Last Post

This will be my last post from this blog page. Next week, my new publishing website, www.kenarnoldbooks.com, will go live. It will contain a new blog space, KABlog, which will be open to contributions from other writers. I will continue to post something there once a week on same schedule, but you will have the pleasure of hearing other voices as well as mine. I encourage you to visit the new website and blog--and to sign up there for our newsletter, which will keep you up to date on our forthcoming books and bloggers.

I have been writing this blog for just about a year. Over that time I have talked frequently about the Episcopal Church and its struggles with dissidents--the conservatives who have been outraged by the consecration of a practicing gay bishop (for those of you on the outside, there are plenty of gay priests and bishops in the church, but Gene Robinson, the gay bishop in question, did not pretend to be other than who he is and did not hide his partnered relationship). That story continues to play itself out, but increasingly over the year I have found it to be tiresome. It is about life on a theological pinhead, for the most part. The serious issues of our time are not being ignored by the church--or churches--but on the whole the real work on global warming, armed conflict, economic injustice, and racial tensions is being done by groups not associated with the church. (Before some of you write to me about this, I know of the few exceptions and that in some parts of the country and the world, important and risky work is being done. My point remains: most of the church's attention is directed toward the small print.)

The presidential election has turned out to be more important that some of my earlier posts suggested I thought it would be. The emergence of Barack Obama is a hopeful sign, if only because he has brought out more voters and seems willing to raise the issues that matter most. (I do not believe that he is not a politician, however. He is a very able politician.) Hillary Clinton remains a strong and viable option, leaving us Democrats in the unusual position of having two similarly strong candidates to choose between (assuming that the current Obama sweep doesn't knock Clinton out). And even John McCain isn't just another zombie from the Reagan tomb. We still have our heads in the sand when it comes to the problems of our extravagant and wasteful way of life. I have nothing wise to say about the escalating problem of the global climate; I do plan to publish some books this year about it, however.

In the past year, Connie and I have moved from New York City to Portland, Oregon, changing cities and employment. We have started a new publishing company; I have finished the first draft of a new book on Christianity tentatively titled The Christian Atheist. Connie has finished a book manuscript and begun another. We are both actively writing and seeking publishers, while working every day to find new authors to publish. It's been a hectic and in some ways frightening year for us. There was even a time last spring when we were not sure how we were going to survive or where we were going to live.

But here we are. In the end, it is where we need to be. The shift from this blog space into a new one is, in a small way, indicative of the changes. We are moving into a broader environment, one in which we intend to flourish. I hope that those of you who have been reading this blog will make the trip over to the new space. Some exciting publishing will be happing there, in addition to these weekly ruminations, rantings, and redactions (not sure those all mean something here but I got interested in "r" words).

Let me close with a haiku:

dry leaves cling
to the Butterfly Maple
oh! last summer

Ashes

Perhaps it is meaningful that Fat Tuesday is also SuperDuper Tuesday. After the feasting come the ashes, if you go in for that sort of thing. (Even if you don't, they will come.)

Some years ago when I was the on-call chaplain for St. Luke's Hospital in Manhattan, I went into the wards on Ash Wednesday to put ashes on foreheads and remind people they were going to die. There was great eagerness among the nurses in particular, who were positively gleeful as they lined up. I recall that as I was imposing ashes on the nurses in the Intensive Care Unit a man in the room nearby went into cardiac arrest. The doctors rushed in to save his life. I am not sure exactly what they were doing; I was busy marking the smiling nurses with death. I had not gotten to him yet.

This brief recollection is just a prelude to a poem, which I wrote a few weeks ago, not thinking about Lent at all. It is not a poem about Lent, but it is about ashes. As the poem says, that is enough.

Ashes


Scatter them you said
on the Columbia where Multnomah Falls
bisects the cliff’s face
knife plunged through the rock
a flash of brilliance in the sun
so that they sink into the everlasting flow of things
dissolve into memory
into fact
into the western sun
what I want you said is to leave the country
lose myself in the Pacific

it was one of those conversations
we did not plan to have
how do you want to be memorialized
I asked
when you’re gone
what songs should we sing
and what do we do with the body
you no longer need
and we are too creeped out to keep

burn it you said

and I agreed
I do not want to be deposited in dirt
I said
nor in the family vault
burn mine too
and you and all my friends
be joyful on a hill
among the spruce and rock
and if you cannot bear to watch
the flames consume me
recall the heat of all the passions
of our days and feel within
the unexpected power of
what bursts forth when we let go
of what we were

you smiled and said ok
we’ll dance for you like dervishes
but if I’m gone before you
just be sure you dump
my ashes in the river
that’s enough