On Gratitude

Filipinos demand that their children perform mano po when they meet a respected elder. The child bows, takes the adult’s hand and holds it, palm down, against his forehead.

Humility and deference to adults is expected from a Filipino kid. My late wife, Myrna, was raised in Manila in this tradition. This training (correctly applied) produces admirable results. Immigrant Filipino kids are usually well behaved and respectful, and seldom get in trouble with the law. Filipino immigrants in America are remarkably successful in maintaining family cohesion, educating their children in practical skills, and continuing religious tradition.

Most Filipinos also demand religious indoctrination and observance from their kids. Overwhelmingly, they are Catholic.

Expressing gratitude is part of my religious practice. Every morning, in my prayers, I thank God for another day, and I thank my mother and father for doing the best they could in raising me. And I ask for their forgiveness for my ingratitude.

This was not always my outlook. I rebelled bitterly against my father when I was young. When I thought of him, I was filled with resentment about the things he did not, or could not, do for me. My attention was entirely fixed on my complaints against him. I had no pity on him for his limitations, and no comprehension of his struggle in this Vale of Tears.

Myrna taught me her concept of “reciprocal obligation” between parent and child, a moral imperative throughout much of Asia. Wealthy Western societies no longer expect children to be respectful of adults as a matter of course, or to provide for their parents in old age. The Western child owes nothing to his or her parents.

After Myrna’s death, I struggled for years to stop bitching at God for taking her, to change course and thank Him for giving her to me for 16 years. I had to return to the Church for spiritual guidance. I couldn’t do it on my own. Ingratitude was killing me.

I’m trying now to be grateful in all things. It’s not easy. 

Lord, help me

Lord, help me,
I didn’t think life could fall apart
So thoroughly and irretrievably
Again…
My sins are many
My punishments so well deserved
I wish this life would simply end
So the next one can begin

Dreamed last night
My apartment filled with venomous snakes
Breakups with female musicians
I’m back on the street
Again…
There’s nobody to yell at
No one, Lord, but you,
To hear my lament

Tell me where next to put my foot
Where to sleep tonight
Bottomless cup of coffee at Panera
“How sharper than a serpent’s tooth 
it is to have a thankless child”
Hours hanging out at gym
What is wrong with me, Lord,
Why have I fallen into the abyss?

Old Man’s Gotta Be Humble

Giving somebody the middle finger and stomping off in anger doesn’t work very well for an old man. Didn’t work particularly well for me when I was a young man. That didn’t always stop me from doing it.

Myrna’s death forced me to my knees. I was such a strange person in the first five years after. One of my Facebook friends is freshly widowed, and I see a lot of the same characteristics. Weird memory tricks, especially. 

I had relied so much on Myrna that I worried constantly that I might be forgetting something. Oddly, I wasn’t. It was a phantom.

I’ve always been proud of my intellect, my athletic body and my musician abilities. With good reason. No matter how badly I screwed up in life, no matter how bad my decisions, my talents pulled me through.

My abilities are fading now. Within a few years (how many?), I’ll be delivered into the arms of the government’s senior care sector. 

I’m thinking of finding a part time job. And, I’m getting very humble about what type of job I would take. Four hours a day, five days a week. Entry level clerical would be fine. I’m a damned good typist. In fact, my serious entry into the world of programming was mastering word processing back in the day when that was a high paying, very in demand skill.

I got down on my knees and started praying when Myrna died. Well, first I fell on my back, screamed and pumped my fists and feet in the air, pleading with God to return her to me. Took me a long time to give up on that.

So, I got in a big fight a few weeks ago. I’m still pissed off, still want revenge, still want to argue that I’m in the right. As if that would do any good.

Old man’s gotta be humble. Fights are expensive. I’ve been in enough to know. I’m no longer quite so talented, intellectually or physically. The day is coming when nothing I do will bail me out. Not so far away.

