paulmuses

I was born, baptized, and educated into the Catholic Faith. In first grade, in 1955, this was the first question and answer from the Baltimore Catechism that the sister handed out for us to use every day.

Who made me?

God made me.

So anything Catholic that happens in the world reminds me of my childhood Faith.

Coincidentally, I’ve been listening to Bob’s 1979 album, Slow Train Coming, with one of my favorite Dylan songs, Precious Angel, with this chorus.

Shine your light, shine your light on me

Shine your light, shine your light on me

Shine your light, shine your light on me

Ya know I just couldn’t make it by myself

I’m a little too blind to see

Oh man, if one of the greatest cultural individualists of all time, also the author of Like a Rolling Stone, and

How does it feel

To be on your own

With no direction home

Two songs, fifteen years apart, with a similar theology. If even Dylan, the orneriest, don’t tell me what to do genius, needs help, as he pleads early in Angel,

To show me I was blinded, to show me I was gone

How weak was the foundation I was standing upon

Then what about an average schmuck like me who thinks he escaped from his Faith half a century ago?

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It turns out it isn’t easy to be an atheist or an agnostic, which is not believing in either the existence or nonexistence of a deity.

A couple of weeks ago, through a Lifelong Learning course and the book Born Believers: The Science of Children’s Religious Belief, I learned that the human brain includes cultural tools that make believing in gods easy or natural. One such tool, which the proponents of the Cognitive Science of Religion call agency detection, is a built-in bias to look for agents behind events, present from the earliest beginnings of homo sapiens.

This is the proverbial need for Mr Caveman to take the thinnest possible evidence of a predator seriously because the cost of not doing so was too great. Last night, for example, I heard a door creak and immediately was on alert.

There are other tools like that, but I think you get the point. Every human society includes gods of some sort because our brains are biased toward this phenomenon. Our instructor makes clear that this cultural prejudice does not mean there is a God gene or that religious belief is inevitable or is proof of God.

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This idea, our noggin’s natural fealty toward the transcendent, is new to me. And I’m processing it. Something, I hope, my own brain is still able to do at 77. But it does help me understand why I’ve never been able to let go of the feeling that, in the theologian Marcus Borg’s words found in The Heart of Christianity, there is a MORE out there,

A nonmaterial layer or level of reality, an extra dimension of reality.

My sometimes Muse Bob seems to know, as reflected in his long lifetime of songs.

Me? Though I now understand why I’m still in the God game, the answers from my first religious instruction don’t suit me as an adult. Because my brain apparently has a default position, it’s incumbent upon me to keep searching, which perhaps doesn’t come so naturally. Still, one is more than his brain, isn’t she?

As I walk tentatively toward what might or might not be the abyss, I wonder what I might find, or if there will be any longer an I to discover what is or isn’t there.

If not, that would be a bummer, so my brain says.

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“Newly elected senators walk toward an orientation meeting inside the U.S. Capitol on Monday, less than a week after Democrats took control of the House and Senate,” read a CBS lead sentence.

The fellow in the blue suit, new guy Josh Turek, representing my state of Iowa, has never walked, having been born with spina bifida. But he has crawled up hundreds of stairs, dragging his wheelchair, asking for our votes.

When visiting our community for the first time a year ago, he said something that stuck with me.

Running for the United States Senate is not the hardest thing I’ve done.

This is not an essay about the details of Josh’s life, politics, or America’s midterm election.

It’s about each of our stories. How we’ve traveled from A to B. What challenges we’ve faced.

Once you look closely at a new person, choosing the better verbs becomes much easier.

Oh, you can’t beat fun at the old golf course, especially on a cloudless fall day, with no one but Mike, me, and Jim, Elvis impersonator, the superintendent of this nine-hole course in northeast Iowa.

An empty links meant hundreds of tinkle options for me, hazarded by four cups of coffee.

