Birding

December 14, 2024 Leave a comment

Thanksgiving morning Toby woke up to noise and smells. He got out of bed and went downstairs in his PJs. The noise and smells were coming from the kitchen. His mother, aunt Susie and grandma Evans were talking and cooking. His seven-year-old sister Tilly was sitting on the counter singing one of her happy songs.

In the family room, Uncle Kevin and his father were sitting at a card table. Grandpa was sitting in the big chair reading a book. Toby went over to the card table.

“Hey Tob,” said Uncle Kevin.

“What are you doing?” Toby asked.

“We’re playing Risk,” replied his father.

“Can I play?” Toby asked.

“I think this game is a bit too hard for you,” his father replied. “We’ll play a different game later.”

Grandpa called Toby to come over and sit on his lap. Five-year old Toby did just that. He wanted to know what grandpa was looking at.

“It’s A Year-Round Guide to Indiana Bird Watching,” grandpa told him.

“Why you reading that grandpa?

 “I like birds, Tobias. Do you?”

“Uh-huh.” Toby rubbed his eyes and lifted the book to see the pictures. “What’s that?’ He pointed to the page.

“That’s a Dark-eyed Junco,” grandpa replied. “It says here that they like to eat seeds, insects and berries.”

“Huh. His name is Junco?”

“Yes. If you were a bird, I’d call you a Blue-eyed Tobias.” Grandpa smiled.

Toby turned the page. “Why do you like birds, grandpa?”

“Birds are special creatures. They seem to be wherever we are, as if God wanted to make sure we notice them. They are free and at the same time totally dependent on God and His created order.

“And there are so many kinds of birds, Tobias.” Grandpa flipped through the pages. “They bring color and sound to our lives. Seeing them and hearing them is proof that nature is healthy. I try to spot a bird by its coloring and by its songs and calls.”

“Birds have songs?”

“They sure do. Male birds sing to attract female birds. They also sing to scare off other birds from their territory and to bond with mates and young’uns. You want to hear a Mourning Dove Song?”

“Yeah.”  

Grandpa took a deep breath, formed his mouth and went “coo-AH-oo coo-coo”. He waited and then again “coo-AH-oo coo-coo.”

“The Mourning Dove keeps repeating this song until a female is attracted. That’s how I met your grandmother.” Toby’s eyes lit up when he saw grandma smile.

“Bird experts can tell the species of a bird by just listening to its song. Each species has its own song.”

“What’s speecheese?”

“A species is a way to name animals that are alike and have babies like them. Let’s see,” he found the page. “It says here that the Dark-eyed Junco is a species of Junco, a group of small, grayish sparrows.”

“It also says that Male Dark-eyed Juncos sing a sweet, high-pitched trill that sounds similar to the songs of the Chipping Sparrow and Pine Warbler. And during the winter, Juncos come to backyard feeders for millet and bird seed. I saw one at my bird feeder this morning.”

Toby looked over at the kitchen. “Let’s see if your mother has something for you to eat.” Grandpa moved Toby to his feet, got up, and the two of them went into the kitchen.

Toby was given a yogurt by his mother. Eating it, he watched Grandpa put his finger into the cranberry sauce, taste it and pucker his lips. Then grandpa put his finger into the mashed sweet potatoes, tasted it and said “Yum!” And then he put his finger into the pumpkin pie mix, tasted it and said “mm-mmm.”

When he reached for the stuffing, Grandma, hands on her hips, said, “Shoo you two. Come back when we’re ready to eat, in about two hours.”

“Let’s go for a walk Toby,” Grandpa said. “Get dressed in warm clothes. We’re going birding.”

A voice in the next room said, “Dad, the weather man said that central Indiana is 30 degrees and cloudy.”

Before Toby left the kitchen his mother said, “Go make your bed first and then put on your corduroy pants and blue sweater and then comb your hair.”

Toby shot upstairs and came back down two minutes later. His mother looked him over and then had grandpa put on his winter coat, his gloves, and the knitted hat that grandma made for him.

Outside, grandpa went over to his car and took out a pair of binoculars. He showed Toby and said “Maybe we will see a cardinal today.”

As they walked down two blocks past houses, they saw no birds. But then Grandpa spotted a Mourning Dove on a roof. He handed Toby the binoculars after adjusting the focus. “Let’s wait here and listen.”

When the dove began its song, Toby was transfixed until the dove flew out of sight.

They walked to the end of the street and came to a T-intersection. On the other side of the crossroad was open farmland. Wind whistled through the field of corn stalk stumps. Grandpa tied the ear flaps of Toby’s knitted hat below his chin.

To their left and down the road about forty yards was a small group of trees and undergrowth. “Let’s head there,” Grandpa told Toby.

As they walked along on the farm side of the road, Toby found a corn cob. Holding the smooth kernelled end, Toby showed grandpa the half-eaten end.

Grandpa looked it over and said, “Probably some squirrel started eating it. Or may be a goose.”

As they neared the trees, grandpa stopped and brought the binoculars to his eyes. He then handed them to Toby. “What do you see in that tree?” Grandpa pointed.

Toby looked and said, “The birds keep moving so I can’t see them.”

“They might be getting ready for winter,” Grandpa replied. They’re probably in a hurry to get out of the wind and get things settled for winter.”

Then Grandpa spotted a falcon perched on top of a utility pole that was about thirty yards down the road. He adjusted the focus of the binoculars and handed them to Toby. “Look up there. Can you see that falcon, Tobias?” He pointed to the electric pole.

Toby looked and said, “That is a falcon?”

Grandpa looked again. “Yes. A falcon known as the American Kestrel. I can tell by dark gray head, the rust-colored back and tail, the white cheeks and throat and blue-black bill. It’s the smallest of falcons. Some call it a “Sparrow Hawk”.”