How to I regain my peace of mind and refocus on my work? How can I stop the stupid argument I keep re-running? I’ll hit the gym in a few minutes to do a set of yoga. That’s a good start.

The Methodist Schism and Me

The United Methodist Church legislative General Conference recently voted to allow for gay pastors and gay marriage.

The Methodist congregation I serve as a pianist/organist is very traditional and conservative. I’m Catholic. This has never been a problem in my job. I don’t have theological or political discussions in church or during the after service coffee klatch. 

So, my opinion about this change is irrelevant. I do wonder how the change will affect my continued employment and the survival of the Methodist Church. About a third of Methodist congregations have already left the UMC over this schism, many to join a new denomination that rejects the gay agenda, the Global Methodist Church.

I’m not involved in my congregation’s discussions on this issue, so I don’t know whether my client is considering leaving the UMC for the Global faction.

In his sermon on Sunday, my pastor declined to discuss the issues that generated the schism, and instead called for peaceful resolution. He’s already stating his pronouns in the bulletin, an indication of his leanings. So far, nobody’s asked me for my pronouns.

The UMC was already facing a catastrophic decline in Sabbath attendance, and consequent closings of parishes. The Catholic Church is facing the same dilemma. 

I stopped involving myself in person or online in gay issues discussions. While I do have opinions, they are not particularly important to me. I’m a sinner. While I do generally aspire to the Catholic ideal of sacramental marriage, I haven’t done a very good job of living up to that ideal. Who am I, a mere sinner, to scold others?

I’ll continue to play on the Sabbath for my Methodist client, and I’ll keep my mouth shut about their theology and politics. I feel fortunate that my gig has lasted for 5 years. How long my client parish will survive is unknown.

My Yearly Cycle

From Advent through Easter, I’m incredibly busy with church gigs and Mendelssohn Club rehearsals and concerts. After Easter, I’m on full summer vacation, until Labor Day. 

My life is ruled by the Liturgical Cycle.

My only responsibilities during vacation are appearing for my church Sabbath gigs. I’ve been through the repertoire for these gigs many, many times. The hymns are all transcribed into my composition program (MuseScore) and posted into my 12.9” iPad. Occasionally, a congregation member will suggest a new and useful hymn, but that’s becoming a rarity. 

Summer vacation runs for 18 weeks. 

This summer, I plan to start building a commercial and performing outlet for my popular music originals and cover songs. How? Where?

I’m thinking of subscribing to Grok, Elon Musk’s and X’s AI chat bot, for advice on how to create and develop commercial and performing outlets. In other words, business advice on how to effectively reach an audience. I think that an audience for my music and performing exists. Not a huge audience, but one sufficient to fill venues ranging from 100 to 500 seats in major cities and college and resort towns.

Grok is 8 bucks a month. 7 if you pay for an entire year in advance. Grok does not yet, store user sessions in memory. ChatGPT just announced that it will. Seems likely to me that Grok will soon follow suit.

What would be my first question to ask Grok? To be continued…

A Stolen Kiss

An 85 year old church lady in one of my congregations has quite a crush on me. In my first few weeks working for this church, she invited me out to breakfast and, effectively, propositioned me.

“You’re not too old to still have some fun,” she told me. “But, not with me. I’m too old.”

She sat there and waited for me to disagree, but I didn’t.

I shouldn’t have accepted the invitation to breakfast, but I hadn’t thought that 85 year old women might still be horny. Lesson learned. I weaseled my way out of the invitation without any damage, and I thought that was the end of it.

Eve (I’ll call her) has been texting me almost daily for a couple of years. At church, she demands a full body hug during the group meet and greet part of the service.

Last Sunday, Eve arrived early for services and, as usual, marched right up to the piano bench to greet me.

“Give me a hug,” she begged.

I haven’t considered this an unusual request, or one difficult to comply with, so I hugged her.

Eve started to try to kiss me, and much to my surprise landed a wet smooch right on my lips! I hadn’t expected that.