This glorious day, something miraculous. On two consecutive holes, Mike chipped in from off the green with a seven-iron. Each time, his ball bounced several times before hitting the flagstick and plunging into the cup. For duffers like us, these were images to recall in the depth of winter.

But it also got me thinking about last times. We’re both late-stage septuagenarians with months before our next game.

Will there be golf in heaven?

Will there be a porta-potty on every tee box?

Will we listen to the late Jim or the real Elvis?

A few days ago, I bumped into my friend Reg, whom I hadn’t seen for a while. He was putting a small package that he had taken out of a backpack into a UPS drop box. I noticed a bike propped against a bench that he would mount when we finished this brief catch-up.

“How you doing?” I asked. “Oh, a bit rough today,” he offered. “You?”

“I’m OK. Say, you look tired. Do you need help with that package?”

“No, I’m good.”

“Are you still coaching tennis at the high school?

“Yeah, staying visible. It’s easy for older people to become invisible. Got to stay in the game.”

“I saw you playing the other day. How old are you?”

“I’m 82. You?

“77. I’ve been worrying that 80’s right around the corner.”

“Oh, 80, man, that’s a different world.”

“Hey Reg, that doesn’t look like an e-bike.”

Some moments fit a songwriter’s lyrical fragment perfectly. As I walked to the Mexican restaurant where our older men’s book group met last night, the photo’s scene interrupted my mope about the USA’s haunted condition.

Instead of the usual five-minute delay before the words appeared in my brain, the chorus from Leonard Cohen’s “Anthem ” galloped across the sky.

There is a crack, a crack in everything

That’s how the light gets in

So even before the Modela Negra and the Colorado Burrito, I was primed to discuss our October book, Taco USA: How Mexican Food Conquered America by Gustavo Arellano.

But first, the owner, Martin Peña, and one of his sons told us how Martin came to America from Mexico at eight and eventually ran this popular local restaurant with his family for 19 years, with plans to expand.

A very old and very sacred American story.

There were six. And now there is one. They weren’t perfect, but they were mine. And one is the loneliest number.

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The first to die was Sam, a Beagle, of old age, at roughly 84 human years. He lived in the fifties and sixties, a different time, with no leash or poop bags. Mrs. Weinswag, the neighborhood crone three doors up East Street, would complain. Sam was a survivor, with wounds from a car chassis and, likely, a bobcat. In the end, he was blind and deaf and would follow my mom up the stairs one lame step at a time. One Saturday morning, my dad took him to the vet and came back alone.

Paul Gardner, Sr. was next, at 71, in 1993, with sinus cancer that took too long to diagnose. A lifelong Republican, he cast his last vote for Bill Clinton, saying the Christian Right would eventually destroy his party. He was an engineer who worked on cryogenic propellant for the Saturn moon rocket. In retirement, he made multigrain bread products and sold them at farmers’ markets. In his last few months, he built a second railing down into the basement, saying to our mother, “You’ll be in this house a long time, and I don’t want you falling when you do the Monday morning laundry.”

Dad was 35 years right about the Republican Party and about his wife of 43 years. Dody Gardner would live in our childhood home until 2016, when she started wandering outside at night, necessitating that my brother Pat, who lived five miles from Mom and who had been checking in on her every day, move her into a memory care unit where she would live in misery for a year and a half, dying of COPD at 95. Dody was a master bridge player who graduated from college in 1942 and raised my two brothers and me. When I was 13, I came home crying after fighting with a neighborhood kid. “Who started the fight?” she asked. “I did,” I sobbed. “Then it’s your problem, buster.” Her unsympathetic but perfect answer planted a seed that’s still blossoming.