“They like open areas without dense cover. He’s sitting up there to view the whole area for food. He’s scanning for prey on the ground. He’ll sit and wait. He’ll only attack when he’s sure that he will succeed. When he has prey in sight, he will either catch it on the ground or in flight. 

“In the summer months he’ll hunt and eat dragonflies, cicadas, beetles, grasshoppers, butterflies and moths, scorpions, and spiders. He’ll hover and capture insects in the air.

“In winter weather, like right now, he’ll hunt small mammals like mice, voles, shrews, and bats. And he’ll hunt small birds . . . like that little sparrow that just flew into the field. He pointed to it.

Grandpa let Toby use the binoculars to observe the falcon. “Let’s see what happens,” he said. “I wonder if that falcon noticed that small bird.”

A moment later, the falcon swooped down, grabbed the bird with his claws, and flew back to his high perch.

“Did you see that grandpa?” Toby asked.

“I sure did. He’s going back to his perch to eat it. Take another look.”

“Do birds eat other birds, grandpa?”

“They sure do. Birds of prey, like this falcon, have evolved to catch diverse things like insects, small mammals, and birds.

“I just remembered something. When I was a boy, Tobias, my father took me birding. One day he said “Frankie, there are so many birds but you never see dead birds. He told me that dead birds vanish because predators and scavengers come along and eat them. That’s why most bird bodies disappear. Creatures like foxes, badgers, ants, and birds of prey scavenge dead birds. The value of the bird’s life is returned to nature. Nature, he said, provides food for itself. Live birds and dead birds contribute to the lifecycle of our ecosystem.”

The sun never came out. The icy wind blowing across the open field made Toby’s nose and cheeks red. Grandpa said it was time for them to head back.

When they arrived home and opened the door, they were met with a rush of warm air, laughter, and savory smells. They saw the dining room table was set and the food ready to come out.

“Go wash your hands you two,” mom said. “We are ready to eat.”

When everyone had found their place at the table, mom asked grandpa to pray the blessing.

We give you thanks, most gracious God, for the beauty of
earth and sky and sea; for the richness of mountains, plains,
and rivers; for the songs of birds and the loveliness of flowers.
We praise you for these good gifts, and pray that we may
safeguard them for our posterity. Grant that we may continue
to grow in our grateful enjoyment of your abundant creation.
And now we ask Your blessing on this food we are about to eat. Amen.

A loud “AMEN!” followed.

Toby’s mother then handed Toby’s father a knife and said, “Carve the bird.” Toby gulped when he heard that. He looked over at grandpa.

“Tom turkey has been well fed. Now, he feeds us. Tobias, do you know which bird is at every meal?”

“No.”

“A swallow. Do you know which birds go to church a lot?

“No.”

“Birds of prey. What do you call a mean turkey?”

“I dunno.”

“A jerk-ey. What do you give a sick bird?”

“I dunno.”

“Tweetment! Did you hear about the owl with no friends?

“No.”

“He was owl by himself.”

The adults groaned. Toby wanted more.

After plates were filled and people were busy eating, Uncle Kevin asked Toby to tell everyone what he saw birding with grandpa.

“I saw a falcon. It came down and got a bird and ate it,” Toby exclaimed.

“Ewwwww!” Tilly didn’t like the thought.

Toby forked a piece a turkey, held it up, looked at his sister and said “Now I am a falcon!” and gobbled it down.

©Lena Johnson, Kingdom Venturers, 2024, All Rights Reserved

~~~~~

American Kestrel

American Kestral – Call of the Male

Dark-eyed Junco

Dark-Eyed Junco

Dark-eyed Junco Sounds, All About Birds, Cornell Lab of Ornithology

Bird Sounds and Songs of the Dark-eyed Junco | The Old Farmer’s Almanac

Dark-eyed Junco | Audubon Field Guide

Easter Morning Central Indiana Bird Song

Easter Morning Central Indiana Bird Song

~~~~~

American Kestrel – Photo by John Mariani

Vermilion Flycatcher at Cattail Marsh in Beaumont, TX – Photo by John Mariani

Eastern Phoebe at Anahuac National Wildlife Refuge, TX – Photo by John Mariani

American Tree Sparrow, Northwest Ohio – Photo by American_Phoenix

The quirky nature humor of  https://rosemarymosco.com/

Northern Shrike, new cartoon by Rosemary Mosco.

~~~~~

The presence of birds in our lives brings good health. Indeed research shows that the richer and more various the birds in a neighborhood, the higher people’s satisfaction with life. Birdsong is the natural sound linked most strongly to reducing stress and promoting restoration, particularly when it is more diverse and people are prompted to notice it. Birds bring joy.

Five curious health benefits of dark midwinter, according to science | The Independent

~~~~~

Imagination sees a parallel universe.

Filed under Christianity, Holiday, nature, Ornithology, short piece, Short Story, Thanksgiving, Writing Tagged with , , , , , , , , ,

