The State Fair is tomorrow...

and with it the summer begins its departure. The daylight is already shorter, the temperatures cooler, and children are thinking of school.

The older I get the more the charm of winter fades but autumn has retained its hold on me. The heat of the summer disappears yet warmth remains. The days are shorter but the colors compensate for it in their vibrancy. September is the best of months, the only one I wish would last the year. October has its moments, the month when you can wear your best sweaters, but then the long wait begins.

Darkness settles, snow falls, the cold descends and refuses to loosen its grip until some time in March when life again will not be denied. We hibernate, if not in fact at least in spirit, our horizons constrained by the chill just outside our doors. The only sign of hope is the calendar on our wall, a tropical scene for each month, a reminder that somewhere what is all around us is not all there is.

But this morning is sunny and cool, the best kind of day and I'll store each and every one of these days in my soul like a battery to power me through the night to come. It's time to be outside, to move freely, to absorb the sun, and take care of chores. It is the season of drawing all things together so that spring, when it comes, will find a remaining spark of life, an ember that its gentle winds can once again restore to flame.

Sometimes people wonder...

why the Orthodox church is so firm on proper order and decorum in worship. The video below is of a "clown mass" and yes its real and while its extreme it's an example of what can happen when people decide the Liturgy is about them and not about God and abandon the time tested forms.

Filed under couldn't resist...

If you happen...

to be in the area of LaCrosse, WI, today or Saturday consider dropping in to our first annual Rummage Sale at the Church. Like they say, one person's trash is another's treasure (although we've taken care to not have actual trash in our sale).

Hmmmmmm....

On August 18th the Vikings signed Brett Favre. The next two days were marked by tornadoes and torrential rain in the Twin Cities. Coincidence? I think not!

As sand through the hourglass...

so are the days of our lives. I just received an email from an old acquaintance in high school who announced that she's going to be a grandmother.

Sigh...

Brett Favre became a Viking, and on my birthday yet.

I miss the era of heroes even if it was all a myth. Thank goodness there is still Nitschke.

Hat tip to Paradosis...

A blast from the past...

It's come to my attention...

that a handful of seminarians from the Antiochian Archdiocese have been moved from the OCA related seminaries they were about to attend and transferred, through the Archdiocesan offices, to Holy Cross Seminary in Boston. The presumption is that this is a protest against the OCA not silencing the blogger responsible for ocanews.org which has printed articles and information regarding the Archdiocese and our recent struggles.

My sadness is simply this. The very first experience of "ministry" these men, and their families, will have is this event. Yes, serving the Church sometimes means long hours and sacrifice, but there are also many beautiful and wonderful things about it that make it worthwhile and good. Men and families come to seminary with a certain kind of idealism and yes, future events will temper that but the desire to serve, that love of God will also be the fuel that keeps them going when the days are long and the troubles many.

Presuming that the accounts are true this action says to these men and their families "You are a cog in the machine, a piece in the larger game that can be moved for other's reasons." There is a certain truth in that, we do serve our Church but we also serve its Bishops, yet I hope these events will not dampen the fire that brought these men, their wives, and families to this place. I hope they can see beyond the moment and realize the value of what they are called to do and be even if those who are charged with their pastoral care sometimes forget.

Axios and may God grant each of them and their families many years,

Time changes everything...

or at least it should if the normal maturing processes are in place and running. The sadness of age is the physical changes but its glory is perspective. Having just been around and living life has its own way of burning off the impurities, buffing the rough edges, and rubbing off the burrs. Youth is whiskey, straight from the still, age is bourbon charred with the ashes inside its barrel, the price of mellowing.

High school football captains grow gray, teenage beauty queens sag because gravity will not be denied. Whiz kids cannot escape time despite their calculations, and strong and weak change with the ebbs and flows of fate. Such is the nature of life and the only way to understand this is to live it with your eyes, heart, and soul wide open.

And its the way I wish things to be. No pining for a mythical yesterday. No pondering a still to be discovered future. Just alive and awake in this moment.

