We were in Baltimore, visiting Josh and Cathy and our three granddaughters when the storm was getting all the news. We were coming back on Saturday, but as Friday passed and the snow started at 2 p.m. or so, it seemed foolish not to leave early.
We left at 5:30 and ran away from the storm through Maryland and Delaware. The snow was thick and it was very dark, but there was little traffic and we made good time. Somewhere in southern New Jersey, we simply drove out of snow. Snow one moment, no snow and dry roads the next. By the time we got to the GW Bridge the speed limit south of Philadelphia had been lower to 35. So, we were running before the storm.
A big question, it seems to me, is how to know when to run and when to stay put. "Hold 'em or fold 'em" in poker terminology. "Flight or fight" in animal instinct form.
Getting out of Baltimore with the storm of the century bearing down and knowing I had to be here for church and Monday funeral isn't a great example. That was an easy choice.
But when a friend or co-worker tells a homophobic or racist or sexist joke, when is it best to walk away and when does it seem right to challenge them?
When the church stands for something that is intolerable, when is it best to 'just get along' and best to 'take a stand'. And how do you know you're right???
The Tea Party people had a convention in Memphis or Nashville--some Tennessee city--this weekend. I think they are hyper-negative, reactionary and dangerous--but when do I find it necessary to say that or do something about my belief? And, as always, how to I know I'm right....?
When to run and when to stand your ground. A lot there to ponder under our castor oil tree, I'd say....
Sunday, February 7, 2010
Wednesday, February 3, 2010
linear time confounds me
Back in June I preached a sermon about being here 20 years. I had the seven top reasons I'd stayed so long. OK, I couldn't come up with 10 or ran out of time or something....
But the first reason was this: "I lost track of time...."
Which for me is pretty easy. I often feel like Billy Pilgrim in Kurt Vonnegut's "Slaughterhouse Five". Billy Pilgrim, Vonnegut writes, is 'unstuck in time'.
Like me, sometimes. I am hard pressed to get any chronological order in my life beyond "Before/After" I got married, "Before/After" the kids were born, "Before/After" I came to St. John's. That's the extent of my mastery over linear time. It confounds me.
I am totally confounded, amazed, stricken, astonished and flabbergasted that when I leave in, what is it?--80 some days, that I will have been the Rector of this church for over 21 years. (I could take a pencil and paper and figure out exactly how long--but 'over', 'not quite', 'about' and 'somewhere in there' is the best I can do in my head about time.)
Someone asked me today, "doesn't it seem like 'yesterday' that you came to St. John's?" And I had to tell them, 'well, yes, in one way, in another it seems like I've been here forever.' Linear time, like I told you....
So, here I am 80 some days from the end of yesterday and forever. Harriet told me today that the dream I told you about--especially the losing of my dog--had something to do with fearing I would lose my 'center'. There was a lot more about that, but that's the essence of it all. And now that I think about it, that's exactly right--I'm in danger of losing both yesterday and forever when I leave.
I know 'all will be well', but this linear time thing has me really screwed up. 86 days--that's it--I did that with pen and pencil and a calendar.
God I'm going to miss all this....
But the first reason was this: "I lost track of time...."
Which for me is pretty easy. I often feel like Billy Pilgrim in Kurt Vonnegut's "Slaughterhouse Five". Billy Pilgrim, Vonnegut writes, is 'unstuck in time'.
Like me, sometimes. I am hard pressed to get any chronological order in my life beyond "Before/After" I got married, "Before/After" the kids were born, "Before/After" I came to St. John's. That's the extent of my mastery over linear time. It confounds me.
I am totally confounded, amazed, stricken, astonished and flabbergasted that when I leave in, what is it?--80 some days, that I will have been the Rector of this church for over 21 years. (I could take a pencil and paper and figure out exactly how long--but 'over', 'not quite', 'about' and 'somewhere in there' is the best I can do in my head about time.)
Someone asked me today, "doesn't it seem like 'yesterday' that you came to St. John's?" And I had to tell them, 'well, yes, in one way, in another it seems like I've been here forever.' Linear time, like I told you....
So, here I am 80 some days from the end of yesterday and forever. Harriet told me today that the dream I told you about--especially the losing of my dog--had something to do with fearing I would lose my 'center'. There was a lot more about that, but that's the essence of it all. And now that I think about it, that's exactly right--I'm in danger of losing both yesterday and forever when I leave.
