Category Archives: Meditations

Autumn watch

A gentle rain is falling outside the door.

This is September, when you expect the Bay Area to be sunny and hot; but sometimes a little bit of fall rain arrives early. But yesterday we had thunder storms move through, big dark clouds moving across the bay, and just enough rain to disturb the summer’s accumulation of dust on my car. When I got up this morning, the sky was still cloudy — not just low stratus clouds, some fog bank that had been pushed up a few hundred feet above the ground, but real clouds. The sun tried to peek through the clouds in the middle of the day, but towards sunset the clouds had grown thicker.

And now it’s raining — not much, not enough to need a rain coat or even an umbrella, but just enough slow gentle rain to settle the dust and stir up smells from the earth and the plants. The air feels damp and warm. Surely it will get hot and dry again before the winter rains come in earnest, but in the meantime I’m enjoying the gentle rain.

One faith perspective on teen suicide

In the past five months, three teenagers have committed suicide in Palo Alto (more on this from the San Francisco Chronicle). On Monday evening, six people from different faith traditions were on a panel to talk about how persons of faith might respond to this community tragedy.

I attended the panel on Monday night, and listening to what people said raised an interesting question for me: What might we as Unitarian Universalists say about teen suicide? Here are some of the things I thought about:

— As Unitarian Universalists, we do not see suicide as sinful or evil; that is, if a teen commits suicide, we would consider it to be a tragedy, but we would not say that that teenager (or parents/guardians and extended family) was committing a sin.

— As Unitarian Universalists, we would be unlikely to blame God or any deity for teen suicide (assuming we believe in God or a deity of some kind). We would understand suicide to be a human problem which has its source in what we as humans do.

— As Unitarian Universalists, we support gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, and questioning persons fully; we do not think there is something wrong or sinful about GLBTQ persons. We are also aware that some research indicates a much higher suicide rate among GLBTQ teens, and therefore we would want to be extra supportive of GLBTQ teens.

— Coming from our Universalist heritage, we know that all persons are worthy of love, and have inherent worth and dignity. If someone wants to commit suicide because of terminal illness, that’s one thing — but when a healthy teenaged person commits suicide, we are struck by the tragedy of losing a unique person who is worthy of love and who has inherent worth and dignity.

I know some of you will have additional thoughts and meditations teen suicide, and please feel free to add them in the comments below.

Missed connection

In an effort to cut my carbon emissions, I’m trying to commute to the church by train as much as possible. Last night, the meeting of the Board went later than I had expected. I asked if I could leave a little early, and started walking to the train station at about 9:35 p.m., thinking that I had plenty of time to get there. But when I was still a couple of blocks away from the station — too far to try to run — I heard the train pull into the station, and then pull out of the station. I had misjudged the amount of time I needed to walk from the church to the train. So I had to wait another hour for the next train to arrive. At least I had a good murder mystery to read, so the time went quickly.

In another few months, I will know exactly how long it takes to walk to the train station. But right now, I’m unsure of that, and unsure of lots of other things; I often feel stupid because I just don’t know the simplest things. That’s the hardest thing about moving to a new place: so much of what we do is governed by habits, by small bits of knowledge that we aren’t even aware we have.

Thinking about church size

I’d kind of forgotten that there are lots of evening meetings when you’re a minister of a mid-sized church; small churches just don’t have that many meetings. Yesterday, I left home at 9 a.m. and got back at 11 p.m.; today I left home at 9 a.m. and here it is 9 p.m. and I am still at church.

This is one of the unspoken reasons why many ministers don’t want the membership of their small church to increase. They look at the ministers in mid-sized churches, they see that those mid-sized-church ministers typically attend three evening meetings a week, and they don’t like what they see.

This is one of the unspoken reasons why many church members don’t want their church to grow any larger; for there are many church members who prefer an informal organizational style, and don’t want the more formal organization required by a larger church, the type of organization that engenders a formal decision-making process requiring many evening meetings.

On the other hand, there are those of us who actually prefer more formal organizational structures. We also like evening meetings (in moderation: no more than three per week). And we like the increased diversity, the greater financial stability, and the additional programs that come with mid-sized and larger churches.

Both smaller churches and larger churches have their strengths and their weaknesses. It’s not that one is better than the other, they’re just different.

Arrival

After a certain amount of confusion, our Pod with all our belongings arrived this morning. We had a crew ready, and they unloaded everything quickly and cheerfully. In fact, the crew was so good, moving was actually fun — thanks a million, Dave, Emily, David, Mike, Mara, and Dick.

With all our belongings, our apartment feels a lot smaller than before. For a moment, we almost wished that we didn’t have all our belongings. We only wished that for a moment: it’s nice to have pots and pans, and clothes. But we continue to wish that we owned fewer possessions, and we are talking about what we can get rid of. I think I may be getting rid of some books — sixty boxes of books is too many books.

