dream/goal?
Write a book.
9. The room you're in?
Sunroom, which is like a family room.
10. Your hobby?
Blogging
11. Your fear?
Insecurity
12. Where do you want to be in 6 years?
Home
13. Where were you last night?
Home
14. What you're not?
Unkind
15. One of your wish-list items?
More books. . . .
16. Where you grew up?
Everywhere
17. The last thing you did?
Read the Sunday newspaper.
18. What are you wearing?
What I wore to church: khaki linen skirt and blouse.
19. Your TV?
Off
20. Your pet(s)?
Sleeping
21. Your computer?
OK
22. Your mood?
Content.
23. Missing someone?
Always
24. Your car?
Celery green (though it's "official" name is fancier).
25. Something you're not wearing?
Socks
26. Favorite store?
Container Store
27. Your summer?
HOT!
28. Love someone?
Always
29. Your favorite color?
Green
30. When is the last time you laughed?
Today
31. Last time you cried?
At Joe's funeral.

I nominate the following bloggers:

(This is always hard to do, because so many have already received this award, and I love many, many blogs.)
1. Katherine E. at Meaning and Authenticity, who brought me into the blogging world and into connection with RevGals. She honestly shares her struggles and insights with work, church, politics, and her life. The title of her blog tells what she strives for, ever since I met her at the Spiritual Formation Academy in 2001 BB (Before Blogging).
2. Jiff at An Orientation of Heart, who doesn't blog as frequently as I wish she would. Still, I find each post worth the wait. Jiff has directed me to many books I have appreciated, both concerning spirituality and mysteries, my current craze.
3 & 4. Ellie at Does Not Wisdom Call? which features meditations, quotations, and prayers combined with beautiful art. Ellie has two other blogs, too. She collects great political cartoons, quotes, and news stories at Child of Illusion.
5. Sherry at A Feather Adrift, who brings passion and intelligence to her posts about politics. I always wish I could write as eloquently as she does. And a special bonus is that on Fridays she collects multiple pertinent posts from various blogs of interest, and not just politics--there are even some good recipes!
6. Seething Mom, who expresses the anger and frustration a mother feels about the injustices towards her gay son and the homophobia rampant in the USA. Since I have a gay daughter, I identify with how she writes and wish I could be as vocal!
7. Jaliya at Pushing fifty. . .gently. . . if I can find my glasses, who has a wonderfully eclectic blog. She refers to other blogs and websites that I would never find unless she posted. She has a sense of humor I like and an inquisitive mind!

I appreciate Missy giving me the Brilliant Brilliante award (see sidebar). Selfishly, I'm glad I already received it before, because it's too hard to choose bloggers to honor, especially "new" ones! She said if I'd already gotten it, to give it another person, so I can manage just one more:

Angry African on the Loose, who uses language elegantly to espouse the African philosophy of "UBUNTU"--"I am because you are." He talks family, politics, anything with passion!

Trip coming up!

On Tuesday I am flying from TX north to AB, Canada!


My cousin (really my mother's cousin) Margaret just called me from Calgary, Alberta, Canada, where I am traveling to on Tuesday, September 30. She is graciously planning events for us to attend and was asking how well I can walk and/or climb stairs after my knee arthroscopy. What's also exciting is that she asked her family to celebrate her birthday on October 2 in Bannf! I have always wanted to go to that beautiful area of the Rocky Mountains!

Bannf, Alberta, Canada

My underlying urge to visit Cousin Margaret was to get her to tell me family stories--I even bought a digital voice recorder for that purpose. I am realizing she is welcoming me into her family so as to help me know that they are all my family, too. I'll be meeting her children and grandchildren, too, whom I've only seen pictures of.

I will visit in Calgary until October 9 when I will fly to Seattle to see daughter AE and her partner KA. This way I'll spend the weekend with them there, when they are off work. This lonely only child suddenly has a lot of family to visit up north.

It will be a shock to return to hot weather again on October 14!

