Thank You for not making me a barbarian ....
Thank You for making me a man ....
There is a liturgical tradition that begins the day with such 'gratitudes' and concludes with one that has found more and more favor with me in the Last Quarter.
Thank You for gifting energy to the weary.
It's been a week of beachiness... Riding in the morning on the 1974 orange colored Raleigh International .... With it's drilled out brake handles -- just in case I wanna drag race .... With it's double-butted high tensile steel frame -- just in case I need that slightly more flexible than carbon fiber feeling .... With it's Brooks Saddle .... Just in case I forget my appointment with my urologist.
This ritual has been going on for quite a while. It was preceded by trying to wake up my kids to go shelling in the first trough of the ocean .... that space between the shore and the shelf that is forming the next barrier fifty yards out. I'd wake them a half hour before the sun would rise .... we'd drive to the beach and watch the Sun arrive from Western Europe ... express! Sometime during the older kids' adolescence, rising with Dad before Daybreak was just further evidence that -- nevermind what Dad did for a living -- he was at best a Loony Toon trained by Genghis Khan. So, biking took shelling's place.
This morning, the 6 miles seemed much longer. M took me over the first bridge where cars whizz by at 55 .... Couple miles later, going over the second bridge, I musta looked pale ... Or was it imagined pity that I saw in the young eyes coming the other way.
I guess the Fourth Quarter is governed by conspiracies. My Docs are all pretty young and my PCP when he gets a call from me saying that I have an Upper Respiratory thing in a little backwater town South of the Mason-Dixon Line decides that designer antibiotics and steroids are the order of the day. I seem to recall that he lost his Dad when his Dad was young ... But that could be my fantasy.
All this to say ... I need God to gift this weary man some energy. A friend recommended a book by
Meng, the Happy Guy at Google who with Goleman and others put together a meditation course
called Look Inside Yourself .... whose goal is consistent with many a Miss America's ambition:
WORLD PEACE.
Maybe reading Meng made me tired. Don't get me wrong .... In my estimation, it's a good book and fine read. I did get caught up on two areas where I disagree or something. Cantankerous Old Man on Beach!
The one is important to me and the other maybe is silly. So, to the first. Meng believes that Happiness
is the Default/at rest position for humanity. As anyone following here knows, in my estimation a
sinus rhythm between hello's and goodbye's ... Between happiness and sadness is the steady state of being. Maybe as he has to yet produce World Peace, he'd give me that one.
The other (p31) has him using a bicycle analogy for meditation. 'If you're falling left? Correct by
turning right.' That is the intuitive thing to do and will get you cleaning your skin off the road surface.
No .... when falling Left, the body has to learn the counterintuitive slight turn to the left in order to bring the bike back to balance. And so it is with meditation, prayer and free association. If one is wandering, one needs to pay attention momentarily to that curious detour in order to know how to go on. .... Any case ...
Dear God ....
You gave me energy for much of the week while Spawn und Grandspawn were underfoot .... and now you gift ability to feel fatigue.
May I be appreciative.
"And the Heavens and the Earth and all their accoutrements were completed. And God was finished by that Seventh Day of all the creations that he fashioned. And He rested on the Seventh Day and Blessed it."
Just as He blesses the youngins and the day of rest,
so may S/He bless us minions of
the Last Quarter and occasionally gift us energy.
