Stuff and Desire:
I was as usual sitting in my chair surrounded by most of my stuff. It occurred to me and not for the first time that the pleasure in having really can’t compare with the pleasure in getting. I love my extensive stamp collections but the real delight was in finding a new sheet that would go with a series I already had. At the moment I can think of only two such sets: classic movie stars, Bogart, Wayne, Cary Grant, and the Looney Tunes set with Bugs, Daffy, Porky Pig, etc.; now of course because of my hands I can’t even look at them and the last sets I got are still in the package they came in ten or fifteen years ago. My hands got so bad I couldn’t handle them.
Then there are the silver coins. U.S. silver dollars are truly beautiful works of art, glowing in their little blue government boxes. They too are where I can’t get to them. I keep meaning to have my wife or someone bring me one to enjoy. Why wasn’t one ever enough to enjoy? Why did I have to have stamps and coins? Even though a Christian there was still a desire and an emptiness that I always attended to. I am thinking of giving one silver dollar to each member of my family. Why not?
Getting and having: one of my many good memories is the evening my sons and I went to Lexington in a search for new hot wheels. We hit supermarkets and all the kinds of stores that sold such things. There was definite pleasure in finding a new one but the better pleasure was in going with my sons. I don’t remember the cars I found then, but I remember the pleasure of being with my sons on an adventure. Actually, I ended up giving all the sets away to something like “Toys for Christmas.” We did comic shops together too, usually once a week. Now of course I can’t read them and don’t really desire to.
The important question behind all my collections is why wasn’t one enough, one copy, one collection, and so on?. Even when I had a complete set of WARLORD why did I have to have ever so many sets of AVENGERS, X-MEN, MARVEL TWO IN ONE? My friend Bobby Fong, God rest his soul, collected only the AVENGERS. I couldn’t limit myself! Never could. The answer to that question is surely in Saint Augustine’s CONFESSIONS and we all know the quote: our hearts are restless till they rest in Thee. Well, apparently it is and it isn’t quite that simple. Or in my case if it is that simple I simply never managed in my 84 years to do it. And I have to think that because I couldn’t do it, give stuff up, God intervened. I always new that I couldn’t take the stuff with me, of course, but even that didn’t stop me, so now it is virtually impossible, and I say this with great glee, to truly collect anything. I could acquire things through the internet, but if I did that I could not deal with them when they got here: essentially, top to bottom, bottom to top, nothing really works, head, hands, feet, nope not really. The interesting thing is that I find my situation, except when a serious pain won’t ease up, rather hilarious. What I sort of desired to do God did for me. How do I know it was God? Perhaps the presence of the Holy Spirit within me helps determine that. I think so, but of course I can’t really know. The presence of the Holy Spirit insures faith within and in spite of my experience of absence most of the time there is no way I can not believe that my faith is not real and true. He came out of the tomb. The Nicene Creed clearly and succinctly defines that faith, my faith. Thank God. And it’s not that I don’t teeter on the edge of despair from time to time, but I always find at my center the undeniability of Christ.
A Recent Development
I’ve been having trouble falling asleep lately, which is fairly unusual for me. All the drugs I take put me under rather easily and when I wake up during the night I go back to sleep easily, but not this week. Usually when I can’t sleep I read. This week I tried something different. Since I have three 5 x 7.5 Eastern Orthodox icons (my daughter bought me two for Christmas), the Virgin and child, the blessing Christ and Christ pantocrator, and since they are positioned on a bookshelf just above me, I decided to try saying the rosary without any aids; that is, without a recorded program that leads one through them. In doing so I learned something about the way my mind works or doesn’t work. I used my fingers to count out each decade. What I discovered was that saying a decade straight through was impossible.
I would get two or three Hail Marys said and find other thoughts breaking in. Since I was keeping count with my fingers, when I realized what had happened I would go back to the count and keep going. Working that way I did manage to say all 5 decades the first night but only 3 decades last night. Why couldn’t I discipline my mind to go straight through? It occurred to me, perhaps because I have been reading Michael Ward’s PLANET NARNIA about C. S. Lewis’s fantasy and science fiction works, that my inability was a consequence of our disordered human nature. It suddenly seemed clear to me that an ordered, fully rational mind would be able to recite the formula without losing track or without being interrupted. For a moment I had a clear vision of how a fully rational mind would be over against my easily distracted mind. I could see the two side by side for a few minutes until something else chaotically intruded. The one mind seemed rational and glorious like Ransom’s in THAT HIDEOUS STRENGTH, mine by contrast seemed dark, distorted and disheveled. Seeing so clearly the contrast made me realize that there is something radically wrong with human nature, that there really is a way that we ought to be but aren’t.
