Just the other day I realized something I should have 'known'--you know what I mean? I realized a 'truth' that had, for God knows how long (I certainly don't, having no traffic with linear time) I should have known.
Almost every piece of clothing I own is some shade of blue.
Oh, I have a yellow rain jacket and two pairs of khaki pants--just two though--and some socks in other colors, and a couple (only a couple) of white, long sleeve shirts. But, for the most part, I dress in shades of blue that bleed into black.
I realized this because I was looking for a particular blue shirt the other day--a pull-over that didn't have ABT (American Ballet Theatre...my daughter's company) on the front. And what I found that made me a little crazy is about a dozen blue pull-overs...short-sheeved and long-sleeved--that weren't the one I wanted. Then I started looking at my closet and realized that almost every shirt I own is some shade of blue. (I do have two or three red short-sleeved shirts and some other tee shirts that aren't blue and a pullover that is gold because it is a WVU shirt someone gave me.) But what I wear is blue of some hue.
I don't own many clothes. I have a suit I keep at church that is my marrying and burying suit. It is basically brown but with blue lines running through it. Like lots of my clothes, I bought it at the consignment shop and was, now that I look back on it through these new blue eyes, attracted to it because of the blue threads....
I have two khaki pants and two pairs of, you've figured it out, right? BLUE jeans. That's really all the pants I have. And when a pair of them wears out or something, I go replace them with pants from Marshall's that match them as best I can. From what is clean and in my closet right now, I have about a dozen pull over shirts and 9 of them are some shade of blue or black...though 'black', as I think of it, doesn't really have 'shades'. Black is like pregnant--it's either black or not, it seems to me.
I have three white button up shirts, two are white and one is white with, of all things, salmon (or pink, if you want to be honest) stripes. I have three other long sleeve button up shirts that are all some shade of blue. (My summer shirts are in the other room now, but I bet if I went to see them there would be a couple of red polo shirts and one white one and all the rest would be blue of some kind and black.
So, I ask myself, when did this happen? When did I become an essentially 'blue' man?
I have four sweaters I wear. One is black, one is deep blue and the other two or lighter shades of blue. Go figure....
The thing is, if you had asked me, off-handedly, sometime last week, what colors I wore, I would have probably told you, "I wear a whole rainbow of colors--never the same two days in a row...." And I would have meant it.
Surprise, surprise....How truly unconscious I am about any number of things. Over the years I've filled my closet and drawers with 'blue' stuff--my pajamas bottoms are all blue except for one dark brown and one yellow Sponge Bob Square Pants that I got from Pauline when I was in the hospital after cancer surgery five or six years ago.
That's another thing I didn't know--I remember where I got most every piece of my scant number of clothes....Not hard since most were from the consignment shop or Marshall's....But something to ponder anyway.
I'm all blue....What color are you? Ponder that.....
Tuesday, February 23, 2010
Children
I was just out on my little 'smoking porch', well, smoking, if you must know. It is just off the sacristy and on West Main Street. It is the only place I allow myself to smoke at St. John's and though I do smoke there it is much less than when I could smoke out other doors.
It snowed last night and this morning and snowed like crazy here between 10:30 and 1:30. Then it started to rain. Welcome to southern New England's late winter....
I saw an Hispanic woman across the street with her two children--a boy and a girl--probably 3 and 5 or so. She took them up to the door of the apartment house, gently brushed the wetness off their hoods and led them inside.
I also saw a young white woman in pigtails, walking with her two children--and older boy, 10 or 11 or so and a little girl of 5. He had on boots but the girl didn't, so this woman, who was so young and vulnerable and thin, picked her up so her feet wouldn't get wet in the inches of slush. She carried her and they moved on.
I went to see my daughter in Brooklyn, NY on Saturday. She and her boyfriend, Tim, who we love, moved into a new apartment on South Elliott Place in Fort Green, a great neighborhood. Their new apartment is wondrous and they are wondrous. This only a few weeks after visiting my son and his family--Cathy, Morgan and Emma the twins and Tegan Hoyt, the baby--in Baltimore.
Both my children are in their 30's and successful in their lives. And when I see them or talk to them on the phone, I am like those two mothers with their little children I saw today in the snow and rain and slush.
