Church of the Churchless

Best wishes for an ordinary New Year

Here's my New Year's wish for visitors to this Church of the Churchless blog, myself, and indeed, everybody.

Be ordinary. Do ordinary things. Feel happy in your ordinariness.

I say this because now that I've reached the wise old age of 71, I've realized that overlooking the ordinary that's right at hand for some supposedly extraordinary thing that's around a corner has some serious drawbacks.

One reason is what I talked about in a post last month, Why you should be happy today, right now, no matter what.

Be happy today, right now, at this very moment and every following moment.
Why? Because our future contains only three possibilities. 

Tomorrow, or the next moment, could be better than right now.
So be happy! Life will look even brighter soon.

Tomorrow, or the next moment, could be worse than right now.
So be happy! Enjoy life in this more pleasant present.

Tomorrow, or the next moment, could be the same as right now.
So be happy! Life has brought you some stability. 

I'd like to die with a smile on my face. Problem is, I don't know when I'm going to die. Few people do, aside from those condemned to death, those who commit suicide, and a few other types of predictable deaths. 

Since my life, as is true of almost all other lives also, mostly involves experiencing ordinary things with my ordinary self, it figures that being happy with ordinariness offers the best chance of dying with a smile on my face.

Or at least, with an effort to smile. And if even that isn't possible, with neither a smile nor a frown, but an expression of acceptance.

Another reason is that ordinary things bring considerable pleasure when they are enjoyed for what they are, rather than feeling that we're missing out by not pursuing something extraordinary. 

Here's an excerpt from a 2018 post, "Happiness lies in ordinary things." This is a quote from a TIME magazine essay by Meg Wolitzer in a special issue about the science of emotions. 

At this point, being happy is about having the space to appreciate the ordinary things that do in fact make me "happy," though at first glance they might not be seen that way. 

An absence of chaos; an absence of phone calls with disturbing news; an absence of business emails that up-end your day and demand attention right then and there; no acutely ill parents; no fragile children calling shakily from college.

Being able to sit down with a glass of wine and some really good, tiny little olives with your husband; having a nice meal with your kids that's not rushed or fraught.

These seem like small things, perhaps pedestrian things, but I protect them fiercely, knowing that on the other side of an imaginary wall waits the possibility that all of them will soon be gone and that something terrible will replace them.

But I no longer quake in fear.

I used to think that happiness was something a person was so lucky to find that, like Lord Voldemort (a.k.a. He Who Must Not Be Named), it should never actually be mentioned. Now, with happiness taking on a new, modest cast, the fear of losing it is smaller too.

You might think: Good god, woman! This isn't happiness. Happiness has wild colors and flavors; it involves bodies draped across a bed, or things that come in gift wrap. Or even, once in a while, Carvel. Don't you want any of that?

Of course I do.

But being allowed to enjoy some of the more modest pieces of my life happens right now to be my own personal Carvel; my own dachshund, gift-wrapped present, snow day and secret lover. Perhaps for most of us -- or anyway, for me -- happiness has gotten smaller over time, becoming endlessly and exquisitely refined, though somehow never diminished.

Lastly, I'm continually impressed by the marvelous grace and courage of ordinary people. There's no need to look for heroes anywhere else but next door. I'll offer up two examples from my ordinary life.

Here's a Facebook post from a woman I've known here in Salem, Oregon for many years. She's one of the sweetest, gentlest people I've ever come across. When she was diagnosed with lung cancer, even though she'd never smoked, this was a big shock to me and her many other friends.

Yet yesterday she wrote:

What a year! 13 months ago I was diagnosed with stage 4 lung cancer. I haven’t written about it because I know that many deal with worse, and the world is beset with larger problems than what I face.

But, at the end of 2019 I’d like to share what these harrowing months have taught me.

Despite pain and fear, illness and uncertainty, 6 hospital trips, harsh chemotherapy, infections, being too sick to work - or sometimes even to eat - I have learned gratitude for each and every day. Maybe this is surprising, maybe it isn’t.

I have been amazed at how many have been generous to me, and how many have been kind to me. How many have donated time, resources, advice and food. THANK YOU, thank you!

Also - I can’t remember ever enjoying each day more, or feeling more gratitude for the multitude of sights and sounds, large and small, that make up my life. I can’t remember ever appreciating more the wonders that each day brings.

Scans show the cancer is growing, but I mostly feel pretty good these days, and keep hope alive. While my prognosis is not what I want, I understand that ultimately we all have the same prognosis.

I celebrate knowing you! I wish you a happy and meaningful 2020!

