The dark stillness embraces and suspends us above daylight’s fray, giving our deep inner life the chance to emerge and speak.

An ancient sage once spoke of how the lion’s creator gave the lion the gift of sleep. I wonder why he didn’t speak of his creator giving him sleep. Perhaps the lion slept better than him. Such is the work of being human.

I never really ever thought much about how, when, or why lions sleep. But I think about MY sleep, and that it also is a gift that is given to me – or not – and how when it is not, I, in the dark stillness, get to think about things:

Like about how I forget stuff.

Oy!

“Don’t worry Mom. I forget stuff just like that too, and I don’t have Parkinsons.” Smile. We will forget stuff together then. And thank you for your acceptance, your forgiveness, and especially for the notes on the door reminding me of those promises I made to you, my own kiddo, just yesterday – and have since forgotten.

Like about how kiddos grow, and go, and come back home for food, and stuff, and assurance, and the unmet needs of their broken past—the broken past that we contributed to out of our own frailty and selfish ignorance. This is all a great mercy—this process that ferrets out the truth about our ragamuffin selves, always navigating uncharted life-waters.

Like how I wonder at water-lovers. I am a land-lover and have no compelling need to float out on the surface of murky still waters, or undulating salt-waters that hide both teeming life and the remnants of death, down below in oxygen deprived, cool shadows. I SO do-not-trust-it.

Like about how I have come to trust a man though—a man who emerged from the unknown into the known. The miracle of marriage unfolds over the years into honest, white hot, truth-filled conversations that cause each other to hope, and give, and cry, and love, and laugh. Defensiveness is gone. We know that we know that we know what is true, and there is no use hiding or pretending anymore. This kind of love is the next best thing to God. I think He meant it that way.

Like how I begin to thank God and in his grip of grace I relax, and in the middle of my prayer, I - fall - to - sleep.

We are getting so very used to being regulated and legislated, that it might be interesting one day to wake up and be liberated. Is our society so lacking in moral social backbone and wisdom that it wouldn’t know what to do with real liberty?

Therein lies the ideological tension – aw heck, let me call it what it is – a gulf - that separates the run-o-the-mill Republicans and Democrats (Yes, I lump them together) from Libertarians.

Consider this level of regulation: there is a proposal before the California Energy Commission this month that would require ALL new buildings to have Programmable Control Thermostats (PCT) allowing the Utility to remotely control their temperatures. California Title 24 states, “The PCT shall not allow customer changes to thermostat settings during emergency events." “Emergency Events” are not defined. Let your imagination soar.

Some Republican Senator from Iowa wants to investigate (and thus, no doubt, regulate) snake-oil prosperity gospel preachers who fleece their followers for millions of dollars while promising blessings in return. Aw, how nice that the Federal Government wants to find another way to protect us from ourselves and make life more complicated-er-I mean safe.

Actually, I suspect the primary motivation for governmental action is Big Brother’s pursuit of “His” money. That preacher is getting away without paying income taxes! Actually, that’s a “crime” that needs to be taken off the books!

Thieves and fools have always been with us. In fact one thief is a monstrous federal government run by such Senators that make god-like promises of provision, protection, and prosperity in exchange for exorbitant taxation, and my support and vote. What’s the difference between their system and the prosperity gospel preacher’s system? Fleecing is fleecing, and “heaven on earth” was never promised by anyone who could ever make it happen.

Bah.

Politicians make promises to “reduce” government. However we all know that each Department is a monster intent on justifying its own existence, feeding itself, and growing. The faster it builds a web of dependence among a segment of the population, the harder it will be to eliminate without howls of pain and suffering.

Who has the guts to take a knife to the IRS and install a Fair Tax? Who has the guts to eliminate the Department of Education and return that sovereignty to the family and local government?

For individuals to have the freedom to pursue success, they must have the freedom to fail and learn from it. And some must have the freedom to fail and die. The government can’t pass enough laws to save everybody’s life. Sometimes I think that’s what’s going on. I hear pitiful cries of “protect us from food chemicals, protect us from bad financial choices, protect us from stupidity, and protect us from greedy preachers!”

Well, here come the South Carolina primaries. Y’all - Ask hard questions!

After spending the afternoon wrestling with cyber-reality, real-life disasters and challenges began to feel like welcome diversions “Aargh!” is a totally inadequate expletive to describe what I think of my internet browser right now.

In the last month, I’ve found myself sagely reminding friends that God didn’t intend to make us good in this life. However, He did intend to make us wise. Well, after cursing my cursor, dissing my disk, hyperventilating over hypertext, and mumbling that my computer’s inadequate RAM could just byte my RSS feed…. it is glaringly obvious I am NOT good.

And right now, I’m not any wiser either—at least about my internet browsing dilemma.

We visited old friends this week. It has been four years, since we last dined with them, and in the meantime their daughters did that amazing growing-up thing that teens do, one becoming a nursing student and engaged college woman, and the other becoming a lovely high school senior, also dating a tall handsome beau.

Their boyfriends are hard working, church going, humorous, good friends with each other as well as with the girls’ Dad. We played games together in a living room that didn’t have a TV set. As for the girls, their Mom and they don’t “do” internet; they are too busy living real life, opening up their home to strangers and friends, taking care of their animals, studying, helping start a new home business, enjoying each other.

There is a TV in a remote rec-room, the family is very connected to the news world through radio, and the Mom is active as a local poll worker. The high school senior doesn’t even have an e-mail account. Apparently not every teen is “wired” these days.

