Category Archives: The Atheist’s Pulpit

One believer’s view.

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40 Years Gone

My Mom, Ernestine Hinton, died 40 years ago today. She was gracious, charming, beautiful, quick-witted and sharp-tongued, as well as light-hearted and kind. I’m never far from the memories or that grief, the price of love.

Tonight is the full Wolf Moon. Walking Raven would have appreciated the timing.

Life is short; death everlasting. Mom told Merri she knew I’d be angry about her death for a long time. Indeed, I was, but anger is a bitter memorial. She deserved better.  

That was more than half my lifetime ago. I’m older than Mom lived to be and have lived longer without her than with her. I survived lymphoma which killed her. I often mark this anniversary with a haircut, a ritual mutilation — she loved my hair. The sacrifice is less each year. 

They say funerals are for the living, but Mom would have liked hers. The turnout, the finery — the hats! The Dixieland band playing a dirge as we rolled her coffin a mile down a busy street from the church to the cemetery, next to my Dad. My bear Teddy rode on her coffin. Patsy Coontz pleaded with me not to bury Teddy with Mom. (She’s long dead, now, too, but Teddy is with me.) 

The band was upbeat on the return to the champagne reception afterwards. It was a good send-off. 

Chris Hobgood, the minister, said he’d visited my mother in her final days in the hospital. She said she wanted to talk about her funeral yet every time changed the subject. At the memorial, he read this poem, appropriate as spiritual metaphor lacking conventional religious imagery.

I am standing upon the seashore.
A ship at my side spreads her white sails to the morning breeze,
and starts for the blue ocean.
She is an object of beauty and strength,
and I stand and watch her until she hangs like a speck of white cloud
just where the sea and sky come down to mingle with each other.

Then someone at my side says: “There! She’s gone!”
Gone where? Gone from my sight – that is all.
She is just as large in mast and hull and spar as she was when she left my side,
and just as able to bear her load of living freight
to the place of her destination.
Her diminished size is in me, and not in her.

And just at the moment
when someone at my side says: “There! She’s gone!”
there are other eyes that are watching for her coming;
and other voices ready to take up the glad shout:
“There she comes!”

(I’ve seen this attributed to Henry Van Dyke and Luther Beecher.) 

Though one of beauty and strength, she *is* gone forever and nowhere else. I believe death is absolute and final. Still, her mitochondria swim within me, and many of my best traits were hers. I’m grateful to her for more than just my life. And sorry she didn’t have more of her own.

NADA - New American Dark Ages, The Atheist's Pulpit

Cold comfort in the capacity of time to bury kings

Ozymandias

By Percy Bysshe Shelley

I met a traveler from an antique land,

Who said—“Two vast and trunkless legs of stone

Stand in the desert. . . . Near them, on the sand,

Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown,

And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,

Tell that its sculptor well those passions read

Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,

The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed;

And on the pedestal, these words appear:

My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;

Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!

Nothing beside remains. Round the decay

Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare

The lone and level sands stretch far away.”

 

Source: Shelley’s Poetry and Prose (1977)

Ozymandias | The Poetry Foundation

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That which is no more

Like many houses in Albuquerque, our old house had a niche in the hallway intended for a phone, including a slot for a thin phonebook. Even when we had a landline, we never used the niche for that purpose. Instead, it held a kachina most of the time, as well as my keys and wallet.

Years ago, our friends Ann and John sent us a stained-glass piece which happened to be exactly the size of a small window in the front door of the house. It was a natural fit. Imagine our surprise the first time we saw the sun shine through that stained glass to illuminate the niche by chance, if you believe in serendipity. This didn’t happen every day. Indeed, most of the year the blue light shone elsewhere. However, every February and October the light appeared in the hallway and over a few weeks’ time it drifted toward the niche until it full illuminated the niche a morning or two.

Twice a year, we watched this progression. Now, it is no more. The niche, the door, and the sun are as they have been for decades. But we are gone and we took the blue light and kachina with us. Now, we watch for movements of light in our new house. This will take time.

This video is 10 minutes realtime but I have sped it up 16x.

alignment of the niche sped up

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Data-lust be damned!

The following quote is from Birdnote. I am SICK of datalust, sick of the belief that our curiosity supersedes the rights of other creatures to live unmolested. Damn these scientists. Let someone tackle them and strap a proportionate device to their heads because that would be “fascinating.”

“Tiny devices attached to the heads of frigatebirds revealed fascinating information”

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Staggering along Memory Lane

I read reviews of books, movies, restaurants, even art. Often, I know I won’t read / see / visit the subject of the review, in which case I especially appreciate spoilers. (This is the only way I can handle horror stories.)

 

This morning, I read a piece in which two authors bandied about favorite books and authors in a genre I hadn’t heard of: fantasy noir. I followed leads to several references. One particular author had written a biography of Richard Brautigan, author of Trout Fishing in America, among others.

 

I read several of Brautigan’s works in my (pre-)teens. I remember liking his stuff. (The biography looks good, too.) But there were a couple of works that didn’t come up in my search. And that led me to the realize I was thinking of another author: William Kotzwinkle, who wrote a book I *loved* at the time, Elephant Bangs Train (short stories). To this day, I think now and then about A Most Incredible Meal, especially when a celebration ignores a tragedy, which happens quite often.

 

But, what about Reflections on a Gift of Watermelon Pickle? I’d misattributed that to Brautigan, as well. I find now it was from an eclectic collection of poems by then-modern poets. Looking at the table of contents online, I don’t recognize any of the titles, but this one stuck through the years.

 

Learning involves building connections, particularly non-linear and tangential. We laugh at recalling minutia from decades ago while forgetting what day it is today, but to get a hint of what lies below the surface — the depth of knowledge and experience we might plumb — is a delight. The mind amuses and amazes. You’re never alone once you befriend yourself.   

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Appreciating Connections

A tentative connection formed in my mind. One piece was a NPR story about CPE Bach, whom I had never  heard of. I felt the speaker’s appreciation for this Bach — I dare say, I appreciated his appreciation in a way that echoed later, with an article about an Edward Hopper picture I might not have looked at twice, certainly not with the eye of the reviewer, or his enthusiasm. Why, I wondered, do these pieces seem different from countless others I read every day?

 

Is my reaction connected to the way my neighbors speak to each other now? No longer the quick “how’s it going?” as we pass each other, but a more concerned “how are you coping?” paired with a pause and eye contact. Mind you, we are not “essential,” which is to say, we are comfortable and safe, so why the concern? What has changed — what’s gone or arrived that makes us appreciate … more.