Trust in Cod

A member of the pastoral counseling staff was misquoted in our church newsletter:  “Over the years, I’ve just learned to trust in Cod.” 

I would think of this while taking the kids to preschool.  The newsletter used 12-point Times Roman font, making a C and G hard to distinguish.  Spell-check wouldn’t catch it.

In the church parking lot, we’d pass the car belonging of the director of Welcoming Ministries.   Her license plate read:  367-COD.   Cod was made manifest and walked among us.

I’d nose our van into a parking space among the battalion of minivans and SUVs that swarmed with hopping children, and mothers carrying toddlers and diaper bags.  I’d haul open the sliding door for our 3-year-old, check for backpack and jacket (shoes, hat, countenance), take him by the hand, and then walk to the other side of the van and unlatch the heavy carseat for the baby, who was finally asleep.  Hoisting the baby seat in front of me like a lantern, I tugged my preschooler behind me, as we threaded a long path through narrow rows of cars. 

I’d drive home, thinking of my license plate:  246-COW.  It wasn’t a vanity plate; I’d have chosen something with gazelle.

I could remember a time when I’d debated the use of the Oxford comma, or the virtues of Words Into Type.   I’d once bought the Chicago Manual of Style for a job interview.  I’d written a thank-you note to a publishing house editor, who hired me for a freelance position.  She’d pointed out that “accommodation” had more than one m, and sent me my first assignment. 

I pulled the bovine van into the garage, and brought the baby inside.  I had an idea for an article, if the baby slept before it was time to pick up his brother.   

 

 When the sun came up, Jesus was standing on the beach, but they didn’t recognize him.  Jesus spoke to them:  “Good morning!  Did you catch anything for breakfast?”  They answered, “No.” 

                He said, “Throw the net off the right side of the boat and see what happens.”  They did what he said.  All of a sudden there were so many fish in it, they weren’t strong enough to pull it in.”    

      –The Message:  The Bible in contemporary language, John 21:4-6

Make visible

 

“Make visible what, without you, might never

have been seen.”    – Robert Bresson, film director

The Solar Dog

Amidst the solar craze of the 70s, my father proposed a solution:  the solar dog.  He observed that our grumpy, tri-color Bassett hound sought the sunniest spots in the house or yard for naps.  With a black coat, the lazy dog absorbed a lot of heat.   

Dad suggested we get a pack of black Bassetts, send them out to the yard to sun, and then bring them back inside to heat the house.  He figured 10 dogs would be enough, if used in rotation. 

Calculating the cost of dog chow and adequate supply of treats to lure stubborn hounds back into the house, Dad considered his passive solar Bassetts to be far more economical than installing the solar panels championed by my mother.   

Amory Lovins, of Rocky Mountain Institute in Snowmass, had another approach.  He built a 4000-sf home and office so energy efficient that the building is comfortable with exterior temps from -47 to 90 degrees, without a furnace.  Lovins says, “We’ve heated the house with a 50-watt dog.  On really cold nights we’d adjust her to a 100-watt dog by throwing a ball.”

We recently adopted a 4-year-old chocolate Labrador.  Though we’d planned to get another yellow Lab, we saw Maddie’s photo at Safe Harbor Lab Rescue, and knew she was the girl for us.  She’s a social dog, and chases a ball as long as someone will toss it.  She works even harder for a toy that squeaks. 

We estimate that Maddie out-watts Amory’s dog, but of course, our home is far less energy efficient. 

Resolutions

2009 Fortunes

New Year’s Resolutions: 

 #1   Stop researching and start writing. 

#2   No more fortune cookies.

Signs – 3

You thought I was kidding….we spotted this sign in Glenwood Springs, on a trip to celebrate our first wedding anniversary.    Per  previous post, Signs 1, we’d reserved elsewhere.  

Winston Rand might have enjoyed this one.  He posted this funny sign on his blog last year, and this.  As they say in the creative nonfiction world, You can’t make this stuff up.    

Peace

When I was a girl, perhaps 7 or 8, my mother set up the Christmas tree in early December, but said she’d place no presents under the tree until Christmas Eve.  For this I blamed my brother, who would unwrap presents to peek and then rewrap them, thinking no one would notice. 

Each night my parents turned on the tree lights, and I spent an entire evening staring at them. I laid down on the floor on my back, scooting carefully under the tree like a present.  I looked up through artificial pine boughs at sparkling lights, the trunk of the tree stretching high, pulled like taffy through the roof of our house to the stars.

Quieted by the twinkling—perhaps I was nearly asleep–I hummed songs from Sunday School. “Sleep in heavenly peace,” I crooned, “Sleep in heavenly peace.” 

I remember a deep, abiding calm settling within, as if pressed down by tree branches.  I could rest in that amiable peace.  It felt like summertime at the swimming pool, when I held my breath under water and drifted gently down to the pool floor, suspended and warm and still. 