Easter Morning

March 31, 2024 Leave a comment

Easter morning me and father are down in the basement brushing shoes. We put polish on them last night with a rag father keeps with his shoe shine kit on a shelf over the washing machine. I used the rag but brown polish came through on my fingers. We polish our shoes every Sunday but I know this Sunday is Easter because we went to church on Friday and we died eggs and my mother set the dining room table and there’s a lily in the front room and ham in the refrigerator and yellow jello with something in it and plastic eggs in a basket on the kitchen table and the sun shines like this only on Easter. I woke up cold this morning. I put on clean pajamas and put the wet ones in the clothes basket. Then I went into the kitchen and ate cereal. Father woke up. He got the Sunday paper off the front porch and came into the kitchen to make coffee. He waits for me to finish eating and scratches his belly and yawns. He tells me to let mum sleep in. She works too he says. After I’m done with my cereal we go downstairs to polish our shoes. We go back upstairs and father sits at the kitchen table drinks coffee. He opens the Sunday paper and gives me the funnies. We wait for mum and my brother to wake up. They wake up. My mother has coffee and my brother eats cereal. My mother says something to father in his ear. He tells us kids to go into the front room so he and mum can talk. We go. I share the funnies with my brother. We sit there for an hour. We look out the picture window and see father walking around the bushes with a basket of plastic eggs. We know what he is doing. We run to the back door. I hold the door handle and my brother bites his nails. Father comes to the door and says there are fifteen eggs hiding in our yard. See what you can find he says. We run to the front yard and look through the bushes and behind trees and in the mail box. The grass is wet and sparkly we find eggs but there are more we run to the back yard and find more. We pull up the bottoms of our PJ tops and hold the eggs there. We count them I have eight and my brother has seven we go back inside and see what’s inside Jelly beans gum tootsie rolls mother says to have only a couple she doesn’t want us bouncing around in church she says. Father is in the kitchen peeling sweet potatoes. Mother is washing goblets. I don’t know why she calls them goblets. They are not scarry to me. Me and my brother get ready for church. The clothes feel stiff but I wear them to look nice mother says. Father combs my hair and my brother’s hair. We wait in the front room and read the funnies. Finally it is time to go. We get in the car and drive to our church. I’ve never seen so many people. Mother wants to get a seat before they are gone we sit next to my friend Jeremy’s parents I smell flowers. People are talking a lot. Mothers are telling kids to be quiet. My friend Jeremy is sitting on the other side of his parents. Hes kicking the pew in front of him. The lady in front of him with a flower hat turns around looks angry but she smiles when Jeremys mom puts a hand on Jeremys knee and makes him stop. My best friend Billy isn’t here his family doesn’t go to church. We have to stand up and sit down a lot and listen a lot the seat is hard and I can’t sit still and I can’t listen a big woman is singing a high song that hurts my ears. I want to draw. I take the pencil in front of me and a card I draw Easter eggs and the face of the big woman I show it to Jeremy and he laughs. The man up front walks back and forth and then he stops and says o death, where is thy sting o grave, where is thy victory and I think about bee stings and moms gravy. Finally he stops and we stand up again and my pencil and card fall under the seat. A man behind me picks them up and gives them to me and smiles. Everyone smiles today even the woman at the organ who made a big burp sound when the music fell. Father and mother talk and talk and talk and finally we get back into the car and go home. On the counter is a strawburry pie. Mother puts on her apron and puts the ham in the oven. Father mashes the sweet potatoes. I tell them don’t forget to put marshmallows on the sweet potatoes. Mother takes a bag off the shelf and gives me and my brother a marshmallow. She tells us to go watch TV while they make dinner. We go downstairs. I turn on the TV and only Charlie Chan is on. Finally mother calls us and we go upstairs to eat we have to wash our hands before we sit down. Mother lights two candles on our table before the food comes father prays he thanks God for the food and Jesus and empty tomb abundant life heaven and earth sea and dry land family and friends those present and not present wonders great and small and mother says amen. Finally mother brings out the ham and the sweet potatoes and something green. Everything is hot she says. When the rolls come out me and my brother grab one. My mother asks me if I washed my hands. I look at them and my fingers are brown. They smell like polish it’s shoe polish soap and water and some scrubbing will take it off father says I tell them I better eat first because scrubbing is a lot of work. The end of what we did special on Easter Mrs Meyers your student Micheal M Skokram.

~~~

©Lena Johnson, Kingdom Venturers, 2024, All Rights Reserved

Filed under Christianity, Short Story, short story, Writing Tagged with , , , , , ,

The Time Has Arrived

September 27, 2022 Leave a comment

In a recent post remembering Queen Elizabeth II, I asked “Please let me know if you know of any other such female public figure today.”  Queen Elizabeth II symbolized the good, the stalwart, the faithful. She was a touchstone for basic human decency, for her country, and for the Christian faith.

At her Coronation in 1953, The Queen was anointed by the Archbishop of Canterbury. She took an oath to “maintain and preserve inviolably the settlement of the Church of England, and the doctrine worship, discipline, and government thereof, as by law established in England”.

Though she was the head of the Church of England, Queen Elizabeth acted and spoke with secular common sense.

Has another formative and no-nonsense woman come on the scene? Apparently. The Leftist media thinks so and is terrified. The media, with one voice, labels her “far right”, “fascist”, “Mussolini”.

This woman, Italy’s first female prime minster, speaks in clarion terms of the family, of preserving the good, of basic human decency, and of Italy-centered nationalism. She doesn’t speak globalist gobbledygook. She speaks in human terms and with secular common sense.

Here is Giorgia Meloni’s electrifying speech at the World Congress of Families

And here is Tucker Carlson’s opening statement on Giorgia Meloni:

Malone (and Vigano) on Meloni: Italian Election and COVID – Update (substack.com)

9-28-22: YouTube shut down the above World Congress of Families video – the Left is terrified of Meloni (and of families). Here’s a briefer version of her speech:

Filed under 2022 current events, Christianity, Conservatism, Nationalism, Political Commentary, Progressivism Tagged with , , , , , , ,

