HAUNTED BY THE HOLY GHOST

Warning: Shameless Plug-NORTHERN SKIES......Drake's New CD Just Realeased

Northern Skies

The Newest CD released by Drake, the Band
(which includes my favorite Violinist
and one of my favorite daughters (Bea)

Yes, I have given up all hope of hearing strains of Bach, Mahler or Shostakovitch any time soon, unless she puts them into a riff/improvisation as part of one of Drake's songs. 
Not likely.

There is a "rumor" that one of the more "complicated improvise solos is based the theme song from "Sesame Street".
BTW,  she never even watched Sesame Street, or any of those "pseudo-educational/parental guilt soothing" TV shows; and most "kids" shows she gave up on after 5 minutes, miffed that most were an insult to ANYONE'S intelligence.

So how she picked up the Theme Song from Sesame Street is mystifying, especially in the light of a  late night phone call I received asking me if I had ever heard of  "SCOOBY-DOO".
She was sure her "band mates" were just making things up to pile on more "HOME SCHOOL" points...
Yes, Virginia(Bea, or whatever name you are going by), there really is a Scooby-Doo


ANYWAY....The CD is great, see the LEFT SIDE BAR to listen or download some sample tracks, watch a clip of a performance, and maybe order yourself a copy of Northern Skies (or their previous CD, "These And Other Things").

And not the warning on MISSION ACCOMPLISHED, which has a quick comment questioning the Bible Exegetical skills of someone named "George"....

...someone who's hasn't been seen or hear from since yesterday, Jan 20 around Noon.

Bea, what do you know, when did you know it, and how involved are you in with his disappearance????????

Sounds like a job for "you know who...."

or just watch this instead
(Bea's solo on the CD sample track is much more "WILD"-it was still new when this was done)

Drake - Mission Accomplished

what's left...

now, what was I doing?

I can't think in straight lines...

I can't  walk in a straight line; The part of my brain that tells my body where it is in space is malfunctioning.  I frequently bump into things, trip over my own feet, and standing still, have been known to just ...tip over.  (I lean against walls much of the time).

And no matter where I go, if there is a whole row of empty seats,  and I know that I will have to ask people to move if I need to get out,  I will never choose the seat on the end.  It's less rude to ask people to let you go past them than it is to ask them to pick you up off the floor when you miss the seat and end up sprawled in the aisle.  Chairs without arms are just too easy to fall off or or miss by an inch or two, especially if it is someplace where you have to get up and down alot, like church.

It's too easy to just fall....

fall out of time, space, thought, off the edge, always the edge of something, but never hitting the bottom, just landing on another ledge that is getting ready to give way...

it's like gravity that holds your body together is gone.
I tell my husband when I stand up I am never sure if something of me is going to fall off.

falling, breaking up, parts pulled away by another gravity, grabbing on just in time.....

...it's a feeling I have all the time...no matter what I am doing.

Thinking, writing, trying to play music (I am taking organ lessons for physical/music therapy to help my balance, coordination, memory...music with movement kills lots of birds, but I don't seem to be aiming very well, or hitting any of them; they all end up flying away, chirping as if they are laughing at me.

Sitting on the bench (that has no back of sides) is like jumping out of a plane...fortunately, I have known my organ teacher for many years, and I would trust her to to wrap my parachute if I were jumping out of a plane, and I wouldn't have any fear about landing safely.

The thoughts in my head and the words that come out of my mouth, bear little resemblance to each other

 On many days trying to have a conversation, balance listening, processing what I hear, respond appropriately (all the while trying to not to fall off a chair, drop or spill something,  is like trying do do the Olympic decathlon events all at once.

Sitting in a group of people who are casually conversing reminds me of how it used to feel in grade school when we would play volley ball....please don't hit me the ball...

And I have to think so hard to do every day things,
Let alone things that actually required thought,
My brain hurts, aches sometimes just like my joints do on a cold day.

I said extremely silly things when I tried to have sensible conversations so
I avoided them. I had a persistent headache and mental exhaustion. I
found myself saying "left, right, left" as I was walking along.
I squinted if I had to concentrate.

