That time, early in the morning, when you wander, still warm in your covers, between waking and sleeping, between dreams and what the day will demand.

I spent too much time there this morning, trying to recreate and understand scenes that had made so much sense in my not-quite-conscious moments earlier. The reality of certain knowledge dissolved like vanilla extract dropped off the teaspoon into custard, or like warm water at one end of the bath tub.

I was studying playwriting, but not going to class. I was called back for a part, but didn't return for the next stage of auditions. The teacher had a political consulting business. Her husband ran a dry cleaners next door. I talked about pregnancy and how having children was the heavy, most important thing. She was a big woman, heavy — pregnant?

Surely, I thought, there is a clue here for me about me. But I could not grasp it. Head in the pillow, I worked my way through to Tuesday and what happens on Tuesday. Things more truthful floated by, but they would not stay.

It took me a long time to get dressed. One thing I put on didn't go with another, and I ended up in the wrong tee-shirt,  wearing big clunky earrings all day. Heavy again.

I started a new book for Holy Week with my coffee. But it's Tuesday already and it's the same book I started last year and like last year, I won't get through it.

The vague, creeping edge of gray-green anxiety crept through me, like tasting something that's a bit off.  I did not shake it all day long. Not when wandering off to look at yarn and sweater patterns on the internet. Not while wandering the back aisles at Target looking at lampshades. Came home with Easter candy instead, then jammed it into a bag and tucked it out of sight on the dining room buffet. I googled "Easter brunch menus" and my browser slows to a stop as I click through photos of 53 eggs-for-Easter recipes.

And now I'm drifting off to sleep again, still not sure I am who I am and that whoever I am has a clue.

Kurt writes

Sharing a poem from my son.


Death in the digital age
by Kurt Grahnke


Whenever I send emails to myself as I so often do,
Recapitulating articles, which I may never read again,
Shipping docs through e-space to be given physical form
Through a printer I haven’t learned to sync up with yet,
Your name pops up right below mine, with a picture too,
Like email doesn’t know you’re dead.
Not too many G-R-A-H-N-s out there anymore.

Sometimes I think about sending you something,
As if that gesture might symbolize anything important.
It might manifest my lack of comprehension
Of what it means to be erased.
I can’t control Z your absence,
But the computer doesn’t know that,
So if I send you a message,
Do you get it?
Of course not.

But can’t these metaphors
Be strong enough to bring you back into existence?
Is our shared Netflix account, your facebook, our text history
Enough to make an argument for your continued presence in this world?
Are we all immortalized through our gadgets and data we leave behind?
If google suggests an advertisement for me about a baseball game that only came about because of all the things you once sent me,
Are you still talking to me?
It’s hard to say…
I love you so much
That I realize you aren’t.
But I’ll still go to the game
And wish you were there.

Broken, scattered, holy

I'm sitting in my aunt's sunroom, reading while regularly looking out at the birds on the bird feeders. A few minutes ago they were everywhere, clustered on the feeders, hanging upside down to get the suet in the netting, on the bench that serves as a rail for the deck. And then I shifted in my seat, ten--maybe twelve--feet behind the glass patio doors, and they all flew away. Shazam.

One of those fellows is now atop a pine tree at the edge of the lawn, a visible sentry, while the flocks of I-don't-know-what-they're-all-called return.

I'm out in the country and there are way more birds than can be found even on an active June morning in my urban back yard. I've seen a bright red, rather regal cardinal, a blue jay, a red-wing blackbird, and a lot of grey-brown winged things of all sizes that I do not have the eyes or expertise to tell apart. Their wings are sometimes fluttering hard to accomplish a landing near the food. I can see the wind they're fighting in the direction of the blowing snow.

Soon the people will be up in this house--with their age-old ways of bumping together, breakfasting, chatting, remembering, some fighting new battles with canes and walkers and hearing aids. Mostly loving one another, but with the occasional sandpapery brush-up.

Gregory Boyle (of Homeboy Industries fame) writes in "Barking to the Choir" (my morning reading), that God/the Holy appears in all kinds of unexpected, small things. He watches for them with the attitude of the Buddhist who held the whole glass and declared it "already broken."

The birds are here. the birds have already scattered. They've done so several times as I type this.

God/the Holy remains.

Cardinal call

I've been hearing the cardinal again in my neighborhood, though I've heard him far more often than I've seen him. This is probably my fault--he and his mate and their extended family are probably hanging out in backyards with well-stocked bird feeders and sunflower seeds. Nutritional pickings are slim in the tangle of forsythia bushes and grapevines around my house. But that cardinal call is welcome, loud and insistent from the bare trees, up where the blue sky of late-winter sunshiny days offers clear and bracing relief from February's fog.

I went back and re-read some Perverse Lutheran blog posts this morning. I do this from time to time, honestly to assure myself that I can indeed write something that I don't cringe at later.

I often fault my writing for reverting to the "up-twist at the end," as a way to get out of the mess I've written myself into, a way to back away from the computer keyboard that is my shield and my defense. I don't often feel that those "up-twists" are indeed true. ("Is this most certainly true?" remains the guiding question of this pervy Lutheran.)

The odd thing this morning is that I found my blog posts from last summer and fall comforting, even uplifting--to me--after a long stretch of grey February days and things to do that fell well short of being fun. A big part of that was all the recollections of Kris that I read, which came with reminders to pay attention to people and relationships, to strive to do better and to keep moving toward goals, even the ones that stay well in front of you as you reach for them.

That cardinal I'm hearing in the trees these days--was it the one watching the fledgling on the ground last July? Did that little bird, not quite ready to fly up into the mulberry tree by the back fence, much less the tree tops--did he (or she) make it?

"I'll fly away," says the old hymn. "When I die, hallelujah by and by, I'll fly away." There's freedom in those tree tops, up near the blue of sky, above this weary world. There's freedom and grace in leaving this world, but there's also freedom and grace when you stay behind.

That cardinal I'm hearing every morning is not about to leave the neighborhood. The call seeks his mate--the same dull-brown hard-working nest-building female of last summer. The pair will be at it again in the months ahead, doing the good work of this earth.