I know 'all will be well', but this linear time thing has me really screwed up. 86 days--that's it--I did that with pen and pencil and a calendar.
God I'm going to miss all this....
JD is dead
It's been over a week since JD Salinger died and I'm just now writing about it. Part of that is that it has taken some time for it to sink in. Not that he was always in the front of my mind or a part of my thoughts--my goodness, he hasn't published in 30 years or more! But he is in my long-term memory in a powerful way.
When I was 13 years old, my cousin, Mejol--who was as close to being a sibling as I ever had--locked me in her bed room with a copy of 'Catcher in the Rye' and a Bob Dylan album. Mejol was 5 or so years older than me and often went on vacation with us and spent a lot of time with me. I idolized her and would do whatever she told me to. So I read the book and listened to the album and have never been the same.
Since I am such a sophisticated, worldly wise, cultured person (tongue firmly in cheek!) people find it hard to believe I grew up in one of the most provincial and isolated places in the country--the rural coal fields of southern West Virginia. My cousin Mejol went to college and studied literature...and so did I. While in college, she became an Episcopalian...and so did I. She was my lens into the wider world when I was a kid. So Salinger and Dylan in one sitting...well, I have no idea what she had in mind but it shifted my world-view that day. We even named our son Joshua DYLAN in order of Bob and I spent years trying to 'be' Holden Caufield.
Everyone needs a 'Mejol' in their life--someone to open unopened door, even doors you don't know are there and simply invite you through them. I am who I am as much for the influence of Mejol than anyone in my childhood.
I thank her and I mourn the death of JD. It's a part of my youth dying...'course that started happening years ago....
When I was 13 years old, my cousin, Mejol--who was as close to being a sibling as I ever had--locked me in her bed room with a copy of 'Catcher in the Rye' and a Bob Dylan album. Mejol was 5 or so years older than me and often went on vacation with us and spent a lot of time with me. I idolized her and would do whatever she told me to. So I read the book and listened to the album and have never been the same.
Since I am such a sophisticated, worldly wise, cultured person (tongue firmly in cheek!) people find it hard to believe I grew up in one of the most provincial and isolated places in the country--the rural coal fields of southern West Virginia. My cousin Mejol went to college and studied literature...and so did I. While in college, she became an Episcopalian...and so did I. She was my lens into the wider world when I was a kid. So Salinger and Dylan in one sitting...well, I have no idea what she had in mind but it shifted my world-view that day. We even named our son Joshua DYLAN in order of Bob and I spent years trying to 'be' Holden Caufield.
Everyone needs a 'Mejol' in their life--someone to open unopened door, even doors you don't know are there and simply invite you through them. I am who I am as much for the influence of Mejol than anyone in my childhood.
I thank her and I mourn the death of JD. It's a part of my youth dying...'course that started happening years ago....
Tuesday, February 2, 2010
a disturbance in the Force
I ran over a squirrel today on the way to church. I was driving on Mountain Road and this squirrel did a squirrel thing of running to the middle of the road and stopping and heading back. I slowed down when I saw him/her and then sped up when he started back and then he/she ran right under the car and I heard a terrible thud that was surely enough to brain a pound and a half rodent. I looked in the rear view mirror and imagined he was still standing up, but I know he was dead. I felt awful.
Remember in STAR WARS when the Death Star blows up Obi Wan Ben Kenobi's home planet? The moment it happens though Obi Wan was light years away, he staggered and was helped into a seat. "There has been a disturbance in the Force."
That's how I felt all the way to Waterbury. There was a disturbance in the Force and I had caused it by killing that squirrel.
A friend of mine calls squirrels 'furry tailed, cute rats', which they probably are. But I like them, though they show no sign of intelligence except to run up a tree when danger appears--or, run under a car at any moment, just when you think they know better. Squirrels don't seem to ever 'know better' so they are pretty stupid. Rats are probably, in the long run, smarter than squirrels though without the great tails and the cuteness.
But I felt badly all day, really bummed, for killing that stupid squirrel.