Those words are more inspiring to me than anything I've read in a religious book, or heard from a religious person. They're the words of an ordinary person dealing with their troubles in an amazingly courageous way.

Then, my wife came home a little while ago from her New Year's Eve stint as a volunteer dog walker at our local Humane Society. She told me about a man on her shift who "walks" dogs even though he is in a wheelchair.

This can be difficult for him even on nice days, since some dogs are strong pullers on their leash, so can take him for an unwanted ride before he can get them under control. Today it rained heavily for much of the dog-walking shift. 

He didn't have a jacket with him, so even though my wife helped him find a jacket he could borrow, it wasn't waterproof. And his knees got soaked anyway from sitting in his wheelchair while walking dogs in the rain. Yet this man is one of the more dedicated dog walkers.

An ordinary man. Doing an ordinary thing. Yet in such an admirable way. 

I aspire to being as good a person as the woman with stage 4 cancer, or the man who walks dogs with a wheelchair. I have no interest in emulating saints, gurus, holy men/women, or any other religious personage.

I just want to learn from ordinary people who are able to live their lives with love, peace, acceptance, and courage.

Lessons about thankfulness from our dog

Our oldest dog, ZuZu, died last month. I'm still grieving. So when I looked through my previous Thanksgiving Day blog posts (a holiday here in the United States), it seemed fitting to share a 2013 post, "Our 14 year old dog teaches me about thankfulness."

That dog was Serena, shown above in her younger days on a bank of the Metolius River in central Oregon. Here's most of what I said in the blog post I wrote about her when Serena's health was fading.

She doesn't look like she did in her younger days. But heck, who does? Surely not me. Being almost fourteen, Serena is something like 100 years old in dog time.

Serena is a Shepherd/Lab mix (her sisters looked like black labs; we were thrilled to get a kind-of German Shepherd-looking dog with a laid back Lab personality -- great combination). Her back legs are weak, a common trait in aging Shepherd canines.

Yet she still can go on a mile walk every evening with me and ZuZu, her four year old sister-dog. Not literally; they just look somewhat alike.

Serena chugs along, uphill and downhill, across two creek bridges, around a neighborhood lake, through grassy fields. I fired up an iPhone GPS app a few days ago. We meander along at an average of 1.8 mph. Hey, not bad for a 100 year old. 

Her pooper, which may not the precise veterinary term for what controls her bowel movements, isn't working very well.

Most mornings we get up to find roundish firm dark "presents" in the room where Serena and ZuZu sleep. A tiled room, thankfully, because some days the poop is mushier. Which, in case you're worrying, is all I'm going to say on this subject.

Because its my Thanksgiving Day thankfulness thoughts about Serena that are important. I'm grateful that she's helped me realize the importance of, so to speak, sniffing the heck out of life every single freaking day. 

No exceptions. 

I used to look upon our evening dog walk much differently. That was when both Serena and I were younger, when it seemed like an endless stream of dog walks lay before us. 

If Serena paused too long to smell something, inhaling the scent of what, to a dog, at that moment, is the most fascinating thing in the world, I'd get impatient.

Hey, Serena, I'd think, get a move on; I've got other things to do than watch my dog obsess over a clump of grass that, to my impoverished human senses, looks utterly meaningless.

Now, though, our walks have taken on some of the quality of the Zen "Enjoy the Strawberry" parable.  

The meaning of living fully in the present moment, neither retreating to the past nor anticipating the future, is wonderfully illustrated by a Zen parable about a monk being pursued by a ferocious tiger.

The monk raced to the edge of a cliff, glanced back, and saw the growling tiger about to spring. The monk spotted a vine dangling over the edge of the cliff. He grabbed it and began shinnying down the side of the cliff out of the clutches of the tiger.

Whew! Narrow escape.

The monk then looked down and saw a quarry of jagged rocks five hundred feet below. He looked up and saw the tiger poised atop the cliff with bared claws. Just then, two mice began to nibble at the vine.

What to do?

The monk saw a strawberry within arm’s reach, growing out of the face of the cliff.

He plucked it, ate it, and exclaimed, “Yum! That’s the best strawberry I’ve ever tasted in my entire life.”

If he had been preoccupied with the rock below (the future) or the tiger above (the past), he would have missed the strawberry in the present moment.

I'm thankful when Serena stops to taste her canine equivalent of a strawberry. My dog-expert wife tells me that dogs experience dementia just like people do.

But I prefer to think that when Serena suddenly stands still, staring off into the distance for no discernible reason, she is drinking in the present moment. Just as I should always be doing. As we all should be.

