Monday, March 3, 2025
I stop at the neighbors’ mailbox. It marks a half mile where I turn to walk home. I’m not greedy about making more steps than a mile, though maybe when the weather eases, I’ll cross the tracks and walk by the herd of Angus cows and old oaks. Bruce stopped one day when a cow looked dead, her leg cocked in the air, like rigor mortis set in. He walked up to the Herdsman (I’ll call him that) and by the time he got back, she’d birthed her calf. Already we’ve seen some babies in their paddock. If I walk there, I have to be careful not to aggravate the bull when it gets to be his time to be with the ladies.
The train honks with a sound like a French horn with a call to longing, not to go elsewhere, but to stay planted, grounded, here, now. I look up the tracks and way in the distance, beyond streets I won’t name, I see the headlamp that looks more like a mirage than the promise the train will soon roll by. I stand and wait, but it’s taking too long. The neighbor might wonder what I’m doing standing by their mailbox.
There’s a pull to walk closer, to maybe get down on the tracks and take a picture, not unlike the pull I have felt standing at the lip of Niagara Falls, or on the bridge over the Rio Grande by Taos. So I turn toward home, an easier walk because the dogs pull ahead together. The day is mild. I don’t need handwarmers for my gloves. We walk past the neighbors’ barking dogs and Omalola tiptoes until we pass.
A few hours later, Dr Morker, my neurologist, asks if my memory has worsened in the last year. Well, I lose a lot of words, but I don’t want to admit that yes, I think it’s worse. I think how I sat in the former neurologist’s office, how he mocked me, said you don’t belong here, your brain is fine because the neuropsyche test I’d seen three times showed improvement. I think how humiliated I felt, and how that broke my self-perception as far as when to seek help. Besides maybe denial is the way to go. What good would it do if I admitted how I lose words I should know, and how I forget my dog’s medication to calm her stomach so she can eat? I ask Bruce to say again? What if a neuropsyche test found my wits have slipped past mild cognitive impairment? What then? I’ve been told the medication only pauses memory loss for a time and makes terrible dreams.
I watched how my grandmother’s healthy heart and body trapped her for years past her being able to think straight. She knew her brain was failing when she kept saying how she missed her mind. She repeated herself. By the time she died, she sat slumped over in a chair, completely gone, except for her body. Now I wonder if depression, grief, and isolation broke her mind. Her daughters didn’t much like depression or grief, saying she should be happy, she had a nice apartment, food, a daughter and her children next door. But what a loss, her losing her business, and the ability to drive. Nowadays docs tell us elders to find community, use our minds, eat healthy, exercise as a way to put a stay on our minds’ failing.
Dr. Morker ran me through his simple neurological tests like touch your finger to your nose, follow his finger with your eyes. He asked me to remember the words “church, velvet, and camel.” We chatted about other stuff. When he asked me to repeat the words back, velvet was completely gone. As in gone. He said knowing two out of the three words was fine. But I’m not so sure. I am not sure I’d pass the part of the neuropsyche test where you have to repeat details from a story or long lists of words. That scares me. He suggested the MIND diet which is supposed to help our brains stay healthy. And to read the book Super Brain. Do puzzles. Read. Talk to people. “Come back if your memory gets worse,” he says.
Tuesday, March 4, 2025
Ryan Hall Y’all and the local weather guys are impressed by the massive low pressure making its way across the country. It circles just west of us in Iowa, throwing long lines of severe weather all the way to the Gulf coast. We just get rain, not the adrenalin rush of severe storms that stayed south. I walk the dogs to the corner, this time, taking Dolly’s advice and walking home just as rain starts falling. It was all I could do to walk. My legs feel heavy, slow. My hands ache. My muscles ache. I do not want to walk. The dogs pulled me along. The rain pinged on the fields. The clouds were plain.
My rheumatologist orders hydroxychloroquine for my aching hands. My mixed connective tissue disease went into remission, so he took me off it last fall. But on this day I ached, my hands especially. Later during prayers, I can barely say them for my friends even though the list was in front of me. We go to town to pick it up along with dog food, kitty litter and lunch. Always lunch.
