Advent 2017 Meditation #3: A Google Search into Essential Time Management Skills for an Excellent Career, or How to Murder Thoreau

I'm getting yet another late start. This time it's 10:30pm. I've spent the last hour demonstrating remarkably poor time management, doing things like watching a Church league basketbrawl game, and practicing a song for an open mic on Thursday, and fixing drywall, which could easily be done tomorrow or the day after or any time that I'm not supposed to be meditating on all things Advent. And I wouldn't be a "bad time management person" if I hadn't just complained to my therapist today about how I'm terrible with time management. I feel like there ought to be a word for "bad time management person" Maybe an "Edwin." Let's try that again: And I wouldn't be an "Edwin" if I hadn't just complained to my therapist today about how I'm an "Edwin." Oh, yes. That definitely works.

So now, to get with this meditation, I'm smoking (tobacco, for all you miscreants out there) and drinking, but not as much as I did during meditation #1 when I more or less hit "publish" before it was actually finished (I went back and cleaned it up).

I just Googled "time management." I clicked on the first link and it took me to a remarkably uninviting page. Like a house you might walk into and, for some reason, before anyone speaks a word, find that you feel completely unwanted. Maybe there's stacks of clutter, or it's dirty (not messy), or there's strange decor, or children. To my surprise, that link contained an eye-opener: Good time management requires an important shift in focus from activities to results: being busy isn’t the same as being effective. (Ironically, the opposite is often closer to the truth.) What?! Ironically?! Ben Camino has that trademarked! And yet...and yet...I guess that is ironic. I mean, I think it's ironic. Maybe it's only ironic because I'm an Edwin and I have no time management skills and so what's obvious to non-Edwins comes as a surprise to me. Being busy isn't the same as being effective? Bosh. I'm certain that in order to be effective you must be busy. Let's move on. What are the benefits to time management?

Greater productivity and efficiency. Makes sense.

Less stress. I get that.

Better professional reputation.

Hmm. Now I'm suspicious. I spent about an hour today on the phone talking with Eric Wolfe. I don't regret it one bit, but I'm certain it was poor time management and there's not a chance it did a thing for my LinkedIn account. "Better professional reputation." Thoreau would vomit up his carrot and potato garden if he heard a phrase so abhorrent. An appropriate Thoreau quote:

"The greater part of what my neighbors call good I believe in my soul to be bad, and if I repent of anything, it is very likely to be my good behavior. What demon possessed me that I behaved so well?" 

I am certain of it, that Thoreau had scarcely a sense of time, let alone "time management," and the idea that he should learn it for the sake of a "better professional reputation," well, well, it's absurd. 

I read a bit in Thoreau's journal just now, a small break from writing, and I discovered this, from Sept. 7, 1854, age 34:

"I do not so much wish to know how to economize time as how to spend it." 

He goes on:

"The scenery, when it is truly seen, reacts on the life of the seer. How to live. How to get the most life. How to extract its honey from the flower of the world. That is my every-day business, I am as busy as a bee about it."

AHHH-HAAA!!! To be busy, busy as a bee! In pursuit of the good life, of what is true and beautiful and right!

"I ramble over all fields on that errand, and am never so happy as when I feel myself heavy with honey and wax."

He's really rolling with this bee analogy.

"I am like a bee searching livelong day for the sweets of nature."

That settles it. I'm going on a run tomorrow. Getting outdoors and searching for life. Too much screen time these days. Too much phone. I want to run down this old weedy railroad track I discovered a few weeks ago. I want to jog around the downtown and run past what old brick is left and see what I can see. I want to smell the grease wafting from the lunchtime kitchens. I want to hear the traffic. I want to feel the concrete under my running shoes and find the rhythm of my breath. I want to hum around this city, paying attention. I was made for this. Some years ago when I really wanted off the grid I bought a 49cc moped, the sort that doesn't require a driver's license, and I'd crawl around town at about 30mph. Life slows down on a moped. You start noticing houses and trees and shapes and colors your eyes never caught before. I've missed that moped now for about 3 years, but since taking up jogging in the summer I've enjoyed getting back to that slow move.

I love a slow move.

