Rabbits in the Valley

The essence of all growth is a willingness to change for the better and then an unremitting willingness to shoulder whatever responsibility this entails – Bill Wilson

Today I walked out to the truck parked by the church and startled a couple of rabbits. I would say it was a hare raising experience, but it is too early in the column to ear-i-tate you with such an awful pun, so I won’t.

But it did cause me to wonder whether those fur balls hopping around the vehicle were hares or rabbits. I always knew there was a difference between the two critters but must confess I wasn’t sure just what that difference might be. I grew up in the city and so such knowledge was never clearly imparted to us city dwellers. The only wild life we saw were the patrons we observed staggering out of the dozen or so bars and taverns lining 15^th Avenue between school and home – a route that ran about ten blocks.

So, being the curious sort of fellow I am (and there are many people who will affirm the curiousness that is me, or I, or whatever the pronoun is supposed to be), I ran back into the office and hopped on the computer and set about investigating those sorts of details that would help me identify what form of Lagomorphs I was dealing with.

I discovered the main differences between the two critters is that hares generally have longer hind legs, longer ears, change colors (white in winter, gray or brown in summer), live in above-ground nests, and eat leaves and twigs; while rabbits tend to me smaller, stay one color year-round, live in holes, have shorter hind legs and ears, and prefer a softer diet of grasses and vegetables (like carrots). Rabbits tend to be more social, and hares tend to remain wild, even in captivity.

So it turns out the buns I saw did indeed belong to a couple of bunny-rabbits, and while they had been startled by my sudden appearance, they never-the-less did not run far, and they sat in the shade of the truck while listening ever so politely to my best Doctor Dolittle impression (which is NOT to be missed if you are ever in need of a truly wince-inducing moment in your life).

I used to talk to crows too, by the way, but had to stop when parishioners began to say I was stark raven mad.

In any case, the point I am trying to make in the telling of this tale is that I like to learn. That would surprise a lot of people as I devoted much of my school life to avoiding doing just that, but I always was a late bloomer – although why anyone would ever say that is another mystery, for I have never worn bloomers, but I’ll leave that investigation for another time.

The thing is, I have come to realize I like to learn things I never knew before. All of a sudden my curiosity gene has sprouted, and I am willing and able to look things up.

I realize that there are times ignorance is bliss, but only a hare-brained idiot would want to stay that way. The challenge is in coming to realize that facts by themselves are just silly little things, but putting them into context can make them helpful little things.

Take the difference between hares and rabbits. How is knowing the difference helpful? Well, first of all, a rabbit stew is quite tasty, but no one wants to see a hare in their soup, right? So there is that.

Secondly, if you were driving a Volkswagen Rabbit, you would want to be real careful driving around hare-pin turns, right?

And imagine how smart you would sound at the coffee shop as you disclose that Bugs Bunny is actually a mash-up composite of hare and rabbit (long ears and leg = hare, but lives in hole and eats carrots = rabbit)! You’ll be known far and wide as the town’s Einstein, which would be quite a feat considering the competition, eh?

Curiosity is a gift of God and learning about different kinds of Lagomorphs was fun. What’s more, it does not take a great Lepus of faith to conclude we should care for all creatures great and small in this, our valley.

Easter in the Valley

Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin … Matthew 6:28

Boy, Easter is almost upon us once again. A lady complained the other day that it seemed to come awfully early this year, but actually it is just about smack dab in the middle of where it belongs.

I did some research and it turns out that Easter is not scheduled by Hallmark, but rather by the moon and the sun. Easter is celebrated on the first Sunday following the first full moon following the spring equinox. Spring falls on or about March 22 each year, and this year the first full moon of spring takes place on Saturday, April 4 so, voila, Easter is the following day (Sunday, April 5)!

So Easter moves around, unlike Christmas, which is always December 25, or Thanksgiving, which is always the fourth Thursday in November (or the Fourth of July, which, interestingly, is celebrated annually on July 4).

Easter moves around, but it does feel early. Easter is a spring-time festival, and yet no matter how sunny it is, the weather is still pretty chilly (so why isn’t the main Easter dish chili instead of ham or lamb?).

I remember being outside for our annual family Easter photograph (as a child). It was a beautiful day in Seattle. The clouds had parted for a nanosecond and the sun was shining.

