fans are blowing

our windows are wide open to all the sounds of summer. Our bachelor neighbor is revving up his scooter. The college kids are cruising into the driveways with their music blaring. Birds are still chirping.. last gasps before the sun is down completely. Pete and the boys are tying up the tomato plants to stakes for support. We harvested more of the zucchini and squash. Steamed them right away for peak flavor and nutrition. We just signed up for U-verse... a service provided by AT&T.. which will connect us to television stations again. We've been disconnected for 9 months or so and are ambivalent about all the worlds we are inviting back into our house. BUT, we're excited to have access to A's baseball and PBS and Wimbledon tennis and other good stuff. We will reacquaint ourselves with the mute button and be careful about when the boob tube is on. It has been a wonderful hiatus. I've found I prefer reaidng about the news from a few select sources and am content with listening to the News Hour on the radio. It's time for a walk.. to feel the wind blowing in my hair and listen to the leaves rustling on the trees. I'll leave the fan to blow in solitude, and do its task of cooling the house. A house that I hope won't be taken over by television. btw: these are a pair we greeted on a walk in Edinburgh. Note the kilt and good cheer.

asthma

I woke up this morning and felt drugged. i got up and fried an egg and had a cup of tea and realized I can't quite breathe fully. It's a scarey feeling. So, oh yeah, gotta take allergy meds, use the Advair (big guns for asthma) and then the regular albuterol inhaler for the need to breathe in the immediate moment. It's hot here in the East Bay and so we have to sleep with the windows open. I'm thinking that is why i can't breathe. So, until the drugs kick in I don't even want to exert myself. what's a mother to do?

windows and doors

this is a door found in Edinburgh. The blue is similar to the blue of the Scottish flag. I find blue to be a resting place. Like a cool pond it makes me sigh. My mother in law and my grandmother Riegel would immediately say "pretty". In this particular blue, I find a little playfulness, a tiny bit of sunshine. Bright skies and days to play at the beach. What does this blue evoke for you?

too small a God

I'm reading a new book: Quest for the Living God, by Elizabeth Johnson, theologian and professor at Fordham University in NY. This is looking really good! She lays out the truth that throughout time, and from the beginning as far as we can tell, people have sought a way to acknowledge and celebrate the sacred. All creation reflects the nature of God.. which is to say, that God is generally too big to define. and that most people have a sense for the transcendence and immanence both of God. We might be inclined (because this is what our culture has recognized) to understand or image God as an older fatherly male. While that has so many good associations for many of us, and can be illustrative, it is too narrow an image. Atleast in the Catholic tradition, the Trinity has been offered as an essential definition for God... Father, Son and Spirit. The Father has gotten most of the press. Ms. Johnson, who is a religious sister of the Congregation of the Sisters of St. Joseph, invites the reader to consider that this emphasis on the Father has been misguided. What about the Spirit and what about the Son? As she opens the book she establishes rules for the journey of exploration, the quest for the living God: 1. the reality of the living God is an ineffable mystery beyond all telling, 2. no expression for God can be taken literally, and 3. from Thomas Aquinas, "we see the necessity of giving to God many names" It seems funny to begin the search for the living God and acknowledge that NO words will be sufficient to describe or name God. I LIKE THAT! I'm excited to explore some new ways that God is experienced outside of what has been traditionally lifted up. It's only natural that we would miss the mark. We're human, but it's the trying that bears fruit. Seek and you shall find.

it didn't hurt!

Remove the wooden beam from your own eye. Ahhhh. Judge not lest you be judged. Ahhhh. Relief. I tried removing the wooden beam and while I thought it was really gonna hurt, it didn't! It just felt way better when I finally got a grasp of it with the tweezers and it just slid right out! Then after my eye watered for a bit, I could see so much better. I think it's funny that the thing in my eye is a WOODEN BEAM, it's not just a sliver or a splinter. It's a beam, for crying out loud. Well, it sure feels like a beam. Anything in my eye does. I had an eyelash in my eye while I was driving Pete to BART this a.m. and it hurt like crazy! Once i got it out, after a lot of pulling and yanking on my eyelids, it was instant elation .. such relief. MUCH preferable to living with the thing in my eye. Today I will be on the look out for wooden beams and other household items ...in my eye.. and will try to get remove them. out.

stars and nautiluses

Peggy's gonna make a bird bath with her mosaic tile art for us. I'm so pleased and so we are about the designing of it now. She has one she made herself which is truly a work of art. Cobalt blue tiles and a few other shades of blue with three gold stars at the center of concentric circles emanating from the stars. It looks like night reflected in her bird bath's pool of water. I love the concentric circles.. which look like the circles created by pebbles or stones thrown into still water. I'm thinking though of a greener set of blues with three nautilus shells at the center of each circle. It will look more aquatic.. right? Ahhhhhh...... if you were designing a bird bath with mosaic tiles, what would it look like? FUN to think about?