This week I’m finding my way back to the Daily Office along with looking up some beautifully written essays on Substack. As the days barrel into Ash Wednesday and Lent the Psalms sing about the wicked, with the advice: “Fret not yourself because of evildoers; be not envious of wrong doers! For they will soon fade like the grass and wither like the green herb” (Psalm 37:1, ESV). Then the Psalmist urges us to not to go to the angry place: “Refrain from anger and forsake wrath! Fret not yourself; it tends only to evil. For the evil doers will be cut off, but those who wait for the Lord will inherit the land” (Ps. 37: 8 – 9, ESV).
This is good advice. It’s so easy to be furious about what’s going on in our culture or be furious with people who fail us.
I think how monastics through the centuries have prayed these honest, raging Psalms. The poet is not afraid to bitch about people who have hurt him. This is surprising language because we are told to try to be at peace with everyone. I was raised to make nice. Reading these Psalms gives me the words for the dull pain I feel when a friendship goes awry. They speak how people turn, how they back stab.
I’ve started reading them, not to study, but as prayers. Sometimes I hear Jesus’ voice, even when railing against the wicked. They give voice to the pain of being “despised and rejected by men.” Sometimes I hear my voice: “Contend, O Lord, with those who contend with me; fight against those who fight against me!…Let them be put to shame and dishonor who seek after my life! Let them be turned back and disappointed who devise evil against me! Let them be like chaff before the wind with the angel of the Lord driving them away! Let their way be dark and slippery, with the angel of the Lord pursuing them!” (Ps 35: 1, 4 – 6, ESV).
Let them be like chaff, the wind blows away. Let them be like tares that Jesus says not to root up until the end. Then there is Ruth who went to the threshing floor and lay down at Boaz’ feet. I think of the gift she received of a husband who loved her and gave her David’s grandfather, and how maybe the threshing floor is a gift for us to lie at our beloved’s feet, have his cloak wrapped around us, claiming us as his bride. The floor where wheat is beaten, separated from the straw.
When I read about the wicked becoming like chaff I think about my own impulses to distraction, how it’s so easy to flit away from my writing work, my heart and mind, sunk into social media or the latest political drama. It’s so easy to read my phone while Mr. Bruce does the dishes, or the daily office waits for my attention. It’s so easy to fill loneliness with chocolate.
I look forward to when the Spirit like the wind blows that chaff away. I look for the day, as fearsome as it may be, when the wheat and the weeds are winnowed, and the weeds are burned. When the Psalmist says fret not, he may well be talking about the wicked out there, the powerful, who are oppressing the weak and vulnerable. But he may also be talking about the wicked in me, the voice of the accuser who oppresses me with guilt and paralysis and hopelessness. Just the other day, I thought maybe it’s the guilt that needs to go.
Ash Wednesday, March 5, 2025
Our pastor preaches on returning to the scene for Ash Wednesday. Returning to the scene of celebrations and achievements or trauma and sin. He says we should return to a person we have offended and ask for forgiveness. Or return to someone who has hurt us and admitting the hurt. He said those conversations are difficult. These are conversations I avoid. Though the two times conflict broke out with some friends, my calling them out, healed the relationship. Most often I bless the person when they have taken up residence in my head. Sometimes it’s better not to speak your mind.
Orthodox priest, Stephen Freeman has offered a new twist on the Jesus prayer by saying “Father forgive my enemies, those who have hurt me” a prayer that might soften the bristle between angry, resentful people.
In his essay, Forgive Everyone for Everything he explains further: “In the same manner, the refusal to forgive, the continuation of blame, recrimination, bitterness, etc., are not moral failings. They are existential crises – drawing us away from the life of Christ and Paradise, and ever deeper into an abyss of non-being.
“I have lately spent some of my prayer-time each day with a modified form of the ‘Jesus Prayer.’ It runs, ‘Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me a sinner, and forgive all those who hate me or do me harm. Forgive them freely without reproach and grant me true repentance.’ I offer no great authority for this prayer – indeed, as I pray it, I find that it changes from time to time. But it is a way of offering prayer for my enemies – of teaching my heart to ‘forgive everyone for everything.’
“It can also be effective to pray (particularly when we find ourselves bound emotionally by our injured memories): ‘Lord, do not hold their (whomever you have in mind) sins against them on the day of judgment.’ Such a prayer ‘forgives the debt,’ the sense that we have that something is ‘owed.’”
