Do you see what I see?

Albuquerque at dusk, November 28, 2011. (photo by Tom Simic)

"Prayer is sitting in the silence until it silences us, choosing gratitude until we are grateful, praising God until we ourselves are a constant act of praise." Fr. Richard Rohr

My Mortality

Now and then I get reminded of my mortality, and at 68—young for your age the cardiologist told me yesterday—why wouldn’t I be. My father died five months shy of his 70th birthday, his older brother 18 months later at age 72, and his younger brother only 8 months after that at age 71. Only a few year’s later, my mother’s younger brother died just two months before his 65th birthday. All of these men died of heart failure, and all of them had been treated for heart illness—some more aggressively and extensively than others. Would you say I have a family history?

Next Tuesday I am having a coronary angiogram. “I don’t think your symptoms are cardio related,” the doctor told me after what seemed to me a relatively brief test on the treadmill last week. It could be musculoskeletal. Two days earlier one of the doctors at the urgent care clinic where I had gone—finally giving in to what had been troubling me for two weeks—suggested that my symptoms could even be gastrointestinal related. None of this was news to me. My back is sort of a wreck and medication for gastroesophageal reflux disease has been a part of my life for over a decade. “The pain along your left jaw could even be dental related,” suggested the cardiologist. Hmm, I thought, as I recalled that I had mentioned to my dentist a couple of months ago that the area around the crown he installed last spring is sometimes tender. According to him, though, everything looked fine, based on x-ray and exam.

So I’m having this angiogram, having passed an abbreviated-seeming treadmill test, because the dull ache in my left arm and jaw persists. “Is this,”…”yes, invasive,” the doctor replied, before I could complete my question. My thought—let’s just get it over with—even though the idea of it frightens me at least a little. I’m not a kid anymore. And I don’t want to be one of the unevolved men that Fr. Richard Rohr describes in his various writings, including the book of meditations I started reading in late summer. The doctor doesn’t expect to find anything, but I should come prepared to spend the night, should he discover blockage and need to place a stent or stents to open up the blockage.

Let’s just get it over with, even while I’m thinking about all the loose ends of my life that remain unresolved. There’s that bad condo mortgage in the city different and the merchandise consigned to a couple of different businesses in two different states and the accumulation of treasure here in this house in the land of enchantment that in spite of what I might try to tell myself is not my home—and no last will and testament. The list could go on. These are the things that have been on my mind of late, the things that prompted me to contact my attorney in Texas last week. “Why haven’t you done a will,” he asks. I have a will, technically, but it no longer serves current reality. In it I left everything to my mother, who is deceased now almost five years.

So I’m having this test, and lately I’ve been thinking, again, about the need to get organized— to turn the hand-written list of merchandise consigned in Texas into a file on my computer, a file that I can print out and distribute to all who need to know—all who need to know about my seemingly loose ends. My sisters, a couple of friends here in Albuquerque. All who need to know. Huh, I consider. After our mother died in 2007, I had a short period of wanting to follow through on the t-shirts custom-made for me a few years—t-shirts based on an idea that had cooked in my gut for close to 20 years. “For sale—all of my earthly possessions,” they read. I was ready for a short time to liquidate my accumulation of treasure. I found it wasn’t easy, though. Bad economy, huh. It seems to have been bad or on the way to being bad or coming out of being bad for three decades—for as long as I have been moving treasure in and out of my life. Loose ends.

This morning I had the requisite blood work before my date with the cardiologist next Tuesday. I read this morning that during an angiogram, a thin tube called a catheter is placed into a blood vessel in the groin (femoral artery or vein). Then the catheter is guided to the area to be studied. An iodine dye is injected into the vessel to make the area show clearly on the X-ray pictures. The purpose is to reveal if an aneurysm (bulge in a blood vessel) exists or if blockage in a blood vessel is affecting blood flow. The test can also show if coronary artery disease is present and how bad it is. Three viles of blood were necessary for the three tests needed before my coronary angiogram. I’m squeamish about blood-drawing, even though shots don’t particularly bother me. My long history includes virtually passing out the first time several viles of blood for testing were drawn from my body when I was only in my 20s. At the time, the recounting was funny. I thought about that time many years ago as I sat this morning in a waiting room filled with people there for lab tests. As the technician worked to draw my blood, the flow stopped on the second vile. Thanks for explaining why this is taking too long, I thought, in response to his comment. Eyes closed and head cast upward to the right, I reminded myself to breathe, breathe slowly and calmly.

Loose ends are on my mind. I’ve created that type-written list of merchandise consigned in Texas. That’s a good thing. Now to print it and get into the hands of the people who need to know. A similar report from the gallery here in New Mexico where I also have things consigned is only a phone call away. And my attorney in Texas has told me that an email to him with my wishes will suffice for drafting a will. I guess I’m finally getting around to that, at 68. Although I don’t have any plans to “go anywhere”, as it were—after all, I am young for my age—now and then I get reminded of my mortality.

