This Week in San Diego

We went to San Diego this past week. We took more than 90 pictures. Well, more precisely, I took four pictures, Sand took the rest. The picture on the left is the best of the four pictures I took.

It's a flower, but I think you could have guessed that. I don't what kind it is, but still I am rather pleased with the picture.

It was a good week. I was more relaxed than I have been since I retired. I love being retired, but under the circumstances and considering my age, there is always nagging feeling that I am not really allowed to do this, or at least that I shouldn't be allowed to enjoy it.

I've been doing some reading that made sense to me. Laurence Scupoli wrote The Spiritual Combat, which is considered to be one of the great classics of Catholic spirituality. (You can see my review of that work here in the Piker Press.) He also wrote a shorter piece called Peace of Soul. I 'm not finished  reading it yet, but I like where it is going. Scupoli says there's loving God, and there's loving others. Both are important. However, don't over think the loving neighbor part. Put your effort into securing your relationship with God, and God will let you know what he wants you to do. Lots to consider.

 We met this other couple in San Diego who shared with us that they too are retired. They assured us that retirement is wonderful and that they have achieved peace. I took a picture of them (right), so that I can make it my screen saver. I want to be reminded what retirement can be.

In The Time I Have Left

The Story Thus Far

I went to have some blood work done this morning. During the course of the chit-chat with the phlebotomist, the subject of my employer came up, and I told her that I used to work for Nummi. She has lots of clients that used to work for Nummi, so she wanted to know if I had another job.

No, I said, I was retired.

She looked at my chart, noticed my age. "Oh," she said. "You don't have much time left, you might as well enjoy it."

She must have skipped class the day they had the "things not to say to a patient" lecture. Still. I knew what she meant and appreciated the sentiment. Fortunately my blood work was a requirement of a health insurance application and not part of the treatment for some serious disease. I don't expect to die anytime soon, but I am well aware that I am closer to the end than to the beginning of my life, and indeed, I intend to take full advantage of my situation and enjoy myself as much as I can with the time I have left.

Curiously, my phlebotomist's remark did elicit in me a desire to write today. There are about fifty copies of my novel Stained Glass floating around the world, and pretty soon, they may be the only tangible evidence that I existed. I like to imagine that my granddaughter will hand a copy to her kids one day and say "here, this is your great grandfather." And in the time I have left, I think there are few more things worth saying.

So today, I'm going to hole up with my laptop and write. I need to add to my body of work so that the great grand-kids don't read one book and say "like OMG, great granddaddy was, like, a  pervert."

Reflection on Prayer

Mirror, Mirror On The Wall...

It has been 415 days since I retired. Keep that number in mind please, because we will return to it in a moment.

One of the tasks I set myself to when Nummi closed and I found I had lots of time on my hands was to establish for myself a daily prayer routine. I never had one. In fact prayer was one of those areas of my spiritual life that I had pretty much relegated entirely to the Church.  I prayed when I went to Mass on Sunday (to which I was faithful)  and on Holy Days  (which ones I didn't forget and for which I could get time off). After some contemplation and experimentation, I have indeed developed a daily prayer routine that feels good to me. It is substantive enough to look and sound like real prayer, and it is comfortable enough to feel genuine. If you account for the time for development, a couple of disruptions from life events that necessitated trips back East, and of course the effects of my own inertia, I have employed my daily prayer routine somewhere between 250 and 300 times over the past 415 days. Compared to my previous track record, it is a remarkable accomplishment.

Yet, we must put this in perspective. One of the sage bits of inscrutable Oriental Wisdom that Toyota imparted to us at Nummi was that you must perform an operation one thousand times in order to become proficient. Thus a couple's love making becomes established in the first year, and any novelty introduced after children arrive remains just that, a novelty, as there is no longer an opportunity to achieve proficiency. Of course that's a plus or minus kind of number -- at Nummi, some people could pick things up almost immediately, and others, like Fred, were on schedule to achieve proficiency in a thousand years. Interestingly, a thousand repetitions was a good estimate of how long it would take for elements of the job to begin to become second nature. By this measure, I am somewhere between a quarter and a third of the way to point where my daily prayer routine becomes proficient.

