not all better, but better. Except for the cat.

hmm. woke up without an alarm this morning (I forgot to set it last night). That was nice. I was hungry, so I ate breakfast and then had an upset stomach. Phooey.

My muscles are still kind of sore, but not as bad as they were yesterday.

The weather has shifted, so that might play a part, too.

But in other adventures today...

Kitten had an appointment at the vet.

He has had this rash/itchy stuff/sores on his neck and down his back to the base of his tail. It's been nasty, and I wanted to get it looked at before I get busy with school, so I made an appointment.

My cat does not like traveling.

He does not like motor vehicles, as far as I can tell, and he mightily resents his car carrier.

I brought it in from the shed and left it in the living room. Cat and dog both ignored it, as did I.

Kitten seemed particularly oblivious, lying near me in the kitchen as I worked on the computer, easily within reach should I suddenly decide to scoop him up and put him in the box.

Which, of course, I did.

That fucking cat grows extra arms and legs the minute he sees that travel case, I swear. Trying to stuff him into that thing is like trying to arm-wrestle an octopus. get his hind legs in and he's got a hold of the handle with his front claws. Detach his front claws from the lid, and his backside is out of the case again and making moves toward freedom. All the while he is whining piteously.

Eventually, I manage to stuff all of his arms and legs and one tail into the box and find my jacket. He begins to yowl.

And I don't mean little meows. No. He howls.

ROOOOOWWWWWWWWRRRR

YOOOOWWWWWWWWLLLLLL.

YEEEEEOOOOOOOWWWWWWLLLLLLL.

I watch to see that he does, in fact, inhale between the yowls.

I carry him out through the pouring rain to the car, where he settles in for some serious noise.

I call friends so they can share in my misery. To a person, they laugh. One friend actually hands her phone around the room so her family can hear my cat's complaints.

When I suggest to another that he might need a harmonica and a tin cup to bang on the bars, she says "I really don't think he needs a harmonica. No, not at all."

The volume of noise that can come out of a 13 year old, 15 pound cat is impressive. He is a formidable performer.

I grumble that if I ever find the person who taught him to yodel, there's gonna be hell to pay.

At the vet's office, still securely in his cage, he pees.

And not just an "ooh! the sniffing dog startled me!" kind of pee, but a "I am miserable and I am going to squeeze every drop out of my bladder that I can because then the humans (who are obviously to blame for this humiliating ordeal) will have to clean it up" kind.

Oh, he's a bastard.

So he dripped pee all over the exam table, the vet techs had to hose out his carrier and put in newspapers for the trip home, because now his fur was all soaked with urine (ew). The vet gave him a shot, stuffed him back in the cage -- with no more ease than I had managed earlier, it was gratifying to note -- I paid the woman at the front desk and we headed home.

Yowling.

Still yowling.

Only now he was noisy and smelly. Ew.

I stopped at the grocery store for a couple things and to give genius cat a chance to bathe while I was inside. Came out and he's still yodeling at volume 20. Sigh.

Groceries in the trunk, and off we go home, cat screaming all the way.

By the time we get home, I have devised a plan.

I put the groceries away, leaving Kitten in his prison. He is silent, now. concerned about his future.

He had good reason.

I brought his carrier down the hall and into the bathroom. I grabbed a couple towels from the closet and stripped down. I turned on the water to let it warm up. I shut the bathroom door.

I opened the pet carrier and Kitten stepped out. I picked him up, opened the shower stall door, and he grew those extra legs and arms again. Holding him in a most undignified way, I got us both into the shower and shut the door.

He looked up at me and gave the most ear-splitting howl I've heard in ages.

I grinned.

I took the shower head spray gizmo, set it for a concentrated spray, and soaked him down.

He tried mightily to open the glass door. While he was reaching for the handle, I hosed down his tummy area.

He stepped on my foot to get a better purchase, I think. He sunk his claws purposefully into the flesh of my instep and reached as high as he could for the door handle.

Working hard not to scream, I reached down and carefully removed his foot from mine. The pain was intense. My world went white.

I realized I still had my glasses on.

he got lathered up with pet shampoo, then rinsed off and we got out. I toweled him dry for as long as he would tolerate it and freed him to the rest of the house. My foot throbbed for an hour.

We spent the rest of the afternoon sulking at different ends of the house.

Now I am going to soak in the hot tub, and head to bed early. I may sleep with one eye open so the cat does not rip out my throat in the night.

Saturday morning musings

At first glance, today seems odd. It is Saturday, but my alarm went off at 7 a.m. anyway. When it did, I could not imagine why that had happened and slapped at it angrily. Dumbass thing. It's Saturday. Shaddup. But then I remembered that I have a lot to do today and that I set the alarm to go off at 7. Oh. Hmph. Better get up and get moving, then.