Of course I wouldn't mind my hair coming back but, oh well...

Tonight is the night...

when my classmates will gather for our 30th high school reunion. I'll not be there.

There's a lady at my parish who's ill and needs to be visited, and people, perhaps, to see on the way down to LaCrosse. There are services to tend to and apparently a neighbor who's put their fence too far on to church property. The stuff of life. Real life.

High school is like a dream, a far away three years that occasionally reaches out to touch you but for the most part is lost in the mists. In the old days, perhaps, the people you went to high school with were also the people you grew up with, childhood friends from a hometown you remember but now in these mobile days this seems to be more rare. High school is a stop on the way, and the relationships that matter are more often to be found outside its doors in whatever life lies ahead.

The truth is that I live less than a half hour from my high school but its a world of time, places, and experiences away. I care for those people who were with me in those days, but I don't long for them or that time. I wish them well, and pray for them often, but my life is now and any nostalgia is only about what could have been and not what was. My best days are now, always have been.

So, if somehow a member of the Mahtomedi High School class of 79 stumbles onto this blog, know that I wish you all the best and my prayers and hope are that life has been good and kind to you. Be well. Be blessed. May you find every happiness and more than that may you always know God. But tonight I'll be at Vespers with whoever comes through the door. I need to be there for more reasons than you can possibly imagine but I won't forget you either.

Rip em up, tear em up, give em hell Zephyrs...

Is it just me...

or are there others out there who are as sick and tired of TV commercials for "enhancement" products for men as I am?

Can't I watch a move in peace without someone telling me about their new found prowess? I don't care, really, take my word for it and I feel sorry for parents have to try to explain to their five year old about the grandpa on the screen with the funny smile.

And, by the way, as a musician I wouldn't be caught dead sitting around with a bunch of geezers singing "Viva Viagra". Here's your check, thanks for singing, we'll give you back your pride when we're done with it..."

End of rant.

Rain...

There is a glorious rain falling in eastern Minnesota this morning. Slow, steady, lasting, somewhere between the rain that passes just quickly enough to ruin your car wash and the torrents that rip the siding from a house.

It's been a dry summer here along the Mississippi River, they say we're about seven inches under normal, and the skies have been the beautiful, unforgiving, blue of a drought. The old trees can make it because their roots are deep but the lawns, wide and shallow, have become brown and the beauty of flowers has been stunted.

I have many things planned for today. Places to go, people to see, tasks to be accomplished. But it's raining in eastern Minnesota today and the weather trumps everything in this part of the world. Frankly, I don't mind a bit.

Helpless...

After years of hearing it you can recognize the voice on the phone, regardless of who it is, and you know what's coming next.

There will be no magic words. There will be no quote from the Fathers that provides illumination. The sacraments will help but they will not take away the coming gauntlet. There's a cry for help and if you answer it you'll not escape a piece of the trauma because to help means that you, too, must go with and through.

While you never seem to quite get used to it over time you come to accept it, the terrible intimacy of holding the hand of someone walking through dark places. You get used to the helplessness, the reality that all of your skills matter little and you, your presence and your ear on the phone in the small hours of the morning, matter most. When words fail, and they often do in the face of mortality, all that's left is a whisper "I'm here".

So it's okay, you're not a bother, call me when you need to and I'll do my best. Don't, though, expect a miracle or lights shining down from heaven or an instant answer. If that happens glory be to God but if not just know that I'm here.

The Old House...

I have memories of dill smells
and the living room's piano
where a mouse made a nest
and I learned my passion.

There were stairs to an attic
with young boy hidden corners
and a basement, dark and cool
relief in the summer.

Our room was a shared one
two beds and one window
at night we would listen
and hear the floor's creaking.

It was brick, on a corner
as strong as Gibraltar
and it carried us through
the storms and the quiets.

Still time took us away
we left in the winter
houses change in an instant
drifting thoughts, though, they stay.

I'm nearly fifty now
the house close to a hundred
a lifetime away from me
and still I remember.

Original "House of the Rising Sun"...

