Spirituality: The Spirit weaves its way deeply in and through the fabric of life processes making astonishingly foolish paradoxical life-bearing connections where none seem possible. Notice.
The poet says it best: “The point of life is not to succeed
The point of life is to die trying.” Millay
Give a damn, I say
I don’t care how you do it, just give a damn
Sleep til noon
Rise before dawn
Worship Satan
Worship God
Both will respond
Try silent listening
A crow may caw
Despise and detest
Adore and believe
Jesus told Peter to go to hell
He did He became Pope
Stop Sit down Shut up
Multiple times a day
Recipe for prayer
If you give a damn
Introverts: Pipe up
Extroverts: Shut up
True Story: Visit to the infusion center for allergy/asthma injection
Enter at one of a million entrances. Follow signs.
1. Register here after already having registered twice digitally
2. Waved on
3. Forward march—two more corners
4. Meet Nazi Nurse, brandishing her weapon of choice
her stance erect, her face stern
5. HALT!
6. Will she fire her “pistol”? Will I live or die?
7. No, she sweeps my forehead
7. I’m cool.
8. She fires anyway, questions like bullets. Fever? Exposure? Travel? No/No/No. Then a brand new one: bruises on your toes? Wha? I bend down to remove my boots and nearly fall over. She says. NO, no, no need. (Liability rules!)
9. Final exam question: Have you been depressed lately?
“Haven’t you?” I say
She grimaces, and at last grins.
She gives a damn. I pass muster. Wait here. Fully trained, scanned, and cleared, I obey.
A young blonde nurse emerges to escort me into the lab. Why are you here? Doesn’t she have mountains of paper work on me? Oh, and I guess you’re not old enough for vaccinations yet? I tell her I’ve had both. “How come?” “I’m old,” I say. She readies my syringe, holds it down at her side and just beyond my vision as if I didn’t know it was there and ready to job me. Why don’t they just blindfold people, like a firing squad? We notice and gaze together at an enormous nest high in a tree. Bird? Squirrel?
One pandemic
Two pandemic
Three pandemic
Four
Global disease
Global warming
Global murder
Global mindlessness
Watch “An Inconvenient Truth”
Rewatch it Rewatch it
Take a course in Emotional Intelligence.
We are collectively unintelligent—
Toddlers to seniors
Don’t fight
Do not battle
Do not start wars on anything
Just give a damn and work hard
Wage peace
Wars require one winner
and one loser—always.
Wars sow seed for more wars.
American Dream is a nightmare
Dream your own dream
Try Humility
It will feel too big
You can grow into it
Families are landmines—
death-dealing and life-saving
Tread with caution and humble ear
You give a damn. Don’t lie.
True Story: an old man with dementia lies in a hospital bed at home. He is dying. He knows it. So do his family. They bed him down with great care and affection. They leave. He is alone in dark, sleeplessness. He has one last trip to make. He struggles off his bed, crawls first then staggers, then crawls through a hallway and up a few steps. He’s almost there. He lifts his whole body, just enough to hurl himself forward. He made it. He’s on his bed—bed of marriage, bed of conceptions, bed of sweet sleep, bed of love. His wife of years comes to bed and sees him sprawled there. His presence seems abnormal and normal. She is so tired. There’s no room for her in the bed. She angrily tells him to shove over: “Can’t you at least make room for me after all these years?” He is fast asleep and unmovable. She tries kissing and other persuasions before she realizes that he is dead. He gave a damn.
History: Christendom was a word coined in ancient times (800CE) to translate the concept of universal Christianity into Anglo Saxon language. It offered optimism and hope in the face of Viking brutality and invasion. Missionaries would convert the Norsemen to an all-inclusive religion of compassion divine, based on the generous caring ways of God-in-Christ.
BUT, over centuries, and coming to a new nadir in this 21st century, religions have consistently been perverted by practices of exclusion and persecution in the putative name of the Father whose Sons aspire to carry out His ways. Will we, sadly through revolution and violence, return to consider the universal nature of salvation for all living things—as it was in the beginning?
I wanna be loose and raucous
I wanna be cool and holy
I kill myself with my bipolarity
I grasp at life and let go of life—at once.
Tell your story
Or keep silent
Shout it out
Or shut it up
Take a risk
Make it brisk
Trust yourself
Trust your God
Tell a friend
Take an M&M
Grief
not peace
Is the global unifier
Just give a damn!
For the Conductor of the Eternal Symphony: The prayer of the psalmist who gave a damn, prayed a damn. (Translation, Pamela Greenberg, portion of Psalm 19)
The sky unfolds story of your presence;
the firmament tells of the work of your hands.
There is no word or phrase
in which the voice of your creation is not heard.
Throughout all the earth, rope
of your hopefulness goes forth,
and their words reach the end
of the world’s long stretch of land.