I had to leave notes for myself all over and then still don't know what they mean...
I had so many alarms set that I never knew what was beeping and why, so I just quit.

Besides, I can have an alarm tell me exactly what to do when and then get distracted and end up forgetting what I was supposed to do, or end up losing so much time (still not sure where it goes) that I feel time is always chasing me.

On particularly bad days, if I have to do something I'd say it out loud (softly, if people are around-yes, I know I talk to myself) until I had done it or by the time I'd start out to do it, it would be gone within 10 seconds

Leaving the house in my car...I am going to....wherever my destination happens to be.  I now have a GPS system there have been times it was just more helpful to program where I was going so it would tell me when to a turn was coming up--it was less taxing on my brain than repeating (I am going to turn at the next street, I am going to turn, I am going to turn....and then miss the turn anyway.

Or...and btw, I don't drive on days like this anymore...red light-stop, red light-stop, red light -stop,.......

Most of the time I chose not to drive, unless I absolutely have to, and then only if it is short distances and it is somewhere I have driven to many times.

During bad spells, I need more rest/ quiet/very low noise, light, movement/ kind of like isolation therapy...I worry people think I am avoiding them and when I want to be around them, they won't be there

Though it seems counter-intuitive, one of the most restful things is reading a lot.
I read things in sections, never all the way through...and I also find it helpful to completely change subjects frequently.  I may read a few chapters of a book, then read an article from a journal, study a chapter from the bible, read through some of my daughter's and their friend's facebook, blogs, and harass them with a comment or two or three.

I may not remember much of what I read, or just bits and pieces that choose to float around in my brain.
Sometimes they will connect to something that comes up weeks latter, but don't ask me where I read it...or if I read it...I could have daydreamed it, or just thought about it, wrote a bit about it and then deleted it, but it all floats around in the same space and like rubber ducks in a tub of water, keep bobbing up and down, in and out of my line of vision or thought.
I never know which one is going to float into view just at the right time, connecting with something someone has said, and many times nobody gets the "connection" anyway.
that makes me smile.

Reading.....So access to large amount/types of reading material is the best thing about the computer.
I know my family jokes about not being able to rest if someone in cyberspace is wrong about something...that I am out to make sure everyone is straight on something...but even if I did used to do some of that, to compose a coherent paragraph in answer to someone spouting something just begging to be set straight...it takes too many brain cells to compose the 2 or 3 paragraphs needed, and some days I CAN'T  even write that, at least well enough to satisfy my standards...so I have learned to let most things go (IN SPITE OF  WHAT MY FAMILY CLAIMS).

And all they need to do is recall the last conversation when I tried to explain something to them to know that this is not a my toolbox of skills, even on good days.

....unless all the planets a aligned just right, and there is no full moon, and the next day is not Friday.  There are moments when the fog clears, but no way to predict them, or how long they will last. The last time I was able to write a email to a friend that actually contained some understandable content, I copied and sent it to about 10 other people, knowing they had been waiting forever to hear from me, but I couldn't put two words together.
So what if my emails get passed around like an annual Christmas letter...it beats people thinking I don't care enough to communicate with them, or that I moved away, or maybe worse.

what's left...Reading... the computer spares me from places I used to love to go, but avoid now as if my life depended on it; places  Borders and Barnes and Noble.
For me, are now just nice places to have coffee.

Shopping...stores, or anyplace that has more than 3 things to choose from is like entering  Dante's inferno.
The sign on the front door may as well read ABANDON ALL HOPE ALL YE WHO ENTER HERE. 

I am finally past the stage of thinking THIS time will be different...but until I finally admitted this...it was like the movie "Groundhog Day" that looped and looped, except that someone stole the happy ending....and I still get that same feeling walking into a store.

Grocery stores, bookstores, any store;  choosing a book, magazine, detergent, a flavor of yogurt, a box of Kleenex,  a birthday card, soap, shampoo; I could feel by brain start to solidify.
And the ninth circle-choosing a gift for someone I love (that I do desperately want to give a gift to)...it's like I am failing the simplest test of basic friendship...it always ends with wandering aimlessly, my brain feeling like concrete,  and leaving empty handed and  in a daze.