Ends Justifying the Means & Dereliction of Duty : “You can’t have one without the other”

August 11, 2015 Leave a comment

“Where is there dignity unless there is honesty?” ― Marcus Tullius Cicero

First:  A Dereliction of Dignity

“Justice Kennedy and Dignity”

Prior to the SCOTUS ruling on same-sex marriage:  “He [Justice Kennedy] explained that “by authorizing same-sex unions and same-sex marriages, New York sought to give further protection and dignity to that bond.” “…”Justice Kennedy can be remembered as the decisive vote for creating same-sex marriage or as the man who gave same-sex couples the opportunity to argue for the dignity of their relationships. It is unlikely that he can be remembered as both.”

Justice Kennedy please take some notes.

[Justice Clarence] Thomas wrote in his dissent that there is no “dignity” clause in the US Constitution — and that, even if there was, the government could not bestow it upon a person or take it away.

 

Second:  A Dereliction of Duty

Marriage: It’s an institute you must not disparage. Yet, the Supreme Court and State Attorneys General (AGs) have disparaged natural marriage. Many state AGs have not done their due diligence for the people they serve. The following video describes their disgrace.

The video does contain a bit of legalese but it is absolutely necessary for Christians to understand what is taking place in the world around them. This video will inform you of the failure of those whom we trusted.

BTW: I don’t have to tell you that the Left preaches tolerance but the Left is the most intolerant group on earth. The Left depends on bullying to get its way.

Dereliction of Duty: State Attorneys General Failing to Defend Marriage Laws in Court

Filed under Christianity, marriage Tagged with , , , , , , , , , ,

Quoth the Paradise: Nevermore!

December 30, 2012 2 Comments

Quoth the Paradise:  Nevermore!

 Please!  No more tattoos.  Cover up your butterfly, your Mayan symbol of fertility, your undulating butt cheeks covered with spider webs.  Cover up your magic marker body.  I do not want to see it.

 Please! No more women talking endlessly on cell phones while driving an SUV or a mini-van.  They are multi-tasking my patience. 

 Please, no more skinny jeans.  If I wanted to look at a blue toothpick then I will go puncture a Smurf. 

 Please, no more make-your-skin-crawl women: Rachel Maddcow, Ellen, Debbie Wasserman-Schultz, Harry Reid or Nancy Pelosi. 

 Please, no more city mayors telling us we can’t drink a biggie size drink or carry a gun or have a Chic-fil-A restaurant in our district.

 And please.  No more government!

When you voted for Obama you voted to make your life harder. I know I know. You thought life would be better but you were deceived by the “social justice” propaganda.

 Voting for tax and spend Democrats (Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi) means that you spend less time with your family and more time working to pay your bills.  Sure Barrack and Michelle will continue to get Hawaiian vacations and Barrack will continue to play hundreds of hours of golf but your family will have to put off vacations because of … 1) rising Federal and State taxes, 2) because of government regulations affecting your workplace which affects your pay and 3) because of rising consumer prices due to corporation taxes. And, tax rate increases for the wealthy do not occur in a vacuum.  Increasing the tax rates for the wealthy affects everyone negatively.

 With Democrats you are placed in what I call a Moronic Squeeze:  government through taxation (including the newly tax-mandated Obamacare) demands more of your money.  So now you will have to work more hours in order to take care of your family.  Then because you are both working so much you can’t spend time with your kids, time the kids desperately need.  Instead,  a public school takes over your children.  Then the public school system demands more money to teach your children and then government will come back for more tax money from you.  Phew! You and your children are put in an ever tightening vise by government.

 More devastating, government creates fiscal and moral poverty; “social justice” is the scam that is used to take money from your pocket and put it where it best serves a politician and his reelection needs.

 When both parents are working who’s with the kids?  Are you letting the public school inculcate its “diversity” values into your children because you don’t have the time to spend with them, because you work so many hours to pay government for the first five months of the year?

 Social justice, better simply, “justice”,  is learned at home.  Invest your money there and not in government:  spend time with your children, teach them what is good.  The returns will be great.  Government gives you pennies on the dollar return on your tax payments.

 When you keep more of your own money you have more options and more time to spend with family.  Voting for more government – more Democrats – does not give you more time with your precious family.  Instead you must work all the harder to meet government’s demands.  Obamacare is only one of the huge financial demands now placed on the middle class.

 2014 & 2016:  Think about your family before you vote for more government (and less take home pay) in the form of a Democrat candidate.

Added Dec 31st, 2012:  The Best Bumper Stickers of 2012 – the Legal Insurrection edition. Here’s one example:

Bumper-Sticker-Gypsum-CO-Forward

I have to ask:atlanta-Freedom

Filed under 2014 election, commentary, Economics, family, Political Commentary, Politics Tagged with , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Afternoon Aliens

September 7, 2012 Leave a comment

Any exhaustive research into my childhood would reveal several close encounters with aliens.

 You would learn that these encounters occurred primarily on Sunday afternoons but also sometimes on Saturday nights.  You would read that the aliens would slowly pull up in front of my parent’s home and then park right smack in the center of our view, a view framed by our front room picture window. (I wanted to say “frontroom” because it’s the Chicago way.)

 For our family Sunday mornings meant going to church – the hell-fire-and-brimstone-preaching-shouted-from-revved up lungs-quivering jowls-and-leaps and-bounds-of-a-Baptist-minister-kind of church.  Such a fire-breathing monster would let us know in no uncertain terms that redemption came only by turning from our sins and by walking down the aisle or raising our hand. I did wonder why he didn’t sell exercise videos out in the foyer – “Pilate Your Way Out of Purgatory:  Fit and Fundamental Workouts.”

 Now my mom and dad are God-fearing people who have always been very hospitable. Often, after a Sunday morning service or an evening service, my folks would invite friends, speakers, missionaries or relatives over for a meal.  As I said, this happened a lot.