I raise these issues because yesterday I had one of those epiphanous moments that make you stop in your tracks and squawk. My eight year old granddaughter was talking to her mother in the living room. From her vantage point, she had a clear view of mirror on the wall directly behind her mother. Being eight and naturally vain, she watched herself in the mirror as she spoke to her mother.

"Wait, wait, wait,"  her mother said. "Who are you talking to?"

"You," my granddaughter said.

"Then why are you not looking at me?"

I am pleased with where I've come with prayer this past year, but if I am honest, I have to admit that I am still a bit preoccupied with whether or not I look good praying. I am watching the words come out of me, posturing a bit to see if I look holier.

At Nummi, every time you trained on new job, you knew there was going to be that period of time when you felt awkward. When you were a new hire, it was very daunting and even discouraging. Later on, you got to recognizing it for what it was. You knew you had a thousand repetitions between you and competence, and while there was no shortening the process, you knew that little by little your body would respond.

In another 700 repetitions of my daily prayer, in a little less than two years if I can discipline myself, I am pretty sure that I will be able to stop looking in the mirror when I pray.

"...when these things have been repeated to us and in us a thousand times over, we begin to learn to trust simply to the word and power of God, beyond and against appearances ..."
                                                                -- from The Letters of John Newton

Life After the Dial Tone

Going Out

So, I did it. I had my cell phone disconnected.

I don't really need it. I don't. Really.

We don't go out much, so there's no good reason to have four cells phones in the house plus a land line.

Waste of money. Don't need it. Don't.

I had to go out tonight, to get in the car and drive. Away from home. Away from the house phone. Along a highway where there are no phones.

Remember what that was like, being able to get away from people and not having to worry that the office was going to call, or that the phone would ring at an inopportune moment? Do you remember the freedom of being out of reach?

I really don't need to call anybody from the car...unless of course the car breaks down...out in the middle of nowhere...where there are no phones...at night...where there may even be chupacabras.

Wouldn't it be ironic if I was to be eaten by a chupacabra because I got a flat tire and didn't have my phone with me on a rainy night when I decided that being retired means I don't need no stinking phone to bleed me dry with monthly charges for a service that I would only need in case of emergency?

Still, I'll get used to it, not having a phone that is. I don't know if a person can get used to chupacabra attacks. They scar you for life if they don't kill you outright.

I took Sand's phone with me this time, just as a precaution, but I know that next time I'll go alone. I'll lock the car doors and plan my route. I won't stop until I'm there, and I won't tarry on the way back. I will live my life free of my electronic shackles... notwithstanding the chupacabras.

I'm just saying.

There is nothing to fear, but fear and chupacabras.

 

So I am  going along living my life happily, believing that all is well. We have shelter, we have plenty to eat, and we are warm. I have done the math, and there are sufficient funds to keep us sheltered, fed and warm for the foreseeable future. Then I read this article on the BBC News web site about  "the 99ers."  This is a phrase that describes those in the US who have received the maximum 99 weeks of unemployment benefits and still find themselves without work. There are several interviews with 99ers who are of course good people who have come upon hard times. They have lost their homes and their dignity, and they are broke.

I do not doubt there are many 99ers out there, and my heart goes out to them. I am not one of them, however, and I have God to thank for that. He has been most generous to me, and has provided me with a family that has stewarded our resources well.

Funny thing is that when I read an article like this, alarm bells start ringing inside my head and I begin to think that I must be wrong about something. Maybe I added the numbers wrong. Maybe the stock market is going to crash and we will lose everything. Maybe, maybe, maybe.

What if I happen to be the first human in to live to be 200 years old? Do I have the resources to cover that?

I don't know if everybody who retires goes through this, and I don't know how long I'll continue to get rattled when I hear about how bad things can be. I know there is a lesson here about trusting in God, and maybe one day I'll figure that out.

In the meantime, Sand and I are canceling our plans to go to Texas. I read they've got blood sucking chupacabras there, probably stealing money from old people.

I'm just sayin'.