I have walked with them through snow and rain and sleet and blistering heat and the wondrous warmth of Spring and early fall. I have held their hands and brushed away the flotsam and jetsam that the weather left on them. I have carried them through the slush and held them near me, feeling their warm and perfect breath on my face.
I know they are wondrous adults and live their own lives without me involved and yet I know them, when I see them, as children in a snow storm, a rain fall, a perfect day that I lifted into my arms and held and hugged and loved and kissed.
Children are like that, I think. They are always young in our hearts. They grow older and wiser and don't need me anymore, but what I know and see when I know and see them is the child they were, that gave meaning to my life, that made me matter, that were the only thing that mattered to me.
And still, that is true. Children get under your skin. That is just the way it is and the way it goes....
So, when I saw what I saw, I remembered who I am and who my children were....And it was wondrous....
It snowed last night and this morning and snowed like crazy here between 10:30 and 1:30. Then it started to rain. Welcome to southern New England's late winter....
I saw an Hispanic woman across the street with her two children--a boy and a girl--probably 3 and 5 or so. She took them up to the door of the apartment house, gently brushed the wetness off their hoods and led them inside.
I also saw a young white woman in pigtails, walking with her two children--and older boy, 10 or 11 or so and a little girl of 5. He had on boots but the girl didn't, so this woman, who was so young and vulnerable and thin, picked her up so her feet wouldn't get wet in the inches of slush. She carried her and they moved on.
I went to see my daughter in Brooklyn, NY on Saturday. She and her boyfriend, Tim, who we love, moved into a new apartment on South Elliott Place in Fort Green, a great neighborhood. Their new apartment is wondrous and they are wondrous. This only a few weeks after visiting my son and his family--Cathy, Morgan and Emma the twins and Tegan Hoyt, the baby--in Baltimore.
Both my children are in their 30's and successful in their lives. And when I see them or talk to them on the phone, I am like those two mothers with their little children I saw today in the snow and rain and slush.
I have walked with them through snow and rain and sleet and blistering heat and the wondrous warmth of Spring and early fall. I have held their hands and brushed away the flotsam and jetsam that the weather left on them. I have carried them through the slush and held them near me, feeling their warm and perfect breath on my face.
I know they are wondrous adults and live their own lives without me involved and yet I know them, when I see them, as children in a snow storm, a rain fall, a perfect day that I lifted into my arms and held and hugged and loved and kissed.
Children are like that, I think. They are always young in our hearts. They grow older and wiser and don't need me anymore, but what I know and see when I know and see them is the child they were, that gave meaning to my life, that made me matter, that were the only thing that mattered to me.
And still, that is true. Children get under your skin. That is just the way it is and the way it goes....
So, when I saw what I saw, I remembered who I am and who my children were....And it was wondrous....
Monday, February 22, 2010
Letting go....
Do you remember Sting's song that goes something like, "If you love somebody....let them go...."
Well, I don't remember the words exactly but I know what he means. Love can sometimes be confining and disabling. You must love only those who are free to love by having an option to walk away. Something like that.
I spent a while in the church today just bathing myself in the beauty of it all. I love this space and I must, some 79 days or so (which is what Bill told me, our evening sexton, who is apparently keeping track) do. {For an English major that was a crazy way to write a sentence...so it goes.}
I must 'let go', but not yet. For now I will cling with crazy enthusiasm to every precious moment of my time here. Letting go is something I'll think about later. I will, I know. But for now, it is the last thing in my mind.
I've asked the bishop elect, who I've know for decades, to come visit us one day before he is Bishop and I am gone. I hope to show him what a paradigm for urban ministry St. John's is and how vital it is for him to do what he can do to nurture and pastor this place through the long process of having a new Rector.
St. John's is remarkable and, in many ways, not repeated around the church. The parish exists, in a way, to do 'outreach'--which, I might say, is why the 'church' exists. And St. John's really does it. I should have done more to impress people about how important St. John's is to the city--both people in the larger church and in the city. But I didn't. I simply enjoyed and reveled in how astonishingly this parish has 'been church' in a way that matters.
My only fear in leaving--besides the fear of how well I can 'let go' and move on--is that my leaving might change the fabric and purpose of the parish. We--St. John's--have, like most urban churches, a great financial problem. However, what we DO and if we continue to DO that is more important than any other concern.
St. John's, I've often said, 'would have to be invented' if it didn't exist.