 There were also a few Sundays when my parents decided to have an afternoon home alone with the kids. On those days we would come home from church to the salivating smell of pot roast.  The roast would cook while we sat in church pondering our short comings and our eternities.  The record will show that I had aromatic visions of pot roast as I turned from sin, walked down the aisle and raised my hand. 

 Back at home my mother would take the pot roast out of the oven and cover it with aluminum foil. Apparently the fat needed to rejoin the roast in a final cattle roundup. Mom and dad would then prepare the sides – all kid friendly: corn, mashed potatoes and gravy, rolls.  And, upon occasion my mother would make butterscotch pudding for dessert.  As a devotee of such fine cuisine I sat in the basement far out-of-the-way of the chefs. Down there I watched Warner Oland play Charlie Chan on our B & W TV:  “So sorry.”

 Besides being wafted to Kid Heaven by the smells I knew that my parents were not just making a scrumptious Sunday meal.  They were not going to take any chances with me going far from the straight and narrow.  They knew that the way to tether a kid’s soul and keep him close to home was with pot roast and butterscotch pudding.

 Well, on one of those blissful Sundays when my tummy was ballooned to its fullest pot roast-iest extent I lay on the floor rolling and reading the funny papers.  Nancy and Sluggo. Dick Tracy and Flattop. Brenda Starr and…my brother. 

 Daryl ever the antagonist always wanted to read the same few square inches of the comics that I was reading. I swear.  He would daily invent ways to aggravate me.  That day his pointed elbow to my side almost burst me.  In retaliation I poked him back and then he poked back harder.  This went on for ten minutes until my father said, “You two cut it out or no butterscotch pudding for you.” That settled things for the next five minutes. The thought of Butterscotch pudding had a calming effect on me. An added dollop of whipped cream would also keep me in check – for at least a half-hour.

 It was within the cautious serenity of those five minutes that I saw my father suddenly leap up out of his swivel rocker.  The Chicago Tribune fell to the floor splayed open.  My dad turned to my mother who was sitting on the couch half asleep.  With a look of petrified horror he said, “The Gephardts are here!” That was the day I would have my first sighting of aliens in our own front yard.

 Absolutely beside himself, my dad thought for a moment:  perhaps we could make it look like we weren’t at home.  But then he saw the visitors looking at him through the picture window.  The alien father on the front lawn was yelling “Hi Bob.”   My dad then looked down at his two young children, children who just came home from re-dedicating their lives to Jesus and to pot roast looking up at him.   Instantly changing his mind my dad scrambled in two directions at once.  In the same step he first bolted toward the kitchen but then turned and flew to the back of the house.  Things were put away, hidden from view.  Rooms were “straightened.” Food stowed deep in the refrigerator. Our Schnauzer Bobbie took the cue and hid under my bed whimpering. My brother and I hid all of our toys.  The quiet afternoon had morphed into the afternoon of the living Gephardts.

 Now the Gephardts were good people my folks said, “They’re just a little different.” Yeah, as different as earth and mars I would soon find out.

 After greeting the family of five, my dad said he had to get “some things” at the grocery store.  An hour later my mother looked concerned, abandoned concerned, angry concerned.  As the time crept, my mother sat patiently listening to Mrs. G. wonder out loud if her little “Ronnie was really over the chicken pox.” (I kid, (scratch, scratch) you not.)

My brother and I stood across from the three alien kids, two boys and a girl, and wondered what to do. Mom suggested that we go to a nearby field and play baseball until the FBI had located our father. So off we went.

 I can not recall whether it was my brother or whether it was me who was hit in the head with a baseball bat by a Gephardt boy. It must have been me who received the carom because great a swath of my memory has been forever displaced. The oldest kid swung right though an imaginary fast ball which was in fact my head.  Let the record show that silly remained intact though.  (I have had three concussions in my life:  one from a right-handed batter on sugar, one from a concrete wall that halted my fifty yard dash at 55 yards and one as an adult when a humongous lead pipe-carrying truck used my car as a brake – my head bounced around like a pin ball in a Dukes of Hazzard pinball game. Three concussions may explain my David Lynch-like persona, my dream-state reality and my stuttering posts.)

 At some point my dad came back from the store with a pie, a cherry pie and a can of whipped cream.  He offered to heat it, slice it and even remake it -anything so as to not have to talk to Mr. G who I now know was dead ringer for Randy Quaid.  Mr. G sat in our front room – greasy tee shirt, flys buzzing and all.  The three G kids all could have walked off a page of the Addam’s Family comic strip.  It’s all a blur.  On purpose.

 Mr. G was a junk collector by trade.  He collected “fine” items no longer of use to their owners. He resold his JIT inventory on Maxwell Street. Did we have anything that we didn’t want any more?  I imagined that my father wanted to say “Yes, you here.”  But my dad, a generous and good man, kept to his busy ways and went looking for a ‘fine item” that would spur Mr. G into immediate sales activity.   My dad “sacrificially” retreated to the basement where after a half hour of searching everywhere including a Walter Cronkite newscast he found a lamp on its last light bulb and handed it to Mr. G. who was pleased with his salable good but continued to eye my mom’s china cabinet.  My mother seeing Mr. G’s honed gaze locked onto the china cabinet stood up between Mr. G and the cabinet as she continued to talk to Mrs. G.  The “over-my-dead-body” look must have told Mr. G all he needed to know.  He backed down.

 After some warmed cherry pie and coffee and a shake down of each the kids to see if they had taken anything from our rooms we said goodbye to the G’s and to the afternoon. It was now evening.  Exhausted we all fell back into the couch to watch a “really big shew.”  We had seen the Outer Limits.

 Over time the Gs would show up again and again unannounced.  Somehow we were ever on their radar though my parents only slightly knew them as neighbors at a previous address in Chicago. But finally these afternoon aliens did stop showing up.

 I suspect they stopped coming when our house looked eerily uninhabited:  with all the curtains pulled my dad started taking long Sunday afternoon naps on the couch in the dark, cool basement of our house.  My mom who loved our dad took us three (by now) perturbing kids for a long drive in the country – all of us far from afternoon aliens.

(Any truth in this account, real or perceived, is totally up to you.)

© Sally Paradise, 2012, All Rights Reserved

