PeaceBang

My Date With Spider Man and Superman

It’s amazing to think that we’re already on the cusp of November. I remember planning this get-away with my Mom back in July — “let’s go see the babies on Halloween!”
I’m at SisterBang’s place waiting for her to get home, and spending the night here in beautiful, rural Connecticut before heading down to Pennsylvania for two nights of Auntie Time.

MotherBang was supposed to come trick-or-treating too, but she has a bad knee that isn’t cooperating. Poor Mom, she’s had so much achey-breaky this year. I’m so sad that I won’t get to see her dressed up as SpiderGrandma, complete with the mask with the glasses over it. We would have laughed so hard. Heck, we laughed until we cried just coming UP with the idea!

Me, I’m being a pirate. Argh. See you in a few days. Red Sox Nation, let’s all catch up on our sleep, okay? My eyes are the size of espresso beans.

RED SOX NATION CELEBRATES!!

Stupid World Series Announcers

LET ME JUST SAY THAT WHEN MY TEAM IS WITHIN ONE INNING OF WINNING THE WORLD SERIES, THE STUPID FOX ANNOUNCERS SHOULD NOT BE TALKING ABOUT A-ROD OPTING OUT OF HIS CONTRACT WITH THE YANKESS, BECAUSE NO ONE CARES RIGHT NOW. THANK YOU AND GOOD NIGHT.

Stupid World Series

I would have ordinarily been in bed half an hour ago but the stupid Colorado Rockies SCORED and now it’s 6-2 and I won’t be able to sleep and this is just STUPID. Stupid stupidness. Preachers should be in BED now.

Offensive MasterCard Commercial

May I just pause in the middle of working on a paper and my newsletter column to say how vile I find MasterCard’s new commercial?

I’ve got the World Series on and it just came on during the break.

The ad features a rich, 20-something white girl doing a series of things only the most privileged people could ever do: diving off a cliff into a pristine blue sea, taking fencing classes, taking voice lessons, and I forget what else. The woman’s voice (well, ostensibly her voice) sings “My Favorite Things” in the background.

When the dog bites
When the bee stings
When I’m feeling sad
I simply remember my favorite things,
and then I don’t feel
so bad.

In an era of such rampant inequalities, war and genocide, this commercial seems incredibly insensitive and offensive. I hardly think that most MasterCard holders are using their credit cards to finance dips in the Aegean Sea. They’re probably buying prescription drugs and groceries with it, for god’s sake.

New England Town In Autumn: Scenes From PB’s ‘Hood

I love these romantic, beachy grasses.

Jacob’s Pond. I couldn’t get the color, just the sense of quiet.

Just a little intersection up the road that I ’specially like. The tree in the island is a staunch little thing. Still couldn’t capture any color; the light was wrong. But you can see a little bit on the left.

Next time: pumpkins on people’s front steps! Maybe I’ll snap some tomorrow.

Bad Moon Rising

Wow, what a week it’s been! On one hand, I’m feeling in great health after almost a month of being in crummy condition. My upswing has given me new appreciation for my generally high energy and I have renewed compassion for people who live in chronic pain, which is exhausting and disheartening. But it just feels cray-zee out there! Wires crossing, I’ve lost my cell phone twice in two days (paging Dr. Freud! paging Dr. Freud!), the cat erased the hard drive, ordinarily staunch folk have been brought to tears by stressful situations, and nerves are fraying all around me. Someone said that mercury is in retrograde and I believe it, man!

In a funny way, I’m at my happiest and most focused when stuff is messy and edgy like it is now. I grew up in an emotionally nutty home with parents who were totally inconsistent so you never knew if you’d come home to “Leave It To Beaver” or “Troilus and Cressida.” I learned to ignore the twisted knots in my stomach and to concentrate on reading the energies in the household, diagnosing the problems, and fixing them. If Mom needed support, she got it, up to and including my burying the empty booze bottles more deeply into the trash bins. If Dad’s volatile ego needed massaging in the form of a delightful conversation with his precocious daughter, he got it. If I needed to triangulate between sister and father, I did it. If I needed to run interference on behalf of my little brother when dad went on a rampage, I tried my best to do it. I was a little clinician in a very small asylum, never realizing that I myself was an inmate. I have a lot of compassion for that kid.

Now when I see nutty systems at work in people’s lives I have a kind of sad fondness for them. It’s like, Oh yeah, I know this nonsense. It’s always all about fear and control, clutching tight to secrets and habits that aren’t even any good, are certainly not worth our protective loyalty, and which need to be exposed, taken out, and shot. Or at least sent over the side of the cliff like those demons Jesus put into the herd of swine. The thing that’s so poignant about human beings is how much tender care we give to our demons. We give them everything we are, and even feed our children to them. It’s just so hard and takes so much support, strength, courage and desperation to name them for what they are and be willing to say goodbye to them.

“Amazing grace how sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me!”
Anyone who has ever taken their demons out to lunch and broken up with them once and for all knows why that song has such enduring, deep appeal. Half the time we don’t even know how wretched we are until we let one of our demons go for a few weeks (just a trial run, you know) and come to realize that we’d been living choked by it for so long.

