Christmas Trees

Our Christmas trees are still up. Since I'm not in charge of their being put up or being taken down, I have no say in it all. However, I don't remember Bern leaving them up this long before.

We have two Christmas trees--first of all because we have more ornaments than one tree can hold and secondly, because I like White Pine and Bern likes Spruce. So one is in the living room and one in the dining room, near the long windows in the front of the house. There is a rocking chair that sits near the doorway from the dining room to the living room where you can sit and see them both. The White pine has colored lights--one inexplicable strand of which blink--and the spruce has very proper Cheshire white lights. Colored lights--especially if they blink in any way--are considered gouache or gauche (which are the two spellings my spell check gave me though I suspect only one of those words means 'tasteless, which is what I mean about 'proper Cheshire lights).

The lights and ornaments are long gone--shortly after New Year's Day--but the trees remain, still healthy and thriving, so far as I can tell. I smelled the White Pine tonight while I was moving through the crowded dining room--most everything from the kitchen is there since we had a new floor put in the kitchen last week. And it smelled like Christmas--or the forest or a Frabreeze pine spray...well, not really, those sprays don't smell like a forest at all, or even a tree. They smell like what they are: chemicals meant to smell like pine.

Anyway, after I smelled the pine tree I took the dog for a walk and in the melting snow we saw the most amazing sight. It was a dandelion, all fluffed up with those little seed wings that blow away and go make more dandelions. I touched it and it was frozen solid. It had just reappeared from the snow that melted today and I was astonished. I would have stayed there and wrote a sonnet in my head about the dandelion in the snow if the dog hadn't been ready to move on and do what most people politely call 'his business'.

Long-lived Christmas trees and frozen dandelions...it is a wondrous world we live in, after all!

K and B were married this afternoon. They are both small people, fragile almost, but exquisite for that. Perfect little images of a bride and a groom--as lovely as pine trees and dandelions...she as embraced in whiteness as any dandelion about to be blown away. They are sweet, dear people and I can only pray they have a life together that is long enough to have too many ornaments for one Christmas tree and a relationship strong enough to have two Christmas trees if they like different kinds. And I hope the smell that fills their lives is of a pine forest and that the joy they know is like the giddy feeling of a white dandelion against their faces. And I hope they'll have a dog to walk in the darkness and a new floor or two to love.

Bern and I were married in 1970. You could do the math...this year will be 40 years. Neither of us has the energy to do anything new so I guess we will make the 'death do us part' moment.

Those are awesome, if not aw-ful vows: better or worse, richer or poorer, in sickness or in health...'til death do us part. And they vowed to both 'love' and 'cherish'. CHERISH is such a remarkable word and such a profound concept. To 'cherish' is 'to hold dear', to adore and to honor. Can't do much better than that. Love, I tell couples preparing for marriage, much to their horror, "comes and goes". It just does, like all emotions. But we have a choice in what we 'cherish'. We can choose what we 'hold dear'.

Tonight, for me, I cherish my life, my marriage, Christmas trees, frozen dandelions and Puli dogs to walk....

for better or for worse

I had a wedding rehearsal tonight. B and K are getting married tomorrow afternoon. I've done hundreds of these and, if I might say so, I'm fair to middling with weddings. I keep everyone loose and humorous during the rehearsal. I'm pretty good at 'loose and humorous', if I might say so. I start at the end and end at the end, if that makes any sense. I start the rehearsal by practicing the 'going out part' which gets everyone paired up and ready to do the 'coming in part' and go through the service. Tonight's group laughed at all the laugh lines, so I think they are fine.

I have arguments with other priests--and probably with the canons of the church, if I ever bothered to read them--about weddings. Here's why. I think the 'church' is pretty much 'irrelevant' to our culture and society. So, when anybody wants the 'church' involved in their marriage, I am delighted, excited and ready to make it happen.

Lots of priests want people to 'prove themselves' by attending church regularly for some amount of time before the 'church' will be a part of their marriage. I actually think that people who don't attend church who want the church to be a part of their lives in such a remarkably profound moment are people God might want me to invite them into the myths and rituals that the church has to offer.

