Moca's Malaise

My little Moca is nine years old. She's the sweetest kitty, even though she has absolutely zero sense of humor.

It's hard to believe that she's been with me this long; it seems like just yesterday when I was picking out this little fluffy coffee-colored kitten out with the help of the Evans kids who lived two doors down on my cul-de-sac in northern California.

And then Moca tricked me. After getting named for coffee, she grew up and her fur turned black.

During the last six weeks Moca has quit eating, for the most part. At first I thought it was a phase she was going through, but after a while her bones started poking out and her little tummy got rather skinny. She would eat scrambled egg and loves to drink milk, but I know that's not kitty food.

So I took her to the vet 2 weeks ago. After doing $240 worth of vetting (i.e. blood work and so on), he told me she has elevated kidney enzymes, but not enough to indicate any severe disease or kidney failure.

And then he referred to her as "anorexic."

Anorexic??? That shocked me. Moca isn't eating; she's not anorexic!

I came home bearing my kitty, prescription cat food that costs an arm and a leg, and directions from the vet to try giving her a quarter Pepcid AC every day to settle her upset tummy. At least, the vet told me it must be upset because of her enzyme issue.

And then Husband had a little talk with me about how "we need to discuss what kind of heroics we're going to be up for." Oh dear. My Moca is supposed to get better, not worse.

Well, now I'm worried. After eating a bit more following her visit to the vet, she's back to her old tricks. Her personality hasn't changed. She's still her loving, perky self, but she's not eating.

Anybody out there have any ideas?

Communing With the Onions

Yesterday we went for our half-marathon walk. Yes, I am still in training, and I'm proud to say that I did the scheduled 13.59 miles yesterday morning. It took just over 4 hours, which is okay for being only about four weeks into this venture. Next week's long walk--as prescribed by Husband's marathon training book--is a mere 7 miles. I won't know what to do with that! It will seem like a walk in the park!

But I digress. The delight was that I got to commune with the onions yesterday.

Onions actually have special significance in my family. When I was growing up my mom would go to the hairdresser every Friday and have her fine, straight hair set on rollers so it looked good for the weekend. She often commented on how my dad's hair was full of thick natural curls, and that I had inherited that. "Well, you just have to eat onions," my dad would say. "They make your hair curly."
So yesterday we were walking along Mission Road with five kilometers left to go (out of 21.8 total; we're people of the metric system) when we came to a field nearly ready for the onion harvest. Our valley is known for sweet onions so good that you can almost eat them raw, so I strayed off the road and swooped into the onion field for my moment of establishing an acquaintance with the local color.

It smelled like onion rings ... and I love onion rings! The plants were in beautiful shape. It had not really sunk in before now that the onions grow practically right on top of the ground. You can walk into someone's field and just pick them up off the dirt.

One of the prettiest sights of the morning walk, in my opinion, were the onion flowers lifting up like little snowballs all over the field.

Beauty can be found just anywhere, can't it? Even by weary walkers surveying a big old onion field on a sunny Sunday morning in June.

And yes, somewhere deep down, I still believe that onions make my hair curly.

Mabel

Ran into Mabel yesterday. She's going to be 95 years old a week from today. To celebrate, she intends to go for a hot air balloon ride. She thought of tandem skydiving, but said she couldn't quite face that one.

Mabel has been a lifelong teacher and nurturer of young people. She's often up front, reminding her fellow church members to give money so that children in the church can get an education in a Christian school. A few years ago, when I helped with Vacation Bible School, she was teaching a class. I could see pretty quickly that you don't mess with Mabel!

The righteous will flourish like a palm tree,
they will grow like a cedar of Lebanon;
planted in the house of the Lord,
they will flourish in the courts of our God.

They will still bear fruit in old age,
they will stay fresh and green,
proclaiming, "The Lord is upright;
he is my Rock, and there is no wickedness in him."
Psalm 92:12-15 (NIV)

Heaven at the Rest Stop

When I popped out the front door yesterday to get the newspaper, I found the above tract tucked under the corner of our doormat.

It reminded me of the time my friends from Finland came to visit me twenty years ago, and I took them on a road trip down the west coast of the United States. Along I-5 we needed a pit stop, so we pulled into a rest area in southern Oregon.