My brother and I were wearing suits, with starched white shirts and narrow black ties; our sisters had on flowery sun-dresses and bonnets; dad looked quite dapper in his green suit and a much more stylish wide tie (that only hung about half way down to his belt). We were not a very fashion-savvy family; we were much more at home in jeans with holes torn in the knees, short-sleeve checked shirts with pockets half-ripped-off, and wearing dress shoes with white socks, or tennis shoes with black dress socks. Our skills in fashion were a large reason I became a priest!

Mom however, was the fountain of elegance in our family. She always dressed sharp. She was a seamstress, making her own clothes. She also dabbled in millinery; she had one broad-brimmed hat she would fix up every Easter (for ladies were expected to have their heads covered in church back in those days). She would change the ribbons and decorations that would give those who noticed such things the impression that she had a new bonnet every year.

It seemed a silly tradition (both the “wearing a bonnet” and “making it look new”) and yet it was important to her. As she explained, “When we come into the House of God, we should dress in a manner that shows no less honor than if we were visiting the mayor or president.”

Getting back to my story, it was a beautiful day in Seattle, but it was still very chilly. I remember thinking, “It’s Easter! How can it be so cold?” Somehow I thought the day should dictate the kind of weather we’d have, but it didn’t. I thought it SHOULD be warm, but it wasn’t. Weather is an independent sort of thinker and, quite often, a sneaky sort of stinker!

It is what it is, and that’s what’s important. It turns out we can’t control the sun or the moon or the weather, but we can control how we respond.

I will admit that I still dress up for church – even when I’m not working. I still prefer to dress formally for worship. I have learned to wear dress socks with my dress shoes. I know that God is less concerned with the state of my clothes and more with the state of my heart, and yet I also think church is about God more than it is about my comfort – and if I look the part on Sunday, I may be more likely to act the part the rest of the week.

There are 168 hours between Sundays. For 167 hours, I can dress like the slob I am and pretty much go where I want and do what I please (within the limits of law, culture, and finances). But for the one hour I am called to stand, sit, and kneel before the King, I want to shine as best I can – a lily in God’s own Garden, and that warms my heart here in this, our valley.

Making It in the Valley

To stop going to church because it has hypocrites is like not going to the gym because of the out-of-shape people. Anonymous

Oh, what to fix for dinner.

One of the problems one faces when he or she gets to a certain age is running out of ideas for a meal, although running out of an appetite has never been an issue for me.

If our household is like your family in any way – first of all, you have my condolences – then you probably suffer from that basic array of meals that shows up time and again toward the end of the day. There’s the meat loaf and mashed taters, or the chicken and rice casserole, or the pork chops and onions with baked potatoes.

Our meals are pretty much variations on all that. Beef? Check. Chicken? Cluck. Pork? Oink. I will admit we don’t eat a lot of fish. If fish would learn to moo I could probably get in more of a “moo”d for it, but as it is I’ve just never developed much of an appreciation for the life aquatic – despite my Scandinavian heritage.

So, when it’s my turn to cook (yes, my better half and I take turns; she cooks six nights a week, and I get one. I try to save leftovers for my cook-night, but she sort of frowns on that. I think the words I hear through my bleeding ears are, “That’s not fair!” but I can’t be sure, for the audio distortion is pretty bad when the volume meter hits that point), I do what I can to break the routine; I go online and check out recipes for something unique.

There are two things I look for in a recipe: One: something that looks different but intriguing; two: something with ingredients available at our local market.

My personal preference is a meal that can be cooked in one dish as I have no skills at coordinating a feast involving more than one pot. I suppose that makes me a true chef, as the professionals tend to dole out their meals one item at a time. They call them “courses” but, of course I know that in reality they just can’t get their act together either, so the meal comes out in dribs and drabs and costs an arm and a leg as it takes all night (calling it “elegant dining”).

Invariably I’ll find a recipe I want to try but for which we have few ingredients at home. That’s alright with me as I like to put a meal together using fresh ingredients from our local grocer.

Doing meals that way puts me into a nostalgic frame of mind, for I remember that’s how my grandmother used to cook.

She didn't stock up for Armageddon, intending to subsist on canned goods for a decade in a fallout shelter. She would plan a meal (which always consisted of her using several pots and pans – she was a true wizard in the kitchen), then send us around the corner to Loomis’ store where we would hand Old Man Loomis the list, he would gather up what we needed, bag it, and put it on Grandma’s tab. Ah, those were the days.

So when I prepare a meal like that, I feel right at home. I, the hunter-gatherer, then get to work, feverishly chopping taters, onions, garlic, and such whatnots, tossing them into the slow cooker or baking dish – excited to see my partner’s face when I tell her what we’re having. Many times I find her speechless, for which reason maybe I should cook more, but that’s another tale to savor for another time.

