whatever you say, Lord

 

... kein Ire, ich bin Deutscher, my Irish breakfast of corned beef sandwich with German mustard on Jewish rye from Katz NYC. Good, although the bread may cut me down with carbo coma before the dancing fingers finish whatever it is they have in mind for this blogpost.

GOK.

Going to contemplate a bit.

Responding to my blogpost a week or so ago, in which I'd been startled by a question, "Is God luring you out into the desert?" an oldest friend suggested I let go and enter as far as I can into the desert: I'm taking that seriously to heart and mind and already imagining it. 

One of the things I found helpful in life, both as a pastor trying to help others, and for myself personally, was realizing that every difficult experience in life is preparation: helps me realize the next Time this happens, that I've dealt with this before, and survived, therefore I know I can handle it this Time.

1 February 1978 I completed twenty years service in the U S Navy, was piped ashore as a retired Navy commander, went home, took off my Navy uniform, and have never put it on again. I don't know what I did with my Navy uniforms, don't even know what I did with my Navy commander's hat with the gold braid "scrambled eggs" that I wore so proudly those years. I'm just Tom. Yes, when USAA phones or writes me, it's a courtesy "Commander Weller" - - and, yes, the young sentries at Tyndall check my DOD ID card and politely salute me through the gate. But that's as far as it goes. Out into the desert and've stayed there for, now, over 46 years. I did it, am doing it, I can do it again.

Last Time, I just sort of stumbled out into it. This Time I'm going to go mindfully, with a loose plan. What? Forty Years in the wilderness with Moses. Forty Days in the desert with Jesus. This Time I don't have the Forty Years, so I'm going to do the Forty Days. No traveling, no Jesuit guided silent retreats, I'm going to do this desert myself, being and becoming Different. Last Time a Navy officer and became an Episcopal priest. This Time whatever. 

I used to have something called a "breath prayer." A breath prayer, you say it over and over when you need it, mantra-like. It's personal, everyone has their own. My breath prayer was "Whatever you say, Lord." It helped me many Time when I was heading into something difficult. Telling a parishioner family about a loved one's death. Being with a family as a loved one took a last gasp and stopped breathing. Told in a dark evening phone call that my daughter had been in a car crash, jumping up, driving to the hospital, and running into the ER in my pajamas. Telling a wife in a nursing home that her husband had just died. Standing with a man at the open casket of his teenage daughter. Driving to meet a parishioner friend in the yard where his girlfriend lay dead of self-inflicted gunshot. Telling a teenage girl that her boyfriend's suicide was not her fault. My breath prayer, "Whatever you say, Lord" helped me know I was not alone, and that whatever I said and did would be okay for the moment. Now, I'm going to breathe my breath prayer into the desert! 

It'll be different, nearby physically, far away mentally. Maybe I'll come out different. For discipline, it'll be forty days as from the end of May 2024. It'll be whatever wherever whenever. 

Visualizing possibilities, I'm setting it up in my mind. I'll do some hard things that I don't want to do, like walking. I'll take a bottle of water, or a thermos of coffee, and maybe a sandwich. I may go sit in some of the City's new park swings and gaze out into the Bay. MLP: maybe find a new Laughing Place. I may wander in Oaks by the Bay Park next door, stroll the park, contemplate the Park's streetlamps v. the streetlamp in the forest of Narnia, wander the boardwalks, sit on the benches under the trees down by the Bay. Maybe encounter Lilith, the night hag. Maybe pray, maybe just listen. On a Saturday, maybe buy tomatoes at farmers' market. Read or look or watch or think or write or type or none of the above. Maybe stare rudely. Now & then have a coffee at Amavida again after all these years, maybe even sip coffee at a remote table there and study or blog. Spend a morning reading in the park or on 7H porch - - fiction or real, book, magazine, Bible, online source. Tray of raw oysters on the half shell from Time to Time, beer, martini, or glass of red now and then, toss my black shirts and long robes, give away my clergy stoles, go barefoot if I DWP, celebrate school's out and, more than summer vacation, graduated into the rest of my life. 

Jesus don't come and the Creek don't rise, I mean to go far enough out into the desert to stop, have a good look round, let go and let it be; later, return different somehow or nother. Not a new Tom, just me. Tom to some, Carroll to oldest friends, Bubba. It'll be a state of mind, my mind, where I'm fine.

RSF&PTL

T88&c

++++++

Pic: why the 1932 Packard Light Eight. Why not?