The taste and odor she left behind was unbearable. Dense makeup covering over an odor of intense bodily decay. I’m old, too, so I’m aware that the bodily disintegration of an old person is difficult to tolerate.

The residual taste and odor were so awful that I got up after I played for the opening hymn, and pretended to go to the bathroom to relieve myself. I washed my face and hands and rinsed out my mouth, and I was able to continue to play for the service.

Things have gotten out of hand. Churches are incredibly sensitive to allegations of sexual abuse or unwanted sexual advances by their employees. I cannot afford even the hint of romantic involvement with a church lady in one of my congregations. The churches are terrified of being bankrupted by lawsuits.

I’ll have to be on guard with Eve. That’s the last time she gets close enough to French kiss me. I can’t really complain to the church board or the pastor. That will only rebound against me.

The constant texting is something I probably can’t stop, but I can try to cool it off.

Dealing with the romantic aspirations of the church ladies is the most difficult part of my church musician job. The attention and compliments are appreciated, but if I don’t keep my distance I’ll be out of a job.

Everything New is Old Again

I’ve reached that strange juncture attained every five years or so. Except for my 2023 Ford Maverick truck, everything I own is worn out and needs replacing.

Replaced everything when I moved in with my daughter, son-in-law and grandkids eight years ago. I had some money left over from the sale of my house in Woodstock to pay for the update.

Now, my clothing is fading out and thin. My furniture isn’t exactly right for my needs. My musical instruments all need renovation or repair. This time around, I don’t have a slush fund of cash available.

Church clothing is especially frayed and grayed. I think I have 5 dress shirts, so that means each one is washed and dried 10 times a year. At $40-50 per, replacing those is a serious investment. Members of my Methodist congregation often suggest that I don’t need to wear a jacket and tie to services. My answer:

“I’m really doing it for myself. I need to get cleaned up and dressed to go somewhere a couple of times a week.

My Martin D-28 guitar has already been completely renovated, and my Gibson J-200 is in the shop. Those guitars are 50 and 20 years old, respectively. The pedal board on my organ needs repair. That’s an hour trip in each direction to the technician’s shop.

Bed sheets are completely washed out. I bought four sets when I moved, which means each set has been washed 12 or more times a year. Not much fabric left. $60 to $80 per set.

So, should I go on being ragged and threadbare? I’ve already replaced my sweats. That’s what I wear 95% of the time.

Many of my fellow congregations, both Methodist and Catholic, seem to have decided to let it all go. They attend services in threadbare, worn out clothing. I can understand. We’re all approaching the nursing home stage when clothing and appearance will cease being very important.

I think this is the last time round for me. I’ll buy a little bit each month. For at least the next 5 years, I’ll try to keep up appearances, if only for myself.

Am I Doomed to Job’s Fate?

I’ve been reading the Book of Job. Why? Half a dozen times in my life I’ve been right on the verge of achieving my full ambitions as a musician, and in each instance, some calamity blew everything up. God struck me down.

The worst and most catastrophic was Myrna’s death, just as we had become a powerful musical duo, just as the music business was opening up to us.

I’ve been trying for years to understand this dynamic. Unlike Job, I was not always a faithful servant of God (in fact I became a rebellious hell raiser), nor did I refrain from cursing God when all hell broke loose.

Like Job, however, I’ve always wondered what I have done to displease God, and why he does not relieve me of my suffering. I’m still trying to find my way through this dilemma. Myrna was equally confounded by this. She often said (forgive me for the sin of pride): “Everybody’s waiting for you to be a great man.”

The Old Testament God actually allowed Satan to destroy Job to test his faith. Would he renounce and curse God if his children and servants were slaughtered, his body destroyed with disease, his life reduced to beggary? Job persisted in worshipping God.

I failed that test of faith long ago.

Tomorrow, I’m headed into the recording studio with a band to put down the basic tracks to three original songs: “Granddaddy Ran Bootleg,” “I’m Going Home,” and “Show Me the Way,” and I’ll be recording what I regard as a Hank William’s hymn, “Lost Highway.”