Well, life is like that. Our days are often filled with routines that meet our needs for the most part. But every now and then, it’s nice to take a break from our habits and shake hands with a new experience.

Sometimes we worry that we won’t like the new experience – or that we’ll be criticized for it – but diversity keeps life interesting. To embrace the new is NOT to let go of the past, but to create a new past to be remembered fondly tomorrow.

Variety truly is the spice of life, and that’s what we’re having for dinner tonight in this, our valley (and I can’t wait to find out what it is).

Lost in the Valley

The human being is a flute which makes music when the breath of God blows through … Rumi

I am such a loser.

By that I don’t mean to imply that I have low self-esteem or anything like that. What I mean is that I am constantly misplacing things.

One year at Thanksgiving dinner, my grandmother’s home was all decked out with seasonal knick-knacks. I was probably about ten years old and had my eye on a little wax-turkey candle decoration and, being somewhat precocious (more accurately “avaricious”, but I was too young and innocent to know the difference) I asked my grandmother if I could have it.

“Well,” she said, “You’re just going to lose it, but OK, you can have it.”

Well, I took that as a personal challenge and so I took it home and put it on a shelf and never touched it. Every time she came to visit, I would drag her down to the basement to my room and show her I still had that turkey. Hah! Lose her turkey, indeed; double HAH!

Of course I have no idea where it is now. I guess she’s probably up in heaven chuckling over that.

Anyway, last Christmas my wife gave me a knife to replace one that had disappeared. It was a nice Swiss army knife with a number of blades and gizmos. I’d had it for years and then, sometime last fall, it went missing. I didn’t lose it, you understand. It went missing.

I knew exactly where I had last seen it, but it wasn’t there. I’ve checked everywhere for it and it is nowhere to be found. It is somewhere – of that I am sure, but today it is apparently caught in a crack of the time-space continuum that surrounds us on every side. No doubt it is being held hostage by all those single socks that have “gotten lost” since time immemorial.

Anyway, I digress. Barb knew my distress at having had my old knife run away from home, so she bought me a new knife for Christmas. It is nice and red, has the cute little cross emblem I love, and all the blades, gadgets, and gizmos the old knife had. It’s not exactly the same as the old knife – and it will never cut the emotional ties I had with my first multi-use pocket knife – but it is a worthy successor.

That’s why – horror of horrors – I was horrified to discover my new knife had gone missing barely a month “out of the box”! I looked everywhere for it and, like the first knife, it was nowhere to be found.

I knew at that moment I was a dead man walking. I have a sweet, loving, doting wife; that’s all true. But I kept hearing my grandmother’s voice echoing between my ears: “You’re just going to lose it …”

So I did what any sane man would do – not that I am sane, but I put myself in the shoes of a sane man and said, OK, that’ll work – I kept my mouth shut. I checked my clothes, the laundry, my offices, under the bed, under the couch where I sit (and between the cushions), and – nothing!

A week or two passed and there was a commercial on TV for a thing that fits between a car seat and center consul (to catch coins, cell phones, and valuables). A three watt bulb lit up over my head in a badly drawn cartoon bubble. I grabbed my flashlight (which has a few more candles of illuminating power) and checked the space in the car between the driver’s seat and center consul and VOILA! I found m’knife!

It turns out that it isn’t safe for me to carry a knife while wearing dress slacks. I know I will likely be cast out from Montana for wearing an article of clothing that was outlawed since forever; I’m pretty sure denim is the state cloth. Still, separation of church and state means I can wear my church pants, even if it also means separation of man and knife.

I think people are like pocket knives. We may get lost for a time, but God never stops looking for us; God smiles when we’re safely back in the palm of his hand. I find that comforting in this, our valley. I hope grandma does, too.

Truth in the Valley

“I have always been intrigued by people who have a great capacity to trust God … If my strength depends on my capacity to trust God, then I am not very strong!” Herbert O’Driscoll

I feel sorry for Brian Williams. Human memory is such a fragile thing, and our ability to look into the mind of another human being is so limited. I cannot know for certain what Williams remembers or misremembers or has fabricated, but knowing my own short-comings in that regard, I cannot bring myself to throw any stones.

