Lemur Meditation

Last week, while I was walking through the Honolulu Zoo, I saw this Lemur sitting motionless in the hot summer sun, his haunting eyes staring off into the distance as if pondering the meaning of life and death.

Hmmmm....

Perhaps we should hire this Lemur to draft a reasonable solution for both the recession and the housing crisis.

Considering the fact that our politicians are irresponsibly signing documents without reading them, this thoughtful Lemur might be more qualified for the job.

Propane prices gone awry

OK.
When is the craziness going to stop?
My neighbor got her propane bill from Amerigas in December, and she was charged over $4.00 per gallon.
According to the Energy Information Association (EIA) website, Virginia residential propane prices for the month of December were between $ 2.92 and $ 2.95 per gallon.

So, why did some of the companies around here charge over $4.00 per gallon?

If the information on the EIA website is correct, and the average price of propane in Virginia was 295.2 cents ($2.95) per gallon on December 31, 2007--then it seems to me that a $4.00+ per gallon charge was excessive.
People will not be able to continue to heat their housese if this keeps up.
If anyone else is interested in the cost of propane (and what it should or should not be), the EIA website has a listing of current residential propane prices by state. The website address is:
http://tonto.eia.doe.gov/dnav/pet/pet_pri_wfr_a_EPLLPA_PRS_cpgal_w.htm

Heaven, Hell, and God

If one man is laying at the bottom of the ocean and a 2nd man is laying under only a few feet of water----both of the men will die from lack of air in the same amount of time.
On the other hand, the odds of reaching the air (if he moves in the right direction) are much better for the 2nd man, because he is closer to the surface.
When compared to this, I suppose negating things to come closer to God is a good thing.
What I was wondering is---do you think anyone could see God and continue to live in this world?
I don't think so.
At least, that was the impression that I got.
Which is why, when I was 7, I abruptly ended my search for God and NEVER tried that particular thing again.
(Although I have thought about it a lot since then, and am obviously still thinking about it....).
Here is what happened:
When the teacher said "Before anything ever was, God is" -- I thought this meant that I could just go backwards in my memory and find God.
So, after I got home from school that day, I sat down and focused on "unthinking" everything I knew.
First, I unthought my memory of family and friends.
Then, I unthought my memory of the world (which I didn't know that much about anyway).
Then, I unthought my memory of the moon and the stars and the sky.
Without much difficulty, everything soon vanished from my mind and suddenly there was "nothing" everywhere.
I thought I had found God
Until the thought came and said, "No. This is not God. You are still here. You go and then you will know."
I felt myself start to disappear.
I was still so intent on finding God, I was willing to let go.
BUT, then the awful thought stepped in.
It said, "If you go, who will think you back? You will be gone forever. Everything will be gone forever."
That's when everything changed ..
My 100 % focus on finding God changed abruptly --- to a 100% focus on saving myself.
And as soon as my thoughts turned to me, that's when I realized that I was totally and completely alone, out in the middle of nowhere.
In a complete state of terror, I started to scream...
If there is such a thing as "hell" that would be it---existing in nowhere---and not being able to recognize God even though God is there.
What is the point in being if "being" is nowhere surrounded by nothing? How awful is that?
Because I was afraid of losing myself, instead of finding God, that's where I ended up.
Lucky for me, as soon as I screamed everything that I knew reappeared.
I was sitting in the exact same position, in my house surrounded by all the material things that I knew and loved.
My father came running in, and all I could keep saying was "I'm afraid! I'm afraid."
And when he asked me what I was afraid of, I cried, "I'm afraid of Nothing!"
Which made no sense to anyone at all but me. I sounded like a crazy person.
When I went back to school the next day and told my teacher what happened, she said, "Don't ever think that way again. Those thoughts must have come from the devil, because God does not rape little children."
WHAT?
I slept with the light on for many years after that, thinking the devil was after me.
As a result, for the past 45 years, I have thought about God, read stories about God, and tried to write about God....
I have done everything but try to return to God on the path I used before.
Drawn to God and running from God at the same time; trapped between love and fear, I am.
Because of that one experience, I KNOW there is a God ( without any doubt in my mind).
I also know that a person will not go to a heaven or hell because of adherence to one religion or the other.