The easier and more productive way of proceeding, after I let go, would be to make sure it just keeps doing what it does and does it even better. That's why I invited Ian to visit--he's coming in early April--and why I pray those who have been with me on this journey for the last 20 years will realize the journey has just begun....
Letting go is hard, harder than I imagined....
Well, I don't remember the words exactly but I know what he means. Love can sometimes be confining and disabling. You must love only those who are free to love by having an option to walk away. Something like that.
I spent a while in the church today just bathing myself in the beauty of it all. I love this space and I must, some 79 days or so (which is what Bill told me, our evening sexton, who is apparently keeping track) do. {For an English major that was a crazy way to write a sentence...so it goes.}
I must 'let go', but not yet. For now I will cling with crazy enthusiasm to every precious moment of my time here. Letting go is something I'll think about later. I will, I know. But for now, it is the last thing in my mind.
I've asked the bishop elect, who I've know for decades, to come visit us one day before he is Bishop and I am gone. I hope to show him what a paradigm for urban ministry St. John's is and how vital it is for him to do what he can do to nurture and pastor this place through the long process of having a new Rector.
St. John's is remarkable and, in many ways, not repeated around the church. The parish exists, in a way, to do 'outreach'--which, I might say, is why the 'church' exists. And St. John's really does it. I should have done more to impress people about how important St. John's is to the city--both people in the larger church and in the city. But I didn't. I simply enjoyed and reveled in how astonishingly this parish has 'been church' in a way that matters.
My only fear in leaving--besides the fear of how well I can 'let go' and move on--is that my leaving might change the fabric and purpose of the parish. We--St. John's--have, like most urban churches, a great financial problem. However, what we DO and if we continue to DO that is more important than any other concern.
St. John's, I've often said, 'would have to be invented' if it didn't exist.
The easier and more productive way of proceeding, after I let go, would be to make sure it just keeps doing what it does and does it even better. That's why I invited Ian to visit--he's coming in early April--and why I pray those who have been with me on this journey for the last 20 years will realize the journey has just begun....
Letting go is hard, harder than I imagined....
Friday, February 19, 2010
who knows, maybe it's just me....
I'm reading a novel by Jane Haddam. She writes about a retired FBI agent named Gregor Demarkian, who lives in an Armenian enclave of Philadelphia. Jane Haddam isn't PD James or anything, but the Armenian stuff is interesting and Gregor is a cerebral kind of crime solver. However, I almost put it down because it's about a little town in the foothills of the Appalachians near Harrisburg PA that is divided over a school board that wants to make Intelligent Design an option to Evolution in the science curriculum. Even that is an interesting thing except that all the Christians in the book are total nut-cases, yelling at people who don't agree with them that they will burn in hell if they don't come to Jesus and school bullying is all about who is 'that kind of Christian' and everyone else. The 'everyone else', according to 'that kind of Christian' are called secular humanists or atheists though some of them are Methodists, for goodness sake.
So I decided to put the book aside and finish reading the parts of the Sunday NYT that take me almost until the next Sunday to finish. And what do I find in the Times Sunday magazine but a long article on how the Board of Education of the State of Texas has been taken over by fundamentalists who want to change the study of history to include such thoughts as that the US was intended to be a 'Christian nation' and that the separation of Church and state is an invalid interpretation.
Texas, I learned, is one of the few states to have state-wide curriculum decisions made by an 'elected' state Board of Education. So Texas is going to have some folks running things a little to the Right of Center--well, a LOT to the right of center!--so what? Here's 'what'--Texas, besides California, is the largest purchaser of public school text books in that multi-billion $ business. So, what Texas will tolerate in school books has a vast influence on what text book publishers provide. That's 'what'....Some 40 states will be effected by what Texas wants.
The difference between the Texas BofE folks and the folks in the Haddam novel is this--they are all very smart, highly educated and much more adept at dealing with the larger culture. One of them, who was the chairman until even Texas realized he was too fundamentalist Christian in his opinions, is a dentist for goodness sake. Some are lawyers and academics...but a majority of those who have a vote of the BofE are fundamentalists.