Advent is a slow move, when I stop and give it a chance. Advent isn't for the Effective Time Manager With A Better Professional Reputation. Or rather, they aren't for it. I don't think they'd get along. Me, I want to be busy being slow. Last Advent I tried to shut 'er down and take a nap. This year I think I want to start buzzing. Cooking potatoes, cleaning the house, fixing things, lifting things and going on runs, learning new music, drinking new drinks, loving what ought to be loved and hating what ought to be hated. Oh, and I want to read more of this Thoreau journal. I'll fit a nap in at least a few times, no doubt. But tonight I can't stand the thought of letting good honey go to waste. There are new moons, howling wolves, and strange skies out there. "If eyes were made for seeing, then beauty is its own excuse for being," wrote Emerson. This is Advent. We were made for this. Tonight I am ready to brave this city and this life and this season. Tomorrow I will make my way through my day like a bee, zipping from flower to flower, I will manage my time like a 19 year old manages a Waffle House at 3am. I will be an Edwin.

I'm blowing out this Advent candle for the night and falling asleep with this journal. Be well, pilgrims. Be slow.

The Christmastide Vespers Office for Tuesday of the First Week of Advent, The Hymn

O God, creation's secret force,
Yourself unmoved, yet motion's source,
Who from the morn till evening's ray
Through every change does guide this day:

Grant us, when this short life past,
The glorious evening that will last;
That, by a holy death attained
Eternal glory may be gained.

Grant this, O Father ever one
With Jesus Christ Your only Son
And Holy Ghost, whom all adore,
Reigning and blessed forevermore.

Advent 2017 #2: Why do people punch holes in walls?

Last night I didn't get to sleep until the nearby Norfolk Southern blew its 2am whistle. This morning I woke up hungover and a little high. And today, well, today was an all-around bad day. I feel it, too. Precious frustration. It must be precious for as tight as my mind and body hold onto it. Out of control and out of ideas. Afraid. Nervous. Weak. My cat won't stop squeaking and she's driving me mad. And it's all compounded by the fact that I'm struggling to hit my Advent stride. Is it really Advent? It was 50 degrees today. This can't be Advent. And I can't write. I can't do anything. My self-help books tell me: don't catastrophize. That's the ugliest word I think I've ever read or said.

There's this damnable hole in my wall that I've been trying to patch for close to 3 weeks. Way back when, during a really bad day, I put it there. I always think about that day when I listen to Jackson Browne's "In the Shape of a Heart."

There was a hole left in the wall
From some ancient fight
About the size of a fist
Or something thrown that had missed
And there were other holes as well
In the house where our nights fell
Far too many to repair
In the time that we were there

I've ignored that hole since 2014. For a while I covered it with a long scarf that hung from a hat rack. Eventually I stopped using the room and didn't have to look at it. Now I have some plans for the room and so this month I decided, finally, 3 years later, it was time to fix that hole in the wall (which is, indeed, the size of a fist). This hole is a bitch to drywall. It's been impossibly uncooperative. Sanding issues, drying issues, spackling issues, putty issues. Enough issues for multiple hour-long therapy sessions. My girlfriend, after watching me re-spackle the hole for the 4th time, asked if I regretted putting it there. "What even is regret?" I asked. I looked down at all the dust and paint and mess and I shouted, "YES, I REGRET IT."

Why do people punch holes in walls? When we were all much younger, teenagers, my cousin punched his floor. Family shit, I think. He broke his hand. If you have to choose between punching a floor or punching drywall, always go with the drywall. When I was 20 I punched a cheap fake wooden door. The heart controls the fist. The way I see it, you buy drywall putty for two reasons: 1) after a clumsy accident or 2) after a killer heartbreak (and it could be any heartbreak, not necessarily romantic). An important note: people don't punch holes in walls to solve their problems, so "what did that accomplish?" isn't speaking the correct language. They don't do it "out of anger," either. That sounds like something from one of my Buddhist self-help books. No, they do it because there's not a damned thing else left to do. Some might call it "catastrophizing," but when there's no way out, you make one...with a hole...in a wall. Like Andy Dufresne, who put one big hole in the wall of his prison cell and crawled to freedom through 500 yards of shit-smelling foulness and came out clean on the other side. Lucky for him, he didn't have to patch the thing.