Filed under Article, family, Writing Tagged with , , , , , , ,

Unwrapping Up

December 25, 2011 Leave a comment

This past year has been an incredibly agonizing one for me due to unexpected family events and the subsequent heartrending trauma that accompanies such a trajectory.  At the same time, though, I’ve become increasingly aware of a fundamental shift going on in my own nature – the shedding of my flimsy oft pretentious human nature to reveal Substantial Reality.  The nexus between these two versions of my person has been continued prayer for others and a regular partaking of the Eucharist.

 The whole divestment process has not been easy. In fact, it has been acutely painful, its unpleasantness much like what Eustace described to Edmund in C.S. Lewis’ The Voyage of the Dawntreader.  Here Eustace relates his dragon skin being torn off by Aslan.

 “The water was as clear as anything and I thought if I could get in there and bathe it would ease the pain in my leg. but the lion told me I must undress first. Mind you, I don’t know if he said any words out loud or not.

I was just going to say that I couldn’t undress because I hadn’t any clothes on when I suddenly thought that dragons are snaky sort of things and snakes can cast their skins. Oh, of course, thought I, that’s what the lion means. So I started scratching myself and my scales began coming off all over the place. And then I scratched a little deeper and, instead of just scales coming off here and there, my whole skin started peeling off beautifully, like it does after an illness, or as if I was a banana. In a minute or two I just stepped out of it. I could see it lying there beside me, looking rather nasty. It was a most lovely feeling. So I started to go down into the well for my bathe.

But just as I was going to put my feet into the water I looked down and saw that they were all hard and rough and wrinkled and scaly just as they had been before. Oh, that’s all right, said I, it only means I had another smaller suit on underneath the first one, and I’ll have to get out of it too. So I scratched and tore again and this underskin peeled off beautifully and out I stepped and left it lying beside the other one and went down to the well for my bathe.

Well, exactly the same thing happened again. And I thought to myself, oh dear, however many skins have I got to take off? For I was longing to bathe my leg. So I scratched away for the third time and got off a third skin, just like the two others, and stepped out of it. But as soon as I looked at myself in the water I knew it had been no good.

Then the lion said – but I don’t know if it spoke – ‘You will have to let me undress you.’ I was afraid of his claws, I can tell you, but I was pretty nearly desperate now. So I just lay flat down on my back to let him do it.

The very first tear he made was do deep that I thought it had gone right into my heart. And when he began pulling the skin off, it hurt worse than anything I’ve ever felt. The only thing that made me able to bear it was just the pleasure of feeling the stuff peel off. You know – if you’ve ever picked the scab of a sore place. It hurts like billy-oh but it is such fun to see it coming away.

Well, he peeled the beastly stuff right off – just as I thought I’d done it myself the other three times, only they hadn’t hurt – and there it was lying on the grass: only ever so much thicker, and darker, and more knobbly-looking than the others had been. And there I was as smooth and soft as a peeled switch and smaller than I had been. Then he caught hold of me – I didn’t like that much for I was very tender underneath now that I’d no skin on – and threw me into the water. It smarted like anything but only for a moment. After that it became perfectly delicious and as soon as I started swimming and splashing I found that all the pain had gone from my arm. And then I saw why. I’d turned into a boy again. You’d think me simply phoney if I told you how I felt about my own arms. I know they’ve no muscle and are pretty mouldy compared with Caspian’s, but I was so glad to see them.

After a bit the lion took me out and dressed me – (with his paws?) – Well, I don’t exactly remember that bit. But he did somehow or other: in new clothes – the same I’ve got on now, as a matter of fact. and then suddenly I was back here. Which is what makes me think it must have been a dream.”

Here’s what is being peeled away from me (not for the queasy!):

 – A sentimentality of the kind that keeps my soul inbred, subservient to its self-rationalizing self-pity.

 – The desire to control a situation or someone to obtain a pleasant outcome, to soften reality’s blow and effectively deny its painful truth. 

 – Pretense.

 – The need to look good so as to impress others with my abilities, the need to compete for another’s attention hoping to gain the pride of place.

 – The impulse to take action when waiting would be the most prudent – not easy, but prudent.

– The lack of acceptance at face-value of knowledge presented as feminine – intuitive, passive, receptive.

 – The lack of acceptance of wisdom as a gift from God and therefore not derived as a human accomplishment.

The list, the shedding, goes on…

 As this painful process continues I am beginning to see my Real self emerging. This in turn has invoked in me a need to return to my baptismal vows and to those baptismal waters that I at one time had thought only help serve to moisten and seal the earnest of one’s inheritance in Christ.  Little attention did I pay to my rapidly developing dragon skin. 

 Today, by fire and trial and Aslan’s claws, I am being freed of the hardened outer layer of self-protection and I am submersing myself in the waters of my baptism.  In doing so, I, the vulnerable suppliant I, has become alive to the REAL – the “perfectly delicious” Real.

 This peeling away is all about knowing Christ and the fellowship of His sufferings. That is True Reality.

Filed under Christian character, Christianity, Life As I See It, short piece, Suffering, Writing Tagged with , , , , , , , , , , ,

The Tree of Life Envisioned

November 26, 2011 Leave a comment

Recently I viewed Terence Malick’s The Tree of Life. It would be difficult for me to adequately describe the effect this movie had on me, the emotion and reflection evoked from me as a Christian parent who has lost a child.  This movie operates, more than any I have ever seen, on an intimate meaning-of-life level while the breadth of its vision enables us to direct our eyes away from ourselves and out into the vast cosmos. And in doing so, synchronicity with creation is summoned.

 Life’s deepest and most pressing questions, the universal “whys” behind all of life are posed using the simple narrative of the lives of the O’Brien family of five. Underlying the film’s basic premises of wonder and questioning is the ancient wisdom book of Job, for me the touchstone of the film.  I believe that each viewer’s prior contemplation of life’s deepest questions would certainly individualize the film’s impression on the viewer.  Without individuation, though, the movie is just an amalgam of exceptional pictures and music – a mood piece. I see The Tree of Life as being a spiritual movie and not a religious documentary and therefore I believe it will affect each viewer differently.

