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  • Words.

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Imbolc                                                            Waxing Bridgit Moon

    “Belief in the truth commences with the doubting of all those ‘truths’ we once believed.” – Friedrich Nietzsche

    This intellectual bomb-thrower has always been a favorite of mine though I’ve not ready any of his stuff cover to cover.  A recent bio tries to make him into a closet hyper-religious, but if he is he did the damndest job of hiding it.  Sometimes I think an atheist is just an atheist and not a cigar.

    I have felt the force flowing with me ever since the retreat.  There’s something about being lifted in the mosh pit of old friends that buoys the soul.  I’ve got out the pages of Missing I’ve written so far and am finishing an edit/revision I began a while ago, then I’m going to pick up the keyboard and set byte to screen.  Kate and I also identified a week in March when I can go back out to Blue Cloud and work intensively on the novel.  I’m still weighing it since it seems indulgent, but, hey, maybe it’s time for this kind of indulgence.

    We had our business meeting this morning and I had a post-retirement anxiety tremor, so we ran numbers out past 2012.  Hah.  As if it matters.  After 2012.  Just in case, though, we ran them anyhow and the numbers do begin to make sense when looked at over a period of time.  My tremor quieted.

    Had a call this morning from a brother asking for some reassurance.  I gave it, though I’m not sure how my input helped. It’s humbling to be asked for such a thing.

    Met with Leslie, the UU student at UTS that I’m mentoring this year.  It’s fun to watch a young person, she’s my age when I was in Sem, go through the back and forth of this strange vocation, ministry.  Had I a chance to do it over again, knowing what I know now, I would have worked at McDonald’s.  No.  Not really.  But, I wouldn’t have gone into the ministry.  Maybe art history.  Maybe politics full time.  Maybe something else, but I wouldn’t have ended up in the ministry.  But, I did.  Go figure.


    📂This entry was posted in Aging Commentary on Religion Humanities Retirement Woolly Mammoths 📎and tagged

  • Back From The Cloud

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Imbolc                                                           Waxing Bridgit Moon

    The drive home with Frank is over.  We followed route 12 back east, away from Blue Cloud Abbey and the snow which had claimed a semi and an SUV on the road away from the Abbey, stopping only in Litchfield for a Chinese lunch, a buffet.  We talked as usual about many things religion, politics, women and family history.

    Another Woolly retreat has finished, our 24th by some counts.  The 25th will break with our two decade long tradition of late January, early February dates and move us into the last days of September and the first of October, September 29-October 2.  We hope this will encourage more of us to get outside, walk, hike, enjoy the weather and the place.  We’ve opted for our fourth retreat at Blue Cloud Abbey.  It suits our sensibility as a place dedicated to the sacred and brotherhood and is far enough away to count as a trip.  It also has individual rooms and prepared meals.

    We have also developed a relationship with the monks, two brotherhoods with different founding purposes, yet a common focus on the life of men together.  We explore different facets of common ground each time, this time the chanting with Father Michael and some time with Father Tom.  We will, I believe, prove resistant to their attempts at evangelism, hamfisted as they are, but not done in mean spirit.

    Now I’m on my study computer where I’ve just entered the upcoming activities from calendar, trying to spot the time to get back to work on Missing.  That will emerge this week, as I plan to get at least an hour a day in until I can squeeze out more.  I may still go back out to Blue Cloud for a quiet and solitary place to write.


    📂This entry was posted in Aging Commentary on Religion Woolly Mammoths Writing 📎and tagged

  • Still Learning

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Samhain                                                                    Waxing Moon of the Winter Solstice

    The moon light, bright in the southern sky, casts shadows, thin skeletons of trees and shrubs splayed out upon the snow.

    This Latin stuff is fun.  Going back and forth among dictionaries, grammars, websites, puzzling out the verbs and the nouns, trying to fit it all together into English, peeking inside Ovid, at least reading Ovid in his native language.  I know it’s weird, but I really enjoy it.

    I feel about it like I feel about art history; I wish I hadn’t waited so long.  On the other hand the two together give this final third of my life mental vitality.  I’m only getting started.

    Oh.  Picked up the novel I’d set aside, about a third done.  It has promise.  Need to find time for it.


    📂This entry was posted in Aging Art and Culture Humanities Myth and Story Retirement 📎and tagged