Lughnasa Waning Harvest Moon
No rain yet, but we could use some on our new plantings. If it doesn’t rain, I’m going to have to schlep hoses out and water them that way, something I really don’t like to do.
Nothing on anybody’s docket today. That means garden, decluttering, maybe some more research on liberalism.
Fills like we’re in a lull here, poised between summer and fall, ready to make a change, but not committed to it.
Lughnasa Waning Harvest Moon
The second night with no Rigel. I took fliers to filling stations, veterinary offices, grocery stores and the local humane society. Tomorrow I plan to distribute a few more at baseball fields, the town rec center, those sorts of places. After that, we call back to various places and wait.
The driveway has a nice fresh black coat on it; we have a woodland edge to balance our orchard and few trees planted out in the prairie grass. My neighbor (not the suicidal one) came over and noted we’d planted a couple of hawthorns on his property. He said he didn’t care and I said I didn’t either. They’ll have the same affect there and at that point the properties run into each other on an open field.
Kate’s home. She looks better, but still ragged. We see the surgeon on Thursday morning. Could be some big changes here after that.
The second in my series: Liberalism in Our Time has gotten hold of me, it’s now the filter through which I read articles, think about politics and our common life. I just learned about a guy named Herbert Crowley today. He was the architect (and an architect) of what some call the welfare state. His thought has some interesting resonance for me, since I’m struggling in this series with my radical critique of liberal thought. When I get to the Future of Liberalism, I’m going to have come down somewhere on that question, which I’ve sort of neatly side-stepped so far.
Lughnasa Waning Harvest Moon (visible in the western daytime sky)
Kate has begun the dreary process of checking with animal control, vets and the humane society. At the same time she’s begun canning tomatoes, a task she finds soothing. It’s a good thing since she has a cold and numerous pains throughout her body. She prefers to keep going, get things done. In the past I’ve tried to get her to relax, take it easy a bit, but just this year I realized this is part of her spirit, her who she is-ness. Now I congratulate her.
Today is one of those days. Rigel’s still missing. The borderline asphalt company will show up sometime today to seal the driveway. Paula and the Ecological gardens folks have begun installation of a woodland edge garden. To put a nice bow on the day I have my semi-annual teeth cleaning at 11:00. I moved the vehicles to the street, got the gate ready for Paula, then took off and bought 10 more bales of hay from Al Pearson.
Al’s a 70+ farmer who sells his bales right off highway 10. He bales the hay and sells it retail. We all win. He’s a ramrod straight 6′ 1″ sturdy Scandinavian. He told me, “We like our repeat customers.”
Lughnasa Waning Harvest Moon
Rigel has not come home. We don’t know where she is or how she is. Her absence is palpable. At night she sits on the couch with me, her head in my lap as I watch a few TV shows, wind down from the day. She was not there tonight.
Our neighbor left in an ambulance again. Another suicide attempt, this time with tylenol pm. We cannot know the pain in another persons life, not even those close to us. The barrier of flesh and mind holds us out, even when we try to overcome it. This is the truth in solipsism.
There were two police cars, an ambulance and people going in and out of the house. I watched for a while, behind a gauze curtain and felt like an Italian grandmother leaning out a window in a Boston neighborhood. Drama, the kind that touches lives daily on every block in every city and town in the world, grabs us, makes us want to know how things come out.
Kate gave his wife a call and offered to be there for her. She has a big heart and a generous spirit.
The longer Rigel is gone, the more a feeling of sadness creeps over me. I don’t want to feel it. It seems as if I do that I’ve given up on her and I haven’t, but now she’s gone at night.
Lughnasa Waning Harvest Moon
Vega returned home. Kona let all the dogs inside (her major outdoor trick) and Vega walked into our bedroom where I had laid down for a bit. When I got up to see if Rigel had come home with her, she apparently got up on the bed because I found many burrs and stickers deposited on my side of the bed.
Rigel is still out there, somewhere.
Until she comes home or we decide to try and find her an alternate way, I won’t take Vega out to discover their escape hatch. I want Rigel to use it to come home. There’s probably a subtle psychological truth in that, but I’ll leave it to you to discern.
On another note, this is a holiday, a holiday of ending. Labor Day, aside from its apparent purpose, has acquired a status, at least here in the northern US, as the end of summer. This comes not only from the meteorological changes, September 1st is the end of meteorological summer, but also the return of kids to school. Here in Minnesota people go up to their lake cabins to shut them up for the winter and the whole atmosphere becomes one of back to work, time to get serious again.
As a holiday, it has a certain numinosity, a feeling of difference, of quiet, of peaceful. Today I have a sense of lassitude, a languor. That’s partly from the intense work of the last week in researching and writing Roots of Liberalism and partly my body’s response to holidayness, perhaps you could call it its holiness, a time set apart, different from all other days.
Waiting for Rigel.