Monday's Christmastide Vespers Office Refrain

He will judge the world with righteousness and the people with his truth.

I wonder if this hole in my wall isn't alive, if it isn't rejecting my feeble attempts to repair it because, like out of some sci-fi/horror movie, the real wound is festering, in some heart, in a life, and hasn't been healed. This house is young, built in 2009, but it's seen its share of pain. Maybe places and homes need truth and righteousness as much as people.

When I hear that Jackson Browne song, I think about how I put that hole in my wall because I love my mother and couldn't help her. A hole in the wall in the shape of a heart. I think of the cross and the sacred heart of Jesus. I don't mean to mix our liturgical seasons here, it's Advent, not Easter, this ain't the time for crucifixion talk, but if we're out here waiting in the dark, with our candle lit, then it helps to know that the god we're waiting for might just be willing to punch out a hole in the universe for us

in the shape of a heart.

Amen.

Advent 2017 #1: Thoreau's Danger

Hello, friends and Joes (plumber Joes, G.I. Joes, regular Joes, cups of Joe, and pilgrim Joes). Today is the first day of Advent and I'm drinking and smoking and writing to forget a horrendous game of Madden 18 where I threw a pick-6 tied 14-14 in the 4th with under a minute left on the clock. Football doesn't get me in the writing mood, win or lose, but definitely lose, and especially a loss like that. I'd be better off going to the gym, working out my temple of the Holy Spirit, but I've already ran 2 miles today and if I don't start this now I'll be up until the second day of Advent.

I think it might be easier to take a loss like that on a beach in Kona, Hawaii as opposed to a small town in Northeast, Indiana where the quaint, historic downtown has more sheet metal than freshly pointed old brick. But thems the breaks. And now it's December, and it's colder, and darker, and I have to write each and every night until Christmas comes. Last year I followed a $15 liturgical calendar which I think I ordered again last week but it hasn't arrived yet. This year I'm using Christmastide by Phillip Tickle to Sherpa me through Advent.

I also have Walden and part of Thoreau's journal next to me, just in case. In his Dec. 6th, 1854 entry (age 37) he wrote:

After lecturing twice this winter I feel that I am in danger of cheapening myself by trying to become a successful lecturer, i.e., to interest my audiences. I am disappointed to find that most that I am and value myself for is lost, or worse than lost, on my audience. I fail to get even the attention of the mass. I should suit them better if I suit myself less. I feel that the public demand an average man - average thoughts and manner - not originality, not even absolute excellence. You cannot interest them except as you are like them and sympathize with them. I would rather that my audience come to me than that I should go to them, and so they be sifted; i.e., I would rather write books than lectures. 

And so I blog. And I try to avoid Thoreau's danger, and I do not cheapen myself, and I deal with no stares from disinterested audiences, or yawns or glances at the watch. I write for me, not for consumption. But come as you are, read if you wish, join me on this pilgrimage. Journey through Advent with me, pull it apart, test it for yourself, until Christmas morning comes and we can put it all behind us for another year. But for now, God is coming. God is on the move.

What would you do if you received news that "God is on the move"? Thank you Amber from this morning's Advent sermon for this Lewis-esque imagery.

God is on the move.

I read Lion and the Witch a few months ago but suddenly I feel the need to read it again.

If I heard that "God is on the move," I know what I'd do. To borrow a phrase (nay, a judgement) from my friend, Jennifer, I'd let the mystic inside me finally win out against troll. That's not just some saying she came up with, that's her sermon for me, that's her "repent for the Kingdom of God is at hand." That's lady Jennifer the Baptist tellin' me to check myself before I wreck myself. And it's Advent that maybe gives us the eyes to see a Facebook comment as something more than a Facebook comment, maybe a sermon, a cold drink after a run under the Thanksgiving sky, a "come on down to the river to pray," where you can relax those jaw muscles and let your paramour love you as much as she wants, all the time, whatever it takes. That's the danger Thoreau doesn't discuss, of cheapening yourself - not for others, but for yourself. To avoid, to protect, to get on with life. Advent is not the season for "getting on with life."

Jesus said to his disciples: "Be watchful! Be alert! You do not know when the time will come."

