If you ask my body, it would say 80.
If you asked my heart, it would say 16.
If you asked my mind, it would say 66.
If you asked my spirit, it would say 25.
If you asked my dream, it would say 10.
If you asked my desire it would say any age with my lover.
If you asked my soul, it would say ∞.
I wonder if the mountains were all turned upside down, and rivers flowed in the sky. If the sun rose in the west and set a dazzling green in the east and dogs flew and trees were blue and leaves purple. If our faces suddenly appeared on our bellies, if laughter were small blue birds out our mouth and hearing were chimes floating above our blank head. If the sky changed to golden glitter, and flowers sang lullabies, the moon was a nightly smiley face and fire grew in fields to harvest. Would we then fall on our knees and worship God or just complain the apple tasted like a banana.
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Is it difficult to always be joyful, or thankful in every circumstance? Because of my current circumstances, I am thinking about this a lot. This morning, I can see a slight hint of my knee’s definition. I am wrapped in ice most of the day and washing my hands in warm water feels as if I am washing them in Holy Water. Someone should build a great cathedral for the gift of warm water. I have had long periods where I doubt joy and thankfulness, when ache inflates my whole body as air in a balloon, my body feeling like a great glacier buried in ice water. The point I am trying to get to is my joy in circumstances has been the gift of being an American. We are drowning in wealth and with every passing day we sink lower and lower. Our privilege knows no bounds, it is not white or black, rich or poor, legal or illegal. In every case, from the person on death row (there’s not a waiting row in North Korea) to the person in the White House, our American blessings overflow. But in most cases today, blessings have become the curse of privilege, an iron yoke around the heart dragging it to the bottom of death's great lake of fire.
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Time is often what is lacking in life. I opened all my classes by asking the students how much time they had that day. Obviously, the answer was 24 hours. Everyone gets it and not a single second more. So, the question is how we will use our 24 hours. Socrates said, “The unexamined life is not worth living” and someone later added to this, “The unlived life is not worth examining.” Time gives us a chance to examine to live. But when we examine, we must have a baseline, a standard by which to measure our self-examination. This is the role of God in Christ in our lives. It is the very thing that calls us to Him and keeps us clinging to Him, once there. Our desire to be more like Him is the basis, the only sincere basis, for how one might choose to examine and thereby live one’s life. The only way by which we can daily work out our salvation. Retirement is a grand, great awakening of this truth and relationship.
When suffering through the pain of rehabilitation from knee replacement, I remind myself; “You asked for this.” It’s a tremendous privilege to live in a country where you can elect to have a new knee and your insurance will pay for it. I work with a man. I am not sure he is an American citizen, never asked, don’t care. He was helping me into the woods yesterday, my cane not being enough. He told me his knee hurt also. Seems a log had hit him in the knee. I think he told me he was on a walker for a time and had fallen using it. Our communication is hit or miss. I pulled up my pants leg and showed him my scar. He exclaimed, “How much cost?” I wasn’t expecting the question because I had never thought of it. It dawned on me again how fortunate I am to be an American. I shrugged and said, “I don’t know.” He said, “Oh, insurance!” I nodded yes. This is not a blog on our immigration crisis, it is about how fortunate I am to be an American. I wish we could trade all our privileged whinners for all their willing workers. I would also throw in most of our media, their ilk, and most of the government but we would have to sweeten the pot a little there, maybe 5 of ours for 1 of theirs.
This truth deserves full acceptance; I am devoted. I give myself totally. This cuts both ways; I can be devoted to good things, loving God, or have been devoted to bad things, drugs. But the truth is still there, I give myself totally, I want to, I am only satisfied if I am all in. This also limits me in that I reserve myself for these few devotions and accept I cannot for so many others. I am devoted to Christ. This is my greatest challenge in life. I am “prone to wander, Lord, I feel it.” daily, even at times moment by moment but by grace He keeps me. I am devoted to my lover. The ecstasy of this I alone know, but a hint, which has captivated me for several years is, the older her body becomes the more alluring I find her. I am devoted to my family, they being more valuable to me than my very life. I am devoted to the life of being an artist. This, only an artist will understand. Making art is the byproduct of being an artist. I am devoted to beauty. Beauty plays a significant role in all the others. Beauty is God’s cleft in the rock where He often hides me so that I might safely see Him. Beauty is in every line on my lover’s body, every mark, the parts as important as the lily of her whole. Beauty enfolds all mine. I can recognize the beauty of them being them, the beauty of who they are not what they look like. To these devotions, I have committed my life, nothing short of my whole life.