Not only is it wasted time and energy, once I get home it takes hours of isolation and quiet for my brain to reboot before I can attempt something like a conversation, answering the phone, or anything else requiring brain cells.  I must say that is one of the few times, pushing past the fatigue and doing a brainless task that has a visible reward is helpful...my kid's think I am going on an OCD cleaning binge, but something in the physical work and a visible accomplishment helps me feel that I am not a total vegetable.  If it wasn't for dead brain syndrome days, I don't think anything in my house would ever get cleaned or organized.

 (I don't do alphabetical order, or number order anymore.  I just arrange things by size, color, or whatever configuration makes sense and hope I remember the ad hoc file system I just came up with.
If not, at least it is usually color coordinated and has most of the elements of a good art-rhythm, repetition, texture and proportion

----------

it is called neuropsychiatric systemic lupus/ that slipped in when everyone was preoccupied with the rheumatoid arthritis and joints swelling, and being in too much pain to get out of bed.
Now I can get out of bed, but I am never sure what to do after that.

It comes and goes.  Some days I feel or seem normal.  I look normal...which makes it difficult to try to explain myself, especially since one of the biggest losses is in my ability to write, to use words and language.

 It is also complicated by dyslexia, some ADD, and the general disarray that has always wreaked havoc on trying to keep life a little bit predictable...and then we had two daughters, both artists, and my husband just gave up and joined in the chaotic frey.

That's why it's been so quiet around here.
I had a bad flare last Christmas, but it seemed to lift in the spring, so I quit with all the neuro testing, the therapy plans...probably not a good idea in hindsight.

-------------------------

And here are the words I have been avoiding, as if not writing it will make it somehow not true.

Just before Thanksgiving, my brother, my big brother, died, unexpectedly.

and there is no part of that loss or pain that gets lost in that space where everything else goes.
I know every detail, every contour, everything that was there, and now it isn't.

what's left?

Same as always

That One True Thing, the One who was, is, and every shall be

Photo 1 and 2 by Azazelle, HAUNTED HOUSE SET

Last Photo by me, Isabella: Just Haunted Now

My eyes rest upon your face wide-open; and they hold you gently, letting you go ...

To Say Before Going to Sleep

 I would like to sing someone to sleep,
have someone to sit by and be with.
I would like to cradle you and softly sing,
be your companion while you sleep or wake.
I would like to be the only person
in the house who knew: the night outside was cold.
And would like to listen to you
and outside to the world and to the woods.

The clocks are striking, calling to each other,
and one can see right to the edge of time.
Outside the house a strange man is afoot
and a strange dog barks, wakened from his sleep.
Beyond that there is silence.

My eyes rest upon your face wide-open;
and they hold you gently, letting you go
when something in the dark begins to move.

Rainer Maria Rilke

Photo This image touches my soul.../Tracie Taylor Photography

Facebook Status crosspost

Currently waiting in the ER for Jon to get his fractured ankle splinted

Tears, Silence and the Body Ceases. Did you come to Bury my Pip?

 

This will be the sign for you when you have drawn near to entering into that region [of truth]. When grace has begun to open your eyes to perceive an exact vision of these things, then your eyes will begin to shed tears until your cheeks are washed by their abundance, and the fervor of the senses will be slowed that they may profitably be restrained within you. If there is one who teaches you other than this, do not believe him. But you are not permitted to seek another indication from the body besides tears as a manifest sign of the perception of truth, unless in the silence of the activity of the members of the body. This happens when the mind is raised above existing things, and the body ceases from tears and perception and any movement except physical vitality.

St. Isaac of Nineveh,

photo by: Sator Arepo [out for vacation] The shadow side

Hero has a New Hobby (Facebook crosspost)

No, not beer drinking....Ant Farming (besides, as she says "Beer is a drink for the commoners, and her palate would never stoop that low). If you want to know what is behind this "private joke", ask her.  This rates right up there with the "beanbag chair" story, the "oatmeal story", and the "Hero can do anything if she has a pair of rubber gloves" story.

