Religious times, they are a-changin'

My column from Lancaster....read and comment away! If you have never seen me in my priestly garb, please don't be shocked. I don't wear it most of the time.



http://articles.lancasteronline.com/local/4/251710

The pleasure of not accomplishing

This was a good night, I think -- more noteworthy for what it was than what it wasn't.



Tonight...



I didn't spend alone wandering the local mall -- I have enough winsome frocks and skirts in my closet already.



I didn't spend the dinner hour cleaning the house -- that will, however, have to be done before the potential buyers show up tomorrow.



I didn't work on a sermon or do the laundry -- yes, that can wait for tomorrow.



I didn't get propositioned by a man who is married to somebody else.



A friend didn't ask me to pose nude for his photo collection.



I didn't forget to buy the shower gel.



I didn't get messaged and end up chatting with someone who lives about a half an hour away for three hours.



I didn't forget to bring my son's baseball uniform to his dad's house a few days ago, so I didn't have to drive down to his house tonight.



Wow.



Look what I haven't accomplished.



Just an evening of good food and interesting conversation.

And a chance to listen to this song from my childhood...and still a source of pleasure.



This woman, who once would have done almost anything to get the story, now is content to sit on the sidelines and let the jugglers and clowns cavort.

But she does reserve the liberty to join them -- on a more accomplished night.

The Life I've always wanted

Sometimes, well...something you read or something somebody says gets you thinking.

What would your life have looked like if you'd made different choices?

I still am taken by the multitude of ways in which we experience the basics of work, faith or no faith, parenting and singleness, love and celibacy. As a decent listener, I enjoy the opportunity to walk with someone else a few yards, hear his or her story, let the rain of their hopes soak my skin.

After all, I can walk back into safety and dry off.

Coming from a family in which there were arguments, debates and sometimes grief, I appreciate tranquility. Yet others in my family seem to feed on arguments -- I'm sure that the family reunion will offer opportunities to see that in action. I love my cousins, but there have to be some good classic stories to come out of that reunion so we can tell them again at the next.

I am a professional questioner -- but I don't want to question the fundamentals as much as I used to. While I have a low tolerance for boredom, I also am wondering if the price of enduring love is possibly a little less sizzle and a bit more (odd metaphor for a vegetarian) steak.

The life I've always wanted involves a loving partner -- someone who can stand up to me, as Henry Higgins said, in a most unerotic metaphor, a consort battleship. But I'd rather cruise through the icy and stormy waters by my consort's side than ram his deck, if you take my meaning.

Does that make me dull? Perhaps. Or perhaps it makes me sane. Or maybe I just need to be surprised. After all, I do have a tendency to think I've figured it out -- maybe "it" needs to figure me out!

What is the balance of drama and peace in the life that you once wanted? Want now? Has it changed? Are you settled? Or seeking?

Or are you taking what life dishes out to you...and making it into your home.

Do I really want to be that....(insert rude term)?

A few years ago, a friend of mine looked at me kindly as he implied that I probably wouldn't even know the slang term he was using for... comely women of a certain age.

He was right.

Well, now I know what he's talking about.

All I can say here (a relatively family-friendly site) is that it starts with "M" and it is totally a product of our modern age, in which middle-aged moms are viewed by a niche market as a hot commodity.

And I'm not talking about the Agriculture Committee and derivative regs.

Although we do trade in the marketplace.

There are guys who like full-figured women. Men who like skinny 20 somethings. And then there are younger men looking for...whom?

Mrs. Robinson?

Someone who can quote Baudelaire, put on naughty lingerie, and apply anti-wrinkle cream at the same time?

A woman of the world with a large bag of tricks?

Who knows? I just know that I don't want a night on the town, or anywhere close to the town, with someone who could be my son.

Not to mention that they give me, errr, credit for experiences I haven't had.

Truthfully, it was novel, and a bit flattering, to be a hit or, hit on, by the younger crowd. Particularly since guys my own age tend to want to revive their youth (and other bits) with women considerably their juniors.

But sometimes I wonder what it would be like to see these guys at their best -- as opposed to how I get to see them.

Someday perhaps I'll find out -- when my son brings some friends home to his mom from college.

The ritual I love...and dread

There is so much to love about Little League baseball. The dressed up like their heroes, and goats, in the Majors -- it's particularly fun around here when the "Yankees" lose. The soft spring light on the green of the field. The wonderful coaches who have put up with us when an outfit is left at dad's house, and mom has to race to meet him right when the game is about to start....

But attending without a spouse is a challenge -- and it hasn't gotten easier as the years pass. To hear more, run those bases over to the Philly Moms blog -- and feel free to comment.

http://www.phillymomsblog.com/2010/04/batting-alone.html

Facts of our Fathers

Here are a few more interesting bits from the book One-Night Stands with American History...

• The nineteeenth adment in 1920 gave women the right to vote -- yet women in about a dozen states had been able to vote already. Men and women with more than 50 pounds had the right to vote in NJ as early as 1776. This was taken away by the legislature in NJ in 1807
• The issue didn't come to a vote again until a Republican governor signed a suffrage bill in Wyoming, a bill Democrats apparently passed but hoped he'd veto in 1869.
• You have perhaps heard of the Montgomery-
• Ward catalogue of the late 19th century -- which had some incredible wares. Several men tried to order a wife -- would they have paid the postage due?
• And here's a quip from American humorist H.L. Mencken: Say what you like about the Ten Commandments, you must always come back to the pleasant fact that there are only ten of them.