Today is February 2--26 days left in this month, 31 in March and 30 in April. 87 days left before I retire. I'm already feeling a disturbance in the Force. What was I thinking to do this? I'm much like a squirrel that thought it was a good idea at the time to run across the road and then, though it stopped seeming like a good idea at some point, paused and kept running anyway. I thought for a moment that 87 was a prime number but then I realized it could be divided by 3 and 29. Having it be a prime number would have made it more bearable.
I know that 'all will be well' for me and St. John's, but right now I'm in the middle of the road hoping to get across without being brained by the undercarriage of a Hyundai. Or something....
Remember in STAR WARS when the Death Star blows up Obi Wan Ben Kenobi's home planet? The moment it happens though Obi Wan was light years away, he staggered and was helped into a seat. "There has been a disturbance in the Force."
That's how I felt all the way to Waterbury. There was a disturbance in the Force and I had caused it by killing that squirrel.
A friend of mine calls squirrels 'furry tailed, cute rats', which they probably are. But I like them, though they show no sign of intelligence except to run up a tree when danger appears--or, run under a car at any moment, just when you think they know better. Squirrels don't seem to ever 'know better' so they are pretty stupid. Rats are probably, in the long run, smarter than squirrels though without the great tails and the cuteness.
But I felt badly all day, really bummed, for killing that stupid squirrel.
Today is February 2--26 days left in this month, 31 in March and 30 in April. 87 days left before I retire. I'm already feeling a disturbance in the Force. What was I thinking to do this? I'm much like a squirrel that thought it was a good idea at the time to run across the road and then, though it stopped seeming like a good idea at some point, paused and kept running anyway. I thought for a moment that 87 was a prime number but then I realized it could be divided by 3 and 29. Having it be a prime number would have made it more bearable.
I know that 'all will be well' for me and St. John's, but right now I'm in the middle of the road hoping to get across without being brained by the undercarriage of a Hyundai. Or something....
Monday, February 1, 2010
relativity
I just took my dog for a walk. The temperature on our back porch is 18 degrees, but it seemed so much warmer than it has for many nights. Temperature, like many things is relative.
A dear friend of mine keeps sending me forwarded emails that are very critical of President Obama. I'm not critical at all of the president--I think he's done a worthy job against the almost unspeakable road-block negativity of the Republicans. My friend, I believe, is a registered Democrat. But, like the temperature, 'democrats' are relative.
I've begun to believe relativity can tell us a lot about most everything--take Christians, for example. I am a Christian and it seems to me that my credentials as a Christian (having been an Episcopal priest for over 30 years) should be unassailable. Not true, beloved. Since I am pro-gay marriage, anti-death penalty, a student of evolution, a defender of Roe vs. Wade and a Christian who believes the Kingdom of God will welcome those of other faiths, I am suspect among other Christians.
The conversation that begins, "How can you be a Christian and believe that?" isn't a conversation at all. It is a conversation stopper.
There is a relativity to being a Christian, I think. And that thought is made difficult since there are Christians who think 'relativity' is anti-Christian. For many Christians of many stripes (not a few of which are in the Anglican Communion!) it is a up or down, right or wrong, true or false world. The world where I live and move and have my being (the same world I think God, in some obscure way 'created') is floating, maybe this/maybe that, gray and paradoxical and, in many ways, inscrutable.
My friend Maner, who is a Southern Baptist, keeps talking about how I'll probably become a Southern Baptist when I retire. Fat chance of that! My theology is so relative and complex and confounding--even to me--that I thank God I found the Episcopal Church before I left Christianity all together for something Eastern or primitive or Druid-like. I AM a Christian, but I'm a Christian with many more questions than answers, many more obscurities than absolutes, many more ponderings than doctrines.
Thirty plus years ago, I truly believed I'd be safe to ask questions, question authority and wrestle with my angels in the Episcopal Church. I still believe that--just not as 'truly'. A lot of my conservative friends think the church left them behind at some point by being too liberal. I think, from time to time, that I have outrun the church because it isn't nearly as liberal or progressive as I believed.
I often hear people suggest that as we get older, we get more conservative, set in our way, all that. What I think is that as people age, they 'become MORE like they always were...."