I never read the Spider Man comics, but I remember in the movie (the one with Toby Maguire) Peter Parker’s uncle reminded his nephew that “With great power comes great responsibility” – and so there is an expectation that people in the news business would exercise greater responsibility in doing their fact-checking to ensure their stories are both reliably accurate and trustworthy. That is a reasonable expectation.

As human beings, I know we like to think our memories are pretty good, at least with regards to “important” matters. It may not matter what we had for breakfast this morning or yesterday, but surely we would remember an event like being “under fire” or what happened when we had that “big fight” – wouldn’t we?

But I’m not so sure. Our egos are pretty fragile, and when you add to that the point that “each of us is the hero in our own story” (I wish I could remember who said that – it isn’t original with me), then it makes sense that one might adjust his or her memory of events in a way that does himself the least harm – or shows herself in the best light.

The interesting thing is that much of this is done unconsciously or subconsciously. We often accuse people of lying, when in reality, they are not remembering the event, but their recollection of the event – which involves chemical and electrical processes within the brain itself.

Now, people DO lie. Of course they do. The child who insists they did not take the cookie as crumbs fall from their face is lying. The man who insists he did not rob the bank as the trail of bills falling from the garbage bag to the tree behind which he is hiding is lying. People do intentionally strive to deceive others for a variety of reasons, but I’m not talking here about our capacity to lie.

Rather, I am talking about the way we communicate with one another. We do not communicate through words, but through stories. As a wordsmith, I am particular about the words I use, but they are my words and how they help or hinder the reader are my responsibility. The words you use also help and/or hinder my ability to hear and understand the story you are telling me.

For instance, when a house is burglarized and a person says they were robbed, the hairs on the back of my head stand up and I am liable to throw a conniption because (as a former police office) I know there is a technical difference between being robbed and being burgled. Robbery involves taking something from a person by force or threat of force, whereas burglary is the breaking and entering of a building to steal something. One is a crime of violence against a person, the other a crime against property.

The point is, humans are story-tellers. That’s how we communicate. If our story is unclear, people may ask questions for clarification. As we clarify our stories, they change. We find different words, we rearrange the order in which we tell the tale, or we may replace pronouns with nouns and change the emphasis from one part of the story to another. We do some of these things to make it clearer, but we also do them in response to our audience.

To a humorist, laughter matters – that’s our chocolate. Reporters are supposed to be objective, however, and therein lies the rub. News outlets today are often shooting for market-share, and so stories are more often shaped and arranged to amaze and amuse than to report “just the facts”.

Sadly, that’s the world we live in; fortunately, there will always be those among us who can and will correct us, and that’s a truth we all share in this, our valley.

Treasures in the Valley

“The tragedy of life is often not in our failure, but rather in our complacency; not in our doing too much, but rather in our doing too little; not in our living above our ability, but rather in our living below our capacities.” Benjamin E. Mays

Organization has never been my strong suit. For most of my life, January is a month where I annually promise that “this year will be different.”

I clean out my files and desk drawers, buy organizers and labels, and sort through assorted papers stacked from here to eternity, but by the time the Super Bowl rolls around, Chaos is once again crowned King.

King Clutter rules my life. I wish it were different, but it isn’t.

I see a gizmo being sold on television that takes your receipts and transfers all the information neatly and painlessly into your computer. Ah, the promise of a life that is both paperless and organized is very attractive – but will it deliver? I’ll never know, because I lost the name and number of the scanner; it’s around here somewhere.

Oh well, the spirit is willing but the flesh is weak. Such is life. I am finally able to take a long hard look at my inner soul and recognize that this particular characteristic is highly unlikely to change. I can (and do) make efforts to improve along these lines, but I’ll never really be successful – and that’s OK.

My bureaucratic inadequacies will make for a delightful discovery two thousand years from now when some archeologist will find my stash of scrolls and detritus and puzzle over the meaning of life as it was expressed and experienced in the “old west” of early twenty-first century America.

My being a slob today may help some future slob keep his or her job centuries down the road. When it comes to dirt, archeologists dig it, and that’s nothing to sneeze at.

Knowing my limitations doesn’t stop me from trying to improve; it just helps me adjust the energies I put into the matter. Organizational experts tell us “files are not a storage system, but a retrieval system.” I know that. My brain accepts it to be true. But I have squirrel DNA. I take my precious treasures and bury them hither, thither, and yon, and then I devote the rest of my waking moments scratching my head and wondering where on earth I buried my nuts.

So, I know that about me. I am not proud of it, but I accept it. I don’t rest on my laurels (partly because I can’t find where I put those dog-gone laurels, to begin with), but I can improve.