Since we're not young....

From selections from Twenty-one Love Poems:

III

Since we're not young, weeks have to do time

for years of missing each other. Yet only this odd warp

in time tells me we're not young.

Did I ever walk the morning streets at twenty,

my limbs streaming with a purer joy?

did I lean from any window over the city

listening for the future

as I listened here with nerves tuned for your ring?

And you, you move toward me with the same tempo.

Your eyes are everlasting, the green spark

of the blue-eyed grass of early summer, 

the green-blue wild cress washed by the spring.

At twenty, yes: we thought we'd live forever.

At forty-five, I want to know even our limits.

I touch you knowing we weren't born tomorrow,

and somehow, each of us will help the other live,

and somewhere, each of us must help the other die.

     ADRIENNE RICH (b. 1929)

photo the long way by stephmel (away)

____________________SCHISM__________________

 

 

...but is the eternity that awaits you

In case you didn't read the short story "Day Lilies" in it's entirety, or you missed
the point, or you are wondering why the story and certain lines reached out and
grasped me and wouldn't let go, here it is from another angle.

Maybe you are a poetry person, and you need it distilled down even further.

The Bright Field

I have seen the sun break through
to illuminate a small field
for a while, and gone away
and forgotten it. But that was the pearl
of great price, the one field that had
the treasure in it. I realize now
that I must give all that I have
to possess it. Life is not hurrying

on to a receding future, nor hankering after
an imagined past. It is the turning
aside like Moses to the miracle
of the lit bush, to a brightness
that seemed as transitory as your youth
once, but is the eternity that awaits you

RSThomas

photo: decemberstephme

Things I usually will only post on FaceBook

That's because precisely 11 people have access to it, and every one of the 11 have seen me at my best and at my worst.
I realized something not long ago...somewhere, somehow I have lost my voice...and the reasons are too complicated, too personal, and don't belong here.

 

But what remnants that are left, what words I can still manage to string together keep showing up on my Facebook.
Some days they just explode.
Kind of like fireworks.
My daughters keep getting requests from their friends to "friend me", well, because everybody likes fireworks.

But, being the wise women that they are,  they have been keeping me on a tight leash, knowing the struggles I am having finding my voice again after almost everything in my life has been shaken to the foundations.

They also know the power of words can connect us to  the Grace and Power of The Word, The Logos, the source of Life.
They also know that life without words, without voice is the absolute opposite of the Abundant, Joy-filled, life that God created us to live-in communion with Him and with each other.

 

The last several months, I have found  silence easier, but it's not out of self-control, wisdom, or any other high minded ideal. It's probably more because I am sorely lacking in those virtues.
Keeping silent may cut down on falling into sin or just general foolishness, but if you use silence as a way to avoid risk, you may also miss the the whole purpose of The Logos.
It's also one of those gifts that cannot be hoarded, buried, or hidden or only brought out for special, or scripted occasions.
If Faith comes through hearing, if no one speaks, chooses silence out of fear or selfishness, we rob each other of the  Grace, Truth and Faith that we are meant to give one another by proclaiming the Gospel, we withhold the fullness of Christ, because the Gospel is not a formula or words or dogma, The Gospel is a Person.

It takes me forever to make connections, as I have confessed here many times.
Well, here's another one.
Every Mass since I became Orthodox closes with the reading of the Last Gospel: John 1:1-14 (multiply 3 Masses/week by about 75....I'm slow, I admit it)

Because of The Word, I exist, I continue to exist, I have been pulled from the devouring darkness back into the Light,  I am able to KNOW God and move towards  union with Him.
Christ not only restored us to our Father, He made it possible for us to be restored and reconciled to one another, in fact our relationship to God is so entwined with our relationship to each other, one is not possible without the other.

So as the words of the Liturgy, prayer, scripture bring us into communion with God, words have power to bring us into union with each other.