infallible love... until the end of time

I'm caught by these two references, one from a reflection I heard given by a priest from the USCCB website, and one from the gospel of Matthew. The first were the words of this priest inviting the listener to "be the infallible sign of God's love through joy" and the second are words of Jesus to his disciples-"behold, I am with you until the end of time". Recently, a friend of mine who lost her husband suddenly in the fall of 2008, shared that while she has lost him, she is discovering and taking comfort in God's love for her... and that the comfort comes in knowing that it is for all time. Shaken by the reality of her husband's absence, she is becoming acquainted with the eternal quality of God. Because eternity is beyond my comprehension, it rings true to me about God. So much of what is ascribed to God by Christians seems to fall short of what is divine.. mostly it's human, and too small. Anyway, I appreciate my friend's experience as she shared it with us. and am mostly grateful that she is acquainted with this aspect of God as she absorbs this shocking loss. I must add too that as my friend described her experience, it was evident that she was really aware of God's presence and really was deeply comforted by this hope of eternal love. The first reference again: the awesomeness of creation, and most amazing, us human beings, is deserving of that infallible love... a love that says "I know you and I love you"... and really does! until the end of time. Wait a minute, it was "infallible sign of God's love... joy." The invitation: to be an infallible sign of God's love through joy. The challenge: to become acquainted with that love. The how-to: whatever works for us individually. ... walks in nature, mass, rosary, community, .... what works for you?

for Dana

Robbie, Francesca and I collaborated on this quilt we just sent off to Portland to live with Dana. As it happens her birthday is coming up shortly, so it's an early bday present. It was a joy to create and a joy to create for Dana. Many happy coccoonings Dana... reading, tv watching, resting, puzzling, dreaming... whatever! Here's to you, Dana!

funny part of town

Robbie took us to a part of Edinburgh for dinner that is pretty happening, particularly with the young people and tourists.. called Grassmarket, it used to be the place where hay could be purchased to feed livestock. Funny experiences: a guy with a glass of red wine and a cigarette came up to Robbie and asked him "how much he could press?" Robbie said he didn't know how many kilos... and then the guy said well, he'd bet that he could do more press ups that Robbie. WHAT'S A FELLOW TO SAY? Then we saw a Edinburgh ritual played out... a hen party.. which involves the bride and her friends trooping around town on teetering high heels and scant costumes. The bride wears a big letter L on her back pinned to her skirt or blouse back, which indicates that she is a "learner" as any Scot knows because a learning driver has to post an L in his car while practice driving. We saw three brides in one evening. She invariably looked bedraggled and not humored. Most pubs posted signs that said "No Stag or Hen Parties"... so I don't know where the hen party was always headed... except they were on parade. We saw a burly bunch of rugby players from Mediterranean country looking tanned, healthy and virile, especially compared to the local Scots, who hadn't seen a lot of sunshine for, oh, atleast six months. We saw a number of very pink/fuschia glowing sunburns on the sun-thirsty Scots who for four days had bared their epidermis to soak up the rays. I saw one older woman who was sitting quietly on a park bench with her eyes closed, face raised to the sun looking for all the world that she had died and gone to heaven. Maybe she had? Oh, we had a lovely encounter with a man in Glasgow. We met him on the street as we stopped him to ask about a good pub in the area and we fell into conversation about Scotland and America. He had lived in Ann Arbor for some years and had returned to Glasgow, his home and now was married and had little kids. He seemed almost whistful about America. He had really enjoyed his time in Michigan and wondered what we thought of Scotland. We ended our convo on this note: that times they are a-changin', but that, as Obama points out in his speech to the Muslim world, all people want the same things: peace, a good life, happiness. All those people on Grassmarket St. were looking for those things on that evening in May.

and so on, and so on

We made it to Scotland ... after speaking through Skype for several months with Robbie, we managed to get our bodies to his very spot. We met in Glasgow, drove to Oban, ferried to the Isle of Mull, and then back to the mainland, to Ft. William, drove some more by Glencoe (site of a ghastly, brutal massacre of the local clansmen and women and children in the 1600's) and Lock Tay, to Pitlochry and then south to Edinburgh for four days. We visited many museums, castles, cathedrals, and Tourist Information offices. We ate a lot of pub food with occasional splurges in ethnic food (tapas, Indian food, quiches)and drank a lot of Scottish ale. We walked a lot and could because the days lasted til 11 o'clock at night. Lots of smokers in Scotland judging from the number of cigarette butts on the ground throughout the cities. Lots of proud Presbyterians too. We attended mass on the feast of Pentecost at St. Mary's cathedral in Edinburgh. It was Confirmation Sunday! so sweet to see children from all parts of the globe there with their families and blessed by the community. Lots of Poles, and Scots and Irish (I'm guessing), and Indians, Africans, French, Spanish. Beautiful to come to the table together. We were blessed by being there among them. Anyway, that was a highlight for me... but also sharing meals with Pete's sister Amy and John and with Robbie's flatmate, Jim from Orkney. and with all the kind people who fed us while we were on this pilgrimage, including the many people we engaged in conversation with through the week and a half. The docents, waiters, bartenders, the taxi drivers, shopkeepers, innocents who provided directions, B&B owners, Scotland is a beautiful strong proud place and we were blessed to get a taste of it together. Thanks to all who helped us get there!! (I saw in the faces of the older women, the faces of my grandmothers and greatgrandmothers. Mine is resembling theirs more and more every day!)