 Without going into too much of the narrative detail, detail which may deprive you of the movie’s impact, here is my initial impression of Terrence Malick’s The Tree of Life:

 Though I was ready for the usual exceptional visual imagery – Stanley Kubrick’s movies come to mind – that is part and parcel of Malick’s cinematic talent (see also his Days of Heaven) I was blown away by the large scope of the movie:  creation, the meaning of life, the existence of suffering, nature and grace and the Creator. 

One of the visual and emotional pleasures of this movie is that the images are offered to us in prolonged time frames – there are no frenetic montages matched to every blink of the eye. The absence of the modern movie restlessness allows us to contemplate the force of those images. We are then able to react with deeply held authentic feelings and at the same time not feel the need to immediately dispose of those feelings so as to be ready for the next emotional roller coaster ride of images. In this way the movie parallels life:  creation and real life takes place over time.  I believe the movie honors the fact that God takes time to accomplish His purposes – in the universe and in the saga of our lives. And, as the movie depicts, we do not understand God’s ways but, as I have seen, God, who is outside of time, uses time to reveal His Nature and His Grace to us.

 Malick rolls out before us a grand sweeping chromatic scroll of the universe. The visual imagery, often shown in natural lighting is enhanced with beautifully evocative musical selections including works by Bach, Mozart, Brahms, Smetana’s The Moldau River, Preisner’s Lacrimosa, Cassidy’s The Funeral March and Górecki’s Sorrowful Songs Symphony. Such music invokes us to come present to the spiritual within our souls.

 The awe-inspiring and overwhelming dynamic universe centers around and is grounded by a tree in the backyard of a family’s home in Waco Texas, circa 1950s. Using a minimalist script this family of five provides creation’s human narrative: father (emblematic of nature), mother (emblematic of grace) and their three young sons.  The father, the mother and Jack O’brien, the eldest son and main character give us our viewpoints. Later on in the movie Jack’s character is played as an adult by Sean Penn. The adult Jack becomes an architect who creates buildings derivative of his own hard-edged “nature”.

 Within this family life narrative we see birth, growth, maturation, anger, relational distance, death, sorrow, loss, envy, survival, strife and sin. Along the way the ever pressing questions of life are whispered to our ears using voiceovers.

 As I mentioned the display of the immensity and dynamism of the created universe provides the backdrop for these most important issues of life, questions that this family of five and certainly any sane person on earth ponders at some point in their life:  Where is God?; Does God see what is happening?; Does God care? Are we left on our own? What about evil? What about the loss of a child? Why is there suffering?

 After the death of her son Mrs. O’Brien asks, “He was in God’s hands the whole time, wasn’t he?” “If God is good and cares about us, why does he make us suffer?”  Throughout the movie we are engaged to ponder these hard questions and to once again look through a glass darkly for the answers.

 Watching this film I was also reminded of Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov and the philosophical lessons Smerdyakov learned from Ivan, regarding the impossibility of evil in a world without a God.

 In depicting some of the range of God’s creation we see vast spatial distances which hold myriad galaxies and we also see, looking through other end of the telescope, intricate microcosmic details.  We are reminded that the Creator God is ever beyond our finite comprehension. For this reason I am thankful that Malick chose to countenance theism and not a Woody Allen-type nihilism that turns its back on God and mocks Him every time.

 The movie begins by referencing the oldest piece of wisdom literature in the world, the book of Job. The stage is set with God responding to Job who had cursed the day he was born after being overwhelmed with trouble, suffering and loss.  From Job 38:4, 7:

 “Where were you when I laid the earth’s foundation … while the morning stars sang together and all the sons of God shouted for joy?”

 Throughout the movie there are other paraphrased Scripture references including Job 13:15, “I will be true to you whatever comes.”

 I believe I also heard a paraphrased reference to Paul’s letter to the Roman church during a scene where Jack is praying: “I know what I want to do but I can’t do it.”  Also, there is an oblique reference to Paul’s letter to the Corinthian church regarding the character of love:

  “There are two ways through life:  the way of nature and the way of grace. You have to choose which one you’ll follow. Grace doesn’t try to please itself. Accepts being slighted, forgotten, disliked. Accepts insults and injuries. Nature only wants to please itself. Get others to please it too. Likes to lord it over them. To have its own way. It finds reasons to be unhappy when all the world is shining around it. And love is smiling through all things. The nuns taught us that no one who loves the way of grace ever comes to a bad end.” Mrs. O’Brien, The Tree of Life

 Beyond the infusions of Scripture, I saw revealed man’s unconscious need to bump up against someone bigger and stronger than life itself. And though we are infinitesimally small compared to the enormous universe we matter to God.  In another wisdom book of the Bible, the Psalms, the shepherd boy David speaks in awe of God’s intimate knowledge of His creatures,

“When I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have set in place, what is man that you are mindful of him, the son of man that you care for him?”

  The film doesn’t seek to answer the questions of life but only poses them offering up grace as the consummate reconciler. As a believer in Jesus Christ I am transformed daily by God’s grace.  Just as important, I am forgiven and reconciled with God because Jesus Christ was nailed to another tree – the cross. His resurrection now provides me access to the Tree of Eternal Life. I know the One Who is the Answer.

A tree of life was planted in the garden long ago…

  “Now the Lord God had planted a garden in the east, in Eden; and there he put the man he had formed. And the Lord God made all kinds of trees grow out of the ground—trees that were pleasing to the eye and good for food. In the middle of the garden were the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.”…

 Now the serpent was more crafty than any of the wild animals the Lord God had made. He said to the woman, “Did God really say, ‘You must not eat from any tree in the garden’?”