Even though I have the mark of ashes on my forehead. I’m not sure I want to dive into the purple of the season. I’m not sure I even know what it means to deny myself and take up the cross. For me,self-denial means wanting the denied thing more, and I’d give in. Last Lent I laid off Diet Coke. This Lent I’m drinking it first thing because it tastes good. Richard Beck in Slavery to Death turns to St. Therese, “What she found was not a heroic path, but a little way—a way that consisted of making small, insignificant sacrifices in loving others…The Little Way is about bearing with people. The dying to self here is less about heroic martyrdom than it is about holding your tongue, refusing to gossip, waiting patiently, mastering your irritation, avoiding the spotlight, refusing to respond to insults, allowing others to cut in line, being first to apologize, and not seeking to win every argument” (114).
When pastor read the gospel, “Beware of showing your righteousness before men,” I thought well heck, I’m going to tell this story anyway. About Angelo, a man who asked, “Could you spare some?” Bruce and I had just walked out of the Hallmark store. All I had was a fifty. So I gave it to him. His demeaner felt clear, clean. I told him not to spend it on something that could kill him. He admitted he’d been in jail, been roughed up by a sheriff’s deputy, was sorry he hadn’t sued. Somehow I had his ear because I told him to make something of his life, get a job…I know that sounds preachy, in the same vein as “get off my lawn” but it wasn’t. There was enough electricity, light that passed between us, I thought maybe he might pivot, might work toward a better life. My goodness his spirit felt as clear as the water pouring out of a faucet. I still remember him in my prayers. (Funny how remember is a true word because I don’t always remember.) I don’t care if I just now received my reward by telling. What I hope is I meet Angelo in the Kingdom, and find out my words turned his shoulders toward a good, straight path, well, toward Jesus.
Maybe for Lent, I will take excess household goods to the Rockford Rescue Mission’s Thrift Store. Maybe.
Saturday, March 8
Today frost layers the fields. It’s brisk, exhilarating but not cruel or bitter. The sky is a rare blue, a beautiful clear blue, without contrails and another weather system headed our way. We turn up the gravel road. It’s early to walk past the neighbors with the three barking dogs. I hear the train coming in from the west, that beautiful French horn, sounding with longing. I stop at the top of the hill and watch him approach.
But wait. Wait a minute I hear that longing horn from the east, loud enough to not be far. What’s with two trains going opposite directions? I know there is a siding to the east. The dogs are happy to sniff the assorted holes that have made this road dangerous to drive the horse because they are deep, leg breakers, tendon rippers, and there are times we need to walk into the ditch for safety’s sake. The Canadian National train heading east draws near. The noise of the cars behind him builds. He blows his horn at our road’s crossing. He’s pulling grain cars. He blows his horn at the crossing for the road where I am walking.
The road is tight with ice. I walk slowly because I don’t want to fall. Nobody drives by. It’s hard to look up because the sun shines on the ice. My feet talk to the gravel tightened with ice. I remember the delight of stomping on ice in a snow shower at a friend’s home-the glory of that first snow, the glory of being with other kids. But I don’t step on it. I avoid it. I turn back at the neighbors’ fence which marks a mile. With my back to the sun, it’s easier to look up. A few minutes after the eastbound train passes, the westbound train rolls by. It rolls through a low spot, banks on either side. I am not sure, but I think it’s a CSX train. It’s pulling ominous black tankers. So one train taking corn to an ethanol plant east of here. The other hauling ethanol to fuel points west?
Let me tell you about another generosity. I’d bought hay, sight unseen, that Mrs. Horse refused to eat. 42 bales sat in Tessie’s old stall. It had been so heavy Bruce hauled it in there because I would have injured myself. I thought to ask a friend of this page out to lunch. She counter offered lunch with our husbands at a local campground. I asked if they knew anyone who could use the hay because we could not use it. She knew her neighbor could use it for his sheep. He just came by to pick it up.
On our way to town for lunch I see an eastbound train moving so slowly, it looks like it’s parked, holding cars back at the blinking crossing. Could it be the one I saw this morning, sitting on the siding, waiting for the go ahead to continue? Or maybe the crew went dead and needed to be replaced. We grabbed our sandwiches and sat at the park. We see her nearly every visit, a girl swinging on the swing, earphones in, even during school days. Sometimes she swings high, almost rocking out of the seat and then back down again.
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