Sins and Virtues

As someone posted to me, "It's hard not to know".  This applies everywhere and has been the source of a lot of wasted time on my part, if time can be said to be wasted...
I suppose the waste is repetition of methods that contribute to decay and darkness when those qualities are not called for.  They are highly appropriate when speaking of compost, though the bacteria might protest at this point and say, "Hey, now, wait just a minute, there..."  because as is mentioned in the Old Testament, there is a time for all things, [and most of the people who bother to read my rants are familiar with the lyrics, so I don't need to recite them here].
There is never enough information, and that must be where trust comes in, or the "F" word, Faith, a quality I like the idea of but am suspicious of the born again Christian spin that has been slathered all over it.
It has never seemed to me to have anything to do with blindly following some guy in a pulpit  or even some guy w/a mitre and expensive shoes, but more about deeply knowing that all the information exists, and is known by some knower, and trusting that that knower knows better than I ever will or can.
The brain is a wonderful machine for that which it was designed, but limited in the face of the infinite.
Underneath the leaves and the pavement and the dust of the road is love, a highly durable commodity, but an unpredictable one.
Love is what inflicts pain, if that is what is needed to shift resistance, Love is what turns the light on, and sometimes off.  I suspect in all the occurrences and relationships that arise and subside, there is only one thing that creates them, maintains them and moves them along and that is Love, whatever form it may come in.
I can only live in a created universe that is, at its core, benevolent.
If it isn't, I am content to find out later.

Father's Day

I had two fathers.  One I knew about, and one I did not.
The father I thought I had could not be pleased.  I could blame this on me not being his biological child, and his knowledge of that, but really, he wasn't that nice to any of us, or around much either.  He told my brother he had to choose between making the business go or being on deck as a father, and he chose the business.  I forget the reason why.
My sister was his favorite, named for his mother, and born after grandmother Anne [who liked to be called "Mother Anne" had died, disappointed to see that the first grandchild, of her only child to have children, was a boy.
Annie always knew how to handle Dad, how to be on his good side, how to get his approval.  It appeared to others of us that she never had a fly on her, but I could not figure him out.  He didn't think I was funny, and that was my strongest card.  I was not good at being the right sort of person to fit in with the family, not accomplished, or confident, and being imaginative and sloppy about details was not a feature he wanted manifesting in his family.
Each of our experiences of him were different, but I wish he had shared the talents he had with cars, and machines, and his knowledge of political systems and business that he shared with my brothers.  He had a Victorian view of girls, but the only way in which my view of girls was Victorian was that they should be fighting for equal rights.
Then there was the man who was my father, whom I knew, but not in that context.  He always found me amusing, and listened to my theories of the universe with interest.  He had a wife already, a staunch Catholic, and a daughter, born 24 years ahead of me.  He believed in organic vegetables, and ways of relating to the world that did not include the church.  He had met Ram Dass, and read widely of the coming alternative ways of thinking and being.  He had no patience with narrow minds, whining or people who took themselves too seriously, and I am sorry to have been robbed of knowing that I had a father who loved me, because I believe he did, though everything had to kept quiet, a secret that was not a secret, but that could not be talked about or alluded to.
I am also grateful to my father, who in the reluctant position of being my father, whether to save his face or not,  did better by me than he had cause to, and I have some sweet memories of him when he was in a cheerful mood when he could be charming and an easy presence.
Happy Father's Day, Dads.

2:30

I have been coming across blogs by people younger than I complaining about aging, about an indignity a day and as I have said in a previous post or 2, what do we think the alternative is?  Death may not be something to be feared, but I am increasingly convinced that whatever is going on here is not meaningless.
From the time of invincible youth [another illusion ] to the master class in letting go there is work to be done.
My daughter and her kids are living with me at the moment and I'm being allowed to experience the contrast of different phases, to dream about trajectory, intention and placing value on things that do not last, or become something you don't expect.
Yes, there is physical crumbling, yes there is memory loss, yes there is less desire as well as ability to whisk up and down the local mountain, or stay up all night singing.  The loss there is replaced by being slow enough to hear what songbirds remain singing at dusk.  Waking in the night, staying awake and feeling the dark and the quiet as another quality to existence, enjoyable because one doesn't have to get up at 6 and rush kids off to school, or get to a job.  There is yearning, but not so much for another person to hold onto as to have time to see what is behind the desire, to ask oneself "What did you expect?".
As my mother slowly disappeared behind a needy, querulous, often confused mask, someone asked what is she living for?  What is the point now?  I didn't have an answer to that, but it seemed then, as now, that there is no way to make an evaluation of someone else's path wherever they are on it.
In the last week before my mother killed herself, when she had decided to stop taking the medications, and hadn't yet decided to really do it and dissolve a bunch of pain killers in a glass of vodka, we had time with her that was precious, and full of light.  She cast off the mantle of suffering, of trying to cover up what was happening to her mind, and gave us back, for a short time, the woman we had been losing for years.  It wasn't until that time that I knew how much of her had been driven underground by pain and weakness.  She gave us the gift of seeing that what is essential is not lost as well as how fragile life is, how easily it slips away.
Things being what they are is a subjective idea, somehow there must be room for informative movement, and receptivity to it as well. As physical impediments force a slowdown, the space is made for that.  This is not something to be mourned, but welcomed, kind of like someone you despise giving you a million dollars.