It's interesting to me that my clergy friends are always looking for and finding ways in which I am much more 'moderate' than they think I am. There is stuff I believe in, like the 'objective reality of the sacraments' (we aren't just 'playing' church--we ARE church--is the way I'd put it). And folks to the right of me theologically and politically and just ontologically, always are delighted to point out how open I am to people who disagree. Well, that is true, even my friend who sends me bull-shit emails about Obama--I'm open to being his friend though his politics are bull-shit! But I would suggest that is a factor of my becoming more liberal and progressive than I was as a younger man. When I was in my 30's I wanted nothing to do with people who didn't agree with me--but that's not a very liberal point of view. Besides, I love a good argument and can talk louder than most people who disagree with me....
I'm a liberal, for example, who thinks we've lost our minds about smoking rules ('course I smoke...) and that everyone in the US should learn English (but only because they don't teach classes in Harvard Law School or John Hopkins Med School in any language but English and every child should have a shot at that rather than being part of an underclass). Conservatives say I'm contradictory in those two stands since I'm willing to let people smoke but not willing to let people speak the language of their choice. Like Walt Whitman (talk about your liberal!) I say: "do I contradict myself? very well, I contradict myself. I am large, I contain multitudes...."
I'm actually a 'realist' and 'relativist' as well as a liberal and progressive. People have a right to kill themselves how ever they choose to. But society owes it to everyone to have a shot at being a Harvard lawyer or a John's Hopkins physcian. And people have a right to make all the money they can, but they have a responsibility to share it in a big way. I'd tax the rich back into the middle class because if they were just doing it for the money, they should let someone do it for the joy of a job well done.
Everytime I hear someone say "Obama is a socialist", I say, in response, "Don't I wish!!!"
Truth is, just like me, I think, our president is a liberal and progressive who is washed well in the waters of realism and relativism. For me, that seems about right.
For my email friend, it is apparently a nightmare.
Well, everything is relative, after all....
A dear friend of mine keeps sending me forwarded emails that are very critical of President Obama. I'm not critical at all of the president--I think he's done a worthy job against the almost unspeakable road-block negativity of the Republicans. My friend, I believe, is a registered Democrat. But, like the temperature, 'democrats' are relative.
I've begun to believe relativity can tell us a lot about most everything--take Christians, for example. I am a Christian and it seems to me that my credentials as a Christian (having been an Episcopal priest for over 30 years) should be unassailable. Not true, beloved. Since I am pro-gay marriage, anti-death penalty, a student of evolution, a defender of Roe vs. Wade and a Christian who believes the Kingdom of God will welcome those of other faiths, I am suspect among other Christians.
The conversation that begins, "How can you be a Christian and believe that?" isn't a conversation at all. It is a conversation stopper.
There is a relativity to being a Christian, I think. And that thought is made difficult since there are Christians who think 'relativity' is anti-Christian. For many Christians of many stripes (not a few of which are in the Anglican Communion!) it is a up or down, right or wrong, true or false world. The world where I live and move and have my being (the same world I think God, in some obscure way 'created') is floating, maybe this/maybe that, gray and paradoxical and, in many ways, inscrutable.
My friend Maner, who is a Southern Baptist, keeps talking about how I'll probably become a Southern Baptist when I retire. Fat chance of that! My theology is so relative and complex and confounding--even to me--that I thank God I found the Episcopal Church before I left Christianity all together for something Eastern or primitive or Druid-like. I AM a Christian, but I'm a Christian with many more questions than answers, many more obscurities than absolutes, many more ponderings than doctrines.
Thirty plus years ago, I truly believed I'd be safe to ask questions, question authority and wrestle with my angels in the Episcopal Church. I still believe that--just not as 'truly'. A lot of my conservative friends think the church left them behind at some point by being too liberal. I think, from time to time, that I have outrun the church because it isn't nearly as liberal or progressive as I believed.
I often hear people suggest that as we get older, we get more conservative, set in our way, all that. What I think is that as people age, they 'become MORE like they always were...."
It's interesting to me that my clergy friends are always looking for and finding ways in which I am much more 'moderate' than they think I am. There is stuff I believe in, like the 'objective reality of the sacraments' (we aren't just 'playing' church--we ARE church--is the way I'd put it). And folks to the right of me theologically and politically and just ontologically, always are delighted to point out how open I am to people who disagree. Well, that is true, even my friend who sends me bull-shit emails about Obama--I'm open to being his friend though his politics are bull-shit! But I would suggest that is a factor of my becoming more liberal and progressive than I was as a younger man. When I was in my 30's I wanted nothing to do with people who didn't agree with me--but that's not a very liberal point of view. Besides, I love a good argument and can talk louder than most people who disagree with me....