Today is a day of doing things. I have much to do, and it is not just an assortment of things chosen arbitrarily. I have shoveling and clearing work to do before Sunday night's predicted rain storm soaks into all existing snow and freezes it in place until April. I have windows to put plastic over so that once the rain comes, I can hole up inside the garage at this house where I have a little work and remove the windows and get to work stripping and replacing all of the glazing compound. That's good work to do indoors, and I have a couple of heaters to make it comfy in there.

Oh, and I have to do laundry. Because I need socks.

And I kind of want to rearrange the bedroom. Maybe move things around so that I can take better advantage of the natural light from the windows. The sunrise could come streaming in one window if the bed's headboard were not smack up against it. Hmm. Might not be a bad idea to vacuum under the bed and behind some stuff while I'm at it.

So I am not inclined right now to write beautiful things about god and nature and the world and my cat. I am hunkered down over my coffee cup wishing my right forearm and hand were not all pins-and-needles tingly because it would be a lot easier to type if they weren't. That's leftover from yesterday's shoveling effort. What I thought would be a one- or two-hour job turned into a six- or eight-hour job. Ouch.

The Deepak Chopra book is more interesting than I had anticipated. He starts out appealing to my intellect and acknowledging that not everybody believes in god. That's good. So many books about god seem to start from the premise that the reader already has a god, knows him well and now wants to be his best friend. This is not like that, and I am glad.

The sun is coming up just like it did yesterday, cold and bright as it inches up over the horizon. There is no cat here this morning to teach me how to worship properly. He is still cocooned in blankets in some other quiet part of the house. Sausage links are beginning to sizzle on the stove. They went into the pan as frozen little ice-tubes and honestly, I had forgotten that they were even there until I began to smell them cooking. They're on low, so I only have to get up occasionally and shake the pan. They'll be done in a while.

The cat is no under the table, staring intently at the bookshelf, apparently contemplating the single hardcover publishing success of Paula Poundstone. Odd behavior for a religious teacher if you ask me.

I can hear the furnace doing its thing this morning, and the sausages sizzling and smelling wonderful. I wonder if that is where my exploration is meant to take me today: to senses other than my sight. Although the snow is sparkly like it was yesterday, but we've been there, and done that, so perhaps not. I don't know that I have new words to describe the same scene outside my window.

Chopra talks about the search for god being universal, that all cultures and all peoples do it. He also says that the search goes in phases, with people searching god first in the heavens, then in nature, and then in all things, and then they begin to search inside themselves for god. I think that might be where I am.

I don't think I am going to find god outside. I don't see that I will ever have his mailing address or that I will have to go to a certain geographic place to be with the divine. My goal, I think, is to get in touch with god and to be able to be in touch with him (using male pronouns for efficiency, not gender specificity, so just relax, OK?) every day. I would like to have my conversations with god to not be so awkward, so strained. I want to know that I carry some measure of the divine within me and that it is easily accessible to me and to others.

That's a tall order, I know. And I don't think the search is going to be a linear one, as in I learn lesson A, then proceed to lesson B, then C, all in order. I think this is more along the lines of I learn A, but then explore G for a while, look at Z, but decide that maybe 17 is more the line of learning I want to follow at the moment. This is not going to be an orderly thing.

I don't think knowing god can be a straight-line journey. I just don't see that. Everyone I know who has gone through seminary seems to indicate that there are as many ways to know god as there are people who seek that knowledge, and each has his or her own path to get there.

Normally I tend to be a learner who likes linear stuff. I want to learn the easy, basic stuff and then the more difficult stuff in order. But this does not seem to be the kind of thing that lends itself well to that kind of style. There is a lot to learn, and many teachers and resources available to me every day. I guess my prayer for today is that I be open to learn what each thing and each person has to teach me. I want my mind to be open to all input so that I might learn as much as I can.

The sun is full up now and its light in my eyes is making me sneeze. The cat is nowhere to be found, and the sausages smell good enough that a small dog will arise soon and demand some of the pan scrapings in her breakfast. Saturday is upon me. I shall go now and step into the day.

searching, perhaps for certainty

In what concerns divine things, belief is not appropriate.

Only certainty will do.

Anything less than certainty is unworthy of God.

--Simone Weil

I found this quote when I opened this book I nicked (and subsequently asked permission to take) from my aunt's house. The book is How to know God, (subtitled: The soul's journey into the mystery of mysteries) by Deepak Chopra.

Now I have heard a ton of good stuff about Deepak Chopra, and a friend even recently sent me a link to his blog page. Now I have this book, and it seems like something I should take a look at, and I get hit with this quote.

That's the thing I am struggling with. I do not have certainty. I'm pretty sure I have faith some days, but I am not at all certain that I can define, or even describe in the vaguest of terms, my understanding of my higher power.

I am sitting here at my table this morning and the sun has just peeked up over the horizon and is shining on my face. It is not strong enough yet to warm me physically, but it warms me internally. Perhaps that is my understanding of my higher power.