My definition of a ritual is this--"it is something that seeks to 'make sense' of life". And people, wanting to promise promises and vow vows that will 'make sense' of their lives and want the church's rituals to do that are people folks like me should be welcoming and hospitable to and, without causing them any guilt, let them know God wants to be part of their lives and their love and the crazy complications of being married.

I'm 'marrying Sam' in a way--my job, it seems to me, is to insert God into every crevice and crinkle of the fabric of their lives whenever invited. Have the couple be active and pledging members of the parish for a year before their marriage? I really don't give a fig. They want God messed up in their lives--in all the folds and fibers of their relationship and commitment and love??? That's enough for me. "Come on Down!" I say. Let me add God to all this and just wait and see what happens.

These are good people. I've talked with B and K a half-dozen times and 'counseled' them, if that's the word, about marriage. B's father is his best man. K's father is walking her down the long, long aisle. These are children of two intact families. The angels should serenade them for that alone in a time when marriage itself is an illusion and a temporary state. Sometimes I think the most the church could suggest is serial monogamy, not life-long marriage. And I simply am confounded by those in the church that would deny 'any sacrament' to anybody. The sacraments don't belong to the church, they belong to God. We are just the franchise that can administer them to those Children of God who come looking for them.

The option is to make the church more restrictive and exclusive and retain the sacraments (which are God's, after all, not the property of the church) to those who fit in, obey the rules, meet the standards, live up to the requirements. That direction, that option, which many folks I know support, is to make the church not only irrelevant but inaccessible to the very folks who need it and the very folks who still in some way 'believe' in the sacraments. That, I'm afraid, makes no sense to me.

Will B and K be active members of St. John's? Probably not. Will they, when they have a child, know there is a place that welcomed them and passed on the sacrament of God at their marriage that might just welcome them back with open arms to baptize their child? I think so. And will they, when their children begin asking questions they can't answer about life and death and the 'meaning of everything' consider, if not act on, coming 'home' to the church that is welcoming and open and inclusive to help them with raising their children? Maybe and maybe not. But either way, I want to be the one who opens the doors rather than closes them and leaves the rest to the good people who come to me seeking Sacrament and to God about what happens next.

Just me talkin'. Just me writin'. And that's what I truly believe. God 'opens' doors and windows and anything else that can be opened that might, otherwise, be closed.

Our God OPENS...That what God does, OPENS everything to possibility. And shame on us if we don't do the same....

Praise God for B and K, for their vows, their longing for God to be part of their relationship, their hopefulness, their openess, their marriage....Tomorrow--4 p.m.--2 made 1 by the One we all know, if only dimly. Pray for B and K that their vows will sustain them for decades and decades of struggle, doubt, wonder, love and joy.....

When words fail...January 14

She was 37 years old and was one of the first brides I knew as Rector of St. John's. Just a week or two ago, I talked with her about baptism for her new baby--2 months old, as I remember--and she was deciding on whether the week after Easter worked for her. I'd baptized her two other children over the years. Then, on Sunday, she died. Just like that. Alive one moment and dead the next--the way death works. Death is not something that comes over time. Oh, you can be waiting for someone to die for months, but Death works simply: one moment you are alive and the next moment you are dead.

I did an odd service for her today at the funeral home at 1 p.m. She was cremated at the Medical Examiner's Office in Farmington, after an autopsy to determine why someone 37 had died at all, why that moment came to her.

Even in the cold, the funeral home was stifling because over a hundred people were crowded into a space for 60 or so. A video of her life was running to my right--pictures of her too short life, her children, her family, her friends, things she did before the moment when she was dead and dead for a long, long time. That's the power Death has over us--no matter how long we live, we will be dead for much longer.

The pain and loss was palpable in the room. Her husband and mother and oldest son were in a stupor of sorts, hardly able to react at all to much of anything. The rest of the people there were not talking and laughing and catching up the way people do when an old person dies. There was a pall over the whole room, a blanket spread across them. They were sober, solemn and mostly silent.

Here's one of the reasons I think I am a reasonably good priest: I never try to deceive or lie to people when someone is dead. I have no handy aphorisms or pithy biblical quotes designed to take their mind off the enormity of what has happened to them. Mostly, I say nothing. And when asked questions like "Isn't Daddy in a 'better place'?" I answer, "I have no idea...."