The writer of the article visited Liberty University's School of Law (the school founded by Jerry Fawell...) and was astonished that the goal of that law school is clearly to make sure the US is 'returned' to the status of a Christian Nation. I put 'returned' in quotes since most main stream historians don't believe a CHRISTIAN NATION (capped because of the myriad of implications from civil liberties to academic freedom to the right of non-Christians to worship or the right of non-religious people to be non-religious) was what the framers of the Constitution intended.
The framers were steeped in European Christianity, surely, and most of them--with the exception of Jefferson, for example--were practicing Christians. But because they were so familiar with the mess the mixture of religion and state had made over the centuries in Europe, they studiously avoided including religous (or Christian) language in the document. The word "God" does not occur in the Constitution...all that language about 'endued by their Creator with certain inalienable rights' is from the Declaration of Independence, not the Constitution. And, whenever the writers of the Constitution, including Jefferson who wrote the Declaration almost independently, refered to God in any context it was to a 'Creator', 'Prime Mover', 'Architect of Nature' and not to the Christian Trinity. The Constitution insures an absolute 'freedom' to practice religion but studiously avoids equating that to 'practicing ANY religion' as the basis of the State's functions. Go read it, I'm not making this up....The Constitution might have been, in my opinion, the first truly 'secular' document outlining the workings of government.
Maybe it's just me, but I am profoundly thankful that the Framers of the Constitution establish a division between Church and State. And I know that term was from Jefferson and doesn't itself appear in the Constitution. Imagine if the Anglicans had run the new nation! (Well, they practically did since a majority of the signees of the Constitution were Anglicans along with the first five presidents (absent Jefferson)...but nevermind...what a mess that would have been. A Senate made up of Bishops and such....Good grief, we can't even run a denomination efficiently, how would we run a nation?
At any rate, the folks on the Texas BofE and their allies at places like Liberty School of Law and several ultra-conservative 'think tanks' (I'll resist saying that 'untra-conservative think tanks' is an oxymoron....) believe that the prohibition in the Constitution about the 'establishment' of religion merely meant the Baptists or Congregationalist or Methodists couldn't be 'the State Church'...but the assumption was, those folks believe, that Christians and only Christians would run the whole thing along the line of Christian precepts.
One of the members of the Texas BofE through a fit when a Hindu said the opening prayer for the US Senate one day....Hey, I thought these guys liked 'prayer'! He said a Hindu doesn't believe in the 'real' God.
Here's the rub...who knows, maybe it's just me...but what scares me about the folks in the NYT magazine article is that they think they are the ones to decide what 'religion' and 'prayer' really are and, beyond that, who is really a Christian. Whoa, Nellie! I AM A CHRISTIAN, thank you very much, and I support the ban against enforced school prayer and crucifixes in court rooms and would support a ban against any other intrusion of any particular religion or any definition of who is 'religious' or not sneaking into a text book or a court room or any public place. Just so we're clear: I am a Christian, no matter what anyone else decides I am or am not.
So, I took up "Living Witness" the title of the book I put down. I'll finish it now because I need to learn how other people think and what they think of how I think....Know your enemy, is the phrase. I may not think of fundamentalist Christians as necessarily 'my enemy', but since I am, clearly, an 'enemy' to them, I don't have much choice.
I was driving my wife's truck today. It is covered with Obama bumper stickers. I was stopped at a stop light and the guy on my left tooted his horn and rolled down the window. "Did you really vote for Obama?" he asked.
"I did," I said proudly.
"Like how things are going?"
"I do," I said, knowing a stoplight is not a place to have a political discussion of any depth, "if people would let him do his job."
The guy gave me the finger and pulled out since people behind us were beeping and the light was green.
His truck costs a good four times more than Bern's.
Who knows, maybe it's just me. But I think I will start considering the importance of 'knowing my enemies'.
Something to ponder under my castor oil tree for sure....
Oh, and there's as little danger that I'll move to Texas as there is that I'll move to Armenia, in what ever form it exists today, though Gregor's Demarkian's people are interesting....
So I decided to put the book aside and finish reading the parts of the Sunday NYT that take me almost until the next Sunday to finish. And what do I find in the Times Sunday magazine but a long article on how the Board of Education of the State of Texas has been taken over by fundamentalists who want to change the study of history to include such thoughts as that the US was intended to be a 'Christian nation' and that the separation of Church and state is an invalid interpretation.
