The Feast of the Holy Trinity

So I went to mass today. I ate the wafer. I'm assuming that I will have a reaction to the wafer. The irony is a little overwhelming, actually – the body of Christ is likely to make me have seizures. As I put it in my mouth, I felt my tongue burn. Maybe it was God’s presence. Maybe it was my mind reminding me of what was to come. Nonetheless, I enjoyed the mass. I am surprised. And I'm a little ill.

The liturgy today was about the Holy Trinity. The priest made lots of comments about how the Holy Spirit was like your mom, full of love and caring.

What if your mom wasn’t? Does that mean she didn’t, or doesn’t, have the Holy Spirit?

I was born on Pentecost. For those of you who haven’t been paying attention to your Judeo-Christian history, Pentecost is the day when the Holy Spirit came down from Heaven and entered the hearts of mankind. My mom used to say that I am somehow more filled with the Spirit, as a result of my auspicious birth date. Supposedly, that means I'm going to be kinder, or gentler, or more generous.

I'm guessing she was wrong. I suspect the poll numbers would suggest that others think she was wrong as well. Regardless, that was her theory, and Pentecost was last week.

I find myself hoping that the Holy Spirit is indeed real, and omnipresent, and is, indeed, carrying kindness. The world can use some kindness. And people in pain should be able to hope for mercy.

I don’t have a lot to say this fine day. But I felt like I should post something, if for no other reason, than to keep in the habit of talking to all of you fine OtherEnders. I have had the blogger experience several times in the last several days – I pass something and think I should write about it. In normal times, I would remember to write about it. However, I'm too tired, and when I get tired, I forget things. So I have forgotten everything. And hence have nothing useful to say this fine evening.

We met with the Hospice people today. The intake nurse was awesome. She answered everybody’s questions, and was so careful and caring with JR. Nursing is a calling. We need more of them – the core of JR’s care has been provided by nurses and PA’s, and she has gotten a great deal of comfort there. Her doctors have been fantastic, don’t get me wrong, but the nurses have carried the burden of keeping her going through the system. It sounds like we have found more nurses to help there. I'm glad. The Hospice folks do a lot of really useful things – refill prescriptions, change bandages, check medications – these things sound trivial, but not when you are taking as many different medications as JR is, and have to change as many bandages. She’s a trooper, but driving 1.5 hours to Stanford each time gets old, and now she won’t have to.

I went to the grocery store today. There were 3 police cars clustered around something, and scads of officers. I thought there had been a shooting or something. Nope, a fender bender. A minivan was pulling into a parking space, and clipped the import parked in the next space. A solid hit, no doubt, but is it worthy of scads of officers and three cars? That’s more units than cars involved in the actual accident! Apparently, I live in a very safe place. Which is good, I guess.

I'm getting some new audiovisual toys in my house. A really cool guy who runs a place called Casa Integration is doing all the … well... house integration. I'm pretty excited, new toys, including a cool remote control that is supposedly easy to use. He did want me get an Xbox360 for HD gaming. Hmm. Maybe another day. But if you are in need of A/V services, and you are in the bay area, given him a call.

I could feel bad about how lame this blog posting is. Or I could feel good that I pushed something out the door, to share with you all. I did an interview the other day, mostly talking about innovation, and was asked about how I know when to stop “innovating” and get to work. I tried to say that innovation is, in fact, work, but that the point was fair – how do you know when the idea is ready, and shouldn’t be tweaked any more? I engaged the reporter in the answer – I asked her how she knew when a story idea was ready to go? I drew on my relationship with my friend, the freelance journalist, and my memories of her story ideas. And even with all that analogical reasoning, and a sure-fire smile on my face, frankly, my answer wasn’t that great.

I’m headed to the Sunny Southwest tomorrow. Unfortunately, I won’t be seeing any more Suns games for a while. But I will be seeing my Saxon! Should be fun. I'll try to notice something fun, and remember it, long enough to write a more interesting post on the trip back.

Until then, I hope you, too, can feel the Spirit move you sometimes.