And I don't. That strange and final secret door named Death is something I have no clue about. I simply don't. And I don't reflect on it much because Death is one of the astonishing Mysteries of living. I know all the church's teachings and all the dogma and doctrine and none of that makes the least bit of sense to me.

The best I can come up with and not be telling an untruth is this: I entrust the dead to the heart of God. What that means is beyond me. None of the golden streets and wings and harps and singing the Doxology for eternity speaks to my mind or soul. 'Eternity' as a concept is something I cannot begin to imagine or claim to comprehend. I am locked in 'time'--which we made up to track our journey from birth to death. 'Time' is where I live and move and have my being. Eternity I leave to God.

So, at times like today, words fail--the beautiful and comforting words of the Book of Common Prayer ARE beautiful and comforting--but they fail. And my halting, stuttering words fall short of even failure. Something awful has happened. I am angry with God--which is better, I think, than being angry at the person who died...which we often are. I don't get it, this 'death' thing. I an outraged when it happens and then devolve into broken-hearted and then, usually, hopefully, can come to a moment of 'acceptance', that this horrible thing that has happened does not diminish, in any way, how much God loves us. I know this, when people I love die it doesn't reduce in any way my love for them--that love goes on and even grows. I love my parents much more now, decades after their deaths, than I did when they were alive and with me.


I simply believe the same applies to God. God loves us 'best of all' as we struggle and rejoice through life. Death only increases God's love. At least that's what I believe and hold on to and pray is true. Otherwise, nothing makes sense. Not only do words fail, all things fail.

God's heart, it seems to me--as a priest and a person who will die someday--is where we're bound. God's heart, which is beyond words, understanding, comprehension.

Pain and loss and Mourning and anger and depression we all know when someone dies. What we don't know and can't experience on this side of that strange and wondrous door is this: the Heart of God.

Words fail.

January 13

Yesterday, H., St. John's Parish Administrator, told me she had finally realized that when I leave "every thing will change..."

No shit, Cheyenne! I realize that too--for the parish and for me. Everything will change.

The Episcopal Church has always participated in a group illusion that it doesn't matter, really, who the priest is...the parish is larger than the priest. In a sense that is true. My most profound prayer is that the parish will be stronger and better after I leave. But, in my experience, 'who the Rector IS' is astonishingly important. For one thing, the Rector is, by canon law, 'the boss' is areas of staff, program and worship. That leaves an imprint on the life and fabric of the congregation that in many ways defines the church. It doesn't mean a new Rector can't begin, from day one to replace that imprint--but it is there to replace.

Actually, parishes are like geological strata. Layer after layer is laid on top of the ones before. There are still people here from the Dr. Lewis layer. Dr. Lewis died 7 years before I was born, but he was here for 40 years and left a deep print in the nature of the parish. It was Dr. Lewis who--with far-sighted wisdom--made St. John's a parish deeply committed to 'outreach'. He brought the Red Cross and the Visiting Nurses Association to Waterbury. He provided space to teach English to wave after wave of European immigrants. He housed the WPA workers in the old parish house. And that outline of his devotion to outreach ministry has endured through my day. Others have tinkered with the outlines of the imprint, but have had the good sense not to try to eliminate it.

Then there are layers of people who became part of the church during the residency of other Rectors. The biggest one was Mike Kendall who was associate and then rector here during the late 60's until 1978. Another outreach priest who had a profound effect on people as a pastor and a friend. There was a long time member, God bless her soul, who used to tell people, in front of me, "Mike Kendall was my favorite rector...."

Mike was once standing outside the church with me looking at our sign. On the sign are service times and those universal symbols for male/female/handicapped bathrooms. "That's great," he said, "what a ministry."

Just today, on a light pole near the church I found a pencil drawn sign that said 'bathrooms' with an arrow pointing to st. John's.