Texas, I learned, is one of the few states to have state-wide curriculum decisions made by an 'elected' state Board of Education. So Texas is going to have some folks running things a little to the Right of Center--well, a LOT to the right of center!--so what? Here's 'what'--Texas, besides California, is the largest purchaser of public school text books in that multi-billion $ business. So, what Texas will tolerate in school books has a vast influence on what text book publishers provide. That's 'what'....Some 40 states will be effected by what Texas wants.
The difference between the Texas BofE folks and the folks in the Haddam novel is this--they are all very smart, highly educated and much more adept at dealing with the larger culture. One of them, who was the chairman until even Texas realized he was too fundamentalist Christian in his opinions, is a dentist for goodness sake. Some are lawyers and academics...but a majority of those who have a vote of the BofE are fundamentalists.
The writer of the article visited Liberty University's School of Law (the school founded by Jerry Fawell...) and was astonished that the goal of that law school is clearly to make sure the US is 'returned' to the status of a Christian Nation. I put 'returned' in quotes since most main stream historians don't believe a CHRISTIAN NATION (capped because of the myriad of implications from civil liberties to academic freedom to the right of non-Christians to worship or the right of non-religious people to be non-religious) was what the framers of the Constitution intended.
The framers were steeped in European Christianity, surely, and most of them--with the exception of Jefferson, for example--were practicing Christians. But because they were so familiar with the mess the mixture of religion and state had made over the centuries in Europe, they studiously avoided including religous (or Christian) language in the document. The word "God" does not occur in the Constitution...all that language about 'endued by their Creator with certain inalienable rights' is from the Declaration of Independence, not the Constitution. And, whenever the writers of the Constitution, including Jefferson who wrote the Declaration almost independently, refered to God in any context it was to a 'Creator', 'Prime Mover', 'Architect of Nature' and not to the Christian Trinity. The Constitution insures an absolute 'freedom' to practice religion but studiously avoids equating that to 'practicing ANY religion' as the basis of the State's functions. Go read it, I'm not making this up....The Constitution might have been, in my opinion, the first truly 'secular' document outlining the workings of government.
Maybe it's just me, but I am profoundly thankful that the Framers of the Constitution establish a division between Church and State. And I know that term was from Jefferson and doesn't itself appear in the Constitution. Imagine if the Anglicans had run the new nation! (Well, they practically did since a majority of the signees of the Constitution were Anglicans along with the first five presidents (absent Jefferson)...but nevermind...what a mess that would have been. A Senate made up of Bishops and such....Good grief, we can't even run a denomination efficiently, how would we run a nation?
At any rate, the folks on the Texas BofE and their allies at places like Liberty School of Law and several ultra-conservative 'think tanks' (I'll resist saying that 'untra-conservative think tanks' is an oxymoron....) believe that the prohibition in the Constitution about the 'establishment' of religion merely meant the Baptists or Congregationalist or Methodists couldn't be 'the State Church'...but the assumption was, those folks believe, that Christians and only Christians would run the whole thing along the line of Christian precepts.
One of the members of the Texas BofE through a fit when a Hindu said the opening prayer for the US Senate one day....Hey, I thought these guys liked 'prayer'! He said a Hindu doesn't believe in the 'real' God.
Here's the rub...who knows, maybe it's just me...but what scares me about the folks in the NYT magazine article is that they think they are the ones to decide what 'religion' and 'prayer' really are and, beyond that, who is really a Christian. Whoa, Nellie! I AM A CHRISTIAN, thank you very much, and I support the ban against enforced school prayer and crucifixes in court rooms and would support a ban against any other intrusion of any particular religion or any definition of who is 'religious' or not sneaking into a text book or a court room or any public place. Just so we're clear: I am a Christian, no matter what anyone else decides I am or am not.
So, I took up "Living Witness" the title of the book I put down. I'll finish it now because I need to learn how other people think and what they think of how I think....Know your enemy, is the phrase. I may not think of fundamentalist Christians as necessarily 'my enemy', but since I am, clearly, an 'enemy' to them, I don't have much choice.
I was driving my wife's truck today. It is covered with Obama bumper stickers. I was stopped at a stop light and the guy on my left tooted his horn and rolled down the window. "Did you really vote for Obama?" he asked.
"I did," I said proudly.
"Like how things are going?"
"I do," I said, knowing a stoplight is not a place to have a political discussion of any depth, "if people would let him do his job."