I'm a liberal, for example, who thinks we've lost our minds about smoking rules ('course I smoke...) and that everyone in the US should learn English (but only because they don't teach classes in Harvard Law School or John Hopkins Med School in any language but English and every child should have a shot at that rather than being part of an underclass). Conservatives say I'm contradictory in those two stands since I'm willing to let people smoke but not willing to let people speak the language of their choice. Like Walt Whitman (talk about your liberal!) I say: "do I contradict myself? very well, I contradict myself. I am large, I contain multitudes...."
I'm actually a 'realist' and 'relativist' as well as a liberal and progressive. People have a right to kill themselves how ever they choose to. But society owes it to everyone to have a shot at being a Harvard lawyer or a John's Hopkins physcian. And people have a right to make all the money they can, but they have a responsibility to share it in a big way. I'd tax the rich back into the middle class because if they were just doing it for the money, they should let someone do it for the joy of a job well done.
Everytime I hear someone say "Obama is a socialist", I say, in response, "Don't I wish!!!"
Truth is, just like me, I think, our president is a liberal and progressive who is washed well in the waters of realism and relativism. For me, that seems about right.
For my email friend, it is apparently a nightmare.
Well, everything is relative, after all....
nightmares of reality....
I seldom have 'bad dreams'. Most of my dreams are really ordinary, if obscure, things.
Often I am working real hard on some problem I don't completely understand or am building something though I don't know what it is. I work and work in my dreams, totally at peace, just concerned with putting the next piece in place, not even concerned about the 'final product' but intent of my work. Once, lately, I dreamed about going shopping in some unknown place with Hank and Harriet Fotter for objects de-art for some house they were building. I had no idea what the house was like but I enjoyed the shopping trip (and in real life I hate to go shopping if it isn't for food....)
But last night I had what I'd call a nightmare. It would take me hours to write the whole dream down so I'll give you some details.
I'm out walking my dog in a city that I think I know and somehow, I lose him and I know I can't go home to Bern without Bela--my ass would be grass, so to speak. So, I'm looking for the dog during the dream and I have this big leather folder with lots of stuff in it I need--though I have no idea in the dream what is in it or why I need it...and I keep losing the folder and having to double back, still worried about finding the dog, before I can journey on.
The city I'm in was so familiar in the beginning of the dream but it becomes more and more unfamiliar as the dream goes on. Sometimes it is like the 'old campus' at Yale and sometimes like Cambridge MA and sometimes like a medieval city in some European place I've never been and sometimes like the sound stage for the movie with Robin Williams as Popeye. The territory keeps shifting as does the place I have to find. I need to find my house and then St. John's Church and then other places that I've never been and though the urban landscape is always interesting and could have been fun in another dream of another time, I'm lost...I mean, really lost and keep losing my dog and my folder.
I leave the folder in the apartment of a wonderful family--mother, crippled husband, two kids, the parents of the father--several times and have to wind back through the back streets and thoroughfares of my dream to re-arrive at the apartment and find my folder. Then I leave my folder somewhere because I am looking for the dog and come to a dog park with lots of dogs, a few of which look a lot like Bela but aren't and then go back into an official building and the head of security tells me they found my folder but it is just the stuff in it and the folder and my cell phone is gone, so I can't call Bern or anyone and it's like the 9th cell phone I've lost and I feel guilty and there is still no word of the dog though I keep asking people about him and for directions to wherever it is I'm going (nothing is clear any more) and everyone is friendly and tries to be helpful but nothing I tell them makes sense and some of them begin to ask me if I am crazy and I wish, more than anything besides finding the dog and getting wherever I'm going--that someone would take me to a hospital...somewhere white and quiet and calm, where I could just be for a while.
About that time I realize, even in my dream, that it IS a dream, that none of this is happening but I still can't stop wandering the wondrous streets of places I don't recognize at all and I have on a trench coat and I'm yelling "Wake up!" and "Why can't I find my way?" when I finally do wake up, pulling in and out of the dream for another few blocks of unfamiliar buildings.
