Tag Archives: Barclay

The Throes of Creation – Tomorrow I write

Posted on by
17
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Writer#mediaviewer/File:Leonid_Pasternak_001.jpg

The Throes of Creation – Leonid Pasternak

I’m newly retired.

Today was rough. All day.

Didn’t want to get up, semi-awake, my mind become a subatomic particle collider of memories, facts, people – confused, whirling, disoriented.

Got up, had coffee, but couldn’t write. Didn’t want to. Didn’t want to do anything.

Searched the emails, rummaged through the morning paper for something of interest. Nothing.

This house is dark in the morning. Not just at 5:00 a.m. It’s dark all morning. No sun. And the skies are cloudy. Gray. Like my spirit. Purposeless. Alone. Disinterested. Blah.

It’s the first taste of retirement. The congregation is gone, or, rather, I am gone from them. I miss them. I am without role. Without work. Without routine. No longer a shepherd. Nor am a sheep within a flock. Adrift. Aimless. Dead to what was. Unclear about what is or will be. I am alone.

Except for Barclay who doesn’t get it. He want’s to play. It’s just another day. Go out. Come in. Get the ball. Drop the ball at Dad’s feet. Play ball with Dad, eat food, play some more, go out, wonder why Dad isn’t paying attention and why we’re not getting exercise when there’s such nice snow outside.

Barclay drove me nuts today. Not his fault. He’s a dog. He knows nothing about retirement, nothing yet about aging, about hearing loss, about depression.

Barclay knows nothing about the Mayflower, the Pilgrims, the Puritans, the Congregationalists or the Presbyterians. He’s lucky. He carries no existential guilt, no multigenerational trauma, only the Now. Only the present. Sit. Roll Over. Get the ball. Heel. Treat. “Good Dog.”

I realize that today is Veterans Day and I think of my father, the Chaplain who shipped out for the South Pacific when I was a year-and-a-half old. I hear the train whistle near our house here in Chaska and remember being on the train with my mother after his ship left Los Angeles, the horror of being alone hearing and watching my mother’s inconsolable sobbing in the birth of the night train on the cross-country trip home to Boston. I hear the whistle and feel forlorn.

I remember years later being in the Lebanon Valley Hospital at the age of 14, two hours from home, and 15-minutes from losing a kidney from a football accident. It didn’t strike me as strange then that my parents weren’t there. Strange that their absence didn’t strike me as strange. I just thought they were busy. Now I wonder why they were not there. My mother didn’t drive. Why did my father not come until he arrived a week later with the ambulance driver to take me home? I was alone, forlorn, and thought it was normal. What could have been more important at the church or in the family than being there for their son who was in serious condition in a distant hospital?

The role – his robe – defined my father until the end of his life. It defined him. For most of my adult life it defined me. Until the sullying of the robe and the eight years without it at the Legal Rights Center. At LRC I learned to live without the robe among the criminal defendants and the lawyers and community advocates who pled their cases before the court. I lived the life of a “retired” pastor, a shepherd without a flock.

It’s that time again. I am not unprepared for this thing called retirement. But I realize tonight: I’ve been there. I need no robe to be the person I am and always was. A Stewart, a Titus, and an Andrews with a long ancestral history of dealing with life and death, flight and fight, denial and courage, faltering faith and faithfulness, cruelty and kindness, beheading blocks and pardons.

It’s time for the pardon. Time to let go of the past. Time to let go of the robe. Time to be open to the freshness of a life as it was at the beginning: naked and glorious, crying out for meaning and the wonder of anything at all.

Tomorrow I write!

Joyful Obedience

Video

6

Wouldn’t it be lovely if we could all be this well trained in the things that bring joy to others and to ourselves? This is 10-month-old Barclay wanting to please the Alpha Dog and the Beta Dog. The commands were sit, down, roll over, off (which means “leave it”), come, and heel.

The 10 Commandments according to Barclay and the Peanuts

Posted on by
2

It was so cold last Sunday that your breath froze in mid-air. It called for a lighter touch and for compliments for those who braved the cold. Here’s the sermon at Shepherd of the Hill Presbyterian Church in Chaska, MN.

Barclay preparing to go to school

Posted on by
4

All schools in Minnesota will be closed Monday out of concern for children’s safety. Governor Dayton wants no child left behind freezing at a bus stop. The prediction is 50 degrees below zero with wind chill. Meanwhile, seven-month old Barclay is practicing for his first trip outside in booties. He’s a champ, despite the slur in the narration. He’s attending his first obedience class Monday night in New Germany, MN. Unless they call school off.

The Puppy in the Memory Care Center

Posted on by
8

Barclay, the 6 month old Cavalier King Charles Spaniel, walks on his leash in the pastor’s hand down the long first floor hall of the memory care center. People stop and smile. Barclay paws at their legs, scaring a few, but mostly arousing greater desire to touch his soft, fluffy fur.

This is Barclay’s first experience in the memory care center. It’s also his first ride on an elevator. We take the elevator to the second floor.