The woman said to the serpent, “We may eat fruit from the trees in the garden, but God did say, ‘You must not eat fruit from the tree that is in the middle of the garden, and you must not touch it, or you will die.’”

 “You will not surely die,” the serpent said to the woman. “For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”

When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it. She also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it. Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they realized they were naked; so they sewed fig leaves together and made coverings for themselves.

Then the man and his wife heard the sound of the Lord God as he was walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and they hid from the Lord God among the trees of the garden. But the Lord God called to the man, “Where are you?”

 

While we ask God “Where are You in all of this?”, God is asking us “Where are you?”

Filed under Art, Christian, Christianity, Classical, Evil, Human Interest, Life As I See It, Movies, Music, Philosophy, Psalm, Scripture, Suffering, theism, Wisdom Tagged with , , , , , , , , ,

The Boy in the Tent

October 5, 2011 Leave a comment

Last night I found myself in a van, my ex driving us to a familiar campground in the next state.  We wanted to get there as fast as we could.  We urgently wanted to get to our seven year-old son.

 We drove through the darkness panting and leaning forward in our seats. Just before sunrise we entered the campground.  We drove over to the campsite where we had camped many times before. There in the middle of a grassy opening surrounded by oak trees was a lone pup tent.

 I jumped out of the van and ran over to the tent. Down on my knees I lifted the tent flap and looked into the dimly lit tent.  My son was sitting in the middle of the otherwise empty tent.  He was facing the other way.

 There was nothing in front of him. He sat dead still.

 I crawled over to him.  As I did so he turned his head to look at me. He then got up, jumped into my arms and hugged me tightly.

 After a while we released our hug and I put him down.  He returned to sit in the same place in the tent. He sat down facing away from me.

 I went out of the tent.  My ex had been yelling from the car that we had to leave.

 I called back to my son and told him that we were going, that he must come along. There was no reply.

 ****

 I opened my eyes and winced them shut again.  The pit of my stomach felt as if it had been carved out of me while I slept.  When the silent sobbing began I tried to cover the wound.

© Sally Paradise, 2011, All Rights Reserved

Filed under family, Life As I See It, marriage, prose, short piece, short story Tagged with , , , , , , , ,

Logocentrism

October 4, 2011 Leave a comment

Below are some excerpts from a brief article about education, books vs. TV, imagination, home schooling and preserving what’s good in a civilization.  The article provides a great prescription for a child’s education.   Two of my children were home schooled for several years, so I know from experience the author’s point of view.

The article begins with the author asking “Are you ever afraid that home schooling your kids will make them, um, oddballs?” As parents we asked ourselves the same question and we found the answer to be a resounding “No.”

 I have heard people tell me that children who are home schooled lack social interaction. That is absolute nonsense. What you do as a home schooler is to find other parents who are doing the same thing and then just let the kids relate. You go on field trips and do a lot of fun learning activities which include science, music, sports and drama.  And, there is plenty of support out there for anyone who wants to home school their child.

 From Touchstone Magazine:

 

Education Normal

Mark T. Mitchell on the Oddity of Giving Children a Moral Imagination

 

Will your kids be raised primarily on books or on television? To put it another way: Will your children be educated in a logocentric environment, where the written and spoken word is the primary conveyer of meaning, or will they ingest most of their information through electronically generated images?

Now, of course, emphasizing books over television is not the entire story, for books vary in quality and there are plenty of books that cultivate misshapen virtues and a cynical view of life. But I think it is safe to say that parents who make the effort to emphasize books as a way of life will generally be those who have been powerfully moved by books themselves. They have experienced the wonder and joy and goodness of certain books and will introduce these to their children even as one introduces a family member to a much-loved friend.

But setting the content of the books aside (for only a moment), those whose minds are shaped by an ongoing encounter with language will develop mental habits that include patience, perseverance, the ability to think abstractly, and an imagination that does not require the constant stimulation of external images. The imagination of the reader (guided by the author) creates the images, whereas the child raised on television merely imbibes what has already been fully rendered by the camera.

 More than Rules

There are two facets to educating a child well. The first is to recognize that education is not merely the accumulation of facts, but that it has an unavoidably moral aspect. A suitable education must do more, therefore, than simply teach facts, even moral facts. Education must seek to cultivate the moral imagination of the child, for reducing moral education to a list of rules is bound to fail…

But if our children are raised primarily on visual images, if they do not cultivate the mental disciplines necessary to access truth via language, then the Holy Scriptures will remain opaque, the creeds and confessions of faith will be meaningless recitations, and hymn lyrics will be merely pleasant-sounding rhymes to accompany occasionally pleasant-sounding music.

While the ultimate aim of education is to cultivate the souls of children toward godly virtue, a secondary but related end is the preservation of civilization…

stewards of our civilization must possess well-cultivated language faculties capable of grasping complex and abstract ideas and concepts.

 Normal Children Needed

If a proper education is to accomplish or at least to seek to accomplish these tasks, then a normal child is one whose moral imagination is well formed, whose soul is oriented toward a love of logos and the Logos, and who knows and loves the best of his own civilization. Such a child will, perhaps unwittingly, become a steward of the good, the true, and the beautiful. In a world where normal is considered odd, such children are desperately needed.

Mark T. Mitchell teaches political theory at Patrick Henry College in Virginia. He is the co-founder of Front Porch Republic.
Read more: http://www.touchstonemag.com/archives/article.php?id=22-07-014-v#ixzz1ZpTpK4sP

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