Just a thought...

This is something probably only an Orthodox Christian would think about but "Why would a hermitage have a web site?".

De-electrifying...

Twitter is gone. If people really want to know want to know what's going on with me they can call or email. Or better yet we can go out for supper some time and talk.

My electronic planners are on the way out. I'm going back to a book, with paper. The next cell phone will be just that, a phone, and if I need to find my way I'll open an atlas first, GPS second. I'm even working my music backwards and away from the plugs. I want to hear sounds made of wood and steel, breath and valve, stick and skin.

There are simply too many devices around telling me what to do, where to go, and how to communicate. I remember reading once, it was fun as I recall. I remember as well what life was like without the need for a constant supply of batteries. Many years ago watching a thunderstorm was entertainment from the safety of a front porch and when I wanted to experience nature I actually went outside.

No, I'm not a luddite. I'm keeping the computer and the blog and I'm not keen on the idea of cutting the power lines to the house. It's just that too much is too much and I've reached my own personal saturation point. I like pencils, music on the front porch, sun in my face, and hanging out in person. I have this image of myself as a pale, emaciated, creature with large eyes staring at a screen while a tube feeds nutrients in one end and evacuates waste in the other and I'm choosing to rebel against that future.

And it all started with pot. Yes I did "inhale" in high school because I was 17 and at the height of my personal stupidity but that's decades gone with no regrets. It was more about an incident some days ago when a musician in the acoustic jam I attend talked about how he sometimes smoked a bit before coming to play. My response was that I preferred to be alive, awake, and yes even nervous before I played because I wanted to feel everything as it really is.

Then it occurred to me. There are too many times when I, clean and sober for years when it comes to chemicals, still hang out way to much in a fantasy e-world. I started thinking about whether all those buzzing and whirring devices, the plugs ins and screens, were becoming my own personal "weed".

And just in case I'm going cold turkey.

My fingertips hurt...

and the muscles around my neck are feeling the strain. For over three hours tonight music poured out of me as it does once or twice a week and has from the time I was a child

It's not that I'm the best. I'm not even close. Yet if my life were a movie there would be a soundtrack and it would be way better than the picture. There is always, has always been, music inside, around, over, and above me. Some time before I was born the spring was wound and the music box has yet to stop.

Now some people swim in a sea of numbers, others in facts, others in tasks. I swim in music and even my words are their best when they sound like lyrics. My life is a song I hope will become a hymn that never ends.

So my fingers hurt, bass strings are like wires, but every other part of me is awake, aware, and alive even as this day closes and the next arrives in my sleep.

Little truths from life...

You never really know how dirty your carpets are until you buy a new vacuum cleaner.

Found that out this morning. Pulled up enough hair to make a third cat. I'm not that dirty. Really.

I was talking with some folks...

about trapping skunks (I have some interesting conversations) and I found out what you use to bait the trap. Spam and sardines. And yes, there apparently is a market for skunk pelts but I do not want to know where.

August is the month...

of reflection, the month of my birthday, the month that marks the passage of time. Every August I think about things, where they've gone, and where they may go. August is a pondering month.

When I was a child the age I am now was unimaginable, the age of parents and teachers and doctors. How far away these days were, and how far away were their concerns. But mirrors do not lie and neither do hard to get out of bed mornings. I have arrived and much too quickly for my liking.

I'm happy with the music, a musician being what I should have been if I could do it again, but still it is good to know that it has never died. I'm happy with my family. We've changed. We've grown. We're the same faces but different people. Except for the yawning chasm left by my brother's death there is goodness among us. I continue to write, it feeds me and I feed it. I'm lucky in love, unfortunate in hairline, spreading out some in the middle, but not too old to dream.

Yet I'm restless too. I believe there is something more and its close but not yet here. I feel it but it is undefined. I still have a horizon and probably always will. Always within me is the sense that I was destined for something more, something better, but it is not about the fleeting passage of fame. Rather its the sense that this world, this place, these days, are not my final destination. Everybody hears that call but few listen.

I cannot drown it out.