I'm nowhere near as good at this as Ben Camino, who had me clapping along with his Ironic Advent Meditation as he insulted some Ordinary guy from Ohio. "You insulted him a little bit, [Ben], you got a little out of order yourself," so sayeth the great Robert De Niro.

Ben, I read a book called Perks of Being a Wallflower when I was 16 during Life Science class and "Landslide" was a big part of the penultimate driving-a-truck-through-a-tunnel moment in that gay, emo, early 2000s paperback novel, or at least that's how I remember it. A girlfriend I was trying to impress always carried it around in her bag and so I read it. That's not where I first heard the song, mind you. I was a classic rock kid. Creed and the other 00s bands were shit to me. I wanted Zeppelin, The Eagles, AC/DC. I knew "Landslide" was from Nicks, formerly of Fleetwood Mac (I listened to "Go Your Own Way" when that same girl was both breaking up with me and when I finally broke up with her). Ben, "Landslide" is really important to Millennials. It meant something to us. It may be the only thing I remember from Life Science.

"Can I handle the seasons of my life? I don't know."

Maybe the best thing about that song is the guitar picking, or Stevie Nicks' ghostly voice.

"I've been 'fraid of changin' 'cuz I built my life around you."

That sticks. That really sticks. Can I build my life around no one? In a cabin? In the woods? I want to. I don't know if I can. I don't know if I'm called to that. Or maybe I'm called to that and more. In the space in between. Between the woods and something else. Between the waiting and the arrival. That's Advent. This weird space where "Landslide" means something and doesn't mean anything at all and you find the meaning in the beauty and you listen to it on YouTube and Tom Petty starts playing, a voice from beyond the grave, another rock star I listened to when I was 17. "Learning to Fly."

"The good old days, may not return, the rocks might melt, and the sea may burn."

I don't even know what that means, but I learned something from it. Sometimes it helps to have a songwriter point out the obvious. And at least it wasn't Creed.

In Christmastide Vespers Office for the Sunday of the first week of Advent, there's a prayer:

Almighty God, give all of us grace to cast away the works of darkness, and put on the armor of light, now in the time of this mortal life in which your Son Jesus Christ came to visit us in great humility; that in that last day, when he shall come again in his glorious majesty to judge both the living and dead, we may rise to the life immortal; through him who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever. Amen.

If you're in this with me, if you're reading your way through Advent, burning your candle, then I guess we ought to prepare for life immortal, "The soil, it appears, is suited to the seed, for it has sent its radicle downward, and it may now send its shoots upward also with confidence. Why has man rooted himself firmly in the earth, but that he may rise in the same proportion into the heavens above?" That's the quote from Thoreau I put at the top of this blog a year ago. We are made for these times. If you think you aren't quite right, remember: you were made for this. That applies to basically everything, unless, I guess, it's sinful, in which case it doesn't apply, and if you feel like you're made for something sinful, well, you've got bigger problems than this Advent blog can handle. But it definitely applies to Advent. We were made for this.

