Category Archives: Just for Fun

Lilacs and lily-of-the-valley have always been two of my favorite flowers. I don’t typically like strong fragrances, but these two flowers are what I think heaven smells like, and I need heaven right now, because I miss my mom so much I can’t even think about how much it hurts. I can remember her laugh, but kind of not, and I can remember her love for all people, but I don’t remember what her real voice sounded like, only what her hospital voice sounded like all raspy from being on a respirator and then having a feeding tube scratch up her throat. I want to be able to hear her singing “His Eye is on the Sparrow” or “Amazing Grace” or “Lily of the Valley,” which is why I love those little flowers so much. I am grateful that I can remember when I was really little playing outside of our old house with her and the smell of the lilacs permeated the air, and I remember the way she helped me cut some to bring into the kitchen, so we could have them on the small table when my dad got home for dinner. I am so grateful for the lilac bush that grows in front of my house, because the smell comes in my front door and reminds me of who I am and where I come from, and the sweet aroma makes the small, dull ache in my chest go away for a minute.

I am grateful for incredibly smart students who teach me things. My parents taught me to approach every person and every situation with curiosity and inquiry. I also learned that from some of my best professors in college, seminary, and graduate school; if you enter into an interaction with an open mind, you will learn from those around you. I am grateful for being encouraged to live my life in this way, because if I hadn’t lived this way, I’d have missed some real opportunities for growth.

I am grateful for coffee. Coffee wakes me up, gives me life every morning, and brings me happiness. I have nothing more profound to say about it, but I am so grateful for that delicious dark brown bean juice in my cup every morning.

Today I am grateful for friends who love me. I have the strangest, most eclectic group of misfit friends I know. I am truly blessed to have not only a great family, but also friends who love me so much I could just cry. Okay, true confession. I do cry a lot. And they still love me.

I am also grateful that last night when I let my Luna dog out and she found a possum, she did not kill it. She carried it around the yard in her mouth, but when it stopped moving, she dropped it and then came in the house. When I went back outside to retrieve the presumably dead possum, the sweet baby had run from the yard. I did a whole sweep of the overgrown grassy areas and found no little pink noses and no little beady eyes. Luna did bring in a whole bunch of mud in her paws and deposited it in my clean and smelling-good sheets.

Finally, I am grateful for anger and sadness and despair and hurt and death and all of those sad things that tear us apart. I don’t love them. They don’t make us comfortable. They don’t make us stronger, as the old adage goes, if they don’t kill us. They don’t make us feel as if everything happens for a reason. They simply make us. Human. Theodicy is the oldest theological question: why is there hurt and pain and dark things in a world that was created good and for people who were created in God’s image and for goodness? We don’t know, is the short answer, but here we are.

In the midst of suffering.

In the midst of pain.

In the midst of the spirit.

God is with us. Friends and family are with us.

We are grateful, and sometimes we are not. But today I am.

I need to get back into the habit of writing. If I expect my students to write, I should write. Frequently. And I really don’t write much at all, except when I am asked to write letters of recommendation for students and friends.

I have tried to sit down and write so many times in the past few years. You can see the evidence of the fits and starts here in my blog. I’ll write one thing then not come back to write again for weeks, month, and maybe even one time a year.

I decided just now—ten minutes ago—to write my three gratitudes here each night before I go to bed as a sort of meditation and a time to think back through my day.

Today I am grateful for beautiful, sweet tasting, moist heirloom navel oranges I found at Payless and the way their flavor rested heavy on my tongue as I ate my lunch today. They smelled of light fragrant flowers, reminding me of visiting Merideth in Florida and having to drive through the orange grove to get to her house, but their taste was heavy and serious and made me reflect back on a time when I stayed at the Palmer House in Chicago with my family, and we went to Palmer House Steak and Seafood for breakfast or brunch. The place was so fancy, we almost felt uncomfortable, and my mom was so happy her blue eyes sparkled like jewels, and my dad was so excited about the food he kept trying to guess where the chickens were raised (if you know my dad, you know). My brother and I both ordered the fresh squeezed orange juice, which came out in wine glasses, like we had ordered the most expensive mimosas. We were enamored with the waiter and the way he scraped the table with a little plastic object like a credit card to remove our crumbs between courses. To this day, I wonder what we had to give up throughout the rest of the year to afford that hotel, that brunch, and that orange juice.