I asked Jesus to cast out all my demons about, oh, maybe 15 years ago just to see if he could do it. At the last minute I got chicken and said, “Do you think I could keep just one for a pet?” Jesus said, “Do you think I would or could cast out any demons you’re devoted to keeping around?” And I said, “Do you realize how much you irritate me answering every one of my questions with a question?”

Hey, Southern Cali!

I just met with my student minister and we were talking about my favorite quote, “It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.” (Hebrews 10:31) I’m so fascinated by the way moderns have domesticated God, taking the grey-haired old man thing quite seriously (by that I mean that when people reject God-concepts, it’s usually the grey-haired old man — either the doddering and impotent or raging and vengeful version — that they reject). I rarely hear any one talk about God as pure spirit, undomesticated, glorious, in-breaking and dreadfully inconvenient. I remember actually getting on my knees in prayer during my seminary years and sobbing, “Please stop burning in me so hard.” I felt like the proverbial work horse, “rid hard and put away wet,” all foamy on the flanks at the end of the day, definitely on the edge of breaking, starting to feel for that famous bush from the Book of Exodus. Scripture tells us that the bush burned but was not consumed, but I started to get the idea that it still wasn’t a lot of fun to be that bush.

All this reflection on God as fire led me to wonder insane and hellish it must feel out in Southern California right now, where people are fleeing real flames, not spiritual ones. All these apocalyptic natural disasters over the past years; are there more than usual or is it just that I’m getting older and the world smaller and I’m paying closer attention?

How are you, California readers? Please comment and tell us what’s going on for you. Are you evacuated or providing shelter for someone else who has evacuated? Do tell, and know that we’re praying for you here in PeaceBangland.

Dr. Smoothenstein

This guy has been on my mind a lot lately.

The photo was taken last April when I got wound up really tight after Easter and took a few days off to visit SisterBang in Connecticut. I am inhaling that dog as pure medicine (it only looks like I’m choking him!).

This elegant old gent is my sister’s canine familiar, Gordon. I wish you could see these two together. For the past 13 years they’ve been like one animal; you know how centaurs have the body of a horse and the head of a man? Well, my sister has the body of a woman with the body of dog attached at the hip. She is the consummate Dog Person. A fierce New England spinster like me, she eschews the company of troublesome men and is loyal to her hound, who in turn worships her. Every time she gets involved with a new romance he gets positively addled. You can read the cartoon bubble over his head: “What did I do wrong? Why she does not love only me any more? But I am so much more cuter and more well-mannered than this guy! Plus also I smell a lot better!”

I remember when I was living down in Maryland and SisterBang came to visit. I walked out of the church building and into the sun to look for her in the parking lot. As is typical of her, she was already surrounded by children and had Gordon by her side. She was wearing a simple toga-like sun dress and flat leather sandals, her long hair down and shining. He sat smooth and burnt caramel colored, unperturbed by the long drive and eminently patient with the adoring children. They looked like a painting of Artemis and her hound.

So it seems that Gordon, Count Dordonski, Dr. Smoothenstein, Mr. Bologna Ears, is ailing. He has cancer in his nasal passages and an enlarged heart. He has had some seizures and bleeding that indicates the cancer may have metastasized. SisterBang is not the kind of person who would expect her animal companion to endure lots of frightening and uncomfortable procedures for her sake. She is willing to let him go. He is getting ready to go over the Rainbow Bridge.

Gee, it’s hard to think about our family without Dords in it. But we all know that the essence of doggie is energy and life, and when they get old and sickly, it’s only fair to let them go. As I said to my sis, “It’s not like he needs more time to work on that great literary legacy he hoped to leave.”

They’re the simplest of creatures but our greatest teachers of complex wisdom.

I’ll get to snoggle with him next Tuesday night on my way down to Pennsylvania, where I have a date to trick-or-treat with Superman and Spiderman.

Cleveland Indians, PeaceBang Salutes You

Dear Cleveland,

I know the score from last night’s game was 11-2 but I saw that game, and it was no shut-out. You are a terrific team and you fought hard. I was scared of you the whole night.
Sorry we won’t see you at the World Series but maybe next time.

I do have one bit of advice for you, though: grill up that third-base coach of yours, Joel Skinner, and eat ‘im with ketchup on a bun.

Dear Red Sox,
I officially worship your talent and verve. Over the past two nights you guys went from being a very Beckett-Manny-Papi dependent post-season operation to being a superstar TEAM. You all had your shining moments of genius. J.D. Drew, you have been vindicated. Dustin Pedroia, I was there when a NESN announcer called you “little piss ant Dustin Pedroia.” You were no little piss ant last night. You were glorious. Dice-K, you’ve been shaky this year but I believe in you. Always have. And Jonny Papelbon, please stop dancing around champagne-soaked in your latex shorts after these huge victories. You’re taking years off my life. Jacoby Ellsbury, you too, son. You boys are so gorgeous and talented you distress my soul’s peace.
Tito, I kiss you on your baldie head.

See you at the World Series!