My Mortality—Albuquerque, New Mexico (November 9, 2011)

R. Harold Hollis

If Only

“I knew something was differnt.” That’s what Ludd said about the cake Marie served him in Lily Tomlin’s 1977 one-woman stage show that I had on vinyl 30 plus years ago. Do you know the recording? Can you too hear Tomlin? Once in awhile I think about Ludd and Marie, the names she gave to her mother and father “to protect them,” she adds (audience laughs) in her skit, “Dracula’s Daughter”. The humor of the piece lies in the flat-toned pace of their seemingly meaningless conversation about the kind of cake Marie buys or doesn’t buy, their conversation interrupted by the maniacal screams of their daughter who hears their exchange even though she is entombed in her room, music playing loud enough to wake the dead. For all practical purposes, Ludd and Marie are as clueless of their Dracula’s Daughter as she is of her parents. They seem to exist to try one another’s patience. If only the sometimes subtle, sometimes not, variations in the routine of our lives were so funny. If only.

Lately, I’ve been having my own flat-toned days--or so they seem at times--even though there is enough upheaval for anyone. I made one of my routine fall treks to Texas to focus for a time on my business of offering for sale treasure that I accumulate spring to fall. The trip was made more challenging by the drought that has laid claim to the Lone Star state and appears to be well entrenched for another year. No amount of water produced through the garden hose can mitigate the lack of rain. When I left at 6 a.m. on a Friday morning in early October for my return to New Mexico, Texas was set for another day of temperatures well above normal, no rain in sight, as day broke on the parched landscape, revealing old-growth trees struggling to hold on--some already having given up the ghost. Much of the southwest is suffering extreme drought, but a look at the current U. S. drought monitor is enough to make Texans paranoid. Record setting heat and record low rainfall tell the story. What in the past we have called the dog days of summer is dogging the fall.

Here in New Mexico, the drought is apparent as well, even though Fall has come to this land. As I made my way west on I-40 late in the day of October 7th, having driven well over 600 miles with another 150 miles to go, the temperature had dipped to the 50s and the remains of the monsoons produced late-afternoon rain showers. By the time I reached Albuquerque, the outside thermometer on my Toyota registered 46 degrees, with lows in the 30s predicted for the night. To feel this, to see the cottonwoods change to yellow and orange, and then to hear on the news that arid New Mexico is below 50% of its annual scant precipitation, somehow Texas seems to have gotten the worst of it. As we near the end of the harvest season, temperatures in Texas still cling doggedly to the high 80s.

One of my favorite stories about how clueless we can sometimes be goes back at least 20 years. At work in an air conditioned downtown Houston high rise on a hot, rainless July day, in the company of a few colleagues, I commented, “Man, I wish it would rain.” “Why, do you have a yard?”, asked a 20-something newbie, who ironically was a graduate of the great Texas university known for its emphasis on agriculture, she, obviously not of its agriculture graduates. I replied, “Yes, and you eat food.”

While I was away in Texas, the house I rent here in Albuquerque was burglarized. Someone who was awfully intent on seeing what might lie beyond the walls of this little 1940s adobe-like dwelling kicked in the back door, busting it in half. I don’t know how long the house stood open--presumably over night. A friend who was looking in on the house in my absence discovered the front door standing open when he came by after work. The forces of landlord, carpenter and friends came to bear on the circumstances. And though only my television and an antique western saddle were taken, the burglars came back the second night and tried to kick in the front door. Their attempt was foiled. I felt helpless in Texas, knowing that it would be at least two weeks before I could return to tend to my own property. And though more than a couple of people have suggested that I make the pawn shops in the area of the city where I live to look for this relatively unique saddle, I didn’t see the point. I had given up on the television without a second thought.

Oh, well, let them eat cake. Bread enough, there is not. I’m feeling rather flat, not unlike the way Ludd and Marie seem about their cake, be it banana, plain, or “what about the chocolate”. You mean the one that causes you to break out under your chin? “Stop talking about that cake,” I want to scream. It’s enough that my home has been violated and that I am anxious every time I lock the front door to leave. I now leave the television on, not at all fooling myself to think that the sound of voices inside would deter anyone who is intent on breaking in for my cake or my bread or my laptop or television or whatever other treasure their hungry eyes might translate into cash. Last night, as I lay awake around midnight, having awakened from some nightmarish dream whose details I don’t recall, I realized how powerless I am feeling to save my earthly treasure from those who would take it. I might as well be Dracula’s Daughter screaming from the confines of my heavy metal bedroom to Ludd and Marie and the insurance man who have quickly learned to whisper about important things, like cake. I get it, even though I don’t know what to do with it.

If Only--Albuquerque, New Mexico (October 26, 2011)

R. Harold Hollis

Ah, the Golden Rule

“No man is an island entire of itself; every man

is a piece of the continent, a part of the main;

if a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe

is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as

well as a manor of thy friends or of thine

own were; any man's death diminishes me,

because I am involved in mankind.

And therefore never send to know for whom

the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.”

