not going to church

My first Sunday of retirement and I didn't go to church. I didn't feel guilty in the least. (That, by the way, is one of the problems Episcopalians have--we've lost the capacity to feel guilty about not going to church!!!)

I did wonder what was going on at St. John's, but not as much as I thought I would.

Someone asked me the other day, "Where will you be going to church?"

I responded, "That implies I will be..."

I've told people who asked me why I pursued ordination that "I want to make sure I go to church...."

I actually like 'doing church' a lot, lot better than 'going'. I love preaching and liturgy and I know I'll be doing more of that in the future--supply priest, part-time in some large parish or priest in charge in a small one. Filling in. Stuff like that. Someone at the Diocese suggested I let it be known I'd be glad to fill in for people on Sabbatical. That would mean I'd go to the same parish for a month or two. I thought that was a great idea.

Then she said, "You do take some getting used to...." A compliment of sorts, I guess.

Or not.

I'm still on the email list for various meetings at St. John's. They should probably take me off so I won't just abscent-mindedly show up and because I really am going to try to 'vacate' myself from the inner workings of the place. It's none of my business any more.

I was going to go to church at the local parish--St. Peter's--but I only wanted to go to the 8 a.m. service and I couldn't remember when it was. (That's not a joke--I know it isn't at 8...it's 7:45 or 8:15. There was an Episcopal Church in West Virginia that had on it's display board:

SERVICES
8 a.m.-------8:15
Holy Eucharist---10 a.m.
I couldn't make that up. Episcopalians simply believe the early service is the 8 a.m. Service.

And I won't go next week, most likely, since we'll be in Vermont.

My theory has always been that church attendance is 'habitual'. You don't do it out of the goodness of your heart or because you want to but because it is a habit...much akin to brushing your teeth before bed. Your mouth just doesn't feel right if you don't....

I've told people the 'habit of church' takes at least 3 months to form...if not more given modern attention spans...and about 3 weeks to break. We'll see about me....

Luke

Luke Plunski--Luke the dog--died today.

He was Michael's dog first...saved Mike's life once and made Mike's life so much finer, brighter, happier. Then, after Michael died Luke became JoAnn's dog, saved her life in a different way, making it possible to move on after her son's death.

I'll never forget how someone with great good sense allowed Luke to be in Michael's hospital room during his last illness--even in Intensive Care. Mike had lost both his legs to his disease and Luke was his legs for him. Mike didn't take up the whole bed, so Luke would lay where Mike's legs should have been had the world been kinder. Sometimes a medical person would come in and be horrified to see a dog in a hospital bed. Luke would just look at them with those endlessly deep brown eyes and most of the time, the person would just melt.

Luke made you melt. He was a Golden Retriever and a beauty of one. How could you resist that look that said--"I'm laying here where I belong, next to my human...."

Luke became a therapy dog after Michael died and brought joy to hundreds and hundreds of people in hospitals and nursing homes. He was never assertive, always patient, always waiting for the human to make the first advance. And as gentle as a spring breeze, as sweet as the smell of honeysuckle, as healing as magic chicken soup.

He always came up to communion with Jo, mostly because he knew his job was to be near her always and he did his job to perfection. And one day, his great head leaning against the altar rail, I simply gave him communion--just a wafer like everyone else. After that, he was my great, good friend. If I'd forget and someone else gave out the bread on that side of the altar rail, I'd glace over and he'd be looking at me with those eyes that made me melt and I'd feel like I'd been rude to the Christ Child...which isn't far from true. Luke was about as Christ-like as any creature I've known.

I suppose some people might have objected to my giving him communion--but I never asked and, most likely, wouldn't have cared. It was only right and proper and in good order.

When Jo and Luke got into the library on Sunday mornings for the adult forum--they were there almost every week for years--he'd want to come greet me. Jo would give him his short little leash which he would carry in his mouth and he'd come to say hello. (He'd also take the chance to roll on the Library rug, but who can blame him for that?) It was one of the highlights of every Sunday, that little lick and rubbing against me.

My grandmother divided the world into two distinct groups "church people" and people who, well, were not 'church people'. I tend to divide the world into 'dog people' and everyone else. Loving a dog is like holding your heart in your hand and feeling it beat for a while. You all know the "DOG"/"GOD" stuff...well, I'm not sure it isn't true.

Lord I will miss him....

Jo held him as he died. I've held dogs as they've died and there is very little more profound and humbling than that. The pain of a dog's death is sharper and cleaner than even the deaths of people you love. I don't know anyone who, when someone they love dies, doesn't have some unfinished business or some guilt or some unanswered questions...mixed up stuff. With a dog, it's just pain. You know they never blamed you for anything, were never disappointed in you, never thought you should change your ways....they simply, purely loved you. Just like you are. Just like that. That's a Dog/God thing--there is no other creature besides a dog who can find that Agape Love, that redemptive Love, that Love that knows no bounds, that love that mimics God's love for each of us.

I weep for Luke tonight...but more for Jo. I know the pain she feels. I've been blessed and privileged and made a better person by the love of dogs....

What a difference a day makes....

24 hours from now, I will no longer be the Rector of St. John's--something that has defined me in many ways for 21 years almost.

Well, they are paying me until the end of July, so I guess in some fuzzy way I am still the Rector...but I gave back my credit card, stopped signing checks and will hand in my key--which says 'rector' on it tomorrow. And then it will be finished...done....

Hard for me to believe but it is finally going to be true. I will be 'retired'.

I'm still not ready to say much about the whole thing except this...