The guy gave me the finger and pulled out since people behind us were beeping and the light was green.
His truck costs a good four times more than Bern's.
Who knows, maybe it's just me. But I think I will start considering the importance of 'knowing my enemies'.
Something to ponder under my castor oil tree for sure....
Oh, and there's as little danger that I'll move to Texas as there is that I'll move to Armenia, in what ever form it exists today, though Gregor's Demarkian's people are interesting....
Thursday, February 18, 2010
serious thoughts
I've been thinking about things lately--things I've never had to think about before--things about packing up and leaving...painful thoughts and very serious.
Yesterday was my last Ash Wednesday at St. John's....at some point I decided Ash Wed was so important that we should make it easier and easier to take part. So, we started out by having 3 full services: 8am, noon and 7:30 pm. Then, every half hour we'd have someone in the chapel to 'impose' ashes and give communion from the reserve sacrament. That sort of broke down until now we simply have someone in the chapel in a cassock all day long. It's 'all ashes all day' at St. John's.
Over the years that has worked and worked and continues to work. Though we had a normal noon crowd and a far above normal 7:30 crowd, there were more people who just drifted in and through than the total of the 3 services. Whole families come. The youth group came. People from the Soup Kitchen--volunteers and guests--came. People I never dreamed would come, came. People who saw the sign outside the front door dropped in. It is truly exciting, the way we do Ash Wednesday. I have dozens of stories. Maybe I'll tell them in another form when I get around to writing stuff down about my experience as a priest. I'll try to remember to do that. But for now, there is this: it is wonderful and exciting and the height and depth of 'inclusion', the way we do Ash Wednesday.
I'm really going to miss that.
Then I was thinking about dis-embedding the vestments that belong to me from the vestments that belong to the parish. That might take a whole day, someday soon. And packing up the pictures I have at the parish and my other stuff and 'moving out'. What a nightmare. Why did I decide to do this anyway...?
But dis-embedding my stuff from that place will be nothing compared to un-enmeshing myself, my heart and mind and soul, from that place and from, most of all, those people.
We had a staff member once who talked about how 'enmeshed' the parish was. I don't think that person meant it as a compliment. It was a criticism of how people become so involved in each other's lives that they begin to define themselves as a 'group' and not as strictly 'individuals'.
I could write a great deal about this theory--and will someday--but the truth is, I never saw that as a negative thing. We are, after all, 'the Body' of Christ....and though the eye has its job and the hand its job, they work as one, enmeshed, as it were.
So, that is my job these days--to appreciate the connections that hold me at St. John's and begin the painful process of cutting them away so I can walk away. A friend who reads my blog told me I was much more emotional here, in writing, than I seemed as I went through my life and connections and work day by day. And that is so. This is the work I need to do--I don't need to impose it on everyone...it is my work. And it is painful and fraught with loss. Yet, I shall do it...and in my day to day work I will seek to free people from the mesh that holds us now, so they can walk on when I walk away.
It is difficult and trying. And it must be done. And I will do it.
Above all things but one, I want to walk away free to face the possibilities of the future. The only thing I want more is to allow St. John's to be free of me as well.....That will be a 'completion' and we can all move on with a light step to what God has in mind for us next....
Yesterday was my last Ash Wednesday at St. John's....at some point I decided Ash Wed was so important that we should make it easier and easier to take part. So, we started out by having 3 full services: 8am, noon and 7:30 pm. Then, every half hour we'd have someone in the chapel to 'impose' ashes and give communion from the reserve sacrament. That sort of broke down until now we simply have someone in the chapel in a cassock all day long. It's 'all ashes all day' at St. John's.
Over the years that has worked and worked and continues to work. Though we had a normal noon crowd and a far above normal 7:30 crowd, there were more people who just drifted in and through than the total of the 3 services. Whole families come. The youth group came. People from the Soup Kitchen--volunteers and guests--came. People I never dreamed would come, came. People who saw the sign outside the front door dropped in. It is truly exciting, the way we do Ash Wednesday. I have dozens of stories. Maybe I'll tell them in another form when I get around to writing stuff down about my experience as a priest. I'll try to remember to do that. But for now, there is this: it is wonderful and exciting and the height and depth of 'inclusion', the way we do Ash Wednesday.
I'm really going to miss that.