"This reminds me of heaven," Erja said.

"What?!" I asked.

"You know, like those pictures on Jehovah's Witnesses tracts," she explained. "They always show a picture of people having a picnic in a park, which is supposed to be heaven. It looks just like this."

We looked around at the trees and neatly trimmed grass and picnic tables and little pond nearby, appreciating the tableau for a few moments.

And that's what I thought about when I picked up the tract yesterday.

This Week's Joy and Terror

This Casavant organ console graces the platform our university church, with thousands of pipes quietly waiting to speak from behind the screens across the front of the sanctuary. I practiced on this organ regularly when I was an undergraduate here, long ago in the 1980's. I was minoring in music then, my emphasis in organ. My senior year I played this wonderful instrument every single school day; I was preparing for my senior recital.

During my seven years back here I have rarely played the Casavant organ, despite my special affection for this instrument. It's complicated, and I won't go into it. But this week is an exception.

I have agreed--because they weren't able to find anyone else--to play for our "campmeeting" this coming weekend. It's a yearly summer gathering of churches from eastern Washington, northern Idaho and northeastern Oregon. In the olden days, the church members pitched their own little tents and went to these meetings under a big tent, persevering through the heat and bugs. Now we're inside the cavernous sanctuary with air conditioning, for which I'm thankful even if it's not quite as memorable.

I'm petrified, frankly. I'm completely out of shape. I've been practicing 2 hours every day just to play prelude, a few hymns, offertory and postludes for three services. Unfortunately I care about what people think of my playing ... and by extension, of me. But terror is mixed with the the grand joy of spending two hours each day playing our magnificent organ.

I think all the best experiences in life come with at least a bit of terror lurking about.

Hypocrite Houses

Have you ever noticed how hypocritical houses have become these days? When I was a kid, you could look at a house and it was the same on the front and the sides. My uncle and aunt lived in a brick house (still do), and you saw brick whether you looked at the front, the sides, or the back. We lived in a brick house covered with plaster, and whether you looked at the front, the sides or the back, it looked the same.
Not so anymore. I find it so intriguing that so many houses in our area have brick or stone fronts, but if you just walk a little further to get a kitty-corner view of the house, it's plain old siding along the sides and the back. No fanciness, no accouterments, no pretty window trimming, just siding--yards and yards of it.

The ironic thing is, I noticed it too late to save our house from the fate of a hypocrite; our stone on the front is fake, added with mortar to glue it to the fascia. The glued-on stone barely goes around the front corners and then it's done. So I live in a hypocrite house, too, with yards and yards of plain siding along the sides and the back.
It doesn't matter how pretty the front is; I always feel a bit disappointed when I see a hypocrite house.

And why is it that way? Well, because it's cheaper to be a hypocrite.

Now go chew on that one for a while.

Healing Garden

A pink poppy in Lois's garden near PortlandMy life is pretty crazy and sometimes scary right now, which is why I so much enjoyed my few moments out in my friend Lois's garden near Portland, Oregon last Sunday. So, in honor of you, Lois, here's the photo of your pink poppy, and a befitting poem I found here:

Healing Garden

Your healing garden takes stock
of what you need.
We chose large pink blossoms
for fragrance;
and for sweetness, we have red strawberries.
Ageratum, those low growing blues
to remind us of sadness,
which comes to us, sometimes,
so we'll put them
near the snapdragons,
rocketing to the sky in brilliant crimson
like your dreams,
powered by the sun
in those yellow pansies,
that can grow even in shade for a time
if they must.
And that single, glorious, tall pink poppy
for the center.
We bought young plants to start small,
and surprise us with unknown, radiant colors
that will bloom from the warmth
of your inner sun.
Remember-it's never too soon
or too late
for planting.

~~Lenore Horowitz

Danger: Conclusions Being Drawn

(Snazzy little drawing found here)Several recent events have reminded me that human beings have a terrible propensity to draw conclusions that are false. I think we need to remember that we are all witnesses, and that means that the most we can hope to do is to perceive a person or a situation from our own perspective. We should be wary of our own tendencies to judge a person or situation.

If you are a person who instinctively draws conclusions, as I do, maybe we should make a pact that we'll always label our conclusions as "theories," not "the way things are." Even if you're downright sure that such-and-such happened because you saw it with your own eyes, or because a credible person told you about it, you'll be much more fair to the people involved if you'll say to yourself, "It sounds like such-and-such happened, but that's my theory."