By His Incarnation, everything that He assumed by taking on Flesh, has removed boundaries of of what is Holy and what is not.
Words, speaking, communicating, relationships are all included.
Every moment is open to Grace, every touch, every movement, every word (words of joy, words of lament, words of comfort, words or praise, in short, words that tell the STORIES of salvation, especially your salvation....I haven't found any list of exclusions yet) can be sacramental.

photo Once Upon a Time by artsyevie

So, silence does have a place in our lives, but if we choose to avoid words out of fear or risk, fear of trust, fear of....death, we have chosen to spurn one of the most powerful gifts that God has given.

all other photos by nikaa

SCENES FROM A MARRIAGE...A Few More Words From Elaine Neil Orr

More from the short story Day Lilies by Elaine Neil Orr's

photo by ☮hanna

There were two truths about herself that Ellen had told her friend.
She wanted phone calls about awards and she did not want anyone else in her community to be named Ellen.
She had grown up a white girl in West Africa where other girls had names like Tunji and Deli or possibly Esther and Ruth.
Her parents had been missionaries.

Now in her American life, if she went to a party and was introduced to another woman named Ellen, she left.
Or even if she wasn’t introduced but just heard that some other woman at the party shared her name, she left.
Her reasons were obscure; she could hardly explain to her husband. Once she had tried:

“I came to the U.S. when I was fifteen. I felt so lost.
At night in bed, I would say to myself, ‘I’m Ellen and I grew up in Nigeria.’ I would say it over and over.”

“Right,” he had commented.

“Is that all you’re going to say?”

“You felt lost so you said your name to yourself at night. Ok.”

And then he had turned on the television, signaling to his wife that she was being self-absorbed.....

****

Ellen grieved over years of tedious arguments with Martin when now she could see that neither of them had been right or wrong.
They had only been so different in their habits and desires. Since her father’s death, dreams dragged through her nights like heavy,
twined cables under the Atlantic.

She had a dream of her own death in which no one noticed her absence.

Ellen needed some things to keep her afloat and in the world. Her name, for example, or a certificate of merit that would say:
Look. You have performed splendidly. Many people love you.

I need, she needs, we all need each other

As I said, I  really need my editor, but she really needs all the prayers and love right now.

We will never be aware how much we need each to learn how to live and how to die;  but we must never stop trying in our crazy, inarticulate, and sometimes hopelessly misunderstood ways to give in love, what God has to graciously given to each for the good of all.

excerpt for the Glen Workshop: From the Introduction.....

In the middle of this enlightened, reasonable, and modern world, my husband and I live as misplaced medievalists;

We believe that God is Three, yet indivisibly one; we believe in a God so transcendent that speaking His name can inspire shuddering fear; yet we believe in a God so immanent, so loving,  that He is closer to us than our own breath, our own skin; we believe that that death is just sleep; People don’t go missing in some hypothetical three tiered universe, they just go unseen in a one story universe where all that was, is and is to come intermingles everyday.                            
The visible and invisible claim equal footing in our world.  We knock up against the unseen as often as we bump up against the furniture.

We also believe that marriage is an eternal bond that cannot be broken.  We can break each other, break hearts and we can break  faith, but nothing in earth or heaven can break the bond of marriage.  Some people would think that a unbearable weight and even a curse; to us, it is one of our greatest comforts.

The other hope we have is that history is holy; nothing is ever lost to time or memory; Love that was once cannot not be.

The theological ramifications of really believing “God is Love” are enormous.
Pieces of God don’t just go missing.......ever.  Woe to those who misplace, or scorn a gift of such Worth.

Speaking plainly, this could be an end where two people, destined to never travel alone, now travel the same way, however, they travel in silence and isolation after trying everything not to let the story end that way.

But Hope is as much of God as love. This may also be just the beginning of a new chapter in the story; this one ends with two souls traveling and arriving at the same destination as one whole, but wounded, immortal body;

This is the life I lead, the way my thoughts stretch out across the dark horizon at the end of all things, late into the eve of the seventh day; this is the live you get when you love a God who raises the dead.    

                                photo by nikaa