Flowing, Changing

The bulletin for Joe's funeral today had a profound quote from Border Lands: The Best of David Adam's Celtic Vision:

"Everything in this life is visited by its tides and seasons. This world is in a state of constant flux; all is flowing, changing. The more alive and alert the creature is, the more likely it is to be changing regularly. All of us are caught up in the pull of the ebb and flow of the whole of creation. In each of us thee are many strong currents at work. We are a very small and frail craft in a mighty ocean. Yet we may be privileged to discover, in the ebb and flow, that nothing is lost, only changed."

"Flowing" 2006
Michelle Martin McDulin

Praying Our Distractions

Praying Our Distractions

Martin Smith

You can't say about praying: "Practice makes perfect; gradually you will get to be really good, so be patient with the messiness of your beginner's results. In time you will be proud of what you achieve." Instead, the advice might go something like this: "Honey, prayer is God's way of getting you to meet the cast of characters you call your distractions. God knows we spend a lot of time disowning them and pretending we don't know them. They are family. Prayer will always be messy, because they are. Those 'distractions' are our mess. They're the mess we are in. So prayer is our rendezvous with them and God is present to introduce us. Maybe what you call your distractions are really the main event."

Source: Newsletter of the Episcopal Diocese of Washington

From Inward/Outward. Subscribe here.

In Memory of Joe

"TESTAMENT"

by Wendell Berry

1.

Dear relatives and friends, when my last breath
Grows large and free in air, don't call it death --
A word to enrich the undertaker and inspire
His surly art of imitating life; conspire
Against him. Say that my body cannot now
Be improved upon; it has no fault to show
To the sly cosmetician. Say that my flesh
Has a perfect compliance with the grass
Truer than any it could have striven for.
You will recognize the earth in me, as before
I wished to know it in myself: my earth
That has been my care and faithful charge from birth,
And toward which all my sorrows were surely bound,
And all my hopes. Say that I have found
A good solution, and am on my way
To the roots. And say I have left my native clay
At last, to be a traveler; that too will be so.
Traveler to where? Say you don't know.

2.

But do not let your ignorance
Of my spirit's whereabouts dismay
You, or overwhelm your thoughts.
Be careful not to say

Anything too final. Whatever
Is unsure is possible, and life is bigger
Than flesh. Beyond reach of thought
Let imagination figure

Your hope. That will be generous
To me and to yourselves. Why settle
For some know-it-all's despair
When the dead may dance to the fiddle

Hereafter, for all anybody knows?
And remember that the Heavenly soil
Need not be too rich to please
One who was happy in Port Royal.

I may be already heading back,
A new and better man, toward
That town. The thought's unreasonable,
But so is life, thank the Lord!

3.

So treat me, even dead,
As a man who has a place
To go, and something to do.
Don't muck up my face

With wax and powder and rouge
As one would prettify
An unalterable fact
To give bitterness the lie.

Admit the native earth
My body is and will be,
Admit its freedom and
Its changeability.

Dress me in the clothes
I wore in the day's round.
Lay me in a wooden box.
Put the box in the ground.

4.

Beneath this stone a Berry is planted
In his home land, as he wanted.

He has come to the gathering of his kin,
Among whom some were worthy men,

Farmers mostly, who lived by hand,
But one was a cobbler from Ireland,

Another played the eternal fool
By riding on a circus mule

To be remembered in grateful laughter
Longer than the rest. After

Doing that they had to do
They are at ease here. Let all of you

Who yet for pain find force and voice
Look on their peace, and rejoice.

Our next president. . . .

I can't get this Thomas Friedman editorial out of my mind, in the midst of grief and concern over Joe's death. Maybe I'm connecting stuff to the meditation upon Jonah 3 and 4 yesterday in our EFM class, where I realized our entire country needs to repent and turn around--and sacrifice. Give up using so much gas, less air conditioning (AAK--in Texas, too???), buying, consuming more than we need. . . We all would have come together after 9/11, but were not challenged to do so. Now we're fighting over side issues like a pig wearing lipstick when the economy is finally showing its true state of being.