Painting lattice with Sikkens makes it rain

The man at the paint shop said, "Sikkens is great stuff. It's beautiful...but it's also very unforgiving.
No kidding.
Sikkens Deck Finish has to be applied by hand with a natural bristle brush. It can't be applied with a roller or a spray painter. It can't be applied in direct sun, and if it rains on it before it dries--I hear that it turns gummy and white.
Making sure to follow all of the rules, I have been using Sikkens products on my deck for the past 3 years with great results.
Now......
Recently, because the deck sits high above the ground, we decided it would look nice with some lattice around the bottom.
Of course, then I realized I was going to have to paint it too.
Painting 9 foot tall lattice with a brush is like trying to put together a 2,000 piece Jigsaw puzzle of the ocean and blue sky.
It's HARD.















I've been outside for several days, painting and painting.
Today, after I finished the last two sections, I stood back and admired my work.
It looked beautiful
But then, just 3 hours later, the sky filled with dark clouds.
What? Auuuugh.
It takes about 5 hours for Sikkens to dry properly.
I went out and touched some of the lattice boards. They were still tacky.
OH NO.
Thunder crashing; lightning flashing--as the wind picked up and the rain began to fall, I rushed out and put a drop cloth around one section of lattice that I had done and tried to get a big trash bag secured around the other.
Well, the trash bag blew away almost immediately and last time I checked, water from the deck above was starting to fall behind the drop cloth.
Too dark for me to see now.
As I sit here now watching the rain and worrying about wet paint, I am reminded of something that happened when I was in 5th grade at St. Mary's elementary school (a long, long time ago) .
Sister Dominic was walking around the room asking everyone what they wanted to be when they grew up.
Several boys said that they wanted to be policemen or firemen.
A few others wanted to be doctors.
One boy said that he knew he would be an astronaut one day.
The nun said, "very good" to each of these responses.
Most of the girls said they wanted to be nurses, or teachers, or moms (those were about the only choices girls had in the 50s anyway).
Their answers also brought nods of approval.
And then, Sister Dominic asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up.
In my most confident voice, I said: "I want to be a saint."
Sister Dominic started laughing as soon as she heard my response so, of course, the rest of my class decided to laugh too.
Ha..ha...ha...
HEY!
It seemed like the logical occupational choice to me.
In Catholic school, we were taught that saints were closest to God.
Right?
I figured that, life here being incredibly short and the afterlife being interminably long, it would be a good idea to get as close to God as I could.
Why waste time being a nurse or a teacher...when I could cut straight to the point and just be a saint?
Oh well.
Apparently my logic only made sense to me.
Finally, after an eternity and a half, the laughter died down and Sister moved on to her next victim, who was smart enough to say something acceptable.
He wanted to be a priest.
Ooooh...of course....that was a good one.
I folded my arms and frowned.
The bell rang and it was time to go home.
Thank God for having mercy on my poor soul.
I was almost out of the door when Sister Dominic stopped me.
She handed me 4 little books and said, "If you really want to be a saint, start reading about the lives of other saints so you will know what you have to do."
Ok fine.
I started reading through the books as soon as I got home.
One saint beat himself with a whip every day to show his love for God?
Another saint wore a horse hair shirt to cause himself pain all day long, so that he could be closer to God?
And then there was the one who didn't eat anything for weeks and half-starved to death to make herself more acceptable in God's eyes?
What? What?
This is what saints do?
It didn't make any sense to me at all.
In fact, if I was God, I would be angry at these people for doing this to themselves.
I thought---if God wants everyone to be all cut up, bruised, and scratchy, why didn't God make us this way when we were born?
I put the books down.
Either something was wrong with these self-mutilating saints or something was terribly wrong with God.
SO ...WHAT was I going to be when I grew up then?
I didn't know.
I still don't know.
Ooops...I'm 52 and running out of time.
Maybe I can still become a saint?
If the rain ruined the Sikkens on those two sections of lattice, it's going to take the patience of a saint to sand it off and start all over again.
It's 2 in the morning and I can't sleep.
My imagination is working over time.
I shudder to think what might be waiting out there for me now.

