humungous overshare

Today--4/17/10--I turned 63. When I turned 25 4/17/72, my mother was dying and I was by her bedside. She was 63. On the morning of my birthday, after I'd spent the night by my mother's bed, my Aunt Elsie came in and said, "It's your birthday". I had forgotten.

My mother was 38 when I was born and 63 when I was 25. That was 38 years ago come Monday. I'm now the age she was when she died. She had just retired from 40 years of teaching elementary school when she had stroke after stroke and slipped into a coma for a week or so and I sat by her bed, feeding her ice cream with one of those wooden spoons most of the night. Half comatose, she still loved--as she always did--vanilla ice cream.

I'm not superstitious at all. I pay people to let black cats run in front of me. I walk under every ladder I encounter, I spill salt and don't throw it over my shoulder, I don't even whistle through graveyards. But the math intrigues me....She was 38 when I was born and 63 when she died. I'm 63 now and it was 38 years ago she died. A little too ironic. And we were both retiring....ok, I am a little superstitious. Plus, I have all these wierd blood tests and stuff to deal with in the next few weeks. If I make it past Monday, I'll feel better....

My birthday is always a little sad since I remember how close my mother died to when I turned 25. Two days. 4/19/72. And this one is a tad wierd, given the 38/63 stuff....

I'll be fine.

I was with my mother when she died. The doctor had warned my father and I (who were not getting on too well at the time) that she might seem to regain consciousness but it was merely a reaction and she was already quite brain dead...stokes and kidney failure and all...plus a comotose state.

My father and I were with her and she did exactly what the doctor told us she might do--she sat up and seemed to look around and then fell back on her pillow, dead.

My father, in spite of all the advanced warnings, thought she could see us, hear us, communicate with us and started calling out her name: "Cleo! Cleo! Cleo!" he called. Then she died.

We stood silently for a few minutes.

"She heard me, didn't she, Jimmy?" My father asked.

And in the worst thing I've done--and I've done horrible things in my life--I said, "No, she didn't."

I'd give anything to have that moment back and say, "Oh, Dad, she heard you, she knew you loved her, she died with your voice in her heart...."

And I can't go back and do that.

Instead I said, "No" and he wept and offered me 40 dollars to buy some shoes that would be fit for the funeral and I told him that wasn't enough because I was insulted that he didn't find my shoes worthy and was thinking of my shoes instead of his dead wife and I was so angry that my mother had died instead of him.

So, this time of my natal joy is muted by a memory like that....

Like I warned you, an overshare.....

Last things

Almost everything I do around St. John's these days is 'the last time' I'll do them--last holy week, last Easter, last baptisms, last nursing home communions, last meeting of this kind or another--and even my last Vestry meeting.

I actually, unlike most priests I know, have enjoyed some 85% of all the Vestry meetings I've ever attended. It is the remarkable commitment of people willing to serve on a Vestry that makes the time together magic--that and the occasional breakthrough to consensus and the great good humor I insist on and often get and stuff like the time two vestry members were about to take their disagreement to the parking lot for some bare knuckles...stuff like that....

At the vestry meeting--with cake and champagne--one of the vestry members said something to me that makes me think perhaps my 20 years here were positive and good.

"You were the reason I came back the second time," she told me, 'but you're not the reason I stayed--I stayed because I love this place...."

Perfect. I get anxious when someone says something like "I don't know what we'll do without you", as flattering as that is in a ego satisfying way. I am humbled and honored to be the reason some people started coming--but the parish is what matters now, not me--no matter how much you love me...and I know you do...and I you.

Last things are strange and a bit emotionally challenging. And, as they come and go "next things" are what matter--for me and for the parish....

who I be

I think I lost this post by some dumb thing I did by typing too fast.

So, if you get the same thing twice--or sort of the same thing--sorry.

today, when I was preaching about how in John's gospel everyone was more interested in what Jesus could 'do' than who he 'was', I realized what has been making my leaving St. John's so very, very hard. I have become, in my letting go, so tied up in what I 'do' as the Rector I have lost sight of who I 'be' as the Rector.

I won't be 'doing' those things anymore after a short time, but I will still 'be' who I have been while doing them.

Where I come from, people who meet for the first time usually ask, "where are you from?"

Where you're from--which town, which holler, which part of the area--tell volumes about who you 'are'. The Millers from Jenkinjones are not at all like the Millers from Spencer Curve. The Blankinships from Pineville aren't the same folk as the Blankinships from Leckie. 'Where you are from' tells people who you 'be'.

When I came to New England I noticed the first questioned people asked a new acquaintance was "What do you DO?" Knowing what you 'do' doesn't tell me who you 'are'. Doing and being are distinctions.