The staff jokes a lot about our 'bathroom ministry'--which isn't pleasant but vital to those friends of ours who are outside and either homeless or far from home who need a bathroom. A recent seminarian gave a sermon about the holiness of cleaning feces off the wall. Some felt that was a little too vivid, but it is true. I have become adept at unplugging toilets in my time at St. John's and am better off for that. We are a church with a strong appreciation of Incarnation--the body has many functions and we are one of the few places in the center of the city where folks can find 'rest and relief'.

Several years ago I saw a young man walk past the church office window unzipping his pants. When I didn't hear the door open I went to see and found him peeing beside the church house door.

"Don't do that," I told him, "come in and use the bathroom...."

"I'm homeless," he said, about as angry as I would be if I were homeless, "I bet you have a bathroom in your house."

"I have three," I said, "and would like more but this isn't a conversation about the inequities of society, it's about how you are welcome to come in and pee...."

I've thought for a long time that the three professions that should be paid the most are Day Care Workers, Garbage Collectors and Nursing Home Aides. People who care for our children should be almost deities in our midst. People who take away the incredible amount of waste we make should be honored. And those who clean up our messes when we are old should sit in seats of honor.

It's all about waste and bodily functions when you get right down to it. Why shouldn't those jobs pay 6 figures? And why shouldn't cleaning feces off the wall be holy?

More later. Love you.

January 12--day three

I'm thinking, should I count up to my April 30 retirement or count down from now? I'd have to go to a calendar and figure out how many days there are between today and April 30 to count down to 1. I could probably do it in my head--Feb has 28 days, March 31, April 30. That's, if I counted right and it isn't a leap year (I didn't cheat and look) is 89 days. January has 19 left, I think, which boils it down to 108 days before I leave St. John's. That just seems too few after 20 years (some 7307 days and more). That really bums me out, having 108 days left out of so many. So, I won't count 'down', I don't think. I'll simply keep writing and let it go at that.

I'm having a hard time with this right now. There was an article in the newspaper today "Popular Rector Leaves Church". One of the reasons I'm stopping is that I believe, in a positive way, I still am 'popular'. Not with everyone, surely, but with enough and those who matter. I am always distressed by athletes who play one or two years past their prime and leave because they have to or aren't given a contract extention. That saddens me. So, leaving now, at--if not at the 'top' of my game, at least still playing well--seems the right way to go. One of the most wondrous members of the parish told me in the parking lot yesterday that he was happy I could leave 'on my terms'. He was forced out of his job decades ago and it still hurts. So I go now, even though I think I could still contribute to the life and ministry of the church. "My terms" aren't bad, not a bad way to stop.

Which is what I'm doing: I'm 'stopping'. I'm not quitting or leaving or finished or resigning...none of that. I'm stopping, now, on my terms, before I 'have to' quit or enough people want me to leave. And I'm having a hard time with it today. People I love have told me how they are having a hard time with it all and I don't even tell them I am too. I just tell them "I know" and try to honor their feelings of loss and pain even though I have those feelings too.

I've started noticing 'what I will miss'.

I'll miss my 'smoking porch'. I'm stopping smoking as well, but it, like my leaving St. John's, is a drawn out process. The only place I allow myself to smoke is a little porch off the sacristy. Smoking there is like being in Dr. Seusses' book about "I saw it all on Mulberry Street." Every time I go out there to smoke I see something amazing: an Orthodox Jew carrying a cat across the street wrapped in a blanket; a woman smoking and talking on her phone with her Pug dog driving the car, apparently; a crow as big as a chicken; a woman with jeans so tight I would pay to see her take them off (not for 'that' reason, but just to see how she does it); a plastic bag that blew around my head and then off down toward the Green like the bag at the end of "American Beauty Rose"; a guy with so many returnable bottles and cans in his car that I couldn't see through the windows to see him driving; a drunk man who stopped traffic until a young woman could get her baby carriage across the snow bank and cross; homeless couples holding hands like all lovers should; secretaries out walking on their lunch hours from the law firms that line the Green; a lovely woman jogging, thin and taunt as a dressmaker's dummy, her pony tail shifting side to side, grave and precious as a newly laid egg; large people on small bicycles; cars with the radio or CD player turned up so loud they must have permanent ear damage; old men shuffling, wheezing, on their way somewhere, perhaps to die; young people, their coats open even in the chill, strutting their stuff....and lots more. I see it all from my smoking porch.