I don't always agree with Friedman, but I think this editorial hits where it should about the next president. He ends with:

"The last president who challenged his base was Bill Clinton, when he reformed welfare and created a budget surplus with a fair and equitable tax program. George W. Bush never once — not one time — challenged Americans to do anything hard, let alone great. The next president is not going to have that luxury. He will have to ask everyone to do something hard — and I want to know now who is up to that task."

Go here to read the full article, which is entitled "No Laughing Matter."

A Good Death

Today is a very good day to die.

Every living thing is in harmony with me.

Every voice sings a chorus within me.

All beauty has come to rest in my eyes.

All bad thoughts have departed from me.

Today is a very good day to die.

My land is peaceful around me.

My fields have been turned for the last time.

My house is filled with laughter.

My children have come home.

Yes, today is a very good day to die.

From Many Winters by Nancy Wood

This is the way Joe died on Monday. I wish my parents had experienced such deaths, but still I know they were welcomed in love to their new lives. I hope my death will be like this someday.

Chuckle

Death Comes

Cargoless,
bound heavenward,
ship of the moon
~~Dohaku

My friend Joe died this afternoon, peacefully and with his family around him. The hospice nurse said he had a "zen death."

Rest in peace, dear friend. As you are in the arms of the Divine One, may God also envelope your loved ones left behind with love and comfort. Amen, amen.

Love

“There is a desire within each of us, in the deep center of ourselves that we call our heart. We were born with it, it is never completely satisfied, and it never dies. We are often unaware of it, but it is always awake. It is the human desire for love. Every person on this earth yearns to love, to be loved, to know love. Our true identity, our reason for being, is to be found in this desire.

“I think William Blake was right about the purpose of humanity; we are here to learn to bear the beams of love. There are three meanings of bearing love: to endure it, to carry it, and to bring it forth. In the first, we are meant to grow in our capacity to endure love’s beauty and pain. In the second, we are meant to carry love and spread it around, as children carry laughter and measles. And in the third we are meant to bring new love into the world, to be birthers of love. This is the threefold nature of our longing.”

May, Gerald G. The Awakened Heart. San Francisco: Harper Collins, 1991. 1.

Desire for God IS God

"All your love, your stretching out,
your hope, your thirst,
God is creating in you so that God may fill you. . . .
God is on the inside of the longing."
~~Maria Boulding

This was part of the meditation I read to Joe yesterday. Tears and love keep me thinking of and praying for Joe today.

I lit two candles for him and Mary Jane at the Oblate Grotto in San Antonio this afternoon. (That is next to the school I used to attend--Oblate School of Theology.)

Pray for Joe and Mary Jane

Please pray for my friends Joe and Mary Jane. Joe is dying of cancer and today came under the care of the loving local service of hospice.

Last night Mary Jane called and asked me to spend the night with her. Joe had suddenly worsened; the doctor came to their house and said his body was starting to shut down.

MT and I stayed at their house until this afternoon. (We know each other from our Friday Renovare Group.) We were there when the hospice nurse arrived, followed by the hospital bed and oxygen. The instructions and example given by the nurse were extremely helpful. By the early afternoon, it was comforting to see that Joe was much more comfortable.

I was blessed to be there, especially when I read and prayed a meditation from David Adams' Border Lands: The Best of David Adams' Celtic Vision, with my two friends and later with Joe. He echoed some of the lines of a repetitive Celtic prayer. He agreed that God was there. I felt that to be true.

Although Joe is sleeping a great deal and eating very little, except for applesauce with ground medicine in it, he is aware for brief intervals. When he heard that his children were coming, he said, "Wonderful." Two arrived today, and the last comes tomorrow.

Hospice is so good.

Peace Prayer

Eternal wellspring of peace--
may we be drenched with the longing for peace
that we may give ourselves over
as the earth to the rain, to the dew,
until peace overflows our lives
as living waters overflow the seas.

