The Goodbye

 Snow melts from the temple eaves,

and the first tears of spring

fall to the stones.

RIP Ladron, my PTSD service dog.

August 2008-July 12, 2022

She made my world sane.

The picture of the Kosho-Ji temple in Fukukusa comes from https://terebess.hu/zen/sojiji/koshoji.html

I hope that it's OK to use it here.

Music from Sir James Galway, with Nakasendo.

The Five Minute Friday prompt this week is PROPOSE.

I cannot propose an end to winter

beyond faith

that there is spring.

Yesterday's You

God made you, yeah?

Knew you before the womb?

OK, maybe you've gone off the rails. We all do, to some degree.

But when Jesus makes all things new, He's using what you were, and making that into what you can be.

Even in the times you were furthest from God, no part of you was a throwaway. 

No shame, for with Christ, disgrace is clothed in glory.

Look back on the emptiness

of all the years now dead and gone,

but that death's all a sham unless

you refuse to take along

the younger self that lived those days,

did best or worst with what he had,

who daily offered curse or praise

to our patient Heaven-Dad.

Why take him when he was a jerk,

a scoffer at the bright and good?

Well, it's true he needed work,

but really in your heart you should

know this to be well and true,

that part of him still lives in you.

Appropriately, the Five Minute Friday prompt this week is TWENTY.

I was twenty way back when,

convinced that I would never die

until that weirded moment when

I bet my life against the sky

and drove an aeroplane straight through

some 250 kV wires;

it seemed that 'twas the thing to do

in matching madness to desires,

and by God and His mercy hand

that He keeps prepared for fools,

I was able then to land,

and having broken many rules

was asked that I not soon return,

but, dude, I flew again next morn.

The only quote I can think of here is 'stupid is as stupid does', but I've had a blast.

Music from America, with Work To Do.

Sylvia shall meanwhile work on her ice cream.

Why Can't I Die?

People ask, with a dreadful diagnosis, and awful symptoms (I can see tumours in the mirror, for Pete's sake!)...why are you still here?

And I don't know. I'd ask my doctor, but I outlived him.

Maybe it's to help Barb with her life and with the dogs, maybe it's to write a few more sonnets... I just don't know, and sometimes I do wonder as to the point of it all.

It's gone on for far too long,

and I feel so alone,

and so far from being strong,

Lord, why can't I come home?

I have done that which You ask,

have tried to write and live in hope,

but I cannot fulfill this task,

and can no longer cope

with the blood and with the pain,

with what makes me weep at night;

why, oh, why must I remain

in this hopeless fight?

And God's answer never fails,

"Accept your Cross, and take the nails."

The real reason I'm staying, of course, is that I never went to a trade school that had surrender in the curriculum, and I see no point in learning it now.

Maybe you can decide to die, but I know that you can decide to live.

The Five Minute Friday prompt this week is TRUST.

Trust the Lord with all your might,

trust when it's all you can do.

Trust Him in the final fight,

and trust that He will carry you

across the blazing coals of hell,

across the raging storm-tossed seas,

'cross ruined lands you knew so well

where golden years were spent at ease.

Trust that there's a better place

that soon you'll see from His strong arms,

trust that there's a solid grace,

a wall between yourself and harms

that would leave you sore bereft;

trust with all the strength that's left!

Four minutes thirty. OK.

Music from Parsons Ghost, with Go Down Swinging.

Parsons Ghost's debut album is self-produced, and has real country roots; if you like them, support them through iTunes.

Sylvia suggests a simple reason for staying alive...ice cream!

Skydiving For Catholics

Just for a change of pace, here's an old Catholic joke, set to rhyme. (I'm Catholic, so I guess it's OK for me to tell?)

The canopy, it didn't open 

(and thus the rigger showed his worth),

and the jumper would be broken

upon that hard unyielding Earth.

"St. Francis, save me!" was his cry,

his face turned to onrushing land,

and in a twinkling he did lie

in a great and tender hand.

"Son, I must know you called on me

in truth; you see, I must be sure.

Did you call Frank of Assisi,

or Francis Xavier?"

And thus the moral here for you,

you'd best know who you're talking to.

Music from the Foo Fighters, with Learn To Fly.

The Five Minute Friday prompt this week is AWARE. I don't know...

I really thought I was aware

of life, and what I need,

and then I had an awful scare

when cows ate all my weed.

I'd put it out there in the sun

to get that crispy creme,

but then it all just came undone

and they came on the scene

and dipped their faces in the bowl,

and chewed, then showed pure bliss,

and in my heart it took a toll

that things came down to this,

that I knew not that the herd was nigh,

and now, alas, the steaks were high.

Four minutes, and hey, you were expecting Tennyson? And for the record, I don't use the stuff.

Sylvia knows who to talk to for ice cream, but while she's eating it, you can talk to the paw.

Hold On Tight

The author Steven Coonts once said that a young person should never whittle down dreams to fit into his or her hometown.