The Imagination Diet

I was 16 years old.
My parents were fighting.
Mom wanted to complain to me about her problems with dad, and dad wanted to hang around me so he could ignore mom.
I was trapped in the middle and didn't want to be there.
Haunted by adult problems that I could not solve, I got a part-time job after school so I could leave early in the morning and not come back home until late in the evening.
It would have been the perfect plan, except for one small problem:
I was completely skipping breakfast, lunch, and dinner.
I hadn't been paid yet and had no money, so I came up with a creative solution.
When my new job gave me my first 15 minute break, I walked over to a nearby deli that had a wide variety of meats, breads, and desserts on display near the window. Since I had tasted these things before, it was easy for me to re-imagine all of the flavors just by looking at the food.
Yep.
After successfully pulling up the taste of roast beef, mashed potatoes, and gravy to the front of my mind, I then imagined that I had eaten an entire plateful.
It worked!
Suddenly, I wasn't hungry anymore
I didn't need to actually buy food; I could eat it with my mind.
Awesome!
Another problem solved.
I thought I was absolutely brilliant.
However, by the time I got my first paycheck, I was almost too tired and weak to continue working. It should have occurred to me that my lack of actual food was at fault, but it didn't.
Duh.
So, I went to a doctor to find out why I felt so exhausted.
He took one look at me and said, "When is the last time you actually had something to eat."
I thought for a minute and answered, "Well, umm...I really don't know..."
And then, I told him about my imagination diet.
Uh Oh.
He stood there for a few minutes staring at me without saying a word. And then he said, "Well that's very interesting, but you can't do this anymore. If you don't eat, you'll die. Your body will not survive if you continue to eat food with your mind only. If you don't start eating normally, I will send you to a different kind of doctor."
Ok. I understood.
My brilliant imagination diet had a major problem: No nutrition whatsoever.
It works, but it shouldn't be used on a regular basis.
Maybe just from time to time, like at Christmas or Thanksgiving, to keep from eating too much.
Oh well.
With my paycheck in hand, I put my creative mind on the back burner, and went back to eating food again (most of the time) like everyone else.

Glue, Nails, Strings and The Universe

When I was a preschool teacher back in 1984, I had a very interesting philosophical discussion about the universe, with a group of children (3 to 5 years old).

My question was: “If I throw this ball up into the air, it always falls back down. Why doesn't the sun fall down out of the sky too, I wonder....”

To answer this question, they immediately referred to their own experiences. Their answers were fascinating; a great illustration of human thought (and error) in action.

One 3 year old had a quick, easy explanation. “The sun is glued onto the front of the sky. That’s why it sticks up there.”

A much wiser 4 year old was quick to disagree. "No, you're wrong! Glue won’t work. The sun is hot. The glue would melt and the sun would slide off the sky. The sun is hanging on nails and....staples."

“Oh man!" a 5 year old laughed. "None of you guys know anything. The sun can’t be stuck on with nails and staples because everything up there moves. The sun, the stars, the moon, the clouds--it all moves around. That's why everything is hanging on strings.”

“On strings?" I said. “With all those things moving around up there, wouldn’t the strings get tangled?”

“They haven't yet, have they?" The 5 year old crossed his arms and frowned. "They all watch their strings. They keep their strings out of each other’s way.”

At that point, another 5 year old spoke up. “Wait a minute. All of you are wrong. It isn’t glue or nails or strings. It’s God. God holds everything up. "

“Everything?” I said, “There are hundreds and thousands and millions of things up there in the sky. How does God hold up all these things at once?”

“God has many, many, many arms,” said the 5 year old as she waved her arms around vigorously.

All the children looked at her and then frowned thoughtfully. Suddenly, everyone was silent and the conversation came to a complete stop. All of them (including the one who firmly believed in strings) were trying to visualize this huge octopus-like God upholding the universe.

Then the bell rang and we went onto easier things like digging our way to China with plastic shovels.