It was refreshing.

It used to be common for society to characterize college life as the fantasy existence that was opposed to the work-a-day world’s “real life!”

Now “IRL” is the text and chat abbreviation for “in real life” – as opposed to the unreal life of the internet.

Even the time honored task of turning paper pages to read a book is being challenged. Amazon has created the Kindle®, a wireless, electronic, paper-display reading device that can purchase and download a book from the Amazon marketplace in moments. They claim it reads “like a book.” You can judge for yourself by watching a video on it at the Kindle page on Amazon.

But no matter how much nostalgia tugs at my heartstrings, I can’t go back in time. I like my keyboard, which compensates for a hand that doesn’t write well most days. And I SO appreciate e-mail and love the data base that the search engines represent (so long as I can browse them!)

“It isn’t fatal. Something else is going to have to kill me!” I assured my children as we discussed my dawning Parkinson’s disease (PD) diagnosis. They weren’t so sure that was a comfort as they nervously watched me lift a shaky fork to my mouth.

Yes, the diagnosis was a gradual process. And PD isn’t something that I “got” all at once, one day, either. By the time my first symptom, a thumb tremor, showed up in October of 2001, neurological degeneration was probably many years in the making. I was just 47 years old.

Since there are a multitude of tremor causes—one medical website lists 184—it took a couple years of observation, neurological examinations, CAT scans, MRI’s, a raft of blood work, and finally seeing how I responded to dopamine enhancing drugs, before doctors would give my young self a definitive diagnosis of PD.

Parkinson’s often shows up on just one side of the body. As right-side slowness and stiffness increased, I learned to write, eat and type left-handed. I was surprised with how much my new lefty skills delighted my southpaw family and friends!

Although some of the standard PD Drugs appear to be neuroprotective, some studies also suggest that other PD meds might alleviate symptoms while progressing the disease, a frustrating catch-22.

One Georgia neurologist anticipated I would receive only seven to ten years of medicated relief before more radical measures, like brain surgery, would be necessary. Therefore, I was in no hurry to begin the regimen of drugs with their side effects and built-in lifespan.

So, I explored alternatives, supplements, and treatments to enhance my neurological health. Nothing cured me. Perhaps some measures delayed degeneration, but over five years after that first thumb tremor, I was dealing with increased stiffness, trouble turning over in bed, even slower movement, and depression.

My excellent neurologist, Seneca’s Dr. Ricaldi, patiently let me explore my options, and then assisted me with my choice to take on the standard drug treatment in 2007. The meds are quite remarkable, giving significant relief, renewed movement and vigor. However, they aren’t a cure, and I still need to tweak and adapt them to my body’s needs and capacities.

Parkinson’s disease has slooooowed every area of my life. This disease has taught me patience and gratitude. It has strengthened my faith in God, ordered my priorities, and hopefully made me wiser. I finally smell the roses.

Our family jokes about useful things to do with a hand tremor, like play the castanets, or take down shorthand from people that s-s-stutter, or paint stormy seascapes!

I still keep my ears peeled for helpful additions to my lifestyle such as anti-oxidants, green tea, etc…

Yes, PD is my friend, my shadow, my relentless companion, but it is not me. I’m Claire, and PD is just along for MY ride!

We enjoy watching young children anticipate a good thing. They are unabashed in their hopeful glee, which usually spills out of them in wiggles and outbursts and wide eyes. They thoroughly engage in the hoping and believing.

"The imagination should be allowed a certain amount of time to browse around," wrote Thomas Merton, and an appropriately ordered childhood affords the youngster that space to dwell upon the promise of good things to come. There, they embrace and optimize their waiting. There, they rehearse and explore the story of the good things to come.

Heightened senses put earnest wait-children (no matter their age) right on the verge of the fulfillment as they peer into Good News.

“They are cliff dwellers, teetering on the edge of precipices, overlooking shrouded lands of promise, longing to dwell in the valley of realized visions.

“They are restless pacers, tasting hints of breezes blowing from verdant pastures, catching vague snatches of melodic musings forming symphonies beyond their grasp.

“They are furrow-browed gazers, sensing lights that tease the peripheries of their searchings, feeling gasps of color that feed their craving for more.” (Peer with Me Into Good News by C. Muzal ©1991)

Calendars spin round and bring us again to our year-end ritual of waiting for the good thing. It is a small picture reflecting the big reality: in ancient times, The Father made a promise, men waited thousands of years, and then an old man held a baby up to the Father and said, “Now I can die in peace, for I have seen your salvation.” (Luke 2:29)

And we wait again for the next coming, the next Advent. (Acts 1:11)

“These sterile and barren bodies of ours are yearning for full deliverance. That is why waiting does not diminish us, any more than waiting diminishes a pregnant mother. We are enlarged in the waiting. We, of course, don't see what is enlarging us. But the longer we wait, the larger we become, and the more joyful our expectancy.” (Romans 8:23-25) The Message by Eugene H. Peterson.

We know that we are children of the Father because of our eager anticipation for the promises of our Father to come true, for the good things to befall us, for the answers to our deepest needs to be realized.

It is a very simple thing, this waiting. There is not one whit we can do to bring the promised next age to pass, for it is entirely in the Father’s hands. However, in the meantime, we can be decent to others, like we would want them to be decent to us, and prepare our hearts for the next age by learning to love the stuff the Father loves: truthfulness, goodness, humility, justice, and mercy!

(The photo of Annie was taken in 1987 - a favorite of mine!)