True for cancer, as well.

Dreams carry your heart into the future, and having given up on mine, I can now understand that its being a future you'll never see in this life is irrelevant.

The point is that when you keep the dream alive, you're already there.

When you let it die, the best part of you dies with it, and God weeps, for the killing of even an impossible hope is the biggest betrayal of His love.

Where, now, do I go from here,

when all's been left too late,

and circumstances make it clear

that my job's just to wait

for that fell knock on the door,

a cold hand on my shoulder;

I always thought there would be more.

I thought I might grow older.

I've fallen now to little things,

in hope of self-respect,

while shadows cover spreading wings

in dust of sad neglect,

and sometimes I wonder why

I have lost the will to try.

The Five Minute Friday prompt this week is GUESS. I guess I can do this.

Dude, I did not think I'd guess

so long ago, in glory days

that life would become a mess

and dreams would vanish in a haze

of pain and puke and things far worse

(humiliation in the dunny),

and that I must not choose to curse

the Lord my God, though it be funny

that I am felled from higher places

in which the learned looked up to me,

but in falling I've found graces

and a kind of victory

in smiling when most would blaspheme,

and, in smiling, live the dream.

Three minutes, and I'll stand by it 

Music from ELO, with Hold On Tight.

Sylvia is delighted to share her Ice Cream Dream.

 

Smartest Dumb, Or Dumbest Smart?

The whole cancer thing's gotten so laughably awful (stand up, get lightheaded, and fall over... REALLY?) that I thought I would throw a question out there.

Would you rather be a dumb smart person, or a smart dumb person?

 Some folks learn by being told,

some from books upon a shelf,

but I will say that I ain't sold

'till I try it for myself.

Now I won't claim to have a lock

on smarts or wit or common sense,

and that is why I got a shock

by peeing on electric fence.

The spark, it moved from wire to me

with bright flash and almighty CRACK!,

and I was felled just like a tree

to rest a bit upon my back,

and wafting up into the air

was smoke from, yeah, you do know where.

Music from Smash Mouth, with All Star.

The Five Minute Friday prompt this week is stir. Challenging.

Did the angels stir the waters,

or was perhaps the boiling pool

lure for simple sons and daughters

who in hope would play the fool,

pushing to the sad line's head,

giving elbow to a chin

from a heart that went quite dead

in the hope that it might win

a path from the black despair,

from the generation-curse,

breathing foul miasmic air

with no shekel in the purse

of the soul condemned to rue

faith in magic shown untrue?

Three minutes, and that's probably obvious. Less Shakespeare than Oh, Dear.

Sylvia always knew dogs were smarter than people. She didn't need more evidence.

 

Hijacked By A Fish

This post was originally supposed to be about the importance of a sense of purpose in one's life, but along the way it was waylaid by a punny fish.

The pain of cancer's really hard,

and time is like a tortoise,

so there's a pool in my backyard

for a senseless porpoise.

This is not what you might wish,

still less what you would ask,

but know, please, that this dotty fish

is well up for the task

of puncturing pomposity,

of soaking down the grave and grim

to banish faux-solemnity

with deluge from flapping fin

that leads into a back-flip path

which splash makes even Zealots laugh.

If you're interested in how these things get written, I came up with the first three quatrains in my head while taking care of the dogs. I figured that it would be easy to remember it, and so didn't write it down immediately.

Yeah, well...at that point I could only recall the first quatrain.

So I wrote the version shown below...and then recalled the original!

The pain of cancer's really hard,

and time is like a tortoise,

so there's a pool in my backyard

for a senseless porpoise.

He will soak the pompous

with joyful fins a-flapping,

infuriate the serious

(if they are caught napping)

with water from his blow-hole,

aimed with gleeful care

to wash the grim unsmiling soul

and let it breathe free air,

because there's not much we can do

but laugh, until this life is through.

Funny thing, though, this does kind of describe the Christian life, in which self-important solemnity is punctured (with, I think, a Holy glee) by rebirth in Christ, which restores the true and pure innocence of the soul, in which fun can take its deepest and most stable root. And the symbol early Christians used was...a fish!

Yeah, I know. A porpoise isn't a fish. Barb told me.

No accident, I think, that C. S. Lewis' autobiography is called 'Surprised By Joy'.

If you're with me so far, the Five Minute Friday prompt this week is DANGER. Oh, wow.

There's a danger upon waking,

there is danger when I sleep.

Jesus, do not be a stranger,

and please hold my soul to keep

if the ending comes in dream-time,

or it ends in sand outside;

either way I go in full prime

for the cancer just can't hide

a heart that jollies up the fear,

and guffaws at wracking pain,

letting loose of what's held dear

so that humour can remain,

and I'm gonna hit it big

in my Heaven stand-up gig.

Three minutes thirty. OK.

Music from Coldplay, with Life In Techicolour II.

Sylvia will investigate fishy happenings... after the ice cream.