August 6: Fragility of Life, Absolutely Go to Heaven,Sharon Olds, "My Father's Eyes," Adventrues of Stickman

I've been thinking a lot about the fragility of life.  Yesterday, as I was hiking up from the base of a waterfall, I nearly slipped off the edge of the hill into the valley below.  Lots of rocks.  It would have been a very hard landing.  In the space of a few seconds, my life could have changed forever.

Of course, that's always the case with anybody.  Things happen.  You walk into a party and meet your future spouse.  You have a romantic evening, and suddenly you're a parent.  You go to see your doctor, and she tells you that there's a mass in your abdomen. You wake up in the morning with a pain in your side, and in the evening, you're in an operating room, having your appendix removed.  Fragility.

I have plans.  Syllabi to put together.  Poems to write.  An attic to clean out.  These things are all on my to-do list.  I make lists.  All the time.  Those lists help me feel in control.  Notice I used the word "feel."  In reality, I know that I'm not in control.  But the illusion of control is important for my peace of mind.

My sister, the one at the University of Michigan Hospital, was always in charge, at work and at home.  People depended on her level-headed, no-nonsense approach.  This time, last year, she was going to movies and out to eat.  Visiting with her nieces and nephews.  She was happy.  In control.  At least, that's what she believed.  Yet, right now, she is beyond making decisions, telling people what to do.

At one point in Mr. Ives' Christmas, Ives' son, Robert, asks Ives:

"Do you think that if you die just after receiving communion you will absolutely go to heaven?"

Robert is young, impressionable, full of faith in God's goodness.  Ives answers him, "Yes.  Without a doubt."  Robert is looking for comfort and assurance, and Ives provides it.

I will be traveling to Ann Arbor tomorrow to see my sister.  I'm going with one of my best friends (and one of my sister's best friends).  My friend offered to drive me, and I accepted.  I know that I'm not in control of my life or my sister's life.  I have to give her over to God.  I am simply going to provide comfort and love and support, like Ives gives to Robert.  I won't be posting again until Saturday.  Maybe Sunday.

Life is fragile, but God's love isn't.  Hopefully, I'll be able to help my sisters who are down there, making the decisions, understand that.  It's time to hand over the reins to the Big Guy in the Sky.

Saint Marty hopes he's doing the right thing.

My Father's Eyes

by:  Sharon Olds

The day before my father died
he lay there all day with his eyes open,
staring with a weary dogged look.
His irises had turned hazel in places
as if his nature had changed, bits
of water or sky set into his mineral solids.
Every time he blinked, the powerful
wave of the blink moved through my body
as if God had blinked,
a world unmade in the jump of an eyelid.
They said he was probably not seeing anything,
the material sphere of his eye simply
open to the stuff of the world.
But toward evening he would seem to move
his eyes toward my voice or his wife's voice.
And once, when he got agitated,
reaching out, I leaned down
and he swerved his blurred iris toward me and with-
in it for a moment his pupil narrowed and
took me in, it was my father
looking at me.  This lasted just
a second, like the sudden flash
of sex that jumps between two people.
Then his vision sank back down
and left only the globe of the eye, and the
next day the soul went out
and left just my father there
and I thought of that last glint, glint without
warmth or hope, his glint of recognition.

Adventures of STICKMAN

July 1: Fantastic Dreams, God's Love, Patricia Lockwood, "When the World Was Ten Years Old He Fell Deep in Love with Egypt"

And in church he recalled certain recent fantastic dreams.  There had been a dream about ancient Egypt recently.  Of it he could remember this:  of riding across a desert in a chariot to attend a dinner party at a nobleman's house.  He driver was a Nubian slave.  In that incarnation Ives was a minor architect of some kind.  He wore a silken cape and a soft gold skullcap and gold bracelets around his arms.  He carried vials of perfume as a gift for his friends. . .

Ives has a lot of strange dreams and visions.  There's colored winds and spinning suns.  He's an Egyptian architect and a French monk and a Parthian.  Each incarnation of himself is searching for some kind of divine knowledge, and understanding of God's love.

I've been thinking about God's love a lot today.  Maybe "thinking about" isn't quite the right phrase.  More like "struggling with."  I'm not really seeing God's love in what's happening with my sister.  I don't see divine mercy or justice.  I don't really see anything close to what I associate with Jesus or the Big Guy in the Sky.

I'm not sure where I'm going with this post.  I'm angry.  Not thinking really clearly.  I'm thinking of the plagues God visited on the Egyptians, especially the final one, where all the first-born children of Egypt are killed.  I've always had a difficult time with that plague--how children are somehow punished for the sins of their parents.  I know God had to get Pharaoh's attention, but killing kids just doesn't jive with my vision of a loving Deity.

Okay, I'm not going to go any further with this.  I'm trying to figure out the mind of God, and that's not a healthy pursuit.  I'm confused and sad and pissed and tired and _____ (insert any emotion here).

Saint Marty needs to get to bed.

When the World Was Ten Years Old
 He Fell Deep in Love with Egypt

by:  Patricia Lockwood

Just as he fell in love with the dinosaurs,
just as he would fall in love with the moon--
no women in the world yet, he was only ten
years old.  A ten-year-old is made of time,
the world had forever to learn about Egypt.
He entered encyclopedias and looted every
fact of them and when he had finished looting
     there he broke into the Bible.  He snuck
into his mother's room and drew thick lines
around his eyes and those were the borders
of Egypt.  He carefully wrote in stiff small
birds, he carefully wrote in coiled snakes,
he carefully wrote in flatfooted humans.
The ten-year-old world needed so much
privacy, he learned to draw the door-bolt
          glyph and learned to make the sound
          it made.  I am an old white British man,
decided the ten-year-old world, I wear a round
lens on my right eye, the Day, and see only a blur
with my left eye, the Night.  When the sun shone
on him it shone on Egypt, all the dark for a while
          was the dark in the Pyramids, the left lung
of his body was the shape of Africa
          and one single square breath in it Egypt.
They never found all the tombs, he knew.  Anyone
might be buried in Egypt, thought the ten-year-old
world in love with it, I will send my wind down
into my valley, and my wind will uncover the doors
to the tombs, and I will go down myself inside them,
and shine light on all the faces, and light on the rooms
full of gold, and light on even the littlest pets, on the mice
and the beetles of the ten-year-old kings, and shine light
                              on even their littlest names.

Can you explain God's love to me?