Because even though I'm appeciative that Serena's advancing age and deteriorating health have helped remind me that I'm in the same sinking mortality boat she is, it shouldn't take a 14 year old dog to remind me that we'll never know when the last time will come. 

Probably it won't be very long before Serena and I take our last evening dog walk.

There's a good chance I won't know which one it is. So I want to look upon every walk as our last walk. I want Serena and I to enjoy it like the best strawberry (or chew stick) either of us has tasted in our entire life.

The older I get (I'm 65 now), the more I realize there is only one way to cheat death: making the most of every moment. Not in a frantic skydiving, tango in Buenos Aires, howl at the moon fashion (though there's nothing wrong with this).

In the sense of being present, in the present. 

Serena is. Dogs always are. Serena doesn't know she's old and getting ever closer to dying. She just knows that when her nose senses an enticing odor, it needs to be attended to.

If this life is all there is, what should we do during it?

Poet Mary Oliver asked a great question in the last two lines of "The Summer Day." The poem ends with:

I don't know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?

Obviously the question isn't for others to answer. Oliver addresses it to each of us, every reader of her poem. Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?

I'm not sure why Oliver added the Tell me. The question remains the same without it. But I like that Tell me. It forges a bond between the poet and the reader. as does the previous Tell me, what else should I have done?

Frequently I have intimations of my mortality. This isn't just because I turned 70 a few months ago. Death always has been lurking around in my consciousness, sometimes scarily. Of course, death is impossible to ignore, given that everything which lives, dies. 

What I'm talking about, though, when I speak of intimations, is this: I'll be doing something utterly ordinary, when suddenly I'm struck by a vivid awareness of the fact that life is limited and one day I will die. 

I used to believe in life after death, but now I don't. However, that vivid awareness was just as strong -- maybe even stronger -- when I was a devotee of an Eastern form of mysticism that taught an immaterial soul survives physical death. Sure, I accepted that concept. 

But since no one knows for sure what happens after we take our last breath (my bet now is nothing, because we're dead and gone forever), even the most fervent religious believer still has to face the stark reality that this life could well be, as Oliver says, our "one wild and precious life."

Last night my wife and I were watching TV. In the midst of The Late Show With Stephen Colbert a thought unexpectedly popped into my mind: Brian, you're doing to die one day. Should you be spending these precious present moments watching Colbert make jokes about Donald Trump?

It only took my mind a few moments to come up with an answer to my mind's own question. (Weird how the brain engages in conversations with itself.)

Sure. What would be better to do than what I'm doing right now?

Sort of like Mary Oliver, minus her refined poetic sensibilities, I responded to myself with a question that nonetheless contained an answer. 

In my current churchless frame of mind it seems senseless to view any activity of life as lacking meaning. A few hours ago I walked our dog, ZuZu. When we got home, I grabbed a stick from a tree branch where I store our dog's favorite toy, high enough so she can't reach it. 

Like most pet owners, I talk to ZuZu as if she speaks English. "Let's play stick, little dog!" My preparing to throw the stick was all she needed to get excited, the words being superfluous.

We then spent ten minutes or so engaged in her favorite game: not bringing a stick back, reverse fetching. I throw the stick. ZuZu runs and gets it. Then she runs away from me when I say, "Bring it here!" We repeat this until ZuZu lies down, with the stick nearby, for her other favorite activity: being patted.

Is playing stick what I want to do with my one wild and precious life? Absolutely. In fact, I consider that everything I'm doing, including writing this blog post, is what I want to do, given that I am doing it. 

Circular reasoning? No. 

I just have reached a point in my life where I consider that the whole Bucket List thing has no attraction for me, because it assumes that some things are really important to do before we die, while other things are less important. 

In my opinion, and I'm really just speaking for myself, going down that way leads to, if not madness, dissatisfaction. When our doings are divided into less and more important, less and more meaningful, it seems to me that we're always questioning whether what we're engaged in is what we really should be doing.

I think Oliver's first question gets it just right: Tell me, what else should I have done?

Woody Allen talks about the meaning of life, or lack thereof

Thanks to Jen for sharing this Woody Allen video in a comment. Allen says that artists, and I guess we're all artists of life, have to provide reasons for living in a universe that doesn't possess inherent meaning.

Meaning is provided by us humans, not by the cosmos. Allen also observes at the end of the video that everybody needs illusions to get us through the harsh realities of life. I agree. But our goal should be to embrace the wisest sorts of illusions.

(Defining "wise" in this context is what keeps this blog going, along with almost everything else in life -- philosophy, politics, hobbies, relationships, etc. etc. etc.)