My brother Pat was the youngest and stayed in his hometown, as did his wife, Sue. They were married for 49 years. He was an excellent athlete, an All-State baseball pitcher, which made his death from liver cancer at 70 last year even harder to take. It’s likely this killer cancer was connected to the removal of all of his colon except for a small piece for colitis thirty years ago. According to his oncologist, they should have tested that bit of colon every year. By the time they discovered the disease, it was too late. Pat became a regional sales manager for Sherwin-Williams and retired about a decade ago, partly to have more time to help manage our mother’s decline, with the patience of a youngest son and his mother’s no-nonsense attitude.

My other brother, Peter, born two years after me and four years before Pat, also died last year of lung cancer. Peter, a city manager, left for the south in 1974 and never returned, dying in Florida. When he was two, a car accident resulted in him being catapulted from his mother’s arms out of an open window onto a curb. I was in the front passenger seat and ended up on a grassy boulevard, not seriously injured. As a result of his injuries, Peter’s left arm and leg were malformed. Sadly, Pat and I lost touch with Peter in the last five years. After Pat’s death, I discovered Peter had been in an Assisted Living facility for two years and that his wife, Pamela, had just died. Fortunately, I was able to FaceTime with my brother many times before his death last January.

So, Vidya Sury, Collecting Smiles, when you ask about a family tradition, and since we are heading into Christmas season, I’m going to start playing a Christmas album my family put on the brand new 1955 stereo every season while we gathered in the rarely used living room with the decorated tree on Christmas Eve, tearing into gifts, lighting the fire, drinking eggnog, lingering for midnight Mass, salivating for my mother’s chocolate pie, arguing about whatnot, and listening for Sam’s ” Let Me In ” bark.

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Including the one inside me

Creative — Carole Olsen asks what kind of doormat we are.

This is what happens, Editor—Extraordinaire Adrienne Beaumont and master—commenter Rodrigo S-C, when you disrespect observant days. Today is National Mule Day, and I have a very funny mule joke. But nooo, I can’t give the readers of my favorite publication a Steve Martin-worthy chuckle because of this conspiracy to raise the prompt standards.

By the way, it’s also National Chicken Fried Steak Day. I’m guessing the two of you, with your hoity-toity principles, disdain this dish enjoyed at diners around America. Cooks, not chefs, serve it with instant mashed potatoes and lots of gravy to hide the mystery meat underneath. I also have a very funny Chicken-Fried Steak joke that includes imported beef from Russia, but I’ll keep it to myself.

Usually on Mondays, my favorite diner will follow up its steak-for-the-common-man special with a slice of MinceMeat Pie, bought the same day at Walmart.

Which reminds me, yesterday, I had the cyst that had erupted on my butt on Saturday, as I contemplated Carole’s prompt, removed just so I could sit on my designated diner stool, the one with carpenter’s tape with my name penciled in. My doctor said that at my age, these blisters are often stress-related. Was I worried about something? She would have told me the latest abscess joke making the rounds at the clinic, but said she didn’t want me laughing too hard while she had a sharp object on my rear end.

Coincidentally, you’ll be delighted to know it’s also National Mince Meat Pie Day. This was my mother’s favorite dessert, and I have a very funny mother-and-son Oedipus joke I usually tell on May 6, National Freud Day. Instead, I’ll jot it down on a pink Post-it note and attach it to her tombstone.

So I’m sorry, Carole; you are one of my favorite writers. I wish I had a doormat story because I have a very funny doormat joke. However, I don’t even have a dormant tale yet, but I am working on a very funny…

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A few months ago, I attended a men’s soccer World Cup game between Argentina and Switzerland, with 70,000 other spectators and a TV audience of millions.

For the next few weeks, I’ll fall asleep reading Stephen King’s 11/22/63, a terrific 800-page novel about traveling back in time to stop the assassination of John F. Kennedy that sold 84,000 copies in its first week.

However, most of us do our thing over in the corner, out of the limelight.

Yesterday, I sat with a small crowd on a beautiful Saturday fall day, watching Luther College triumph over Ripon College, 35 to 20, in American football.