Today was the first Sunday of Advent. We made it through. Maybe hope sustained us, maybe it was the veggie omelet from Johnny's in Huntington. I hear a 2am train in the distance and it's lulling me to sleep. Be well, pilgrim. I'll see you tomorrow.

~~~~~

Pilgrim Dude is in love and this is the sort of thing he writes when it's late and his identity is down. I rather liked it and thought it worth sharing.

You are my amante. I love you. Tomorrow/today is Monday. Have courage. Life is good. You are good. You are better than good. You are a woman made to wait on the Lord and worship and serve and love and lead and you do these things well. You are an inspiration to me, your overcoming, your cooking, your advice. I am 2 beers, 5 blunts, and 2 cups of coffee into this first Sunday of Advent and I tell you baby that if it ain't you it ain't no one, you're my amante, that's Spanish for lover, and that's a good thing. You're a good thing. In 7 minutes it's gonna be Monday, the first Monday of Advent, and I love the feel of your cheeks, your face, on my lips, under my nose, and how your face moves into a smile when I kiss you there. Today is Advent and I'm waiting on myself to be the man I know I can be for you. Amen.

Thanksgiving 2017 Meditation: Enough

Today is Thanksgiving and I'm back with a Thoreau quote.

I went on a 4 mile run this evening and as I circled back I passed the parking lot near my home. The sun had set below the woods and a deep orange glow hovered over the countryside. The parking lot lights were strangely beautiful, almost holy, and the old corner restaurant didn't feel quite so ugly as usual. Parking lots are empty on Thanksgiving. The emptiness adds something queer and transcendental.

I edited a short essay last week. I had to trim it back from 500 words to 300. I don't do much editing, what with this being a blog and all, but it was a rewarding experience. I think we should all benefit by taking the time to remove superfluous things from our lives. If a parking lot can suddenly appear holy without all the traffic, how much more could a human life become? What new and glorious things can we add to our existence by removing the unnecessary?

"I am grateful for what I am and have. My thanksgiving is perpetual. It is surprising how contented one can be with nothing definite, only a sense of existence." - Henry David Thoreau

Ironía Dia de los Muertos Meditación

It’s the first day of November 2017 and I’m drinking a Samuel Adams Maple Red Ale from a snifter, a proper beer glass, usually reserved for stouts and brandies and other things worth smelling. The writers on samueladams.com talk about this beer like it’s a $300 sweater from the J. Peterman catalog:

As vibrant in color as fall's liveliest foliage, this deep red beer's hints of caramel and vanilla are rounded out by a smooth, rich maple character. Warming enough for a chilly fall day, its distinct notes of maple dance against a slightly sweet malt background and make this complex beer the perfect bridge into cooler weather.

Around here, in northern Indiana, maple is a March flavor, when the air freezes during the still-long nights and warms up during the crisp sunny days. That’s when the local maple mill runs. Then and only then. About two weeks, four if they’re lucky. So I’m not so sure about this “perfect bridge into cooler weather” business. For me, it’s the opposite, when the green grass pokes through the thin crust of icy snow and the gray winter clouds give way to cold blue afternoons, dad calls and tells me he’s going to the mill and I lace up my mud boots and join him in the middle of a small woods. If you’re looking for the perfect bridge into cooler weather, you don’t need the Maple Red by Sam Adams, you need Advent.

We're coming up on the 1 year anniversary of Pilgrim Dude and I'm trying to remember what this blog is for. I'm doing something here, I just can't think what. Last year, at the end of November and well into December, this writing space became a sort of liturgy. For 18 consecutive nights (until I took off for Hawaii), I sat at my computer and wrote, drank, smoked, and cried. I wrote about death. I wrote about life. I chewed on roots. Ironic Advent MediCATIONS, I called them, unashamedly ripping off the Ironic Advent Meditations of Ben Camino (which are now trademarked). I do what he does, only worse, and with less irony, and without a half century of life to look back on (or however old you are, Ben). Those MediCATIONS were about treating the anxious, desperate, exasperated, reaching, uncentered life we too often live with some naps, walks, poetry, patience, music, and friendship. We’re about a month away from Advent 2017, which begins on Dec. 3rd. If I manage to write a full set this year, it’ll be 22 meditations in all. I don’t have much to teach, but I have a lot to think about. Truth be told, I should have started yesterday with an Ironic Halloween Meditation, like Ben. I’ve wanted to write one of those for a while now. But I’ll have to settle for an Ironic Day of the Dead Meditation.