On the other hand, I also have a cup of coffee with me at the table, and it warms my physically. I love the warmth on my hands as I wrap them around the ceramic orb, I love the aroma of fresh brewed coffee, and the taste is wonderful. I can feel the hot liquid warm me from the inside out as I drink it down.

Is not that what I am seeking in a god? Something that I can grasp, that I can feel its form and warmth, and that I can put to my mouth and drink in to nurture my body and soul?

Somehow, I had always imagined god to be something more than my first cup of coffee of the day.

But honestly, that seems to be what I am seeking.

I know that the recent upheaval in my life is probably what is prompting me to crave something solid, something reliable, something that I can hold onto and define and understand, and ideally, physically grasp so that I can feel secure. The rational part of my brain knows that this simply is not going to happen. I am not going to find a walking, talking physical representation of god here on earth.

Now there are some (Quakers, perhaps?) who would argue that the divine exists in all of us, and therefore we are all manifestations of god here on earth. But I don't think it would be cool to just begin praying to the guy across the coffee shop from me. It might make people nervous.

The sun is up beyond the filter of the bare January trees at the edge of the back field now. It is stronger, glinting off my glasses and my eyelashes, affecting my ability to see the screen of my laptop. I am beginning to feel its warmth on my face, even as it obscures my vision.

Is that what god is? A warming force that is overwhelming in its power and scope, making its presence known through both comfort and discomfort? Warming and nurturing, yet so large that it demands attention and drowns out all that would compete with it?

That seems to fall short of my understanding as well. Although I am inclined to put my chin in my hand, close my eyes and feel the sun on my face for a few minutes. The cat is doing his own version of this exercise too, perched blinking on the windowsill.

I have fetched a second cup of coffee. The cat is now lieing down on the sill, soaking in sunlight like a solar panel, his long yellow fur glinting in the light.

He lives an uncomplicated life, this cat of mine. He eats, he uses his litter box, he plays with his catnip mouse, occasionally battles the small bouncy dog, and he lies in the sun. Aside from the intermittent soggy chewings administered by Quinn, it seems like a pretty ideal life. He seems content. We both sit here in the sun this morning, him enjoying the sensation and me trying to understand god.

Silly humans, to think we consider ourselves superior to animals. I'm the only one in the room who is struggling with anything. He's enjoying the sunshine.

The snow in the yard is sparkling like so many diamonds. I have seen that phrase, that cliche, used over and over, but honestly, that's what the snow looks like this morning. It is blue and gray and white and sparkles and textures that look like a fine, fine paintbrush brushed the surface, partly to smooth, and partly to give texture. The empty footprints of a feral cat cut across the yard from the corner of this house to the thicket in the southern corner by the brook.

The snow makes rolling hills and dales, gentle dunes of sparkling white, striped and speckled with the bluish shadows of the naked maple across the yard and the alders o on the other side of the brook. Spikes of tall summer grasses long dead stick up through the drifts, their seed pods now brittle shells that rattle in the wind. Mice burrow at their base, searching for a winter's meal beneath the blanket of snow.

The sun is blinding now, and very warm on my forehead. I write with my eyes nearly closed, feeling the warmth and brightness in its full force. The cat has moved a few inches forward on the sill to improve his view of the yard. He blinks in the sunlight, yellow eyes soaking in the rays, their centers the thinnest of dark vertical slits. He blinks lazily. I envy him his ease. He is content. He does not struggle with the great mysteries and elusive truths of the universe. If he does, he does not mention it to me. His whiskers glow like fiber-optic cable, backlit by the sun. The make a glowing halo as they sprout from his eyebrows and the sides of his muzzle. He gives an enormous yawn, showing all who would look each of his sharp and jagged teeth as if to say "I am the king lion of this window sill! Trespass at your peril!" I heed his warning and stay at my computer.

He is sitting up now, and purring his sun-soaked pleasure so strongly that it rocks his body gently. I can see his sides move as he breathes. We have been together so long, he and I, that I can tell by watching his sides what kind of breathing he is doing: the nearly stop-action in, rest, out, rest when he sleeps; the short in length, but deep in volume breaths that he uses to boost his oxygen and energy levels when playing rough with the dog, the silly little hiccup breaths he gets after supper sometimes, and the distinct breaths that happen only when he purrs.

He is happy, sitting on his windowsill, surveying the outdoors he never visits. I fancy him content in his warm, dry, pampered isolation, but I wonder. He has never been an outdoor cat. He does not know the freedom and dangers of the greater world. He sees members of the feral cat colony that lives in the barn next door, and he watches them keenly, occasionally growling if one gets too close to the house for his comfort, but otherwise he has little comment on their comings and goings. He has already lived longer than the three generations of cats we have seen come and go in the yard, and he will likely outlive many more.

Aha. contemplation is over. Batteries charged, the cat has jumped down from his perch and gone in search of kibble.

I cease and go in search of my own breakfast. I do not know if I am any closer to knowing god than I was an hour ago, but I think both the cat and I got what we needed from the sunrise. This morning's worship is concluded.