Well. That was a suprise.

Monday night I had an attack of acute gastritis. Since I haven’t established my health insurance out here yet, I went to the ER at the local hospital, San Mateo Medical Center. The hardbitten triage nurse pretty much ignored me (you could almost hear her thinking, “Yeah, yeah, so what if you’re vomiting and in pain, there’s no gunshot wounds”) — until she tok my vital signs, and found my heart rate was 43 beats per minute. Although she kept chatting with her friend, her attitude changed: “Let’s get this guy in there right away, his hear rate’s down to 43, put him in T1.” That’s “T1” for Trauma Unit One.

So they put me on a heart monitor and immediately discovered that I have heart arrythmia, which I have had for as long as I can remember. I fuzzily tried to explain that it wasn’t serious, but I knew they were going to keep me in overnight. Sure enough, that’s what they did — attached a heart monitor to me and admitted me to the hospital about five o’clock.

A hospital is a terrible place to be ill. Mostly I just needed to sleep, but in the hospital they wake you up every couple of hours to draw blood, or take your vital signs, or maybe your IV runs dry and the insistent beeping on the IV machine wakes you up. Then, too, you’re somewhat at the mercy of your roommate. My roommate wasn’t as bad as some — he had the TV on until about 2 in the morning, he snored incredibly loudly, but he didn’t groan that much. In short, I could only sleep in short snatches.

As for the hospital food, the less said about it the better. When you’ve been puking your guts out, there are some alleged foodstuffs that you don’t even want to look at. In general, though, I can’t complain. Mostly I got excellent care. The doctors, nurses, and the various other people were kind and caring, and they were attentive and listened well.

They finally discharged me at 2:30 p.m., sending me home with meds for my stomach. Maybe I have an ulcer, they said. Carol heard one of the doctors say “mild hypertension.” I know what the real problem is: I have been overworking for the past four years, and it finally caught up with me. My name is Dan, and I’m a workaholic, and it’s time for me to get over being a workaholic.

First day

We’ve been in San Mateo for less than a full day, but we have already taken care of important business. We met our downstairs neighbors, both of whom are flight attendants, and and chatted with them. Ed, our landlord, came up and fixed a faucet, did some paperwork with us, and gave me a cold beer. We sat on our second-story deck drinking beer and watching the neighbors go by, a mix of whites, Hispanics, and East Asians. We looked at rice cookers at the Japanese housewares store in downtown San Mateo, although we didn’t buy anything. Carol got invited to go to a writing group with Ms. M. And we watched a pair of hummingbirds fly by our apartment.

Late July

With all the rain we’ve been having, with constant puddles in all the low-lying places, it almost feels like spring rather than summer. But in spite of the weather, I know

On our walk this evening, we saw Queen Anne’s Lace (Daucus carota) growing in a number of places in cracks in the piers and wharves along the waterfront, and the plants were in full bloom: umbels of pure white, gently rounded, looking like intricate lacework.

Other midsummer flowers are also blooming. One of the chrysanthemums that we planted two years ago in our tiny little garden has deep burgundy blossoms. Near the bridge to Fairhaven, I saw some Common chicory (Cichorium intybus) plants about four feet high, each with a couple dozen pale blue flowers.

First-year Herring Gulls are everywhere. They fight each other for food. They call piteously to adult Herring Gulls, hoping to be fed (the adult gulls mostly just ignore them). There is always an injured first-year gull wandering around looking forlorn — today, Carol pointed out one with a broken wing walking up the street. Within a year, 80% of them will be killed off, but right now they are everywhere.

I’m just starting to notice that the days seem a little shorter, the sun is setting a little bit earlier.

The Red Sox have slipped out of first place. They always slip out of first place in late July or early August, and then struggle for the rest of the summer to catch up to the Yankees. They are as reliable as Queen Anne’s Lace.

Summer rain

Our PODS moving container arrived at seven this morning. As I stood outside our building waiting for the truck to show up, the rain came and went — light rain, a quick heavy shower, drizzle, then no rain for a while. The National Weather Service tells us that a low pressure system is moving up the coast of New England. We’ve only had a quarter of an inch of rain so far today, but it has felt like a wet day.

Carol and I walked down to the Waterfront Grill tonight to have a good-bye dinner with Ann and Leo. While we were walking, we admired the lush gardens tucked between the road and State Pier, and the gardens in Coast Guard Park. The hostas were especially remarkable, with huge leaves and big, tall clusters of purple flowers.

“Look at those gardens,” I said to Carol. “They look much better than they did last year.”

“It’s all that rain,” she said. “All the plants are growing like crazy.”

More rain is forecast for Thursday night. The hostas will be happy.