Okay, cheer up a bit.  It's not sunny out, but you'll be going to work soon enough, and you worked a full five shifts last week, so that's good, in fact it wasn't that bad, now that you're staying hydrated.

Writing is multi-tasking.  On the one hand the tea is being prepared, and a little chicken broth warming up on the stove.  There's mom to call, to check in on.  And while you didn't go out, and even ran out of wine, but didn't open the saved bottles, the Beaucastel from 2012, the 2008 Caymus Cabernet, the last of the wines your father sent you..  You got some good stuff done around the house, not in bad shape for the week ahead, knock wood.

Blood Type.  I put in a small bit of astragalus powder into my green tea, steeped last night.  I like the taste of it, and its effect, placebo or not, helps with the aches and pains of waking.

A Mass on tv in the background, at noon, instead of the Gregorian.

And lo, the priest is talking about the Transfiguration.   Jesus takes Peter and John and James up the hill, 3 disciples, and prepare for Elijah and Moses.  There up on the  mountain.  (What does rising from the dead, mean, the apostles wondered, after J told them, keep it quiet until I do...)

But the Mass is just one part of the morning's multi-tasking.

DIY electrolyte water to brew up out of filtered water, baking soda, salt from the marsh... 1 liter to half a teaspoon of baking soda, half a tablespoon of salt...

And Jesus restrained himself, hid his divinity in his humanity...

Arch Bishop Fulton J. Sheen, manifestation of glory, but not a full manifestation of his divinity...
"The glory that shown around Jesus as the temple of God,... a natural expression of the inherent loveliness of... Christ veiled his divinity with humanity..."  The Lord is pulling aside this thin veil...  The divinity within is not so hidden in him that we have to dig...

Fr. Anthony Mary, MFVA...  I like him, this guy, his gentle bedside manner in our lives.  His voice is pleasant, and his singing is seamless with the Mass and its spirit.  A friend, accepting you.

Talk of Origin's thoughts on the matter... The six days of creation, the seventh day of rest.  Lent, a season of retreat...  Entering into full communion...


I wonder how much politics are effected by blood type...  How we might naturally argue with eau other...

Jesus is the source of love, faith, and joy...
Incorporated into his dying and his rise, that's what we encounter in Baptism...
Straight ahead through the cross, the only direction.

We get scandalized by the resurrection...  To Peter, you must not get in my way...  Don't tell anyone until after I rise from the dead...  It strengthened their faith.

"As the cross came nearer, his glory became nearer, and burst through..."  Father F..J Sheen...

We get scandalized by Jesus upon the Cross...


Kerouac wrote he sees the Cross in moments toward the end of Big Sur, horrible story of his descent, alcoholic...

Writing has to be multi-tasking, to realize work and aging parents, to realize the Cross, and its beauty in our lives, which we are asked to go to, and through, to find direction, the only way...

And so I sketch, and roughly sketch, from the man's sermon, on this the second Sunday of Lent...  Misquoting, not attributing with any proper scholarship here.


Blood Type, perhaps that is why I have certain caveman views in life, ones that you have to keep close to the chest sometimes...  So do I not exactly engage when those of Type A blood, the farmers, go on with their own farmer point of view;  they can be vegetarians quite happily...  Nor do I engage with the omnivore Mongol herd blood of the B people, because while I can get them, they don't always get me.  JFK was type O.  He could speak to a lot of people, without managing to offend them.  The ministers down in Houston, Texas, even though he was so nervous that he shook, they got him, as a kind of universal donor in his understandings of things, and they had to agree with him.  ABs are friendly, more or less, from what I can tell...

Faith to the A is in the town and the fields, and the grain storage house.  Faith to the B is mastering and conquering city walls and taking what you can...  Faith to the O is the meat of the hunt, a life of action.

And so the O understands the blood of the Cross, deep down, the small aches the barman feels from taking up his own Cross, serving the bread and wine...

Now the Cross, that's up there with the deepest, the highest form of understandings we will ever upon this Earth attain.  One doesn't dismiss it, either.

Like you or I, people will say petty things about us, perhaps, sometimes, as people will speak good and bad of all things, depending, but, you cannot say that much bad about anyone who thinks, at least, of the Cross sometimes, thinks of it as a thing of direction in life, so that one might gain passing through it, metaphorically.

Do we need to nitpick at the details of how we are placed upon our own Crosses to then bear?  Are those even sins if they bring us to the Cross...

I think, as long as we get that state of affairs, of the Cross in this life, we are doing alright, as students of life and the spirit.

Probably not a very good thing for us, going up on the Cross, upon the daily uncertainty, the mystery of the future shrouded before us in the form of death...


Indeed, writing is multi-tasking.  A full room to work, as if you were indeed a waiter, and you never know where the resolution of wisdom's full meal might come from, from what direction...  In one ear, the dishes for the most part have been tackled with soap and hot water in a tub in the sink, drying now, in the other year, you call your mom.  See if she's seen any of the Olympics, or if she got her New York Times for this Sunday, gas in her car from the easiest mini-mart gas station, the Stewart Shop at Utica and 5th...  And in other ears, unexpected things, unpredictable thoughts, voices from the community...

Thousand layers of geological thoughts in the relative moment, feelings of almost wanting to cry, but somewhere also knowing that this is what saves you, makes you comparable with all life and humanity.  Finding writing, finding that process, that will always make you a bit happy in some way, as will motion, the clock ticking down to that time you'll brave walking out the door, getting to work, on foot, call a cab, the bicycle left at work out of cold weather and laziness...  And it's only Sunday night, can't be all that bad...