Quarantine Day 19

. Faith

Quarantine Day 19

Laying in the hot tub and looking up through the steam I hope for no shooting stars. No getting pulled that far up and out of myself.

Many nights we gaze, attentive looking for the not uncommon satellite. Planes are easy to spot every 10 minutes or more often, but it is much quieter this Spring with the virus. Will summer mean the typical slow down of life? Or instead a somewhat welcome relative quickening? An easing of restrictions and more semblances of life returning to normal?  The stars are brighter in the same way downtown Denver is clearer when I drive down 285. If we drive less we instantly get cleaner air.

In the humid quiet I can run out of things to say, even to my wife. Exposed and intimate beneath the vast sky it is still possible, especially for two introverts, even in these claustrophobic nights, to be alone. Lazy limbs occasionally drifting through the tub are the only sound.

Lonesomeness sometimes pulls me to God. In these strange unnumbered days Continue reading →

Quarantine Day 11

. Faith

Quarantine Day 11

–  How did we get here?  I asked.

– What do you mean? Julie was looking down over an edge where the sea of winter dead grass became a two-foot wide running gulley; the water was pulling us somehow. I meant How did this hike that began as mere daily chore become a Wander?

She and I were now only loosely connected; disappearing from each other behind willows and hillocks of dead sod. The vast meadows lay underneath and around in uniform directions as though we explored underwater, or strolled the moon. I didn’t remember making a decision to change.

The fog sat on the mountains all day. We had been jogging in shorts twice in five days previous; temperatures in the 50s and it seemed May or even June. But today was freezing; nothing above the high 20s and a harsh Colorado reminder: this was spring; to be continually tricked into thinking warm and green shoots when frigid stillness and death still clung. Continue reading →

The Year of the Rat

. Faith

I walked into the retirement home wondering if we would ever again be able to tell truth from lies, propaganda from news. These are dishonest, sleazy days. A rat is somebody who tells. But what they tell is the truth; or it wouldn’t warrant telling. So who is afraid of a rat? Who’s afraid of a Whistle-blower?

An acquaintance, Colleen, was dying upstairs on a mild Colorado winter evening at the start of the New Year. My wife Julie and I stopped for a visit.

Climbing the stairs I thought “what a horrible time to have to die”. Our democracy shrinking to the most corrupt and petty it has been in any of our lifetimes. The GOP still lying about the entire affair with Ukraine and covering up for this thug of a president. Truth has become a merely partisan trick; nothing to trust in an era of Fox news. The Chinese New Year brings frightening rodents scurrying across rain-glazed alleys. The fear and lack of integrity smears itself across every broadcast medium.

Her kids and I engaged in bedside small talk while Colleen slept and then I turned to recognize why we were all here: waiting for her to die. Continue reading →

Naive

. Faith

Genesis Anthem from November 10: Chris Rice’s “Naive”

Brett on drums, Don on piano and lead, Julie and Janet on Background vocals