I see my readership has declined further. This assumes that Google Analytics “visits” have any significance. This corresponds to my own feelings of being invisible and eccentric. No matter. I continue to experience my daily life as a mixture of interesting engagement with ideas and beauty through reading and music and a sense of living in an exterior environment of hysteria, falsity, and crisis in American life.

The hysteria I experience is largely political. I suppose one could think of people who support our president-elect and ones who view his election with alarm. Although i am clearly in the latter camp, I find both kinds of hysteria off putting. Supporters of Trump seem to have a cavalier attitude about facts and coherence. The anti-Trump camp has created confusion in my mind with its adopting the political language of activism in the absence of actual political activity or even new governmental actions.

Thus hysteria on right and left social media (mainly Facelessbooger)  blurs with daily anxiety I experience in people.

Falsity is a parameter of church work I have experienced all my life. From my point of view, it is fortunate that I have as yet to entirely adapt to it. I am grateful at this time in my life to be associated with church work that is the least objectionable I can imagine and at the same time remunerates me so that Eileen and I can live.

But then there are moments.

Moments like yesterday. My intellectual, emotional, and physical fatigue asserts itself on the days after church work. Mondays and Thursdays are usually days I remind myself that the reason I am grumpy or tired or out of sorts is that I am still in recovery mode. When I am called on to do church work on these days like committee meetings and funerals (yesterday), the recovery takes longer.

As I’m sure you are aware, dear reader (whose numbers are dwindling), funerals in America are fakey. There is always a disconnect between the moment and the events that have led to it. I am reminded of Ed Friedman’s observation that “There is never, you should pardon the expression, a shit suicide” by that he meant we don’t assume that someone who has killed themselves wasn’t a “shit.”

Similarly when ritual is reduced to elegy and numb disregard and misunderstanding of religious rituals not normally part of one’s life, it’s pretty pathetic. As I help lead these moments, I am reminded that living, breathing people are always a mixture of good and bad. We are none of us the ideal person we see in our mind’s eye. And at the same time we are all of us more worthy than we probably think we are. God help those who try to put a label on us especially when mourning.

What’s the Best Music to Listen to While Working? – The Atlantic

Silence for thinking but what about cooking?