Then I feel Bela against my leg in bed and can hear Bern breathing and I know none of it was real and I look at my clock, thinking it will be morning and it is only 1:07. I get up, go to the bathroom and read John Sanford's new novel for 30 minutes or so before I risk going back to sleep and finding myself in those strange, unknown streets that would be interesting if I weren't terrified.
I've thought about it for hours--being the Jungian I am--and realize the dream was about my retirement and how frightened I am about 'what happens next'. In reality, I have some ideas and thoughts about what I will do, but in my unconscious, I am terrified of finding myself somewhere totally unfamiliar where I can't find my way though people are helpful and where I lose the things I love and need.
Jung thought that once you 'got' the Dream-makers point, the dream would not return. I hope so because this was so frightening.
So, Dream-Maker mine, I've got it. I'm terrified of what is going to happen to me after the next (can you believe it? 89 days). And I'll dwell on that and ponder it over and over. Just don't send me that dream again, OK?
I really am moving into a city-scape that will be at once strange, unknown and a bit frightening. I know that...really know it after that dream....I know, OK?
I hope my Dream-Maker believes me....I don't want another night like last night....
Often I am working real hard on some problem I don't completely understand or am building something though I don't know what it is. I work and work in my dreams, totally at peace, just concerned with putting the next piece in place, not even concerned about the 'final product' but intent of my work. Once, lately, I dreamed about going shopping in some unknown place with Hank and Harriet Fotter for objects de-art for some house they were building. I had no idea what the house was like but I enjoyed the shopping trip (and in real life I hate to go shopping if it isn't for food....)
But last night I had what I'd call a nightmare. It would take me hours to write the whole dream down so I'll give you some details.
I'm out walking my dog in a city that I think I know and somehow, I lose him and I know I can't go home to Bern without Bela--my ass would be grass, so to speak. So, I'm looking for the dog during the dream and I have this big leather folder with lots of stuff in it I need--though I have no idea in the dream what is in it or why I need it...and I keep losing the folder and having to double back, still worried about finding the dog, before I can journey on.
The city I'm in was so familiar in the beginning of the dream but it becomes more and more unfamiliar as the dream goes on. Sometimes it is like the 'old campus' at Yale and sometimes like Cambridge MA and sometimes like a medieval city in some European place I've never been and sometimes like the sound stage for the movie with Robin Williams as Popeye. The territory keeps shifting as does the place I have to find. I need to find my house and then St. John's Church and then other places that I've never been and though the urban landscape is always interesting and could have been fun in another dream of another time, I'm lost...I mean, really lost and keep losing my dog and my folder.
I leave the folder in the apartment of a wonderful family--mother, crippled husband, two kids, the parents of the father--several times and have to wind back through the back streets and thoroughfares of my dream to re-arrive at the apartment and find my folder. Then I leave my folder somewhere because I am looking for the dog and come to a dog park with lots of dogs, a few of which look a lot like Bela but aren't and then go back into an official building and the head of security tells me they found my folder but it is just the stuff in it and the folder and my cell phone is gone, so I can't call Bern or anyone and it's like the 9th cell phone I've lost and I feel guilty and there is still no word of the dog though I keep asking people about him and for directions to wherever it is I'm going (nothing is clear any more) and everyone is friendly and tries to be helpful but nothing I tell them makes sense and some of them begin to ask me if I am crazy and I wish, more than anything besides finding the dog and getting wherever I'm going--that someone would take me to a hospital...somewhere white and quiet and calm, where I could just be for a while.
About that time I realize, even in my dream, that it IS a dream, that none of this is happening but I still can't stop wandering the wondrous streets of places I don't recognize at all and I have on a trench coat and I'm yelling "Wake up!" and "Why can't I find my way?" when I finally do wake up, pulling in and out of the dream for another few blocks of unfamiliar buildings.
Then I feel Bela against my leg in bed and can hear Bern breathing and I know none of it was real and I look at my clock, thinking it will be morning and it is only 1:07. I get up, go to the bathroom and read John Sanford's new novel for 30 minutes or so before I risk going back to sleep and finding myself in those strange, unknown streets that would be interesting if I weren't terrified.
