I would like to go back to this place and gaze at this moon. I rented a convertible this weekend to play in just because I had HAD it with things and I wanted to do something fun. So I rented a convertible! I have enjoyed it very much. I bought my first sewing machine of my very own today because I need to do some hemming on things and I would rather do it myself than have someone else do my alterations. I was reminded of how much I know how to do today. I know how to sew, even though I haven't done it very much. How many women my age actually know how to thread a bobbin? Many of them do, let me rephrase that--how many single women my age who have to work for a living know how to thread a bobbin? I think the numbers would be less. How many know how to plant a garden and can vegetables or make pickles? How many know how to make homemade fried chicken and mashed potatoes? I haven't done those things in a long time, but I could if I wanted to. Lately, I've wanted to--but I do not have time.

There's a hummingbird outside my window, sipping nectar from my lantana flowers. It's a little female, not very pretty, but dainty and a joy to watch! This is the third time I've seen her. I'm glad she comes to visit me.

I've rented a storage unit to put some things in while I am in this selling and buying a house process. I will begin to put things in it soon... I'll probably hire someone to move a bunch of things out next weekend. Stuff! How did I get so much stuff?

I want to drive my convertible to that bluff and watch the stars. I'll have to settle for driving down the Natchez Trace tonight and listen to the frogs sing their croaky choruses.

I wonder sometimes if I am not just a little dull. Oh, I can be witty enough and I can regurgitate facts with the best of them, but take away surface interaction...how much depth is there? How much independent thinking do I exercise? Take away wilfulness, take away cleverness... how much depth of thought is there to me?

I wonder.

I'm reading a book titled 'Gilead', lent to me by a friend. It's this book that has caused me to ask of myself--do I have depth of thought and character? I like this book! It's a letter from a pastor father to his son when he finds out he is dying. Listen to this excerpt:

I really can't tell what is beautiful anymore. I passed two young fellows on the street the other day. I know who they are, they work at the garage. They're not churchgoing, either one of them, just decent rascally young fellows who have to be joking all the time, and there they were, propped against the garage wall in the sunshine, lighting up their cigarettes. They're always so black with grease and so strong with gasoline I don't know why they don't catch fire themselves. They were passing remarks back and forth the way they do and laughing that wicked way they have. And it seemed beautiful to me. It is an amazing thing to watch people laugh, the way it sort of takes them over. Sometimes they really do struggle with it. I see that in church often enough. So I wonder what it is and where it comes from, and I wonder what it expends out of your system, so that you have to do it till you're done, like crying in a way, I suppose, except that laughter is much more easily spent.

I liked that description of finding beauty in laughter very much! And the thought in this one made me pause and think for a while:

Now, this might seem a trivial thing to mention, considering the gravity of the subject, but I truly don't feel it is. We were very pious children from pious households in a fairly pious town, and this affected our behavior considerably. Once, we baptized a litter of cats. They were dusty little barn cats just steady on their legs, the kind of waifish creatures that live their anonymous lives keeping the mice down and have no interest in humans at all, except to avoid them. But the animals all seem to start out sociable, so we were always pleased to find new kittens prowling out of whatever cranny their mother had tried to hide them in, as ready to play as we were. It occurred to one of the girls to swaddle them up in a doll's dress--there was only one dress, which was just as well since the cats could hardly tolerate a moment in it and would have to have been unswaddled as soon as they were christened in any case. I myself moistened their brows, repeating the full Trinitarian formula.
Their grim old crooked-tail mother found us baptizing away by the creek and began carrying her babies off by the napes of their necks, one and then another. We lost track of which was which, but we were fairly sure that some of the creatures had been borne away still in the darkness of paganism, and that worried us a good deal. So finally I asked my father in the most offhand way imaginable what exactly would happen to a cat if one were to say, baptize it. He replied that the Sacraments must always be treated and regarded with the greatest respect. That wasn't really an answer to my question. We did respect the Sacraments, but we thought the whole world of those cats. I got his meaning though, and I did no more baptizing until I was ordained....
I still remember how those warm little brows felt under the palm of my hand. Everyone has petted a cat, but to touch one like that, with the pure intention of blessing it, is a very different thing. It stays in the mind. For years we would wonder what, from a cosmic viewpoint, we had done to them. It still seems to me to be a real question. There is a reality in blessing, which I take baptism to be, primarily. It doesn't enhance sacredness, but it acknowledges it, and there is power in that. I have felt it pass through me, so to speak. The sensation is of really feeling a creature, I mean really feeling its mysterious life and your mysterious life at the same time. I don't wish to be urging the ministry on you, but there are some advantages to it you might not know to take account of if I did not point them out. Not that you have to be a minister to confer blessing. You are simply much more likely to find yourself in that position. It's a thing people expect of you. I don't know why there is so little about this aspect of the calling in the literature.

Blessing others... Do I take the opportunities to bless as they are given to me? I want to think about this some more.

Saturday night

Today has been a day at home, spent in my pajamas, and I've been content, mostly. Probably because I've been hurting all day, taking Tylenol every three hours to head off the pain that has been coming regularly and I haven't felt like doing anything else. I've been wondering if menopause isn't that far off in the future for me, because I'm afraid that I'm experiencing symptoms of perimenopause now. Which makes the reality of me not having children (read family) even more concrete. It's one thing to deal with the idea of not having children if I'm still capable of bearing them. It's another to accept the death of that possibility when it is no longer a hope, because my body cannot.

I realize I'm not at that point yet, but it feels closer than it has before, and it is an eventuality I cannot escape. So tonight, me and my emotional self have watched chick flick movies in my pajamas and used up a lot of tissue. Finally, when I could stand the sea of hormones I was wallowing in no longer, I decided to rent an action film with a woman as the kick-butt-heroine. And DAMN if the plot wasn't about true love and the whole world depending on that relationship. AAARRRGGGHHHHHH!!!!!

However... I saw my counselor/friend on Friday and came away with a pearl of great worth. I was telling him how sometimes I looked at my life and thought, "If I live to be 80, then my life is halfway over and what do I have to show for it relationally? I don't feel close to my blood family, I don't have a family... I have some deep friendships... but really, what do I have to show for my time on earth?" Here's the pearl... He said that biblically, God doesn't talk much about how much we are to accomplish relationally. That the bible is far more concerned with the individual and the importance of growing. Of choosing the right things, of responding to life as an individual. Growing one's self. I liked that and I want to hold on to that truth.

Questions

Is it a sin to pray that someone would die? Is it ever okay to wish that someone would die because you don't want someone you love to keep suffering?

Does it matter if the person is close to death anyway? What if they are abusive, hateful and filled with bitterness? A financial burden? A waste of air by human standards?

Does it matter if they aren't a Christian? That they have alienated everyone in their life?

Life would be easier if someone would die. I think God already knows that and knows that I would like for that person to die soon. Would it be wrong to pray for a swift end to the misery they bring to everyone they touch?

I don't think it would be wrong.

The motivation for such a prayer would be that my loved one wouldn't have to deal with an intolerable situation. Yet God uses such things for His own purposes. The suffering of loved ones is not without purpose or value. God gives each of us individually our portion of suffering because the end, the burning off of impurities, is more valuable than being happy in the short term. Should we pray away the suffering of those we love?

Why not? Jesus asked God to spare Him if it was God's will. It isn't wrong to ask the same for ourselves or the ones we love. The challenge is to accept His answer.

But I swear, if I were closer to the situation, I'd be praying really hard for someone to die soon.