I knock on the door. We walk in the room to see a parishioner who loves dogs. She’s always had a dog before she lost her independence. Barclay goes to the bed, puts his paws on the side of the bed, and begs to be lifted to say hello to Susan. Susan’s eyes open wide. “Oh, my!” she says. Her face is beaming. I lift Barclay to meet Susan. She reaches out to touch and is delighted by his softness. He licks her face, kisses her mouth, brings her to the rapture only a puppy can at this point in her dying life. There is no time. Time disappears. There is no then. No there. No anywhere but here, no time but now in puppy time on the second floor of the memory care center where Susan doesn’t know she is.

There is NOTHING in this world like a puppy. He just loves everyone the same whether or not we know our own names. Is it a coincidence that ‘dog’ spelled backwards Is ‘god’?

Barclay is watching from the floor. His “owner” is doing something with Susan. “Dad” tales Susan’s hand. They’re holding hands. They close their eyes. Dad is talking in a peaceful tone of voice Barclay hasn’t heard before. It’s very quiet in the room. Susan’s face relaxes and is at peace. Long after Dad has stopped talking, Susan’s eyes stay closed. They hold hands for a long time in the silence. She is at peace. Maybe Susan has gone to be with dog.

The World in a Tunnel

Posted on by
Reply

Can the whole world shrink to the size of a walking path tunnel in Chaska, Minnesota?

On our morning walk, while Barclay sniffs his way along the path for signs of smaller creatures who might not have made it through the night, my eyes were drawn to the graffiti on the both sides of the tunnel. Boldly painted in black or red, the logos belonged to gangs or gang wannabes.

Eight years at the Legal Rights Center in Minneapolis left me we a knowledge of graffiti and tagging. Our defense attorneys sometimes defended “taggers”, self-proclaimed creative artists who used public space as their canvasses. Other times the graffiti was posted by a gang member to announce the gang’s claim to a block or a neighborhood. Often the gangs were competing for control. In that case, there were at least two “tags” and sometimes many: Latin Kings, the Crips, or the Gangster Disciples. The graffiti meant, “Don’t mess with us. We own this neighborhood.”

In Chaska this morning the tunnel walls were filled with gang symbols, most likely by kids who are gang “wannabes”, kids in a small city pretending to be gangsters the way my generation used to play cops and robbers or Cowboys and Indians. You couldn’t be both a cop and robber. You couldn’t be a cowboy and an Indian. You were either in the one gang or the other. We’re all in some kind of gang where we get our sense of identity and the security that comes with belonging to something.

Walking through the tunnel was like living for a moment in a microcosm of the world where the small town folks’ claims of ownership and the threats of violence mirror and replicate the power of greed, the lust for power and “the good life” that filters down from The Boss, Trump’s Tower, Wall Street, the Mall, Afghanistan, Iraq, and Washington, D.C. where the will to security and power is the motive force.

Meanwhile, six-month-old Barclay, the 10-pound puppy on my leash ignores the walls and sniffs the macadam for a mouse that has already died, unaware of handwriting on the walls of the superior species of his master.

– Gordon C. Stewart, Saturday morning, November 16, 2013

Dad was bad today

Posted on by
8

Barclay (Cavalier King Charles Spaniel) and bad Dad (homo sapiens)

Barclay (Cavalier King Charles Spaniel) and bad Dad (homo sapiens)

The new puppy (3 pounds 8 ounces) was leaping from my arms, flying to the sidewalk before I knew what was happening. It happened so quickly. Barclay was still excited from meeting the children around the corner; he was not his customary docile self.

The plunge from my arms was terrifying. The yelping was blood-curdling. I thought for sure he had hit his head or broken a leg or suffered some internal injury. He crawled forward under the Blue Spruce for protection, still crying loudly. I fetched him from under the tree, held him close, apologized profusely – “I’m so sorry, little guy. I’m so sorry” – and carried him into the house, still traumatized and whimpering. He settled down in my arms while I checked his body for signs of damage. Finding none, I put him down to see how he would walk. His walk was slow but straight. He spent the rest of the day more quietly but was fine as the day wore on, returning to his playful self during late afternoon play time.

Barclay greeted Kay’s return from work with a wagging tail and kisses to her face, as if to say, “Dad was bad today, but I forgave him. I’m glad you’re home!”

It’s a Puppy World

Posted on by
4

Barclay on chestAfter much careful (actually impulsive) thought, we decided to add to the household. Barclay arrived in this world May 21, 2013. We brought him home last Sunday evening.

Barclay is a Cavalier King Charles Spaniel, a breed known for extraordinary companionship, quietness, intelligence, beauty, and ease of training, all of which drew us to the breed. But when we saw this little guy, saw those big eyes and that excitedly wagging tail, picked him up (all 3 lbs.6 ounces of him), and experienced the quick licks to the face and gentle nibbles on the ear, we were putty in a 10 week-old puppy’s paw.

Life has changed for him and for us.

He has a home…..and our sleeping days are over. He’s very quiet. Doesn’t whine at all. As we learned Monday night, he’s too young to make it through the night without a potty time. Poor little guy was cold, wet, and shivering when Kay came down at 4:30 for her cup of coffee and quiet time. He recovered well throughout the day, and we adjusted our schedule to be better “parents” to the un-house-broken baby. He has had no other accidents…largely because I watch his every move every day. I’m the stay-at-home puppy dad who now required TWO naps a day, just like Barclay.

We feel very blessed to have lost our mind and ask your good wishes and prayers that the three of us survive puppyhood in “a good way,” as our American Indian friends say.