Marcia Falk, The Book of Blessings
(Beacon, 1996)

Yay for Birthdays!!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY
TO DEAR FRIENDS,
GRANDMERE MIMI and RUTH!!

Go and visit Grandmere Mimi and Ruth and wish them a happy day!

Who's in the Boat?

Statue of Jesus by Kent Ullberg
October 1995
Commissioned by FUMC

This statue of Jesus in the boat is in front of First United Methodist Church of Corpus Christi, TX. I was an active member beginning in 1994 and for the following ten years, until I rejoined the Episcopal Church.

Today I remembered a story about Jesus and the boat from the time it was ordered and installed in front of the church.

My good friend JT, who has since moved to Fort Worth, griped on our weekly Sunday walks on the bay front (and thus in front of the church) that too much money was being spent on this work of art and should instead be spent on the homeless and less fortunate.

Eventually, JT came to a realization that continues to get me to smile and also to realize that judging is not exactly Christ-like. She finally came to acceptance of the statue when she visualized all the people in the boat with Jesus. The immediately repulsive person she thought of in 1995 was Geraldo Rivera!

As I think of this today: "Who's in the Boat with Jesus?", I realize that Sarah Palin is there; George Bush is there; even Osama Ben Laden is there. Jesus would not exclude anyone from the boat.

What gives me the right to exclude people? Back to:

Bless ___________, change me!

It so goes along with this story of the Desert Fathers that I read today in the book the Wisdom Class is reading and discussing each Tuesday: Where God Happens by Rowan Williams. You may be familiar with this one; it's one I've always loved and needed to be reminded of!

"There was a brother at Scetis who had committed a fault. So they called a meeting and invited Abba Moses. He refused to go. The priest sent someone to say to him, 'They're all waiting for you.' So Moses got up and set off; he took a leaky jug and filled it with water and took it with him. The others came out to meet him and said, 'What is this, father?' The old man said to them, 'My sins run out behind me and I cannot see them, yet here I am coming to sit in judgment on the mistakes of somebody else.' When they heard this, they called off the meeting." (p. 20)

(originally from: Ward, Benedicta, trans. The Sayings of the Desert Fathers. Kalamazoo, MI: Cistercian, 1984. 138-139.)

Perhaps I can stop judging if I remember to ask myself, "Who's in the boat?" and remember to pray, "Bless __________, change me."

(Still, I can vote for whomever I wish.)

And it is important to remember that just because I (or anyone else) is ON the boat, I (or they) have not "arrived"--it's a journey of learning to become the person envisioned by God, a journey and not a destination.

Bush Drills Us Ever Deeper

by Nick Anderson
Center for American Progress

Women Against Palin

WOMEN AGAINST PALIN

"This site was created to shine light on the anti-woman policies of John McCain and Sarah Palin. McCain's choice of Palin was insulting to women who care about policies that affect their lives. We, as women, will not vote for any candidate based solely on his or her gender. American women are smarter than John McCain thinks. We will take our voices and votes to the ballot box this November and vote for change that will empower the average woman. That change will not come about with John McCain and Sarah Palin."

This site also has links to latest election news articles from Reuters, AP, and Yahoo!News.

10 Reasons Why Hurricane Season Is Like Christmas

Number Ten:
Decorating the house (with plywood).

Number Nine:
Dragging out boxes that haven't been used since last season.

Number Eight:
Last minute shopping in crowded stores.

Number Seven:
Regular TV shows pre-empted for 'Specials'.

Number Six:
Family coming to stay with you.

Number Five:
Family and friends from out of state calling you.

Number Four:
Buying food you don't normally buy . . . and in large quantities.

Number Three:
Days off from work.

Number Two:
Candles

And the Number One
Reason Hurricane Season is like Christmas:

At some point you’re probably going to have a tree in your house!

~~~~~~~~~~

Son BJ, who is in Austin, says that his Houston house-mate told him that there is a tree on the roof of their rented house, a tree blocking their driveway, and part of the backyard fence is down. Their house is in northeast Houston.