I've thought about it for hours--being the Jungian I am--and realize the dream was about my retirement and how frightened I am about 'what happens next'. In reality, I have some ideas and thoughts about what I will do, but in my unconscious, I am terrified of finding myself somewhere totally unfamiliar where I can't find my way though people are helpful and where I lose the things I love and need.
Jung thought that once you 'got' the Dream-makers point, the dream would not return. I hope so because this was so frightening.
So, Dream-Maker mine, I've got it. I'm terrified of what is going to happen to me after the next (can you believe it? 89 days). And I'll dwell on that and ponder it over and over. Just don't send me that dream again, OK?
I really am moving into a city-scape that will be at once strange, unknown and a bit frightening. I know that...really know it after that dream....I know, OK?
I hope my Dream-Maker believes me....I don't want another night like last night....
holy ground
I told this story as the end of my sermon on Sunday. The sermon was on the gospel lesson from Luke when Jesus goes back to Nazareth, his home town, and reads from Isaiah in the Torah and proclaims that the scripture of healing and restoring and bringing the blessing of God is fulfilled.
Then things get dicey. The folks in the synagogue remember Jesus is a hometown boy and what right does he have to speak like God and lecture them on their disbelief? "Isn't he Joseph's son?" the ask each other--where does he come off doing this....? Then they try to throw him off a cliff but he passes through them like fog through the trees and goes on about his work and life.
Then I recalled how Dr. Milchin, who was my doctor as a child, had a son, John Jr., who always went away to school but came back one summer from college and became the laughing stock of the whole community because--before 'running' was seen as something people did for recreation or health--he ran up and down the valleys for hours on end. Everyone laughed at him. "Dr. Milchin's son has a screw loose", they said. "Why doesn't he get a summer job?" they asked. "Who does he think he is?" they wondered while mocking him.
Later I learned John Jr. had been the captain of the Princeton University Cross Country team and was simply training. He went on to be a surgeon and made his GP father proud. But we didn't accept him because we knew him too well...he was too familiar...to ordinary...to commonplace.
So, as Thomas Wolfe knew, it is hard to 'go home again'.
I went on to observe that we often don't honor those things which are familiar, ordinary and commonplace. We usually look for God in the unusual, the amazing, the exotic and strange. In fact, I believe, God's Glory is present in precisely what is ordinary and familiar, we simply need ears to hear and eyes to see,,,,
As I've often said, the definition I know of 'epiphany' is this: 'the sudden, intuitive insight into the deep down meaning of things, usually prompted by what is ordinary, common-place and day to day...'
Then came this story, that I realized I hadn't blogged about on Sat since it was meant to be the end of my sermon:
C was a member of the church I served in New Haven. She is gracious, loving, competent and committed. Her son was the same age of my son and they played together for five of the years of their lives...from 5 until 10. Eric came to an Easter service a few years ago and he and Josh got to connect for a short while. About three years ago, C, who lives in 'the Valley' started coming to St. John's. I hadn't seen her for months, I realized, and was about to call here when she called me.
Her mother has cancer and Alzheimer's and after months of going down to Brooklyn to visit each weekend, C had moved them to CT--her mother to a nursing home and her father to live with her. She called to ask me to come and pray for her mother and anoint her since her life was slipping away.
I got to the parking lot of the nursing home and C was just getting out of her car. We embraced and moved inside, walking behind an elderly black man with a cane who was walking very slowly. I assumed he was a patient, but when we caught up with him, C introduced me to her father. I thought we'd walk with him but C said we should go on, 'he never wants to slow other people down'.
So we were in C's mother's room for a few minutes before C's father made it. Her mother was very non-responsive, in one of those chairs that look comfortable and adjust but roll as well. I talked to her the way I always talk to people who I don't know can hear me 'cause, what do I know about what they hear?
C's sister was there and when the father got in the room, the sister tried to help him off with his coat, but he slipped past her and moved much faster than before to the chair beside his wife's chair. He flopped down, took her thin, veined hand in his own and lifted her fingers to his lips. I was right across from him and saw the moisture in his large brown eyes.
I should have taken my shoes off, being as I was on Holy Ground. I had enough sense not to say anything for a long time. Finally, softly, I said, "a long time...."
"Seventy years," he said, still holding his wife's unresponsive hand to his cheek.