Then I was thinking about dis-embedding the vestments that belong to me from the vestments that belong to the parish. That might take a whole day, someday soon. And packing up the pictures I have at the parish and my other stuff and 'moving out'. What a nightmare. Why did I decide to do this anyway...?
But dis-embedding my stuff from that place will be nothing compared to un-enmeshing myself, my heart and mind and soul, from that place and from, most of all, those people.
We had a staff member once who talked about how 'enmeshed' the parish was. I don't think that person meant it as a compliment. It was a criticism of how people become so involved in each other's lives that they begin to define themselves as a 'group' and not as strictly 'individuals'.
I could write a great deal about this theory--and will someday--but the truth is, I never saw that as a negative thing. We are, after all, 'the Body' of Christ....and though the eye has its job and the hand its job, they work as one, enmeshed, as it were.
So, that is my job these days--to appreciate the connections that hold me at St. John's and begin the painful process of cutting them away so I can walk away. A friend who reads my blog told me I was much more emotional here, in writing, than I seemed as I went through my life and connections and work day by day. And that is so. This is the work I need to do--I don't need to impose it on everyone...it is my work. And it is painful and fraught with loss. Yet, I shall do it...and in my day to day work I will seek to free people from the mesh that holds us now, so they can walk on when I walk away.
It is difficult and trying. And it must be done. And I will do it.
Above all things but one, I want to walk away free to face the possibilities of the future. The only thing I want more is to allow St. John's to be free of me as well.....That will be a 'completion' and we can all move on with a light step to what God has in mind for us next....
Tuesday, February 16, 2010
no hash tonight--trying again...
I hit the wrong key and published a blog that I hadn't yet written. I probably shouldn't be allowed to be near a computer....
So, I remember how it started. Jack Parker, one of the great people in history--I'd put him up there with Moses, Abe Lincoln, Bob Dylan, Martin Luther King Jr., Kurt Vonnegut and Elvis--didn't come to the Shove Tuesday Pancake Supper at St. John's. When I asked him why, he said because Christ Church in the East End had corned beef hash on Shrove Tuesday. So I made him promise to come next year and I made a small bit of corned beef hash...one brisket and a few onions and potatoes and (my secret) evaporated milk and parsley. But people liked it so each year over the years I've had to increase my production of hash.
This year I had over 12 pounds of briskets, 15 pounds of potatoes and five pounds of onions (though I cheated and bought onions already diced in plastic containers). I cooked the briskets yesterday when no was around since the church was officially closed for Presidents' Day. I peeled the potatoes and was ready to go today as soon as the Soup Kitchen closed and I could have the stove to myself. Alas, the snow came and we actually cancelled the Shove Tuesday pancake supper. Alas, again. People were coming to cook the cakes and sausages and the hash would have been ready by 5.
But it was a good call. I slid all the way home and the snow was a slushy as it is in Vancouver at the Winter Olympics...another, alas....
Jack, I believe, would forgive me--I hope he had some hash with his pancakes in the Kingdom.
I miss him.
So, I remember how it started. Jack Parker, one of the great people in history--I'd put him up there with Moses, Abe Lincoln, Bob Dylan, Martin Luther King Jr., Kurt Vonnegut and Elvis--didn't come to the Shove Tuesday Pancake Supper at St. John's. When I asked him why, he said because Christ Church in the East End had corned beef hash on Shrove Tuesday. So I made him promise to come next year and I made a small bit of corned beef hash...one brisket and a few onions and potatoes and (my secret) evaporated milk and parsley. But people liked it so each year over the years I've had to increase my production of hash.
This year I had over 12 pounds of briskets, 15 pounds of potatoes and five pounds of onions (though I cheated and bought onions already diced in plastic containers). I cooked the briskets yesterday when no was around since the church was officially closed for Presidents' Day. I peeled the potatoes and was ready to go today as soon as the Soup Kitchen closed and I could have the stove to myself. Alas, the snow came and we actually cancelled the Shove Tuesday pancake supper. Alas, again. People were coming to cook the cakes and sausages and the hash would have been ready by 5.
But it was a good call. I slid all the way home and the snow was a slushy as it is in Vancouver at the Winter Olympics...another, alas....
Jack, I believe, would forgive me--I hope he had some hash with his pancakes in the Kingdom.
I miss him.
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