And I've seen it all here as the Rector of St. John's. I've seen and experienced and known more than you imagine...more than you CAN imagine....And I'm going to leave that behind in 108 days or so. I've having trouble with it now, right now. It will pass, I know, but right now I dread that leaving....

1/11/2010

Monday. I like Mondays at St. John's. Not a lot is scheduled to happen. Lots of priests take Mondays off, but not me--I love coming in and being around when nothing much is scheduled to happen. A priest who once worked for me told me "you do nothing better than anyone I've ever known." We're no longer close (more the pity) but things happen. And we must have been pretty close when she told me that because she saw through my facade and discovered a deep truth about me. I actually enjoy 'doing' nothing, just 'being' around. Sometimes people call me and begin by saying, "I know you're busy..." and I interrupt to say, "no I'm not, I've just been hanging around waiting for your call...." It puts them off stride so I wave it away and ask how they are and why they're calling such a busy man....

Priests are past masters of seeming 'busy'. I think it is because 'being a priest' goes against all the stuff we were told at our parents' knees and by the educational system and the whole ambiance of our culture. "Busy" passes in our culture for 'important'. And if you're not busy doing something, well, what do you hope to accomplish? I think we as priests are a bit embarrassed by how little we have to 'do', like work. So we fill our schedules with meetings and gatherings and busy work and not-so-busy-work to justify being paid. I have a classmate who left Virginia Seminary in 1975, along with me, and went to a church in Florida--just across some body of water from Cape Kennedy where he can sit in his back yard and watch the shuttles and other rocket things launch. He stayed there until a few years ago when he retired (he was only in our seminary for one year because he was a RC priest for years then left and married a woman with five children). He was in one place his entire ministry as an Episcopal priest. I talked to him several years ago when I visited about 30 of my classmates on a sabbatical to catch up with what had happened since we all left Virginia Seminary.

He told me this: "priests are the only people in the culture who are paid to 'do' nothing. We just wait around waiting for someone to need us....and if we aren't there when the call comes, we aren't doing our job...."

Anyway, I did go to a nursing home today to have a Eucharist. There has, over the 20 years, always been someone in the parish who could play piano who went with me to the three nursing homes each month so we could sing. I go to two now since one closed (more the pity) and though I used to dread going to the nursing homes (it is a momento mori to visit such places)I always enjoyed it once I got there. Its only been a few years since I finally understood why I liked going to nursing homes. It's because it puts me among people who 'really' do nothing. I understand that about them and I realize that just being around waiting is a ministry and a life in and of itself. And to them, when the pianist and I arrive, it is like the call on Monday morning that I've been waiting for. And I love them--these old people who used to be older than I am by quite a bit than they are now. They are mostly sweet and gentle and so pleased that we are there even if they have no idea what we're doing. I like that. It is a real triumph of human life to be pleased with what's happening when you have no idea what it is....Ponder that under your castor oil tree...

One lady at this nursing home waves at me all during the service. she waves when I'm praying or reading the gospel or celebrating communion or singing. She just waves and crosses herself whenever I cross myself. One of the Recreational directors once asked me if it distracted me. "No," I told her, 'it keeps me focused..." I mostly wave back all during all the things I'm doing.

When I give communion at the nursing home I intinct the wafer and put it on people's tongues--or tiny pieces of wafer if they have trouble swallowing. I say "the Body and Blood of Christ" and, instead of "Amen" they almost always say--even the ones who seem out of it altogether, not even able to wave--"thank you...."

I don't know, if there is ever a new prayerbook we should have people respond to the sacrament by saying 'thank you'. It's a polite thing and makes a lot of sense. I've decided when I'm retired and go to eucharist I'll say 'thank you' to the Body and to the Blood and to the ones who bring it to me. It just seems right.

When I'm retired I could write a chapter in a book about going to nursing homes. I think I will. I'll give you a preview....

Once when I was giving communion at a nursing home there was a woman with wild hair and no teeth and a lot of energy--she was tied in her wheel chair else she would have escaped to God knows where. I came to her and dipped the wafer and held it out and said, "The Body and Blood of Christ."