Under a tree without gifts, I had found the core of Christmas.  I could recognize that grace again—in a sanctuary’s hush before singing carols with the children’s choir, in the gentle department-store mystery of my mother’s nativity set, in the luminescent cloudcover as we drove to our mountain cabin one Christmas Eve, in holly-wrapped iron sconces in a Philadelphia church, in glittering stars of Jerusalem’s night sky on a crisp winter night.  

These moments hinted at the edge of a comprehensive peace, of a magnitude yet to be known, a shalom promising restoration and mercy and justice and joy. 

It took years to realize that connecting with this calm is what I most want for Christmas. If I rush through the season, distracted by details, I leave no room for wonder.  At the core of season is the gift of peace, anchored in the assurance that God has come near—closer than a heartbeat–and made a home with us.       

–Adapted from my article published in Alive Now, 12/2000.             

 

Dear Santa

Katie

Katie-pup

Recently said goodbye to Katie, the yellow Labrador who’d been with us for 14 years.  A friend once told me she’d had several dogs, but only one, Sadie, had been a soul mate.  I’ve always wondered if I’d say that about Katie.  We’ll miss her. 

Passion

I’ve lost far too much sleep watching the Olympics this week.  Phelps, Liukin, Torres, Misty May, Yang Wei, Coventry—the headliners, but every athlete in Beijing has devoted an inordinate chunk of life and sacrifice to training.  What drives a person to pursue the shot put (all that chalk on the neck), or synchronized diving?  I decline to participate in any activity, sport or otherwise, that requires a Brazilian wax. 

But perhaps I am the last person who should speak about the eccentricities of passion.  I waited 2 long weeks for titles to arrive from Amazon:  Eastern Pilgrims—the travels of three ladies (published in 1870), Books and Readers in the Early Church, How the Codex was Found.  Guardians of Letters.  Arcane books for an eccentric passion.  Yes, they’re fairly riveting.

Not sure why I’m gripped by the interests I have.  Who can explain why someone feels an inexplicable pull towards 400 meter backstroke or headstone transcription…Nascar, 18^th-century furniture, LP album covers, hot-wire chemical vapor deposition? 

Or, in my case, parallelism in Hebrew poetry, or the issue of parablepsis among ancient scribes?  Are my Scotch ancestors to blame for this?  Maybe all those canned green beans from my childhood.  

Flyby

It's good to be king.

In May, I looked out the glass door to the cabin deck, surprised to see a hummingbird sitting on a perch attached to a deck post.  I thought it was too cold, and too early, for hummers.  But he peered at me through the glass, turning his head left and right, so that he could see me with both eyes.   

Afterward, I heard mad whirring from the front deck.  Something buzzed past the two empty hummingbird feeders hanging on the deck with a shrill whistle, soaring at great speed from one side of the deck to the other.  Someone was hungry. 

The hummingbird feeders left by previous owners look like oversized, red plastic strawberries — a little garish.  But we finally cleaned one, filled it, and hung it up.  The hummingbird, whom we named Henry, sampled the goods, but he was still unhappy. We could hear an agitated whir every time he flew past. 

Clearly, the other strawberry feeder needed filling, too, and we wouldn’t have any peace until it was.  So we cleaned the dead wasps and bugs out of that one, as well as residual red sticky goo, and filled it with clear sugar syrup. 

The feeders are Henry’s domain.  In the evening, if I sit on the deck alone, Henry will drink at the left feeder, and then sit on the dowel.  He fluffs out his feathers, rather husky for a hummer, and watches me.  He turns his head left and right in a smooth alternation.  He will sit for 10 or 15 minutes, until it’s time for another drink, and then find a new perch.  Or if the dog is on the deck, Henry will feed, and then perch on a bare aspen branch nearby.  Henry shuns pacing dogs. 

The hummer feeders hang on either side of the covered part of the deck.  Between the feeders is a dowel, which I assumed held a bird feeder at some point.  My mother donated an old feeder and some shelled sunflower seeds to fill it, and we hung that on the dowel between the hummingbird feeders.  

Henry guards his feeders like a spoiled regent who won’t tolerate change.  He defends his kingdom fiercely against other hummers.  When a robin perched on one of Henry’s favorite aspen branches, he raised a ruckus until the robin stayed lower on the tree.  Henry resents the sunflower feeder, and sometimes shoos away crossbills, finches and nuthatches, chasing them at lightspeed well into the trees.

King Henry I

 One evening I sat with a bird book and a pair of binoculars, determined to identify a type of nuthatch? warbler? with black and white markings that was eating the sunflower seeds.  I was stumped by mystery bird, but I intended to identify Henry.  With a white collar around his neck, Henry is feisty enough to be a Rufous, chubby enough to be a broadtail,  He sat on the rain gauge for a good long time after one feeding, and in the sunset light, I could see his neck was an iridescent candy apple red.  A ruby-throated hummer.  

 

 

 

We put an old patio table under the deck cover, and Henry will dive right past the ears of anyone sitting near the railing.  This reminds me of Tom Cruise in Top Gun, taking a flyby.  Negative, Henry, the pattern is full.