cogito. sum?

November 20th is the projected date for the release of my new favorite Color.  I've never paid much attention to color before, am unable to distinguish tope from tan, brunette from brown.  But this time, distinguishing will be both easier and more exciting.  That day is to bring our new baby into the world.  We found out last week that she is a she and when we asked Toby what her name ought to be he replied, "Color," presumably expressing his desire to be creative but we took it as a real suggestion.  So for now that's who she is, a good old-fashioned hippy name...Color Julin-McCleary.  We can't wait to meet her.

October 24, 2006

 

Listening to Cloud Cult’s “Transistor Radio,” I’m having a deep moment of existential despair, of aloneness.  I wanted to email Mike Pearson to tell him how great this record is.  I realized how far away he is.  I missed him.  I realized how I wanted his company but this could not be.  Natalie and Toby are out shopping for groceries and a present for our nephew Brody.  I’m in this chilly apartment alone.  What if something happened to my beloved and son out there on the roads?  Then my aloneness really would be laid bare.  This apartment, in which I’ve shared untold good moment upon good moment, being loved and loving Toby, friends and company, and Toby would instantly become a barrenland.  What reason do I have to believe that this blessed existence will continue?  I have none.  Thus the despair and feeling of aloneness.  I picture myself at the railing, taking communion at some later date, maybe tragedy has indeed struck, maybe I’m just really fucking old and I no longer have the trappings of youth (future expectations, the luxury of living parents as a buffer to my own mortality, friends still living scattered far and wide that testify to my existence, that can bear witness that I actually did live on this earth, that my feet touched the ground and I swam in the ocean, and I saw Big Ben take his first step into the 3^rd millennium and I got vomited on by a man hopped up on something, friends who can recall that I was hurt by girls in junior high and high school and that I was an ass to people) and maybe I’ve lost my mind to dementia or mental illness and I can’t depend upon the memories I hold so dear that prove I am (memories of loving and hurting and laughing).  Maybe I’m homeless and have no stuff that places me at some point on the class continuum (it doesn’t matter where exactly, just that I have a place).  That piece of bread and swallow of wine are in my hand.  Into my aloneness God speaks a word, I know you and you are mine.  Eat, drink, I am yours.  I like that image.  Cogito ergo Sum?  Bullshit.  I am known (I forget the passive in Latin), ergo Sum.

When I lived in Liverpool I lived with this vicar named Geoff Pearson.  One of my favorite people hands down.  Long story short, the Queen got smart and made him Bishop of Lancaster (in NW England, north of Liverpool and near the Lake District).  He of course does not do this alone, both the Incarnate Word and Jean Pearson (his wife and another one of my favorite people/heroes/mentors) will accompany him and sustain him.  So I'm pretty excited about this.  Check the links below for news from the BBC et al re: Geoff's new position of service!

http://icliverpool.icnetwork.co.uk/0100news/0100regionalnews/tm_objectid=17452206%26method=full%26siteid=50061%26headline=geoff%2dsteps%2dup%2dto%2dbishop-name_page.html#story_continue

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/lancashire/5216600.stm

http://www.number10.gov.uk/output/Page9922.asp

Are you in the Puget Sound area? 

 

Come see us off!

Host:	Brian and Natalie
Location:	Brian and Natalie's Call for directions
When:	Saturday, June 17, 5:00pm to 8:00pm
Phone:	425 369 0184
We're moving to St. Paul Minnesota on June 18 and we're gonna miss ya! So we wanna see you one last time at our Seattle abode (we'll be back a couple times a year of course). Stop bye, give us a hug or a pat on the bottom, and a "get on with it." We promise to do likewise. We'll just be hanging out after packing up the van, so it'll be real mellow. Don't bring anything but yourself. Depending on how much we can fit in the moving van, you may actually end up taking something with you when you leave!

 

my friend dallas turned me onto this interesting site.  www.globalrichlist.com  go there enter your income and see where you rank with the world's other 5 billion 999 million 999 thousand 999 people.  you may be surprised, horified, inspired, or all of the above.

 

FYI:  I am in the top 5.99%.  There are 5,640,257,352 human persons that are poorer than me. 

Taking the bus home from work on Good Friday, I sat next to a guy who works for the same social service agency that I do, but in another project.  He's a good guy and we chat occassionally on the bus home.  At one point he asked, "Do you have any Easter plans...church, family stuff?" 

 

Today in Seattle, as in many other U.S. cities, thousands demonstrated for federal immigration policy reform.  It was beautiful sitting here at my downtown workplace as droves of Latinos passed by with their U.S. flags, strollers, toddlers, youths, optimism and communal pride.  I thought of being a minority in this country before I die and I liked that thought.  I thought of my Irish and Italian ancestors coming to this country, driven by the hope of economic opportunity.  I don't even know their names, but (as history books claim) these people likely worked the shit jobs that the American majority of that time didn't want.  They saved and scraped and laid the foundation for the priviledge and comfort with which I would experience this country.  As the tens of thousands passed by today I thought I saw an occassional McCleary, Pessavento, and Bacco pass by.  I pray that when this new majority takes power, they will remember their time as aliens and wayfarers in the land better than our current western-euro majority does.

My Pastor reminded me of one of my favorite Biblical facts.

I once worked at a housing project for formerly homeless adults with mental illness and chemical dependency in the downtown of an American city. 

I just saw my favorite film of the past 6 months or so.  "The Constant Gardner" is a harrowing thriller that says somthing important, broadly about the price people in Kenya and other developing countries pay for Western luxury and excess (not to mention exorbitant profits for a handful), and in some ways even more powerfully my inevitable complicity with injustice. 

 

Several years ago, Josh Graber gave me Voltaire's "Candide."  I dug it quite a bit, starting and finishing it on a flight from Seattle to Iowa City.  "Tend you gardens" is the advice that closes the novel.  My reaction to this philosophical nugget varies from time to time.  I love it at times as a poetic way of communicating the S. Covey principles of "circles of influence and circles of concern."  In terms of effectiveness, it is wise to focus one's energies on that which can be affected and less wise to expend energies on that which concerns one but is beyond one's influence.  At other times I abhor Candide's sentiment for the way it infects me with a laissez faire attitude toward injustice with which I am intricately joined, despite my conscience's attempts at suppressing awareness (thus establishing false ignorance).  Sure, perhaps I cannot impose sweeping changes on behemoth pharmaceutical companies with ungodly capital interests at stake.  At the very least it is my duty to acknowledge the inequitable suffering imposed on "the least of these" so that I might enjoy (por ejemplo) advanced technology, the best medical care in the world, ridiculously superfluous diamonds covered with west African blood, apples at 50 cents a pound, jeans for $10, etc. etc.  And perhaps merely being opened up to the truth of the matter, I would make different choices, perhaps I could affect change.  Irregardless, my Savior calls me to weep with those who weep mourn with those who mourn rejoice with those who rejoice.  If nothing else, when I open myself up to this position of honesty and compassion, I am compelled to cry out to God for justice.  And if I stay there long enough, perhaps I'll be ready to answer the call, "Whom shall I send?" when it comes.

 

what did you think of "constant gardner?"  "Candide?"