Monday, December 2, 2024

Giving Thanks

 Thanksgiving is over--but giving thanks is not.

We need to be thankful every day...all the time.

Bern is doing Face Time with our granddaughter. I can hear them down the hall. They do it M-W-F and I'm always thankful.

I'm thankful, after the election, to live in the Very Blue state of CT.

I'm so thankful that Bern and I are married. We met when I was 17 and she was 14. 60 years later we are still together.

I am thankful that I'm an Episcopal priest--I have served amazing congregations and thank all of them for molding me into who I am today.

There is so much more for me to be thankful for--but I'll stop there for today.

My advice to you--be thankful every hour....


Friday, November 29, 2024

All I need...

It was great to have Mimi, Tim, Eleanor and Josh with Bern and me for Thanksgiving! They are almost all I need....

I also, because of Thanksgiving and the Sunday schedule at Trinity and that Wed. Bible Study is cancelled for Dec.--I have almost two weeks without work. That's almost all I need....

But according to the stats of my Blog, Under the Castor Oil Tree, I only need a bit over 3000 more views to reach half-a-million total views.

That's all I need....

 

Tuesday, November 26, 2024

A fulneral for someone I never met

His name was Tom.

He was a very successful man. He and his wife lived in NYC and Long Island until they moved to Milton, for goodness sake.

He was 90 when he died.

His son did the Eulogy and made me wish I had known him.

His wife sang a song she wrote for him.

His daughters read scripture.

There was no communion.

He was buried in a grave yard I never knew existed about five minutes from the church.

The area around the grave yard reminded me of my home in Southern West Virginia--so rural, so barren. 

I was amazed by it all.

They gave a good donation to the church.

All in all, an interesting day.

 

Monday, November 25, 2024

Thanksgiving is coming

 It's only a few  days away....

Mimi, Tim and Eleanor are coming Wednesday and Josh early Thursday.

John usually comes but he's in a medical center with a broken back.

It will be good to be with them and to eat too much.


Saturday, November 23, 2024

Today

 Hard to imagine I worked in Higganum for several years.

I couldn't find my way there and came home for Bern to give me directions.

Even those weren't great--so, I was a couple of minutes late for the service.

The alb didn't fit at all--much to big.

I was a  nightmare.

But I got through it well

Lots of folk there I knew but had forgotten their names.

Faces, I am good at--not names.

Talked to Mejol, my favorite cousin a couple of hours ago. She's 5 years older than me--and she said the same: Faces not Names.

Getting old is  not fun....


Friday, November 22, 2024

"Two funerals in 4 days"

 I have a funeral tomorrow of an old friend and one on Tuesday of someone I've never met.

I will begin both with this from a classmate in college that she wrote for a man she loved who died in Vietnam. 

    When people die

        It's like a bird flying into a window on the coldest morning

            of the year.

    When people die

        It's like the bears are out of the zoo and

            eating children on the street.

    When people die

            It's like a maniac is in the power station and the

                lights go on and off and on

                off and on and

                off.

    When people die.

            

        I think you'll agree.....

Thursday, November 21, 2024

For my children and grandchildren...

Bern and I have two children--Mimi and Josh--and four grandchildren--Emma, Tegan and Chris Bradley and Eleanor McCarthy.

I worry more about them than Bern and I. We are in our 70's and not long for this world. But they have decades to  live.

What the new government will mean to them is beyond my expectations.

I long for them to live in the nation I've always lived it.

But I don't know if that will happen.

I pray so....

 

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About Me

some ponderings by an aging white man who is an Episcopal priest in Connecticut. Now retired but still working and still wondering what it all means...all of it.