Anniversaries

Today I got an email from Dave, the salesman I bought my car from, wishing me 'happy anniversary' on the second anniversary of the day I bought my car. (That seems odd to me but I'm sure the dealership has some software that does it automatically.)

Which means, I bought my car the day before I wrote the first post on this blog. (I didn't mention the car in my blog and if you had asked me how long I'd had the car I wouldn't have had a clue. But now I know--two years today.

There's a wonderful man who is one of the founder's of Integrity--GLBT Episcopalians and their friends--who sends me a happy anniversary wish every year on our Marriage Anniversary and another on the anniversary of my ordination. His name is Louie Crews and I only imagine he must send those to a lot of Episcopal priest, though how you get the list together for that I can't comprehend.

So, since March 8, 2009 was my first post, I thought I'd send it to you again. (Mostly, I just wanted to remind myself about what I said I'd do here and see if I'm still trying to do that.) But it does explain the name--many people think I take castor oil then write....Which says something about their evaluation of the substance of these musings....

Sitting under the Castor Oil Tree (3/8/09)

The character in the Bible I have always been drawn to is Jonah. I identify with his story. Like Jonah, I have experienced being taken where I didn't want to go by God and I've been disgruntled with the way things went. The belly of a big old fish isn't a pleasant means of travel either....

The story ends (in case you don't remember) with Jonah upset and complaining on a hillside above the city of Nineveh, which God has saved through Jonah. Jonah didn't want to go there to start with--hence the ride in the fish's stomach--and predicted that God would save the city though it should have been destroyed for its wickedness. "You dragged me half-way around the world," he tells God, "and then didn't destroy the city. ...I knew it would turn out this way. I'm angry, so angry I could die!"

God causes a tree to grow to shade Jonah from the sun (scholars think it might have been a castor oil tree--the implications are astonishing!) Then God sends a worm to kill the tree. Well, that sets Jonah off anew: "How dare you kill my tree?" he challenges the Creator. "I'm so angry I could die!"

God simply reminds him that his is upset at the death of a tree he didn't plant or nurture and yet doesn't see the value of saving all the people of the great city Nineveh...along with their cattle and beasts.

And the story ends. No resolution. Jonah simply left to ponder all that. There's no sequel either--no "Jonah II" or "Jonah: the Next Chapter", nothing like that. It's just Jonah, sitting under the bare branches of the dead tree, pondering.

What I want to do is use this blog to do simply that, ponder about things. I've been an Episcopal priest for over 30 years. I'm approaching a time to retire and I've got a lot of pondering left to do--about God, about the Church, about religion, about life and death and everything involved in that. Before the big fish swallowed me up and carried me to my own Nineveh (ordination in the Episcopal Church) I had intended a vastly different life. I was going to write "the Great American Novel" for starters and get a Ph.d. in American Literature and disappear into some small liberal arts college, most likely in the Mid-Atlantic states and teach people like me--rural people, Appalachians and southerners, simple people, deep thinkers though slow talkers...lovely for all that--to love words and write words themselves.

God (I suppose, though I ponder even that...) had other ideas and I ended up spending the lion's share of my priesthood in the wilds of two cities in Connecticut (of all places) among tribes so foreign to me I scarcely understood their language and whose customs confounded me. And I found myself often among people (the Episcopal Cult) who made me anxious by their very being. Which is why I stuck to urban churches, I suppose--being a priest in Greenwich would have sent me into some form of shock...as I would have driven them to hypertension at the least.

I am one who 'ponders' quite a bit and hoped this might be a way to 'ponder in print' for anyone else who might be leaning in that direction.

Ever so often, someone calls my bluff when I go into my 'I'm just a boy from the mountains of West Virginia' persona. And I know they are right. I've lived too long among the heathens of New England to be able to avoid absorbing some of their alien customs and ways of thinking. Plus, I've been involved in too much education to pretend to be a rube from the hills. But I do, from time to time, miss that boy who grew up in a part of the world as foreign as Albania to most people, where the lush and endless mountains pressed down so majestically that there were few places, where I lived, that were flat in an area wider than a football field. That boy knew secrets I am only beginning, having entered my sixth decade of the journey toward the Lover of Souls, to remember and cherish.

My maternal grandmother, who had as much influence on me as anyone I know, used to say--"Jimmy, don't get above your raisin'." I probably have done that, in more ways than I'm able to recognize, but I ponder that part of me--buried deeply below layer after layer of living (as the mountains were layer after layer of long-ago life).

Sometimes I get a fleeting glimpse of him, running madly into the woods that surround him on all sides, spending hours seeking paths through the deep tangles of forest, climbing upward, ever upward until he found a place to sit and look down on the little town where he lived--spread out like a toy village beneath him--so he could ponder, alone and undisturbed, for a while.

When I was in high school, I wrote a regular column for the school newspaper called "The Outsider". As I ponder my life, I realize that has been a constant. I've always felt just beyond the fringe wherever I was. I've watched much more than I've participated. And I've pondered many things.

So, what I've decided to do is sit here on the hillside for a while, beneath the ruins of the Castor Oil Tree and ponder some more. And, if you wish, I'll share my ponderings with you--whoever you are out there in cyber-land.

Two caveats: I'm pretty much a Luddite when it comes to technology--probably smart enough to learn about it but never very interested, so this blog is an adventure for me. My friend Sandy is helping me so it shouldn't be too much of a mess. Secondly, I've realized this: that there is no spell check on this blog. Either I can get a dictionary or ask your forgiveness for my spelling. I'm a magna cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa ENGLISH major (for God's sake) who never could conquer spelling all the words I longed to write.

I suppose I'll just ask your tolerance.