The burden of my past collapses weighs heavily on me. Where to go with these recordings? Why should anybody listen to a nobody, an old man headed toward the grave?

I tell myself that I only want to document to the best of my ability my lifetime of work and struggle, but the old ambitions still live inside me.

You might be surprised to learn that I do expect these recordings to be noticed and to be well received critically. That’s happened repeatedly. And then… the fall.

Will God release me this time from the fate of Job?

How to Battle the Gender Psychosis?

My grandkids are approaching adolescence. We live in an area that is full of the temptations of the psychosis of sexual identity politics, the bizarre notion that there is something other than male and female, that humans can change their sex at will.

How to protect my grandkids? The power of the state and the schools supports this psychotic ideology. Feminism, gay worship and trans madness is the state religion, Federal and NY State. Ridicule and punishment of traditional Christian and Jewish observance is part of that religion.

I’m a sinner. In my adolescence, I was seduced into the hippie rebellion, a precursor of this diabolical ideology. Do I regret that? Yes. Did I eventually pull my head out of my ass? Yes.

Back in the day, kids weren’t engaging in sexual mutilation and taking sex change drugs to rebel. No, we were enjoying hetero orgies, pot and psychedelics. I think this was better, or at least slightly more sane, but I might be rationalizing. At the least, I’m glad that the hippie rebellion did not include sexual mutilation.

My grandkids are nearing puberty in an area, the Northeast, where gay worship and trans propaganda are overwhelming in the schools, media, and even in many of the churches. In fact, the church where my men’s choral group rehearses and performs is the epicenter of this propaganda. This group has been in existence for 100 years, so its residence in the church began when it was still an orthodox Protestant denomination.

I’ve tried to give my grandkids all my love and focus for the past 10 years. That’s about all I could do for them. I helped to finance the home where they live with me and their mom and dad. They would not allow me to give the kids a Christian indoctrination, so I came up short there.

My grandkids will go through teenage rebellion. I have no doubt about that. One of the most important responses, in my opinion, for a grandfather is to not respond angrily or with ridicule to that rebellion. A child will dig in when confronted with anger or ridicule, and only burrow deeper into the disparaged behavior.

I’m hoping that this wicked state religion goes out of fashion soon. But that seems unlikely to happen. I suspect that my tolerance will be tested to the limit.

Recreational Politics.

Like everybody else, I waste too much time online arguing about politics. Heated discussions! Threats of lawsuits and a good punch in the nose!

I am not going to be a political activist, or a martyr to some cause. Will I vote in the upcoming election? Certainly won’t matter, except maybe in local elections. Federal and NY statewide elections are thoroughly rigged.

My interest in politics is, thus, purely recreational. I’m retired and I can afford to waste a few hours every day bullshitting. I’m for Trump on policy, but outside of the BSing, I’m not going to do anything. This is probably true for a lot of people, because we now live in a retiree dominated society.

Every morning, I say my prayers, thank God for another day (that’s no longer to be taken for granted), and ask him to help me to not waste my time on politics. I’m about as successful with that as a nymphomaniac is at abandoning lust. The temptation to rant about politics is overwhelming.

The online ranting leads one into mysterious traps and blind alleys. I can debate with some crazy for hours, only to finally discover that he’s a joker posing as something he isn’t. Sincerity is in short supply on the inter-webs.

I’m stuck at home this week. My truck is in the body shop, so I don’t have my own vehicle. Could borrow the son-in-law’s SUV, but I’d rather not take the risk. For 6 days, I’m going nowhere. This only increases the temptation to pick up the iPad and look for a fight.

How much yoga and music can I do in a day? My limit is about an hour for yoga and 2 hours for playing music. I’m trying to discipline myself to spend a lot of time reading Thomas Acquinas’ Summa Theologica, but that’s a tough hack.

I will pray again this morning to relieve my mind of the political obsession. Monday was a good day. Tuesday, not so good. God help me!