As adults, we still rely on our experiences and conjectures to fathom the universe. Even with all of our intellectual advancements in science and impressive sounding speculations (black holes, time/space continuums, etc., etc.), are we any closer to understanding the true nature of the universe?

Maybe, when measured in terms of infinity, we are right there with the preschoolers.

A rather humbling thought.

God and my meatloaf sandwich

It happened about 40 years ago while I was attending St. Mary's Catholic elementary school, but I remember like it was yesterday.
As soon as Sister Francis saw me unwrapping my big, thick meatloaf sandwich, she grabbed it out of my hands and quickly tossed it into the garbage can.
"Why did you do that!" I cried out.
Sister Francis sternly replied, "Do you want to lose your immortal soul? Is a sandwich worth your immortal soul? You know you can't eat meat on Friday!"
Egads. Friday. Fish day.
My heart sunk as I gazed longingly at the trash can; part of my meatloaf sandwich was sticking up over the edge--trying to lure me straight into hell.
Sister Francis had no idea how special a meatloaf sandwich was at our house.
My brown bag lunch usually consisted of a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and an apple, day after day after day.
Meatloaf sandwiches with lettuce, mayonnaise, and ketchup only came around once in a blue moon.
I sat there, still looking at the trash can, wondering if I could sneak over there and salvage my lunch.
I mean, God is love, right?
Someone who loves me wouldn't want me to burn forever just because of a sandwich, right?
Surely God wouldn't want a poor little girl to go without her lunch.
I was just about to get up and creep over to the trash can when Sister Francis came back to my desk.
She handed me an extra carton of milk and said, "Take this time to pray and offer up your sandwich to God."
SIGH. God stole my lunch.
Years later, sitting in a philosophy/religion class, I found out that the Catholic church eventually did away with the general "no meat on Friday" rule, because it was kind of outdated.
I was told that the only reason the early Christians did not eat meat on Friday was because they lived in a fishing community, and the "no meat on Friday" rule was originally established to help the economy.
Since our economy doesn't center around fishermen anymore (hasn't for years and years), it was determined that there was no longer a valid reason for the rule.
WHAT?
You mean I lost my meatloaf sandwich that day, way back then, because no one updated an old rule?
You mean I could have eaten it without being condemned to a fiery furnace for all of eternity.
That does it.
I want my meatloaf sandwich back.
I don't care if it's 40 years old, I want it back.

Are We There Yet?

The commercials on TV give the false impression that, if I spend lots of money on a new car, I will soon be happily speeding through deserted streets or zooming along leaf covered solitary roads.
Deserted streets; solitary roads?
NOT!
Most of the time, around here, both new and old car owners find themselves sitting side by side in traffic going NO miles per hour. Doesn't matter how much the car cost; doesn't matter how fast the car is supposed to go. All makes and models idle together equally in stuckness.
Yep. Many of us, who travel to and from work in northern Virginia, spend about 3 or 4 (or more) hours a day sitting in traffic on I-95.
It's downright claustrophobic.
There have been a few times that I just wanted to jump out of my car and run away from it all. I don't know where I would go exactly, but at least I would be going.
I often wonder if the others around me are feeling as desperate and trapped as I am. The person in the car next to me has not moved in over 15 minutes. He's leaning forward with both hands on the steering wheel, his eyes focused straight ahead. Maybe he's pretending he's really driving, or maybe he's so stiff he can't move anymore.
I'm not sure.
With nothing left to do, my mind starts looking inside itself for ways to escape--wandering backwards in time through old memories.
Ah yes. Things were different way back then.
Or...
maybe things were kind of the same.
Years ago, when I used to sit in my deluxe dishpan "hot-tub", I wasn't going anywhere either.
But I didn't mind.
I was just enjoying the time that I had.
Looks like I have forgotten how to do that.
Hmmmm..
Or maybe I just want to choose when and where I am stuck.
Bottom line is: I don't know about anyone else, but I don't like the amount of time that I am spending in my car.
One way or the other, I have to make some changes.
Maybe that's why I'm not there yet.