Call it a vacation, a sabbatical, a semi-retirement. But I’ve got to stop for awhile. I’ll iPhone some small things in for awhile so you know I’m still breathing somewhere!

Slowly, the meetings have begun to be scheduled again- some of the same meetings I intentionally withdrew from last Fall. These are meetings that are necessary, despite my laissez-faire attitude about getting things done over a phone call or two and a lunch. Not everyone works that way, and it is flat-out wrong of me to try to squeeze everyone else into little molds of me! So, there has been a few additions to the numbers of meetings I attend. I don’t like that, but so be it.

The main thing I do it seems- each day now- is look for mom’s hearing aid (metaphorically speaking). I do that because I think the easier I can make it on the staff where she lives, the longer she will be able to stay there. I am trying, in a ridiculous way I know, to fill in a little of what she has lost through Alzheimer’s and..

It ain’t working..

The alternative to where she is now is more expensive, more distant, and it won’t afford the window views onto fields and trees which mom now is able to enjoy. If she has to move, I will probably have to move, too. And I don’t want to do that, not right now anyway.

Nor can I pretend that her illness has not fed into my own long crisis (series of crises) of faith. What to make of the “loving Lord” my mom still talks about , who (in her God schematic of the way God works) is allowing her memories and consciousness to be sucked away day by day? That, of course, leads to a whole series of mental challenges about human suffering for which the Bible has no non-conflicting answers. Theodicy has baffled greater theologians than me; all I can do is reduce it to kindergarten answers, and try to be calm and assuring when mom is crying and asking, “What is wrong with my brain?” (That’s something new, by the way- her awareness that something IS wrong.) Whatever I say back to her, the answer which underlies my words is this: “Don’t worry; in a year or so you won’t know who you are, who God was to you, or that you even have a brain.”

Sounds harsh, doesn’t it? But ask the caregivers of Alzheimer’s patients if it is not also true- that their loved ones became human husks before they finally and mercifully died.

Hello, God?

Whatever..

If I sound FUBAR lately, and I know I do..well, now you know. FUBAR and his sidekick, Irrelevant. I know those are both self-perceptions born of ego, too much thinking, and a summer surge of depression, but they overwhelm me right here and right now.  I’ve lost the ‘me’ within the ‘I’.

Here’s one of those Internet gems. This one is being passed around in huge numbers- and deserves to be!

Try to define what it is you’re seeing. Try to put in words why this video makes you feel happy and why you’ll probably be watching it again right away. It’s difficult, isn’t it?

Sometimes- rarely, but sometimes- we get to see humans who have set aside their egos and are able to celebrate their common humanity.  Rumi said it this way:

There is a community of the spirit. Join it, and feel the delight of walking in the noisy street, and being the noise.

We are seeing people here of all ages and nationalities being the noise. And note how similar the “noise” looks and feels wherever it is happening!

Go ahead, watch it again now. “I am he as you are he as you are me and we are all together” (The Beatles). That’s yet another way of saying it..

Here’s the Where the hell is Matt webpage. It’s fun. And noisy.

Once convinced by my soon-to-be son-in-law that the iPhone was among the handiest of human tools, I bought one. I’ve had it for eight months now and here’s my opinion of it:

If I lost it today, I would curse, get in the car, and head for the nearest Apple store to buy a new one.

Now, I learn, I can easily post blog entries from it, too! This is the first one so posted.

Prepare to be overwhelmed with minutia.