Lughnasa Waning Harvest Moon
Vega and Rigel are gone. In a 45 minute period while I lined up framing for a painting to hang over our fireplace they escaped and were returned and escaped again.
When I got back from the framer, a message blinked on our answering machine. Pam, the neighbor across the street, had called. The people who live behind us to the south had caught Rigel and had her on a leash. Vega slipped her collar. They were kind enough to bring Rigel home and open the gate and let her in the back (fenced) yard. Vega snuck back in via their escape route, a route I cannot identify.
I wandered the neighborhood calling their names, met several of the neighbor’s dogs, but neither heard nor saw anything of Rigel and Vega. I feel helpless, especially since we do not, stupidly, have either a chip in them or tags on them. If and when we get them back, a chip and tags are going on for sure.
My plan is to wait a while and see if they come on their own. They like it here and we have lunch for them, so if they’re free, they will return home. Later, I’ll call animal control, but I’d prefer not to right now since I don’t want to explain the lack of tags. We keep our dogs fenced and I exert a good deal of energy to keep them contained, so we’ve operated on the (false) assumption that we don’t need to be too prompt with tags or chips. Wrong.
Lughnasa Waning Harvest Moon
Reality meets prejudice and anxiety. I was the only person in the church with a tie on. In fact, the worship leader for the meeting greeted me as I came up the walk, “There’s our speaker. He’s the only one with a tie on on Labor Day Weekend.
At the end of the presentation I got applause and several people wanted to hear part II.
Note to me for part II: expand on Adam Smith and his works impact in our time, also spell out positive/negative liberty and freedom, plus pay more attention to critiques of the enlightenment like Marx, Romanticism and totalitarianism. Also, the congruence among liberalism and its allies: science, liberal education, liberal democracy, human rights work et al.
Lughnasa Waning Harvest Moon
The next morning. Anxiety has subsided as the time approaches, probably no different from or in fact the same as stage fright.
There is some hoary bit about the anxiety being necessary for a good performance. Sounds like rationalization to me. The anxiety hits because we want others to think well of us, to like what we do and appreciate it. Sometimes they do not.
Since I long ago put on the mantle of one cuts across the grain of received wisdom and will voice unpleasant truths and questions, I know this too well. This does not mean I get no satisfaction from my work, not at all, just that sometimes the most satisfaction comes from the preparation, the crafting and presenting rather than the reception.
As for Roots and this morning, well, that now moves in the realm of action. Much better than imagining it.
Lughnasa Full Harvest Moon
“Wonder is the beginning of wisdom.” – Greek Proverb
I’m nervous. Not sweat on the palms, head for the door or the tunnel kind of nervous, but nervous anyhow. It has two sources I can identify. One, will I dress well enough to preach in Wayzata? After a life time of playing down the importance of dressing up, I still know when it can hurt. I know this seems hopeless given that I’m 62, not 16, but there it is. These folks (folks I imagine attending a Unitarian-Universalist church in a wealthy burb like Wayzata.) dress better than I do. I imagine. And, they probably do. I only want to come up to minimum standards and I’ll probably make it. What if I don’t?
I’ve shaved and cut my hair, trimmed my nails. I’m not about to buy new clothes because I believe Thoreau was right, “Beware of ventures that require new clothes.” but here’s the problem. I don’t wear sport coats or suits at all any more. This is so true that when I went in the closet to fetch a jacket I might wear I found most of the shoulders covered in dust. I’m not kidding. It’s been that long. Also, I’m no longer the svelte guy I was when I bought all the dress pants I own. Fortunately, I can still fit into a few pair.
The second source of anxiety is also about vanity. I’ve preached around the state in several congregations, but I only get asked back in a couple of places. There’s no need for me to preach at all, financially, but I do have an intellectual stake in being heard and appreciated for the work and original thought. That intellectual stake comes freighted with an emotional stake, too. It’s not like I’ll roll over and quit writing if I don’t get good feed back. I generally do good feedback.
Part of me says it’s the changeable nature of program committees and the changing tastes of even those who remain constant from year to year and I’m sure that explains some of it. Part of it, too, I’m sure, is the non-pastoral nature of my preaching. That is, I don’t write to inspire or to give practical advice; I write to make people think, to get them to act, to consider new ways of seeing old problems or to see possibilities and problems where they never saw them before. I can make people nervous. On purpose. Because I’ve understood that to be my particular calling from day 1 in seminary.
In spite of all those it might just be that people don’t like what I say, the way I say it, or me in particular. Oh, well, if it is this, then what can I do? I’m gonna be who I am anyhow. Still, I’d like to know. I think.
Lughnasa Full Harvest Moon
Sneak peek. I have just added Roots of Liberalism and Its Contemporary Branches to the Liberal Faith page on this website. If you’re interested, have a look. I’ll present it tomorrow in Wayzata at the Minnetonka UU Congregation on Rice Street.