As useless as it may feel each January to strive to get organized, it would be worse if I did nothing at all. At least last year’s files are in a carton that is clearly labeled (but the label is on the side of the box I shoved up against the wall … sigh), and this year’s records will be in a fresh new container that I will label sometime between now and next January (after I locate my magic marker).

What is it about human nature that moves us to organize everything?

I suspect it has to do with control. When things are where they’re supposed to be, we save time and energy retrieving them. I admire folks with peg-boards in their garages and shops with “shadow-marks” outlining where each tool is supposed to hang. I like having things out where I can see them. I don’t like things hidden away in drawers or boxes so they’re hard to find.

I wonder if God is well-organized. There are times I presume God has a list of who’s naughty and nice – a cosmic Santa, if you will. But my hope is that God has my permanent record locked up in a drawer for which the key has been lost. Better yet, I pray those records get shredded every January.

As I picture it, confetti falls from the divine shredder into a chute that pours it all down into the bowels of Perdition, where the devil and his minions toss it into the fires while muttering under their breath, “Filing is Hell!”

If true, that could prove to be good news to treasure for everyone here in this, our valley.

Possibilities in the Valley

“Impossible isn’t something that is true to a thing. It’s something that is true to the person doing it.”Source Unknown

Sometimes people can’t just leave well enough alone. I got up the other day in time to wake the roosters, as is my custom, and when I went online to check the news, it had changed. I don’t mean the news had changed (which I expect it to, otherwise it wouldn’t be news – it would be “olds” and that would be pretty boring. Come to think of it, the news IS pretty boring because – wait for it – there really is nothing new under the sun). What I meant is that they had changed the graphics, links, layout, and everything.

The people who supply me with my news had changed the way their front page looks. I don’t remember them telling me they were going to change it. I had no warning and, as a result, 2015 got off to a very rocky start for me.

It’s not that I don’t like change or am resistant to it. Heck, I change my clothes every day and shower so that today’s dirt will have someplace clean to which to cling.

When you get right down to it, I don’t even mind the changes that took place online when I wasn’t looking. They simply caught me by surprise and require me to hop around the front page differently than I did before. It is neither good nor bad; it is just different and requires me to respond differently – and that’s where the problem lies.

It isn’t that the news viewer changed; it’s that I need to. Me! Worse yet, I had to listen to my gray matter grumbling for hours on end about it.

“Pete. Pete. Pete! Wake up Pete! Something’s happening out there; you’ve got to see this. They’re calling for All Hands on Deck! Heck, they’re even waking up the gray-haired gray matter to lend a hand. It’s a real five-alarm disaster looming. Fonts have changed, graphics have moved around, and links are hiding where we’ve got to scroll around to find them. For Keith’s sake, Pete: GET UP!”

Let me assure my readers, you do NOT want to be alone inside my head when those cells get agitated. That is one dangerous neighborhood. It’s so tough I call it Noah’s Ark, because you either travel in pairs, or you just don’t go there.

Anyway, once I got past the first thirty seconds or so of sheer terror, panic, and horror, the frontal cortex, cerebrum, cerebellum, and rest of the Yee Haw gang settled down and started to work out the new patterns for finding what I was looking for (AKA football scores and previews of coming mayhem) and life returned to normal. I still don’t care for the new-fangled layout, but I’m getting used to it and should be fine until Christmas or thereabouts when they will no doubt roll out some new and improved way of irritating me to no end.

But that’s life, isn’t it? Things always change. In fact, one might even call such changes a “Public Service” as one’s need to adapt keeps the brain functioning better, just as working on puzzles is said to sharpen the mind (or as Nietzsche put it, “That which does not kill us makes us stronger” – which I would amend to say, “That which does not kill us DOES, none-the-less, make us crazier).

The fact is that while we may be resistant to change, change is mostly a positive thing in life. Changing good habits for bad habits leads to improvements in mind, body, and soul. Many people make resolutions for the new year during the first few days of January but struggle to keep them (for a wide variety of reasons).

That’s why I really like taking life a day at a time. I find facing a year to be an impossible task, but if I take things a day at a time, it is far more manageable.

It is like the old story of the big game hunter who shot and killed an elephant. Standing by his trophy he wondered, “How am I going to eat all that meat?” His guide answered, “One bite at a time.”

It’s not the “thing” that’s impossible, it’s the person’s attitude and THAT I can keep positive in this, our ever-changing valley.