The longing. What is this profoundness, this eternity we know? The Bible says “He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the human heart;” I will confess beauty and eternity go hand in hand, the latter being the ultimate realization of the former but along with that confession comes this one; I know neither. But it seems beauty gives us the inkling of eternity. The same Bible says everything now is cursed, so all there is exists in a fallen state, not complete, not whole, and I also fallen so that eternity cannot be had in my current form. I am having a long season of sitting quietly and being fully conscious of my body. I once read a book titled “You Gotta Keep Dancing” which made the case that only in pain are we fully aware of ourselves, pain alone allows us to feel ourselves. I looked out over the earth from Fair Haven and said to my lover, “I need God’s beauty to wash over me.”
Late last night I walked outside, as is my norm, a final abiding with the earth before retiring. I was greeted with the rich aroma of our ancient river. It smelled ripe and full of earth, and plants decaying back to soil, and wild things, rocks and fish, and shelled creatures. It smelled alive, abundant, primal as it carried, baptized in itself, all the elements of life and flourishing. It was its spiritual self, the aroma of what makes water such a part of Holy Scripture, the worthiness of it to surround us in Holy Baptism. It was flowing from the first four rivers which flowed from Eden which flowed from God, which flowed to me…last night. I turned and invited my lover out to be with us, the river, me, her, and the scent of God, The Almighty River Maker.
A great joy in TKR therapy is being at Fair Haven. Here are last night’s joys. We often awake at night to our motion lights coming on highlighting wild animals. For several weeks it has been two rabbits playing around our porch. There is also the slightest trembling of the earth and Fair Haven as a tug pushing barges happens along in the middle of the night. Invariably one of us will be awake watching her ply her way upriver behind her mighty spotlight. Presently I am wrapped from toes to hips in ice and compression machines watching our winter seagulls waken from the white island they form every evening and begin their day hunting for breakfast. The good, the bad, and the beautiful, total knee replacement therapy at Fair Haven.
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| Betty up watching the tug come up the river. To the left is her shadow being cast on our bedroom wall from the tug's spotlight. |
I am having a destination pity party, Recliner Resort. Routines mean so much to me, those blessings of regularity, biking, walking His Fair Haven, hiking, and riding the back roads have been replaced with icing, elevating, pill-popping, exercising, walking, rest, repeat. My wife has been reborn as special forces commander just prettier. She clasps her hands under her chin, leans her head sideways, and says, “Have you done your exercises?” her way of ice-cold commanding. If she weren’t so beautiful… To be honest I am very grateful. I live in a country where I can have my old knee replaced with a new one attended by the most cheerful, helpful, and brilliant people dedicated to their craft. My rehab is at Fair Haven. My wife truly was born for therapy and caregiving. And I have insurance to pay for it all. As I heard a grandmother say yesterday, “This just dills my pickle!” which means, I’m doing fine!
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| Part of the joy of Fair Haven rehab is we always have the wildest creatures in our front yard. This was yesterday. |
I am befuddled, in a brain fog of pills, exercises, and schedules. I am head down, worn down, wrapped, squeezed, and iced. I am always tangled in Velcro, enslaved by 2000 outlets, and 3000 cords. I am in no particular place, doing nothing particular, and thinking how peculiar, particular sounds. I have been manhandled. I try to tie thoughts one to another, pick up a book repeatedly, lean back, and will my body to operate. I pray, quote scripture, and try to “always be joyful.” A perplexing, joyful, puzzle of unmatched pieces with a picture of me on the box cover. I am a June bug tied to a thousand strings. I am befuddled.
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I am two days out from total knee replacement. To say I feel like I tried to play a series of downs against some local high school football team would be an understatement. I am sore from head to toe. I have learned two things; one, I am not 30 anymore and two my body is not 18 like the surgery attendants thought it was. Don’t get me wrong. I’ve never had better treatment or been helped by so many committed people. These are perfected professionals, and it shows in their every move, efficient, succinct, and precise. But I am still 66. Here is an example. I had a spinal block for surgery and as all you mothers know it makes the lower half of your body nothing more than a floppy appendage. When they rolled me in the operating room it was like rolling down the assembly line of a Ford plant. At one point they had my leg pushed all the way up and over my body in a position it hadn’t seen since HS football practice. Today my hamstrings are soarer than my knee. If you’ve ever been to the Fish Market in downtown Seattle, I would say I feel like one of those big mackerels they toss around for the tourists, flopping from one set of hands to another. The end of that fish’s day was a frying pan, for me, it was a recliner which I am still trying to get a single part of me comfortable in.
Wednesday, January 31, 2024. I am 66 years old today. Unfortunately, I feel every year of them. I never knew age would be so filled with pain. I stopped writing and began to just smile. Smiling always helps. It helps the smiler... (picked back up writing here today) ...and the one being smiled upon, both being me. 66 has been a long highway for me and sometime yesterday while my lover drove me on a long road trip through Appalachia, I realized it has been my favorite road. Been filled with potholes, tragic accidents, and detours. But it is my road trip, the greatest blessing of all time, I am getting to take the road trip. And I know it has truly been wonderful, full of great scenes, great co-passengers, and finally a Driver Who can get me home. What a ride. What a ride!!!