Last Sunday, Rebecca and I were mesmerized for two hours as the Oneota Valley Community Orchestra performed Letters from Lincoln and other works to celebrate America’s 250th anniversary.

With a high school auditorium about 25% full.

Occasionally, I ask myself how much my reader audience size matters to my commitment to writing. That’s the point of this story’s opening image. And to the contrast I’ve drawn between the vast audience some have and the relatively tiny numbers most experience, including me.

In the photo below, Argentina’s Lionel Messi, the world’s greatest men’s soccer player, is taking a corner kick.

What if, instead of millions, only a handful were watching, would that change his attention, intensity, or commitment to craft?

I’m guessing not, and I need to remind myself why.

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When I write, I imagine an audience of one, a fiction I use to keep my fingers moving. I think of you, in Section F, Row D, seat 4, as I search on a make-believe playing field for a synonym, rearrange a paragraph, audition titles, add a dollop of humor, and discover an enlightening simile or metaphor.

This morning, for this story, it’s whiffle ball, baseball lite, played in the backyards of millions of kids growing up, including, I suspect, America’s greatest baseball players, without an audience.

Before I played Little League with crowds of 50 or more, including my parents and brothers, I honed my skills with Timmy and Tommy in our driveway, combing Mrs. Thompson’s flower beds for foul balls and admiring our towering homers that landed on the Welches’ roof.

The game mattered, and so did how much fun it was.

Once we started playing in front of others, things changed. Often, for the better. It’s a kick to have people watch, to pay attention to what we are doing, to hear them say, “You really got ahold of that one, didn’t you?”

Or, “I love your baseball metaphor.”

Who among us wouldn’t want a Stephen King’s stadium full of new readers every week?

But I wonder: I’ve been to seven Bob Dylan concerts, and he never, ever talks to his audience, except to introduce the Band. Lately, over the last decade or so, he doesn’t allow phones because he wants the experience to be only about the music.

I suspect the same is true for him. It’s about the words and the melodies and the performance. And the audience, big or small, doesn’t matter much, except, of course, to pay the bills and probably to stroke his sizable ego.

Yesterday, my friend Steve and I played catch until our 77-year-old arms gave out. It’s all still about the game.

Our audience was the black walnut trees, two deer, and a ground squirrel.

The audience is icing on the cake. But it ain’t the cake, not for any of us.

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After three, I love the before-and-after moments. Not minutes, moments, because I fully inhabit each, in true Buddha fashion.

An hour after I arrive, warm blankets hide the untied straps of the hospital gown and the grand canyon-sized gaps.

Without hesitation, from repetition, my name and birthdate roll off my tongue.

Nurses and doctors flock to me.

The anesthetist’s blissful words, “We’ll see you afterward,” come true in the blink of an eye.

Death and resurrection.

“Peanut butter on toast and coffee, please,” I say upon arising. It’s now been 42 hours without.

The ordinary becomes extraordinary.

“Shantel, this is the best toast I’ve ever had,” I declaim.

“Four little polyps,” the doctor reports. “We’ll know more in a week.”

Soon after, freed, Rebecca chauffeurs me to the Sugar Bowl for a hot fudge sundae with whipped cream, a cherry, and no guilt.

Later today, I’ll visit a dermatologist for a full-body scan to check for cancerous and precancerous spots.

He’ll use special instruments to examine my whole body, head to toe, inside and out. It’s a preventive measure to stop something harmful from growing and spreading. 

Earlier this year, another skin specialist discovered and removed a Basal Cell Carcinoma behind my right shin just above the heel. She estimated it had been growing for five years and suggested regular examinations.

Yesterday, I joined hundreds in my small community in northeast Iowa to cast votes in America’s midterm election. Election Day across the USA is Tuesday, November 3, and early voting began on October 14.

After filling out my ballot, I placed it in an envelope, secured and sealed with a thin line of glue under a strip of paper I peeled off, and dropped into a snowballing chorus of opposition.

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