suck-o, lousy weather

no, i don't have statistics. yes, i could get them if i gave a rip about statistics. no, this has not been a good summer. weather-wise.

in fact, this summer has sucked.



it has sucked the firecrackers out of the fourth of july.

it has sucked the picnic out of the park.

the outdoor concert? sucked. out.

i can count on one hand the number times i have been able to use my grill.

it ruined the jazz and rib fest.

filled the pool with (rain) water but emptied it of folks.

turned my flowers yellow. yes, even the yellow ones.

shut down the block party in my new neighborhood.

depressed even the mood of this rain lover.


can. not. remember a summer this gray.

further proof, if for some insane reason you need it, that everything was better back in the day. everything was 100% better back in the 1950s.


there.  that's a statistic for ya.

most of all, love is a COMMANDMENT.

lotsa political hate these past few weeks and it reminds me why i prefer love:

• love lets you appreciate vanilla ice cream. 
• love lets your dog sit on the new chair.
• love takes chocolate chip cookies and doesn't add anything to "improve" them.
• love is when your 4-year old granddaughter beams that she can touch the bottom of the pool.
• love is a nathan's hot dog.
• love is how after days and days of humidity, you can finally open the windows.
• love is how when you open the windows, you can see a neighbor walk by.
• love is facebook because now you know whatever happened to all your friends.
• love is sweeping off the sidewalk after the storm and you sweep off the sidewalk of the guy next door, too, and it never even crosses your mind what race he is.
• love is how if you burn the dinner, the people who love you don't care.
• love is not yelling.
• love is a drive-in movie. a drive-in movie in pajamas is double love.
• love is not going to church in jeans because do you want people wearing jeans to your black-tie wedding?
• love is how nice it is to go through the drive-through and pay for the folks behind you, too.
• love is a banana split.
• a root beer float.
• strawberry shortcake.

love is not hating anyone in the news.

how does it work that only i am but you're not?

let's talk geometry.

an interesting angle arose this week at the intersection of the conversation about race and abortion rights, and i learned something new: that while it is possible (and not only possible, definite) that white people are racist even if they don't know it, women who support abortion can't likewise be mistaken.

a white person is a racist, period. that's what we've been told. and if a white person responds with, now wait a minute, i don't think i am a racist, well, shut up - because you are. you are racist and you misunderstand everything if you think you're not/don't.

however, if you try to tell a woman who supports abortion that perhaps she misunderstands everything and she shouldn't be supporting abortion rights even if she thinks she should, you're also told to shut up.

how can an entire race be something and not recognize it but a smaller group of people, i.e. women who support abortion, can't be something and not recognize it?

i got an A in geometry back when i was in school.

but i don't get this "new math."

  

i confess.

i was raised a protestant and protestants don't have "confession." protestants don't go to a priest - or a pastor - and confess their sins. protestants confess their sins to God directly in prayer and sometimes in collective prayer during services. i like that.

i like catholic confession better. 

without focusing on the theological basis and tradition for it, here's why:

it makes me feel waaaaaaaaay better than all the private prayers between "just me and God" ever did. waaaaaaaaaay better. it also makes me feel better than communal confession ever did (although communal confession, for me at least, was more relieving than private. and, for those of you who might not know, catholics have communal confession, too - every mass).

private confession, good as it is, is shy a couple eggs of a dozen. the benefit of confessing one's sins to someone in the flesh is sort of like an alcoholic who first admits (however grudgingly) to himself that he's an alcoholic and then goes to AA and tells the whole wide world about it. 

confessing sins in front of another person, especially a person who has the ordained power to act through Christ and give human voice to the forgiveness of those sins, is one of the most powerful forces on earth. if you don't think so, you've either never tried it or you've tried it but perhaps with the wrong understanding of it or attitude about it. perhaps both.

to take the value of confession to a priest to an even deeper level, i do not confess anonymously - i confess face-to-face or, in cases where that is not available, i tell the priest who is hearing my confession what my name is. it's as different from "faceless" confession as flirting is from orgasm. ok. so bad choice of analogy. forgive me, father. :)

when i converted to catholicism in 1994, i struggled with many of its teachings, confession to a priest being one of the chief ones. i didn't really have too many (any?) well-thought out reasons why i objected to it - nothing, really, more substantial than i didn't think it was necessary - and i resisted it for quite some time. 

i was wrong.

the degree to which one feels an overwhelmingly powerful - yes, even to the point of tears - sense of relief and release - but even more importantly, a sense of re-connection to Christ, is simply without equal in the protestant form of confession. 


the protestant form of confession is good. very good.

i submit ( respectfully, cuz i've been on the protestant side) that the catholic one is better.


(try it.)

:)

what the hell does "mea culpa" mean?

it sure wouldn't hurt a few folks if they'd come down off that there horse of theirs which is waaaaaaaaaaay the hell up in the air and utter these two little words...........

