Well, it was a nice weekend. I’m trying to keep it from dying, because you know I love my weekends. But I’m failing as always. Time she is a shark that must keep moving, and sooner or later, she’ll have your butt for breakfast. So it goes.

I spent a lot of time in church this weekend, which was nice. In our church, it’s still Lent, and Pascha (Easter) still two weeks away. Today was the Sunday of St. Mary of Egypt, who had a very amazing life.

Looking back on the preceeding two paragraphs, I see a broad contradiction of style. Well, so it goes; my mind is a strange neighborhood, and you’re hanging around after dark.

As to the title of the post, I’ve about had it with the posting of hard-wrought creative work on this blog and my site, only to have it ignored. It’s like a dog, barking at the sky. I think I should stop offering it online, don’t you? I’m thinking about getting rid of the site counter and the comments as well. Just release the arrow, turn and go. Because the results are either blood loss or nothing, and no longer in the archer’s control.

Well, this is supposed to be a writer’s blog. though generally I just babble. Nevertheless, I really do write stuff. Here are four new short stories written this year. I’ll be posting two or three more soon, possibly tomorrow.

They’re really quite short. I’m experimenting … Sort of a poet’s take on telling a story. I like them. Let me know what you think.

Winter Angel

Black Shirt with Pearl Buttons

Shining Leaves

Peaceable

You can see these and other stories and poems through my creative writing page.

Well I had a good weekend. I hadn’t been to church for a while, but I went last night and again this morning. I’m sore, especially my lower back. In my church, Russian Orthodox, we stand for the duration unless old or infirm, and the services are long. But my soul feels good. My heart feels lighter. People at church — I’m sure if you go to one of any kind you know this — are kind. And it’s good to be with people who share your beliefs.

Now we have just three weeks left until Pascha (Easter). Should be very nice this year.

Have you ever read the poem Three Moves by John Logan? It’s not great, but I’ve always admired the cadence. Parents please note it has grownup language. … I thought about it tonight, just because I sometimes do, at times when I need to think about my soul.

Yes, I’ve been lax about posting lately. Busy busy. Should ease up soon.

I was using the bathroom in a friend’s house today and happened to spy a package of Tylenol Simply Sleep. I wasn’t snooping – it was in plain sight. Something on the label caught my attention: “While using the product drowsiness may occur.” … Well I should certainly hope so.

I kid you not. Do they mean it also might not occur? And if so, what good is it?

Strange but true.

Yahoo! News – Nobel Laureate Saul Bellow Dies at 89

Hey, fellow Ray Bradbury fans, there’s a new bio about him. Who knew he had such a negative view of technology?

I’m just mulling it over. What if the President of the United States was not invited to attend the funeral of the pope? What if he’s left sitting there, in the White House, with his saddlebags packed? Well, serve him right for ignoring those pleas to stop Texas executions, not to mention to forego the Iraq debacle.

Not saying I hope it goes down that way. Just musing. God’s will be done, not mine.

News Link

“It’s like what Gabriel Garcia Marquez would say about South America: ‘It’s not surreal. That’s the way life is here.’ You don’t have to push it too far for it to become absurd.”

Taos writer takes Zen trip into bizarre America.

It wasn’t a Wednesday when I visited St. Peter’s in Rome in 1979. So we didn’t get to see the new Pope. The tour guide pointed to the window at which he would otherwise appear; the same window on which the cameras have been focused these past few days. It was a very hot day and we marveled briefly at the statues atop the double colonnade, then moved on into the cool sanctuary of the basilica.

I knew even then that I would never have the words to describe the beauty of the interior of that place. If you’ve never been there, you should go. Michelangelo’s Pieta is there, a great volume of marble which looks like nothing in this world so much as the essence of sacrifice and grief. Then there’s the canopy over the tomb of St. Peter, so massive and ornate that my eighteen-year-old mind could scarcely take it in.

We humans are very good at building monuments to heroism and glory, but when it comes to marking the passage of humility and love, it seems the best we can do is gather with candles and cry. As it should be. Pope John Paul II has always struck me as a man of humility and compassion, never bombastic or proud. And while I have, as an Orthodox Christian, disagreed with his doctrines now and then, not to mention that of papal infallibility, I’ve always respected his message of peace. His presence brought people hope and pointed them to Christ, and how can one be a better Christian than that?

The Pope was opposed to the attack on Iraq, and he said so, right to President Bush’s face. No one expected John Paul to slap a yellow Support the Troops magnetic ribbon on the back of the popemobile. We knew where he stood, that he supported the troops in ways that elude the consciousness of American leadership. Let that be a lesson to us all.

Finally, he showed us how it’s done. The one thing we each and all have to do is to die, to leave this world in God’s will and God’s time. He accepted his suffering in peace and died with dignity. And it’s sad, and my thoughts and prayers are with all my Roman Catholic friends. If God wills, he will go on praying for you and for the world.

It’s not a happy day. Terri Schiavo dead, and the Pope in grave condition. It’s
hard to see people suffer ….

Here in small town America, we don’t have a very sophisticated perspective of world events. So I guess I’ve grown up just a little naive.

I’ve always assumed that the courts would tend to err on the side of protecting the lives of the innocent and the voiceless, and that it would be very difficult to find a judge willing to let one person kill another, on the grounds that the former claimed the legal right to do so. Turns out I was naive, and that it’s much harder to find a judge willing to help keep an innocent, helpless person alive. Who knew?

Turns out it’s much harder for a state government to get through the appeals process and execute someone already sentenced to die by a judge, than for a family to get a judge to save someone who has not even committed a crime. This seems extremely ironic to me, and small town guys like this writer all ill-equipped to confront irony of this magnitude.

But even here, we know that Michael Schiavo is in a whole lot of hot water as a Roman Catholic. His juggernaut of insistent self will has run afowl of the Pope, whose offices denounced the court order to remove the feeding tube. And soon it seems that both Terri Schiavo and the Bishop of Rome will be having a word with The One Judge that really matters in this case.

This is from the latest AP report on the failure of the Pope’s health:

The Vatican’s attitude to the chronically ill has been apparent in its bitter
condemnation of a judge’s order two weeks ago to remove a feeding tube from
Terri Schiavo, the severely brain-damaged American woman who died Thursday.

Vatican Cardinal Jose Saraiva Martins, reacting to Schiavo’s death,
denounced the removal of her feeding tube as “an attack against God.”

Although different, some see parallels in the two cases.

Under John Paul, Vatican teaching on the final stages of life includes a firm
rejection of euthanasia, insistence on treatments that help people bear ailments
with dignity and encouragement of research to enhance and prolong life.

A 1980 Vatican document makes the distinction between “proportionate”
and “disproportionate” means of prolonging life. While it gives room for refusal
of some forms of aggressive medical intervention for terminally ill patients, it
insists that “normal care” must not be interrupted.

John Paul set down exactly what that meant in a speech last year to an international conference on treatments for patients in a so-called persistent vegetative state.

“I should like particularly to underline how the administration of water and food, even when provided by artificial means, always represents a natural means of preserving life, not a medical act. Its use, furthermore, should be considered, in principle, ordinary and proportionate, and as such morally obligatory.”

[Link]

Behold, the fall of western civilization. It looks to me like, in the long run, it’s survival of the best rested.
Health News Article | Reuters.com

Love dogs? Me too. It’s amazing how many people think it’s OK to leave their dog chained up outside. It’s not OK.
Dogs Deserve Better

Thanks Barb!