For example, let's say that Stentorian Peter tells me that Snivelly Jacob criticized him in a mean, underhanded way. Listening to the story and knowing my own experiences with Stentorian Peter and Snivelly Jacob, I can just "see" what happened. I fill the picture in with my own experiential background, paint in some bright colors and highlights, and there we are. Stentorian Peter and Snivelly Jacob are firmly set in the picture, halos and highlights well-developed, and the picture is complete. The problem is, there are all kinds of experiences and inner thought patterns that influence Stentorian Peter's retelling and my hearing. And even had I been there and witnessed the interchange, I would see only the tip of the iceberg. I would not see what had provoked Snivelly Jacob, nor would I see the past life experiences that were guiding the thought patterns of Stentorian Peter. I would not see what had happened that morning in their lives, how their other relationships were going, how they were feeling physically, what was worrying their hearts, or what their mamas and papas had said to them in their childhoods that were coming to bear on this specific interchange. And I might only be dimly aware of all the experiences and thought patterns and childhood messages that were influencing my own thought processing of what I was seeing and hearing.

We can be very sharp toward others in our judgments. We can be very wrong. We tend to listen to our friends and believe what they say about others, even though they also can be very sharp in their judgments and very wrong. There is always missing information--always. We've all had those "aha!" experiences--some of them embarrassing, or at least they should be embarrassing--when we learn "the rest of the story" about some person or situation we had completely misjudged. And I suspect we've all been on the receiving end of someone's misguided, critical and sharp judgments of us.

So why do we not learn from those "aha" experiences to quit drawing conclusions?

Matthew 7:1-5 (Message):

Don't pick on people, jump on their failures, criticize their faults— unless, of course, you want the same treatment. That critical spirit has a way of boomeranging. It's easy to see a smudge on your neighbor's face and be oblivious to the ugly sneer on your own. Do you have the nerve to say, 'Let me wash your face for you,' when your own face is distorted by contempt? It's this whole traveling road-show mentality all over again, playing a holier-than-thou part instead of just living your part. Wipe that ugly sneer off your own face, and you might be fit to offer a washcloth to your neighbor.

Kindy Grad

The yearly round of graduations has begun. When you live in a community that provides education from Kindergarten through graduate school, the beginning of June brings day after day of year-end events, and pomp and circumstance. Caps and gowns and diplomas abound, and camera flashes are going off everywhere.Last night was Kindergarten graduation at Husband's school. When I first heard of such an event, I scoffed. What's up with the caps and gowns for six-year-olds, anyhow? Must we try to push rite-of-passage events so far down that they don't mean anything anymore when you actually graduate from high school and college? Is it really worth all that time, effort and cost to make a big deal of a kid going from Kindy to First Grade?But now you'll find me at Kindy Graduation as often as I can get there, simply for my own enjoyment and entertainment. The kids are so cute, and they do a great job of showing--after two weeks of rehearsals--that they understand the importance of ceremony, of making presentations to a large audience, of the behavioral guidelines for praying and singing up front, and of sitting [somewhat] quietly in a ceremonial group.What left me feeling the happiest was the fact that, while this Kindy graduation was about these children, it was also clearly about Jesus. The teacher loves Jesus and talks about Him constantly. The songs were about Jesus, and the prayers the children gave for the invocation and benediction clearly showed that Jesus is their present and active friend and Lord.This is why my entire career has been devoted to Christian education. As much as I admire and support what our local public school district does for the community, when it comes to my children and grandchildren there is no question where they will be, as far as it lies within my power. The comparison of public education to Christian education is like the comparison between a two-dimensional and three-dimensional world. A discussion of history, or social studies, or science, or even reading and writing can't be complete unless you can do it while explicitly acknowledging the presence and activity of a creator God, and His claims on our lives. I understand exactly why people make financial sacrifices so their children can be in an environment that not only educates people for life, but educates them for eternity.

It's an honor to be a part of it.I learned it by memory in Christian school as a child, and it continues to be true today: "Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old, he will not depart from it." Proverbs 22:6

[Above: my Principal man poses with one of his young scholars]