There's a quote I came upon recently (not from Thoreau, from former NFL exec Michael Lombardi): "Culture eats strategy for breakfast, lunch, and dinner." I've spent the last month unpacking it. I'd think about it on long afternoon runs, while mowing the lawn, or cooking eggs and potatoes. When I was a student at Huntington University (a history ed. major), the education profs talked a lot about teaching strategies, behavioral strategies, and classroom management strategies. They had semester long, 3 credit hour classes dedicated entirely to strategy, but I'm not sure I ever once heard anything from the educrats about culture. To their credit, culture is a tricky thing. It's hard to quantify, harder to teach, and it doesn't tackle classroom problems in a specialized or "rational" way. That sort of thing isn't bound to be popular and you can't really expect it from education departments. The trouble is, you can't build anything of significance with strategy alone. So, this year, Pilgrim Dude is going to do a lot of thinking about culture. Thoreau might call it soil. We aren't quite as far removed from the rest of the planet as we like to think, we aren't a special category unto ourselves; the seed requires good soil to grow, and so do we.

I had a walking conversation with my partner Heather a few weeks ago. I’m an external processor, so sometimes I’ll just start talking, finding my way through thought and counter-thought via the spoken word until I trip over something I think might be of worth (she’s a trooper and she’s got insight). On this day, I was casting out demons. I was thinking about love and death. Throw out the idea of marriage as “forever” and replace it with “until death do us part” (if we’re lucky). Throw out of the idea of marriage as “finding happiness” and replace it with “change and growth” (if we’re lucky). “Forever” isn’t real. “Happiness,” as some permanent state, isn’t real. Christianity at its best is a religion about reality - bloody, dirty, slimy, decaying, hopelessly terrifying reality. Any conception of marriage that doesn’t account for fear and decay is...unsatisfactory, and for whatever good it might do, logically, it can’t equip you for marriage on this planet, in this bodily existence, where we all die and only some of us grow old.

Of course, I’ve never been married, so I don’t really know what I’m talking about. That’s why I’m deferring to the experts. I visited the Michelsons a couple months ago and they asked me if I was dating anyone. I said yes, and Jean asked if we prayed together. I told her no, but just the question persuaded me that we needed to start. If it’s worked for Paul and Jean, then who am I to disagree? Just to participate in the same ritual has been culture-changing and centering for me and Heather (Jean told me that during life in Romania prayer together always gave her and Paul a sense of unified purpose). We aren’t much for extemporaneous prayer, so Heather and I pray out of the Divine Hours and the Book of Common Prayer and other like-texts. In Mexico, during Dia de los Muertos, offerings are made to the dead. For me, to read old prayers, to participate in old rituals, to join in the same rhythms and traditions as those who’ve lived and died is a kind of offering, and it’s grounding. To get the most out of life and love, I think we need to stay connected to death and old things and folkways that exist because they’ve been proven useful, even if they don’t always seem rational. That’s part of establishing a culture (for a marriage or a household), I think. A culture that respects life by respecting the dead, and by seeing your partner as a human being, mortal, with feelings and needs, not a means to an end, or on the planet to “make you happy.” I-Thou rather than I-It.

When I was in my mid-20s, I read the book Passionate Marriage by David Schnarch and I internalized this quote:

When you're oblivious to the ways marriage can operate as a people-growing process, all you see are problems and pathology -- and the challenges of marriage will probably defeat you. Your pain will have no meaning except failure and disappointment; no richness, no soul. Spirituality is an attitude that reveals life's meaning through everyday experience; however, don't bother looking for sanctuary in your marriage. Seeking protection from its pains and pleasures misses its purpose: marriage prepares us to live and love on life's terms.

There’s an old sports adage I tell my chess students: “You can’t figure out how to win until you learn how not to lose.” I don’t know how to do a relationship right, but I sure know how to mess one up. Here’s some bad advice: 1) believe that intimate life with another person is a smooth and happy hiding place away from the terrors of the world, 2) view conflict/argument/disagreement as an unnatural, horrible thing to be avoided at all cost, 3) always be willing to sacrifice your integrity if the alternative is discomfort or growth, 4) and never, ever change your values, beliefs, or behavior or put your partner’s goals on par with your own. 