As I said I suspect my vision was enabled by my reading Ward’s book and his description of the rationality that defines the universe for Lewis and his acquaintances. In a way the vision was like seeing the two models of the universe side by side, the ordered hierarchical universe of Dante, for example, over against the enlightenment influenced contemporary scientific model that prevails today. I love astronomy and have some sense of how our solar system actually behaves, but not what it necessarily means; the medieval model, however, has tremendous value as a stimulus for the imagination and for what the universe might actually mean. I mean that I believe the meaning of Dante’s vision of the cosmos is closer to the underlying truth than our own vision. If you want a clear picture of what I see look at a medieval cathedral like Chartres or Notre Dame and then look at any number of contemporary churches. Chartres inspires the imagination with awe and wonder and all the medieval cathedrals were built without the benefit of modern technology. We are capable of creating very tall office buildings that remind me more of Babel than of God. For an important understanding of the medieval model read Lewis’s THE DISCARDED IMAGE.
A Letter to Friends
A letter to whomever, or whoever might be interested at the end of 2024: a friend wrote to me just a bit ago about his terrible year. I spent a while on this response and thought I would let others know too. Ha! I didn’t proof it for reasons explained at the bottom. Take care. Love, and have a blessed new year, all of you, whoever and wherever you happen to be.
As for me I don’t know what to think about my year. According to my iPad I have read 167 different titles in 2024. For that i am most grateful.
I also discovered Chobani Smoothies, 7 ounces of deliciousness. Hardly a day passes when I don’t have at least one. My favorites are Mango, Mixed Berry, and Raspberry Lemonade. My son-in-law and daughter never let my refrigerator go empty. I am well beyond grateful.
As for the trials of the year, sufficient unto the day is the evil there of. One of the worst days was yesterday. I woke at 3 a.m. with an intense pain in the bladder area. Well, that’s happened before. It will soon go away. All I have to do is hold the catheter tube up in the air so it will drain properly. Ha! It didn’t; the pain intensified. What I began to understand was that the catheter was blocked. The pressure intensified. Job-like I cried out to God. He ignored me, I thought. So after 8 a.m. I called Commonwealth, my nursing agency. They weren’t scheduled to come until Tuesday, but they put me in touch with one of the two young ladies who regularly come and treat the wounds. Abby, bless her heart, showed up within 30 minutes, took out the blocked beast and put in a new one, which is now happily draining away. I did have to reconsider my Job-like cries. Secondary causes and all that. But the day was not done.
Next, I fell down. Fortunately my son-in-law was here. He found me stretched out on the floor, (I’ve fallen and I can’t get up! Ha!) and he helped me to my big dad electric chair. Only this morning did I feel the full effects of the fall. MY teeth hurt, but probably not from the fall. Back and legs and head however are another matter. Bruising but no breaks. So again I’m grateful, but where was my so-called guardian Angel? A spiritual timeout? Off praising God? Who can say. However the day was not over. In fact it was only early afternoon.
Mary, my wife, came into my room and saw blood on the floor, probably not a consequence of the Fall—oops, the fall. Turns out the big toe on my left foot was bleeding somewhat extensively. The bloody sock gave it away, yahoo, and, bless my wife who does not like to deal with such matters, she dealt with it.
It also turned out that Bobby my sil, was there to take me to Lexington for my—guess what—appointment with the YES foot doctor. Secondary causes? She had to remove the toenail which was still bleeding, probably thanks to the blood thinners. Another blessing and curse, etc. so now I have wounds on both feet that need daily attention. Whew!
I also have a rash across my chest that gets a daily treatment from which ever foot-care person who happens to be there. The itching is volcanic, the only adjective I could think of that did justice to its intensity. I get a little dizzy when I get up and I had and have a low grade headache. Well, thank goodness this year is effectively over, not that my body recognizes it. The extent of this letter is meant to give you and whoever a laugh or too, oops.. Other than the above I’m okay, though all the print on everything is blurry, just barely readable. Of course. I also finished the last episode of the CATHOLICISM series on THE LAST THINGS: Hell, Purgatory, Heaven. Of course. Haha! Hell!
I hope next year will be better for all of us. [I would have proofed the letter, but, as I said, all print is blurry and my left eye won’t quit watering. Of course.]
Love, Gene
Sent from my iPad
Now I have carefully proofed the letter. The number of problems was problematic. I also forgot to mention in the letter that when I got home from the doctor’s office, I played my daily game of WORDLE and failed to get the right answer in my six tries. Things have improved slightly since this day. Thus may we all have a very good and happy new year.