She stared at me like she was crazy (which she was) or like I was crazy (which isn't far from true) and said: "YOU'RE CHRIST?" real loud, like I wrote it.

"No", I told her, "this is the Body and Blood of Christ..."

She said, even louder 'YOU'RE CHRIST....' like she meant it, like it might be true.

I tried two more times and she said the same thing louder and louder until I noticed an orderly about to come over. So I said, under my breath, "I'm Christ" and she opened her mouth and took the sacrament and said, softly, "Thank you...."

So you read this whole thing--the second day of my writing knowing in April I'm retiring.

I could say, 'YOU'RE CHRIST', which wouldn't be as far off as you might think.

But, instead, I'll just say, "Thank you..." Not a bad thing to say in any circumstance....

Day One

Today, January 10, is the first day that my plan to retire from my position at St. John's has been general knowledge. A letter went out last week that most people already received and I talked about it at all three services--just an initial and general comment, really. My last day will be April 30, so there is time to have longer, more serious conversations. After over 20 years there will be a lot of good-byes to say. And since someone leaving is like a death, I imagine we will all go through some of Elizabeth Kubla Ross' 'stages of death': denial, bargaining, anger, depression and hopefully, acceptance.

I've already experienced in others most of those stages. Some people who knew, before the letter went out, had the first reaction: "you don't mean it...." Others asked if there was anything they, or the church, could do to change my mind. Some spoke a bit harshly with me--words like 'abandoning us' and 'betraying us' were actually spoken. And many are simply sad--already in depression. A few have wished me well and told me they are happy for me. Thing is, people jump back and forth during a long illness--which, in a way--is what now until the end of April will be! My hope is to help the parish--and myself--come to acceptance in the end so my parting can be as wondrous and important as my time with St. John's has been. That's part of what I'll be trying to develop a discipline about by writing down the days.

I also want to reflect on my time here--I have grieving to do and things to let go of before I can leave cleanly. I usually work through things better in writing than in other ways, so this journal of the last few months of my ministry and presence here will help me do that.

I might start looking at 'the church' with a critical eye. One of the things I want to do when I have more time that will begin in May, is to write about 'the church' as an institution and a community. It is meant to be the latter but spends more time and energy of being the former, in my opinion at any rate. So I might drift into that once and a while.

And, really, is will be a time for me to say good-bye to some of the best years of my life. I was 42 when I arrived and didn't have a gray hair on my head though my beard had turned gray years before. Now I'm going to be a white haired guy of 63 when I leave. That's a lot of water under the bridge and a lot of wafers across the rail. It's also a lot of dying and being born and getting married and being sick and moving away and struggling and rejoicing. It is quite remarkable how little a priest 'does' like work. Most of my ministry is 'being there'. Woody Allen once said, "just showing up is 90% of life." In ministry 'just showing up' may be even more than that!

I've had discussions with other priests--and a couple of bishops--about my belief that ordination is ontological, not functional. There are 'functions' I can perform under the particular and peculiar polity of the Episcopal Church. But they aren't hard and soon become like 'muscle memory'. But I truly believe (as truly as I believe anything...we'll run into my odd theories about 'belief' at some point) that 'being a priest' is simply that--'being...."

I have a seminary classmate--probably many of them--who wear clerical collars. I don't and haven't for years--but that's just me. If I did wear a collar the last place I'd wear one is on an airplane--it attracts crazy people like a magnet and even the sanest of us is a little crazy at 38,000 feet trapped in a large, efficient sardine can. Once my friend talked to a man all the way from LA to Chicago. As they were circling O'Hare, the seatmate said to my friend, "what do you do for a living?" My friend looked down at his black shirt and Anglican collar and said, somewhat confused, "Why...I'm a priest...." And the man replied, "I know who you are, I want to know what you do...."

My friend asked me what I would have said. Truth is, what I would have said is something like, "who I AM is what I do...." Let him chew on that while he waits for his baggage.

I'm sure that will come up again in these musings under a Castor oil tree that will no longer be with us on May 1--my life and time at St. John's.

Hope you'll come along for the journey....