"mea culpa."



in the catholic church, we say "mea culpa" at every mass. actually, what we say is - "mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa" - and get a load of this........we strike our breast when we say it! how's that for takin' responsibility?!

i'll tell you how's that for takin' responsibility - it's great. and it's right on the heels of love, which is what makes the world go 'round.

we can't have a loving world if nobody ever looks in the mirror anymore. we can't even talk to one another without chopping the other guy's head off if we refuse to consider that maybe we did something wrong - with no excuses of any kind being made.

the only latin i know is the latin i hear at mass (and in the fine print of some occasional hideous  legal paper i'm forced to read), so i don't know how to say "your fault, your fault, your most grievous fault" in latin (although i realize i could google it, but i'm too lazy - which is NOT my fault! besides, i already know the words that really matter - "my fault, my fault, my most grievous fault") and i am pretty sure that most ordinary joes don't know how to say it in latin, either. but, boy oh boy, do they ever know how to say it in english.

i have a lawyer friend who always tells everybody, no doubt as he was taught in law school to do, never to plead guilty to anything. unless you wanna go to prison. or worse.

i would never do that. plead not guilty if i were guilty. regardless of what the crime is, regardless of what the punishment would be. regardless of the impact it would have on the friends and family i might leave behind. i would never lie and say i didn't do it if i did. i don't care how stupid my lawyer friend - or you - might think that is.


repeat after me (it's really not that hard): "mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa."


we'll take up breast-striking next time.


:)

did you hear the one about the fly, the vinegar, and the honey?

(this post shouldn't even have to be written.)


i have a friend from college who disagrees with me on just about everything. we disagreed then, we disagree now. but he's nice about it and i'm nice about it and he can understand where i'm coming from (back when i was in college, everybody said "coming from") and i can understand where he's coming from and we get along fine. as kids in college today say........."it's all good."

on the other hand, i have a friend from high school who disagrees with me on just about everything. we disagreed then, we disagree now. but she's not nice about it which makes it harder for me to be nice about it but i try. 

when i point out to her - nicely -  that she's not nice about it, she gets less nice about it. it's kind of a dead-end street with us. there's just nowhere to go with someone who isn't nice about it and doesn't want to be.


both of these friends are well-educated from good schools. the first one went to wittenberg and the second one went to cornell. but their formal education has nothing to do with their souls. the first one has one and the second one, well i guess the second one has one, too - but it pains me to think about it.

it doesn't matter, people, how smart you are and what's on your resume. curriculum vitae. it doesn't matter who's following you on twitter.  if you're like the grinch and you have garlic in your soul, you need to stop. right. there. put down your damned books. laptops. iPads. internet connections. whatever, whatever. look in the mirror, consider the feedback you're getting, and think. no............... feel.

i might cross over to your side, if you do. 

i definitely won't if you don't.


think about that. 


no..............feel.

the yellow brick road "out there"

you know how if you look out at whatever it is that you look out on from wherever it is that you're sitting - how that whatever it is that you're looking out on seems like that's where the whole rest of the world is?

it's not. the whole rest  of the world is right here. where you're sitting.



one of the worst things we do, i think, is to perceive that the world "out there" is in some way more real or at least more interesting than the world "in here." it starts us down a path of dreaming which, on the face of it, doesn't sound so bad (it sounds good,in fact), but it's usually not. because most people's dreams - at least their awake ones - are "better" than the here and now. which pretty much makes the here and now if not exactly not worth living, then at least not worth living enthusiastically.

and that's tragic.

the tendency to look out at whatever it is that we are looking out on and to think that that's where life is really happening is especially pronounced when, say, we're sitting outside on a summer evening and we look out over the horizon. or when we're at the beach. it's almost impossible, i think, to sit on the beach and look out over the ocean and not think that whatever it is that's over there on the other side is better than what's right here. especially when what's right here is sand in your crotch.

last night i was sitting on my back patio, which backs up to a vast green (green for now, anyway) cornfield, and i looked over the tops of the stalks and out to the horizon and i thought to myself, over there is the quaint little town of canal winchester. and the quaint little town of canal winchester is better than this.

and then i "looked" beyond the quaint little town of canal winchester and thought to myself that beyond that is, oh, say, charleston, south carolina, for instance, which is waaaaaay better than this. i mean, talk about quaint!

and beyond charleston, south carolina is jamaica, where even just the word "man" is said in a better way than how i say it here on my silly little patio.

and then i stopped myself. or, more accurately, a neighbor stopped me. a neighbor i had not yet met dropped by (seriously......"dropped by." who knew they still make people who "drop by?") and he jolted me back up north, to the here and now. and i invited him to sit down and we talked for about an hour and got acquainted and my dog sniffed at his legs and then my dog "asked" for a pat (and got one) and then she settled down at my neighbor's feet and took a snooze.


so, yeah, mon.

there's no place like home.