The Cognitive Dissenter

Mike has a knack for getting the perfect and most thoughtful gifts. He recently did it again and gave me a new camera for my birthday, a small digital Panasonic with 20x zoom. It is a simple thing of beauty with a great lens so it takes great pictures. All I have to do is push the right buttons which means it’s the perfect camera for me.

A week ago Sunday we went exploring and took the new camera with us.

Once upon a time I was told that if I broke the Sabbath, i.e. didn’t spend my Sundays sitting reverently through three long hours of church sermons, it would be a sin and god would withdraw his spirit from me. “You will be sad!” I was duly warned.

In a different life that feels like a dream fading at sunrise into shades of gray, Sundays were once a colorless patchwork of oppressive pantyhose and too strong perfume interspersed with industrial-strength antiseptic, a dash of dirty diapers, and spritz of stale Cheerios. I should have known something was off when I couldn’t find god in all that reverence and the endemic drive to keep up appearances. She wasn’t in the green jello with the shredded carrots, either.

I think I glimpsed her once in my mother’s lovely smile, impossible to suppress when she described carrying my younger and much more rambunctious brother out of the chapel and into the Ladies’ Room, where said rambunctiousness was soon to be dealt with. Upon seeing another woman washing her hands at the sink, he pleaded, “Save me lady! This mean woman’s going to flush me down the toilet!” A flash of authenticity and color, like the little girl’s red coat in Schindler’s List.

Remember when Bill Murray kept waking up on Groundhog Day? The toaster dropped in the bathtub? That’s how much I used to look forward to Sundays. Roughly.

Then one day I decided to skip church and spend my Sundays in outdoor places filled with sky rather than barely listening to patriarchs while counting evenly spaced lighting fixtures. It was a risk, I was warned, fraught with the inevitable addiction to porn and drinking my sad self into oblivion.

“I understand and I wish to continue,” I said.

Unfortunately, I’m a lightweight and I didn’t get addicted to porn (unless you count sidestepping sweaty box elder bugs breathing all heavy-like while attached at the hiney; I mean the way she shivers when he strokes her you-know … Trish Does the Trail).

There is something almost magical about discovering the true joy of Sundays at your life’s midpoint. It’s like a lifetime of quietly lamenting and finally resigning yourself to having an inny then discovering that pesky and relatively new layer of belly fat only makes it sprout giant rubies and emeralds on demand. It’s all about perspective.

Every year Mike and I keep track of the ospreys that occupy this nest platform. A couple always shows up in the spring and builds a new nest. Hubby has a fish — a tasty trout — clutched in his talons and Wifey is sitting in the nest behind him (she’s hiding from the camera in this shot), presumably keeping a few eggs warm.

When we got a little too close to the nest Dad told us to back off with his high-pitched chirping alarm. Ospreys have an efficient and wonderful family dynamic. They work together to build the nest. He’ll fish while she stays with the eggs. Then they’ll both raise the young and teach them to fly and fish. In the fall, Mom will migrate first while Dad sticks around with the youngins until they’re all ready to head south with Mom. Congress could learn a few things from these two.

I used to sing songs and hymns about how Jesus makes me feel happy inside. But the truth is (forgive me Jesus) seeing sandhill cranes makes me feel happy inside.

This is the same reservoir from which the ospreys pluck their fishy meals. The gorgeous snow covered mountain in the background is Mount Timpanogos.

It was a windy day, perfect weather for launching a big kite over the water while balancing on a board. When I have time to figure out iMovie, I’ll post a video of these guys on the water with their giant kites snagging the wind and taking them for a ride. If there is a god, I am certain this is why she created Sundays and made them so extraordinarily lovely.