When I was younger, I excelled at these mistakes. Now, at 31, I’ve learned how not to defeat myself so outright and to really enjoy the growth process, even when it’s difficult or irrational. This isn’t a strategy or technique, it’s a personal culture-shift. It involves staying connected, rooted, centered, to something bigger than yourself, to an ideal, to an old tradition, to music, to poetry, to prayer, to the life inside you and your partner. This is the soil. We need this. We need the gifts of the dead, of our ancestors, of those whose bones are buried in the crypts and cemeteries, their prayers, their songs, their rules. I have given up entirely trying to do life on my own. There is nothing I know or have or have done that is not to the credit of some older, prior sinner like myself. If during this blogging season I learn only how to better love the dead (and my elders), I'll consider it time well spent.

The pilgrimage continues. Thanks for reading.

An Ordinary Superstition

I want to tell you a story about a customer - an ordinary-looking woman with ordinary blue jeans, an ordinary t-shirt, ordinary sneakers, and an ordinary hair cut. She came into the office looking for a self-storage unit - an ordinary request, given that we're a self-storage facility. I sat down in my office chair behind our big, oak, Amish-built desk and she took a seat on the other side. My friendly cat, Pancake, jumped up to greet her with some head bumps and a squeak. She took to Pancake, as most customers do. I explained the rental contract, the different prices and sizes, and generally how it all works at the Wells County Lock-Up (an unfortunate play on words my father felt was quite creative back in 1999). She sat and listened, like any other customer. She decided which size was best for her needs and I assigned her unit #1310. "It's in building thirteen, and it's the tenth unit down, on the south side," I explained routinely.

"Oh," she said solemnly. "Thirteen is an unlucky number." Her eyes met mine with a shy but piercing sincerity. She was in a double-bind - afraid of the unit, but unable to really ask for a different one without bad manners and giving the game away. I offered to change the unit (which in retrospect may have been too forceful), but I'd already drawn up the rental contract and the pressure to be ordinary was just too much for this superstitious lady, "No, it's okay, I don't want to make you fill everything out again," she said, trying to keep her cool. I could see she was struggling. A few seconds passed. It was too late. She knew that I knew. Her body shifted in discomfort, her secret deviation in plain view for this lowly self-storage manager to see and judge.

"It's a good thing Pancake isn't black!" I said, looking over at my gray tabby/calico cat, trying to loosen the tension. "I used to own a black cat," she replied, doubling-down, "they keep away the dark spirits." When it rains, it pours. Perhaps she thought it wouldn't be so awkward if she just dumped it all out there (it was just as awkward). I pained to act as if this was a completely normal point of view. "Sure! Those dark spirits. Some customers worry about mice, others about dark spirits, it's all the same," was the attitude I tried to give off. I mentioned that #1310 isn't really thirteen - it's one thousand three hundred and ten. She politely agreed but her superstitious heart could tell I was trying to get one past her.

Very superstitious, writings on the wall
Very superstitious, ladders bout' to fall
Thirteen month old baby, broke the lookin' glass
Seven years of bad luck, the good things in your past
When you believe in things that you don't understand
Then you suffer
Superstition ain't the way

There's a solar eclipse today. I can't help but wonder if it doesn't bring out the weirdos - not that I'm superstitious or anything.

An Ordinary Rabbit's Head

It's close to noon here in Bluffton, IN. A dry summer day with large fluffy clouds in a bright, almost white sky. It could rain, but it probably won't. I should be outside at the storage facility putting red locks on the doors of delinquent tenants. Instead, I'm at my desk, on my computer, drinking a frothy cup of French pressed Starbucks dark coffee with coconut oil and butter. I learned in Kona last December that warm weather people don't know how to make dark things (you older readers probably already knew this). Coffee, beer, and coffee-beer, they're all the same: the flavors are weak where they should be strong and light where they should be dark. What you wind up with is an unsatisfying, watery, almost magnanimous brew. Sort of like tropical islands themselves. There's a reason Starbucks comes from the dreary American Pacific Northwest and Guinness from just below the Arctic Circle. Kona Brewing Company even makes a banana beer called the Hula Hefeweizen, a foul and offensive concoction.

I drink dark things all the year long, through Epiphany, Lent, Pentecost, and Advent. Especially Advent. The coconut oil and butter blend is a compromise to my Northern principles. A near moral failing. But at least it's not sugar or milk. It also helps smooth out the caffeine effects. It's a great winter morning 6am pre-workout, especially if you stack it with a magnesium pill, an Ibuprofen, and a big swig of water. Thinking of Hawaii makes me miss all those European college kids I met at the beach hostel. We mostly drank Bud Light. I prefer a good stout, but they didn't serve those at the Americanized luaus. Old, wealthy, leathery-skinned tourists in sweat-stained Tommy Bahama Hawaiian shirts like syrupy mixed-drinks heavy on the ice and free-flowing light beer to go along with fake entertainment.

