On starting to remember....

If you search on-line the words “Tell me about God. I’m starting to forget,” you will encounter a brief story attributed to several sources.

Never mind the sources. It’s the story that matters.

Even as the story has changed with retelling, its essence remains the same.

Here’s one version:

A four-year-old boy couldn't wait for his new baby sister to come home from the hospital. He was eager to be alone with her. But his parents were reluctant to leave a four-year-old alone the infant.  Still, he kept begging, so one night his parents relented. The boy tiptoed into his sister’s room and stood next to her crib in the half-light.

The parents cracked the door, watched and listened as their son whispered,"Tell me about God - I'm starting to forget."
 
Not being a child, I was too self-conscious to ask the question of my new-born granddaughter 15 months ago, but, thanks to the story, the thought of doing so was with me. I found that just being in her presence “told” me about “God” (who is, for me, a verb and silence and is-ness and love. No single word can capture the eternal presence. No word can explain this gift of existence and life, be it old or new or in-between or eternal).

That’s what I’m discovering as I age. If I once “forgot 'God',” I am beginning to remember and re-experience "God," as I grow ever nearer to death.

Perhaps one day as I lay dying, my teen or adult granddaughter will ask to be left alone with me. Perhaps she will knell at my bed and whisper, “Tell me about God. I want to remember.”

She will “hear” my response in the depths of my “spoken” silence, in the eternal presence that enfolds us.

Clara's world

The birth of our first grandchild, Clara, early Sunday morning here in Portland has left me elated and somber.

The joy is pictured in the photo, taken when she was a mere 10 hours old.

Clara arrives as I am well into the first year of my eighth decade.  I've done a lot of soul-searching about aging, death and their mysterious meaning of late, but little Clara's arrival snapped me out of it.

Now I'm riveted on the equally mysterious beginning of life. Clara, like infants everywhere, inspires wonder. My wonder is two-fold: deeply spiritual and, alas, political and environmental.

These tender beings, clearly vessels of the Spirit, speak to the urgent need to heal the planet and drastically, radically, reform our political and economic systems. Innocent new life poses the question of the very meaning of life. It comes down to a question of values.

Some might even ask whether the planet can absorb yet another life like Clara's. It's a fair question, but I find it impossible even to consider as Clara and I stare into each others eyes — in wonder.

Here is the hope and challenge posed by small ones everywhere: Can we old — but not-so-wise — souls still make Earth habitable and hospitable, peaceful and spirit-nurturing for new lives like Clara's?

Still here...

Our cat, Izzy, has been dead a week.

I came home last Thursday to find him yowling in pain and unable to move his hind legs. He was agonizingly hobbled, dragging himself about in fits and starts.

As I was to find out from the vet later that evening at the emergency clinic, he had suffered the feline equivalent of a stroke.

“In humans,” the vet explained, gently breaking the bad news, “blood clots go to our brains; in cats they go to where the main artery to the legs divides.”

And so Iz’s hind quarters, starved of oxygen, had given out.

The prognosis was grim. Without exactly saying so, the vet was gently guiding us to a decision to euthanize our pet of eight years.

We said our good-byes, stroking him after he had been sedated to alleviate the pain and prepare him for the fatal injection. He died peacefully at age 10.

But, I’ve learned, he hasn’t gone.

Not Iz.

He was an indoor cat (after an ferocious outside brawl with an stray interloper) and an insistent presence. He took over the place...or, to be exact, places.... The back of the couch, the bed, the easy chair and vast expanses of our lives.

His presence was, and is, palpable.

It’s ghostly in a comforting way.

I don’t a open door leading outside without wondering where Izzy is. Will he bolt, as he so often did?

I come down for breakfast and expect to be greeted with the meowing reminder that he is to be fed before anything else can happen. Before I put the kettle on the stove or slice a banana or pour out my cereal.

There’s a sunny spot on our bed where I still expect to find him when I enter the bedroom.

On a handy kitchen ledge is the laser pointer whose red, glowing dot of light lured Iz to pounce and pursue.

The litter box that needs emptying, of course, no longer does.

As I read in my chair, I fully expect to be joined by “The Iz.” He had a habit of preempting whatever pearls of prose had seized my attention. Having nosed aside newspaper, book or magazine, he’d settle into my lap and work his way up my chest until we were eye-to-eye.

We’d commune, we two creatures. He’d set me to wondering about his world.

What could you be thinking, Iz? What goes on behind those amber eyes?

The joy of pondering the mysterious world that happened to be residing on my chest.

And now there’s the new mystery, the mystery of death. Where is Iz now?

The answer is clear when I open the door to the kitchen in the morning and still hear his reminder, when I settle into my reading chair and feel I’m being considered as a resting place, when I come up the stairs in the evening and look at the bed and know its shared comfort.

Where is he?

To my joy, he is everywhere.

Transcending bin Laden: Beyond hatred to peace

The death of Osama bin Laden has not inspired me to dance in the streets, chant "USA! USA!" or wave the American flag.

The death we desperately need to be able celebrate has yet to happen.

It is the death of war, fighting and the slaughter of innocents — everywhere.

It is the death of conditions that allow the Osama bin Ladens of the world to rise to power. We need the death of ignorance, hatred, inequality and poverty.

Recall that Osama bin Laden came to power because of his family wealth. Those fortunes were made in a Saudi economy sustained in large part by oil-addicted Americans and American politicians.

And so this wealthy Saudi scion exploited and spread hatred and fear.

He was hardly alone in doing that. Will his death breed more of the same?

Are those dancing in our streets and waving our flag so unlike the vengeance-seeking crowds protesting bin Laden’s death? Are both sides not shackled together in hatred of each other?

And who is exploiting their hatred?

There is no doubt that the death of Osama bin Laden and the public reactions to it are events made epic by the media. The vengeful, the self-serving and the religious self-righteous will feed on the frenzy.

But what is the true significance of this event? How do we derive new meaning and direction from it?

I suggest that American celebrants and the congratulatory politicians — that the protesters and the mourners in the streets of the Middle East — stifle their joy — and outrage — fold up their flags and take down their placards.

Instead take a pause for peace.

Vow to end the hatred and the fighting. Change the world by reaching out to each other. Yes, love your enemy. Make yourselves one for peace and for the "deaths" that will sustain life.