*my going away 'last dance' on Sunday was everything I dreamed and prayed it would be and more and so many people made that happen just the way I wanted it and in ways I didn't know I wanted it but did that I have no way to express my profound and endless joy and thanks

*I threw away my calling cards today and peeled my name off my mail slot and got everything ready to bring home. I am stunned at how calmly I did all that (plus take my letterhead...I used the last Rector's letter head for a year or so.....)

*People have drifted by all week, saying goodbye, being wondrous....

*I can't find my Prayerbook that lots of people signed when I came back from a sabbatical or something years ago. If they find it, I'd like to have it....

*The Iman of the mosque that began at St. John's came by with a beautiful copy of the Koran and the Koran on discs--the whole thing....lots to listen to....

*the soup kitchen clients gave me a poster sized card that lots signed, a cake Pauline dropped and 4 bottles of wine...I could have made four life-long friends handing out those bottles but decided to keep them....

*My last Eucharist was today--the Wednesday healing service....lots of people, including 3 priest friends who I was in a group with for years. I asked everyone to annoint me...my forehead still is sweet and damp with oil. A perfect ending.

*I am not afraid. In fact I am getting close to being outrageously joyful because the pain of leaving is almost over. One more day. And it will all end, as is should, with a dinner with the staff who have supported/loved/made me look good for so many years. I'll be weepy and clingy, but that is as it should be. I love those guys more than they know--more than they could know....

And then, there is what comes next.....And that I welcome and celebrate and look forward to with great joy.

I told someone today, "I've given St. John's 'some of the best years of my life' and St. John's has given me 'some of the best years of my life'." And that is simply true. Not a bad exchange rate, I'd say.

Like that. Simply like that....

Holy Ground

That's what I'm walking on these last few days as Rector of St. John's--Holy Ground.

People come by to say good-bye and I just wander around the building, not aimlessly--with great intention--drinking in the holy space, wondering at the light, astonished still by the silence and the beauty and the deep down meaning of it all.

I am so blessed.

Would that all God's people would be so blessed as I am.

Would that that were true....

Perfect, just perfect...

Yesterday was my last dance at St. John's. I won't work after Friday and in 3 months I'll be really retired--the first check from the Church Pension Fund and from SS will arrive on August 1 in our checking account. Amazing.

I'm not ready yet to write about it--it is still too foamy and bubbly and wondrous. But it was, truly, one of the best days of my life. I wouldn't change a thing.

Deep breath....Liturgy is very, very important to me and I think what we did in the liturgy was perfect, just perfect....like everything else.

I have been so profoundly blessed to have spent 21 of the best years of my life deep in the Old Man's Puzzle with the folks at St. John's.

How lucky can one person be???

Someday soon I'll be able to write about it...but not now....

I'm in love with Lucy Malpafatantial

Not even sure if that's how to spell her name. Have no idea what her ethnicity is. Never met her, never will. I spelled it phonetically from her time on CT public radio. Love her voice. Mostly love her name, however it is spelled, it sounds like this to me when she says it: Mal-paf-tantial.

Lovely.

My wife's grandfather came from Bari, Italy with the last name Lachettegnola (again phonetics) but it got changed to PEAS and then Pisano.

I love names like that. I love Lucy's voice and the way she says her name. Kind of crazy, I know. And I look forward to hearing her each day....

The back of my throat

There is a taste in the back of my throat. It's been there a day or two--not just post nasal drip--something wondrous and so sweet.

You know how they say we taste different tastes in different parts of our mouths? Know about that? Somewhere for salt, somewhere else for sweet, another place for sour....Lips and the tip of your tongue for.....let that go.....

Anyway, back there in my throat there has been a taste for a day or two.

I finally figured it out. It is the taste of happiness....

It took me so long because I'm not used to that taste. I am a consummately "joyful" person. But I don't think of myself as 'happy'--too ironic and reflective for that. Oh, I know how happiness tastes--holding a grandchild, watching the night sky, listening to music I love, eating ice cream...sure, I know that. But I'm not attached to it.

"Happiness", it seems to me, is a Bobbe Prize--a 'feeling', not something chosen, like "joy", a passing fancy, here today, gone in a heart-beat, like that.

Being at St. John's all these years has been remarkably, profoundly, always 'joyful' for me. But I see so much pain and loss and longing that I'm seldom 'happy' about it all. But, 'leaving St. John's' is so excruciating and exhausting that I realize now that the 'leaving' is almost over and in the back of my throat I taste happiness. Not to 'be gone', but that the horror of 'leaving' is almost done. It's like when I stood by my each of my parents' graves. Life was finally still and done for them, I could take a deep breath and move on. Like that.

Today I talked to a 24 year old woman from New Hampshire who wanted me to give her $700 to fix her car so she could go home to appear in court in Manchester tomorrow. I had no such amount of money, but I offered her a bus ticket home. That I could do. She left to consider it and never came back. Why she was here, why she was stranded, why she didn't take the bus, why she needed to appear in court...none of that do I know and did not ask. I know what not to ask, have learned that well....But she was lovely in many ways, very articulate (which English majors like me appreciate) and I can't for the life of me imagine what such a lovely, articulate young, young woman needs to be in court for.....

Then I talked to a man twice my size--quite a man that is!--about his father's funeral. His father is not yet dead but will be and we were discussing the whole thing. And this huge, massive man sat and sobbed for half-an-hour for his father who is not yet dead. Deep breaths is what I need. I need to focus and taste the taste in the back of my throat.

We are all--you, me, everyone--like the wings of the little parakeets I can hear yelling downstairs as I type. So fragile, so delicate, so intricately created, almost painfully perfect...that's what we are, you and I and everyone. Stranded far from home, innocent but due in court. Huge, strong, invincible but so pained.

That's what hooked me on this whole thing--this life, this work, this ministry--just the fragility of life itself and how seldom, in the back of our throats, happiness comes.....