I even lead a workshop a few times a year that is based on making the distinction between 'doing' and 'being'. And I lead the workshop quite well, thank you. But only when I listened to my sermon did I realize that who I 'be' is who I will continue to 'be' after I leave St. John's....What I 'do' will be vastly altered.

This realization (I often say I alway 'preach' to myself and others can listen--today that really proved true!) enables me to create a new future for myself and allow St. John's to create their future. My 'being' will continue though I will mourn the loss of what I've been 'doing' with my 'being' for these 21 years.

It is still painful to imagine leaving--but now I know I can...I can 'leave', 'stop DOING' what I've done so long and still 'be' who I am.

That is a gift--a profound gift to me. I should listen more closely to my sermons....

the vat of choristers

I was a bit harsh in my last post. I was simply disappointed that Maria and the Choristers don't get more folks for their Evensongs. People at St. John's certainly support them financially and love them on Sunday mornings when they sing. But it is the Evensongs where you really get to hear them shine.

Maria has done a great great job over the last 5-6 years (whichever) and it truly shows in the kids who take full advantage of the program. She works with a fragile group who have issues that keep them away from time to time. But the Value Added Training ('vat', get it?) is remarkable. with a few exceptions, the choristers are kids who don't have a lot of sports or after school oppotunities and don't have parents who are able to get them to rehersals regularily. And they certainly don't have music training in the public schools. So, what they get with the Choristers in invaluable training in music, commitment and discipline.

Continue to support them...please....

something to ponder for St. John's....

I have no idea how many members of St. John's read this--but I have something to say to them and the Search Committee....

Every Episcopal Church, in their top 5 commitments, puts Youth and Adult Education along with whatever the other 3 are.

Tonight I heard a marvelous evensong by our Choristers and there were 10 people there to hear it with me.

And we have had, for 20 years, adult education opportunities that have been attended by 10 or less for 90% of the programs.

So, don't put those two things among your commitments. Just don't....

And shame on us for not supporting the Choristers by 'showing up' and not coming to Adult Education.

I don't often 'shame' folks.

This time I will.

so, it was church....

I just noticed I haven't written for this since March 31--I blame it on the Church! That was Holy Wednesday and between then and now came Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, all Easter for two days and a period of rest and recovery.

I am getting old. It is right that I retire. I used to end Easter more energized than when it was Palm Sunday. I got tired this year. Too much church--there is such a thing as 'too much church'....

I have had friends who got so deeply into meditation that they seemed a bit distracted all the time. They were offended greatly when I suggested they were meditating 'too much'.

There is 'too much' of everything. Really....

It was special and sweet and wondrous and a bit of a miracle...the whole Holy Week Easter trip. I am not at all 'formal' in worship, but I love liturgy and I think we made it work in weird and quirky ways....

So, recovered from the drama, I'm back writing. See you soon.....shalom, JIM

you think you should be a priest...think again!

I would have been a writer and a professor of American Literature today if I hadn't let God get all enmeshed in my life. I was following a 'call' I tried valiantly to resist. I wanted to write, if not the 'great american novel', at least some stuff that would make lots of money!

If you think you should be a priest, run and hide from God.

You know why? It is the enmeshing part.

We had a staff member or two who thought 'becoming enmeshed' with the parish was a not too good a thing. Yet, I never figured out how to do what I do or be who I be without that. In fact, it seems to me that 'what I do and be' is precisely that--becoming entangled in the community, caught in the net we are all caught in, wrapped up in the complex of feelings, connections, wonderments, pains, sufferings, etc. of those who I work with and serve and minister with.

Kurt Vonnegut--my favorite novelist, the one I would have striven to be like had I not become a priest--once told the story of the only ordained person he ever admired. It was, bless him, an Episcopal priest on Martha's Vineyard who, Vonnegut said, would 'fall apart' every time someone in the parish died and the congregation would have to heal him and nurse him back to wholeness. "There is something creative," Vonnegut said, "in having to put a man of God back together...."

I know 'all will be well', but tomorrow is the first day of the last month I will be Rector of St. John's in Waterbury. The webs and nets and strings of entanglements and enmeshing are wearing my soul raw right now.

And, I think that is as it should be. Perhaps that is even what God had in mind when the Holy One somehow tugged me toward the priesthood. And, it is the only way I would know to do it...this thing I do...this way 'I be'.

I'd run from it if I were you--but let me tell you this, there is no sweeter pain, no more redemptive suffering, no more joy of connection available than doing what I do and being who I am....Just don't do it lightly....