Today I am grateful for my love dog, Luna the Squish. Last night she killed a baby possum in the yard, and it was horrible and terrible and I cried a lot, not only because an animal died, but because possums are my favorite animal, aside from my Squish. She thought it was a toy and played with it until it took a nap with its guts on the outside, as my sister-in-law says. This dog has seen me through two of the most difficult years of my life, and I know will see me through a couple more. Whenever I am sad, or lonely, or need a laugh her big head with an even bigger smile is here for me. She isn’t exceptionally friendly to other people or other animals, but she doesn’t really need to be.

Today I am grateful for reading out loud and the great joy that it brings to me. My students don’t appreciate the art of a well-read text, but they will before they leave high school. Reading out loud is perhaps one of the greatest joys in this life. Taking words from a page, making meaning, breathing life into them, and sharing them with others. What a beautiful connection between the writer, the message, and the listener!

Few things clear my mind like living in my van in the woods for a few days with my wife. Two Octobers ago, as I was eating a Belgian sausage and a beautiful deer ran through our campsite, I stopped eating animals products then and there (a decision that was also helped along by snuggling chickens in my backyard). To say it was a spiritual moment in my life is a huge understatement, and I can’t imagine ever going back to using animals for food, clothes, or work again.

This October for Bec’s birthday, we went to Potawatomi State Park in Sturgeon Bay, WI. Before I left Indiana, I got poison ivy on my eye, and by the time I arrived in WI, my eye warranted a trip to the Urgent Care. After we left Urgent Care, I took my pharmaceuticals, which if you know me is a huge deal, because I hate prescription drugs, but I felt so much better that we went for a hike.

I always feel so much better after physical activity and some time meditating in nature and hugging trees. Yes, I quite literally hugged a cedar tree; I am not allergic to those. I decided as we came back to our campsite from the Eastern Terminus of the Ice Age Trail that I want to try to hike the whole Ice Age Trial with Bec when we retire; we should probably practice small bits over time, so we know what to do. She also learned that if we walk to opposite way from our campsite, we can get into town and find a pretty cool hiker bar, so we’re going to do that next time.

In order to move back toward health—don’t get me wrong, I am feeling really good these days, but my friend Sarah just posted about the merits of doing hard things, and I haven’t done any hard things for just myself in a good, long while—I set myself some new goals for 2022. I plan to run four days a week: Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday, and Sunday. On the days I don’t run, I plan to ride my bike to school, starting tomorrow. All of this has the eventual goal of running a 50K, hopefully in October or November of next year. I also plan to be sober from alcohol, which is a depressant anyway, and lots of extra empty calories., which I hope to avoid by eating better food too.

Anyway, I’m getting old, so I should probably take better care of my mental and physical health. Prayer meditation, running, biking, and good wholesome caloric intake will get me far in feeling fine.

I wrote most of this as a caption for a post on my Instagram: fatvegantrailrunner.

One SOUL-filling mile: down to the church and back to Grace (Street). No, seriously, that’s my one-mile route in my neighborhood: down to a church and back to Grace Street, which is a block away from my house, my brother’s house really. 

I’ve been fucking up a lot lately: being angry for no really valid reason, crying over things that are out of my control, feeling displaced when my place is wherever I am, and generally feeling sorry for myself when there’s really nothing to feel sorry for. This is a combination of not living with my wife, being a teacher during COVID-19, and simply reaching middle age.

I’m trying, really trying, to give people the benefit of the doubt, assuming positive intent and believing that people are doing the best they can. I’m trying really hard to extricate myself from family things and friend groups whose “best they can” still feels wrong or bad to me. I want for myself a healthy and fulfilling life, so sometimes someone else’s best and my boundaries don’t work together.

I never wish them ill, but I want the best for myself in this life. And at this point I am not willing to sacrifice my best I can for their best they can. Is this selfish? Maybe.

So, I guess this is to say that I don’t want to hurt people, but I also don’t want to be hurt. 

This is to say that I am trying with each new day to make a new me. To make good choices that don’t hurt people, to say I am sorry when I have hurt people.

Down to the church and back to grace. I have a few I am sorries to say.