(John Donne, 1572-1631, “Meditation XVII”)

I went hiking with a couple of friends and a couple of acquaintances last Sunday. One of my friends inquired of the new guy, "do you go to church, Andrew?" A comment Andrew had just made about making the transition from Roman Catholic to public school in the 7th grade had made me smile. He recounted an instance where class had been dismissed, and he stood and made the sign of the cross. His habit embarrassed him, as it would just about any seventh grade boy, and he remembered wondering at the time would he be ostracized by his classmates. Time and distance for this now 56-year-old man gave a smile to him as well. Concerning his church habits these days, “No,” he replied quietly. “I just try to follow the golden rule.” He went on to point out that what we in the Christian tradition call the golden rule is inherent in all formalized religious traditions. The number he recalled is “eight” traditions. Reading about the history of this maxim or concept of human rights is just a few keystrokes away on our computers. Anyway, as he said this, I thought and then replied that if everyone practiced this, imagine what a different world we would live in. It would indeed be heaven on earth, just as God intends and just as Jesus, the great teacher, taught during his journey on earth.

Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. “Therefore, whatever you want men to do to you, do also to them, for this is the Law and the Prophets.” (Matthew 7:12 NKJV) After lunch yesterday with a husband and wife couple I met recently through our shared passion of collecting antiques (actually, her passion, not his), she rode with me back to their home near Lamy, New Mexico where I had been invited to see their house and the fruits of her collecting habit. As we drove, she asked if I write. A mutual friend had told her so. I replied that I have a blog, but that I haven’t had all that much to say for close to two years. “After our mother died more than four years ago, I found that I had plenty to say about a lot of things,” I offered. Before Mother’s death, I had already begun with stories about family and about adult family friends who had made their mark on me as a child. I wanted to give these little gifts to her. “I surprised myself with the direction my writing took,” I said yesterday, adding that religion and spiritual matters seemed to be at the heart of what I somehow need to put into words.

These days, things that likely would have pointed me toward my laptop keyboard a few years ago instead cause me to wonder, mostly to myself, and more importantly, to decide that I don’t really have much that I feel a need to commit to writing these days. I mentioned this to a friend several months ago, and she replied that when I had something to say, I would say it. Not more than a couple of weeks passed before something new showed up on my blog. And so it goes. I can hardly call it writer’s block since I don’t really consider myself a writer. I know that I have the ability to put words into a somewhat coherent and meaningful sequence. What invites me to comment at length are the things that more often than not simply piss me off. The result might be an unsolicited email to a friend or friends. Sometimes a message I’ve received seemingly requires me to reply—as much trying to make sense of something to myself as to make sense to someone else.

I hadn’t considered that what our hiking companion noted the other day would be part of connecting the dots with something headed toward me from just around the corner. But why wouldn’t it? And indeed it did. I received yet another forwarded message from a relative in Texas yesterday—the kind of message that at its heart is meant to breathe life into distrust, fear, and hate. I wrote about a similar forwarded message I received awhile back—this one from a different relative in Texas. The messages are all the same. First, and perhaps most importantly, they are based largely on untruths—untruths that have been combined with just enough of what is true or seems to be true to give them credibility. Someone somewhere put all of this into words that are meant to frighten and whip the reader into a lather, and most importantly for the sender, to in turn urge someone else to send it on to yet another group of readers. And so the lie grows. In spirit, these emails are not unlike “shouting fire in a crowded theatre" a popular metaphor and frequent paraphrasing of Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.'s opinion in the United States Supreme Court case Schenck v. United States in 1919. We understand the results of such behavior.

We all have agendas. Maybe we at times intend to deceive. At other times we deceive unknowingly. We become confused by our own ignorance and by fear. It is the way of humankind. Even though we are capable of the worst, all we have to do is look around us to see the goodness that we are equally capable of. Once again, I am begged to question motive. If I choose to engage in tongue wagging or fear mongering, who or what does this serve? One thing I know for certain is that it serves no good. If I mistakenly believe that my gain is served by the loss of others, I have indeed fooled myself. There is no shortage of good in this universe. Know it, believe it, and act on it. Regardless of how carefully I might try to fool myself, I do not gain at the expense of someone else. I give thanks to our hiking companion from the other day for causing me to, once again, “get it”. Imagine what a different world we would live in. It would indeed be heaven on earth, just as God intends and just as Jesus, the great teacher, taught during his journey on earth. "One should seek for others the happiness one desires for himself." (Buddha, Siddhartha Gautama, BCE 563-483) “No one of you is a believer until he desires for his brother that which he desires for himself.” (Sunnah, Islam, Mohammed, CE 570-632)

Ah, the Golden Rule—Albuquerque, New Mexico (September 7, 2011)

R. Harold Hollis

"The false self will say prayers but the True Self is a prayer and looks out at reality from a different pair of eyes larger than its own. This is why in Ephesians it says 'pray always' (6:18). We pray always whenever we act in conscious and loving union with God, which eventually can be all the time—even in our sleep!" Fr. Richard Rohr, O.F.M., Center for Action and Contemplation

"But Jesus, said unto them, 'A prophet is not without honour, but in his own country, and among his own kin, and in his own house.' And he could there do no mighty work, save that he laid his hands upon a few sick folk, and healed them. And he marvelled because of their unbelief. And he went round about the villages, teaching." Mark 6: 4-6 KJV