Ben Camino tells me it's Ordinary Time. The liturgical color of Ordinary Time is green, the color of salads and avocados and not-yet-ripe bananas. I'm eating a lot of bananas and avocados and salads these days. I grew tired of sweet potatoes and roots. That was a diet for Advent. Seasons pass and seasons come again. I also grew tired of church. Thoreau said something about living each season as it passes. In the last chapter of Walden, he wrote that he left his cabin in the woods for as good a reason as he went there: that it seemed to him that he had several more lives to live and could not spare any more time for that one. It's cliche to talk metaphorically about life and change and seasons, but what better liturgical season to appreciate a tried and true cliche than Ordinary Time?

More than piety or justice, the religious life requires wisdom. I reckon we can't even discuss piety or justice without wisdom (though that doesn't seem to stop folks from trying). Wisdom, I think, involves understanding the difference between a perplexing, unfamiliar, challenging season of life and a life in smoldering ruins. Wisdom can mean taking a posture of non-judgement towards those who experience the faith in strange ways. It can also mean patience, and trust, and believing in that blessed assurance my grandmother used to sing about. Seasons pass and seasons come again. A time away from church service doesn't mean a life away from church service. This is true of writing, reading, prayer, meditation, exercise, social events, friends, cooking, and other things. We all have the right to step away for a time. To everything there is a season. There's probably something in Ecclesiastes about this.

I think this is the real lesson of Thoreau's project: not to move to the woods or quit your job or buy a tiny house or stare out at trees for hours on end, but to live with confidence, to move slowly in a direction that is true, to strip life bare, to find your road, follow your road, to bend with your road, to feel the sun on your skin when it is bright and shining, to wear a coat when there is frost and chill.

If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away. It is not important that he should mature as soon as an apple tree or an oak. Shall he turn his spring into summer? If the condition of things which we were made for is not yet, what were any reality which we could substitute? We will not be shipwrecked on a vain reality.

I've shipwrecked myself on a vain reality a time or two or three. Maybe I'm shipwrecked again. It's hard to say. Reality is tricky. Maybe that's why we need Ordinary Time. To breathe in the ordinary, to remember that without the ordinary there can be no miraculous - no virgin birth, no resurrection, no kingdom come; and while the Teacher of Ecclesiastes mourns that there's nothing new under the sun, maybe Ordinary Time is also, and paradoxically, a reminder that this doesn't make the birth of a new baby or a teenage love or a softball championship or a cup of rich, savory, dark roasted coffee any less the work of a miraculous God, even though they will one day be lost to all memory. "All is vanity!" says the Teacher. Ordinary Time looks the Book of Ecclesiastes in the eye and replies, "so what?"

In a typical year, the Indiana countryside by this time would be as golden-brown as a November cornfield, but it's been a wet summer and so the roadside foliage and city lawns all remain a deep, dark green. I'm mowing the grass at least once a week here at the storage facility and as sometimes happens the other day I hit rabbit. I was making my usual passes, running the mower in straight, vertical lines, when I looked to my left and saw it: a decapitated rabbit's head, cleanly cut, resting in the fresh lawn, blood running out into the ground, a distinct mix of chlorophyll green and crimson red. This is an ordinary thing to the earth, but death is a peculiar thing to me. Moments like that sit with me because even though they feel strange, I know they're not. There's lots of dead rabbits in the ground, and mothers and their babies, too. More than I could ever count. I've written somewhere on this blog that death wins all it seeks. What are our small acts of kindness and mercy supposed to achieve against an enemy like that? What good are "inclusivity" and "empathy" and "love" against the god of death? Here's a thing I think I think: death is universal, love is particular. Universal love is a fool's errand, playing death's game on death's terms.

There's a fine line between the poetic and the superstitious. I once heard a story about a woman who watched a hawk devour some small creature and as it flew away blood dripped down from its talons and onto her forehead. That week she was diagnosed with cancer. Marked for death. Ben Camino told me that sort of thing is ordinary, we just miss it. Ordinary Time asks us to pay a little more attention. I'm not sure what it will accomplish, it may not conquer the grave, but it's better than resignation - and I think that's more than we have the right to ask of ordinary things, that they help us beat back the looming shadow of resignation, surrender, capitulation. If a dark, foamy, buttery cup of French pressed coffee from Seattle is what it takes to delay the inevitable, then I'm alright with that.