Then we sat in silence for a long time--eyes open to the holiness and glory of the ordinary moment, the familiarity of two people, the love that was there....
So, don't tell me the Glory of God isn't in the ordinary and familiar. Don't dare tell me that!
I was privileged to sit in the profound silence of the Heart of God and of Love.
This is all I know and all I need to know about the presence of God in the familiar and ordinary and so well-known moments of life:
Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice in wrong doing, but rejoices in truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, endures all things. Love never ends.... (I Corinthians 13.4-8a)
Just that moment is enough....
Then things get dicey. The folks in the synagogue remember Jesus is a hometown boy and what right does he have to speak like God and lecture them on their disbelief? "Isn't he Joseph's son?" the ask each other--where does he come off doing this....? Then they try to throw him off a cliff but he passes through them like fog through the trees and goes on about his work and life.
Then I recalled how Dr. Milchin, who was my doctor as a child, had a son, John Jr., who always went away to school but came back one summer from college and became the laughing stock of the whole community because--before 'running' was seen as something people did for recreation or health--he ran up and down the valleys for hours on end. Everyone laughed at him. "Dr. Milchin's son has a screw loose", they said. "Why doesn't he get a summer job?" they asked. "Who does he think he is?" they wondered while mocking him.
Later I learned John Jr. had been the captain of the Princeton University Cross Country team and was simply training. He went on to be a surgeon and made his GP father proud. But we didn't accept him because we knew him too well...he was too familiar...to ordinary...to commonplace.
So, as Thomas Wolfe knew, it is hard to 'go home again'.
I went on to observe that we often don't honor those things which are familiar, ordinary and commonplace. We usually look for God in the unusual, the amazing, the exotic and strange. In fact, I believe, God's Glory is present in precisely what is ordinary and familiar, we simply need ears to hear and eyes to see,,,,
As I've often said, the definition I know of 'epiphany' is this: 'the sudden, intuitive insight into the deep down meaning of things, usually prompted by what is ordinary, common-place and day to day...'
Then came this story, that I realized I hadn't blogged about on Sat since it was meant to be the end of my sermon:
C was a member of the church I served in New Haven. She is gracious, loving, competent and committed. Her son was the same age of my son and they played together for five of the years of their lives...from 5 until 10. Eric came to an Easter service a few years ago and he and Josh got to connect for a short while. About three years ago, C, who lives in 'the Valley' started coming to St. John's. I hadn't seen her for months, I realized, and was about to call here when she called me.
Her mother has cancer and Alzheimer's and after months of going down to Brooklyn to visit each weekend, C had moved them to CT--her mother to a nursing home and her father to live with her. She called to ask me to come and pray for her mother and anoint her since her life was slipping away.
I got to the parking lot of the nursing home and C was just getting out of her car. We embraced and moved inside, walking behind an elderly black man with a cane who was walking very slowly. I assumed he was a patient, but when we caught up with him, C introduced me to her father. I thought we'd walk with him but C said we should go on, 'he never wants to slow other people down'.
So we were in C's mother's room for a few minutes before C's father made it. Her mother was very non-responsive, in one of those chairs that look comfortable and adjust but roll as well. I talked to her the way I always talk to people who I don't know can hear me 'cause, what do I know about what they hear?
C's sister was there and when the father got in the room, the sister tried to help him off with his coat, but he slipped past her and moved much faster than before to the chair beside his wife's chair. He flopped down, took her thin, veined hand in his own and lifted her fingers to his lips. I was right across from him and saw the moisture in his large brown eyes.
I should have taken my shoes off, being as I was on Holy Ground. I had enough sense not to say anything for a long time. Finally, softly, I said, "a long time...."
"Seventy years," he said, still holding his wife's unresponsive hand to his cheek.
Then we sat in silence for a long time--eyes open to the holiness and glory of the ordinary moment, the familiarity of two people, the love that was there....
So, don't tell me the Glory of God isn't in the ordinary and familiar. Don't dare tell me that!
I was privileged to sit in the profound silence of the Heart of God and of Love.
This is all I know and all I need to know about the presence of God in the familiar and ordinary and so well-known moments of life:
Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice in wrong doing, but rejoices in truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, endures all things. Love never ends.... (I Corinthians 13.4-8a)
Just that moment is enough....
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)