failing the 'clicker' test....

This morning, when I tried to use the remote control for the air conditioner in my little office, I couldn't get it to work. I'd failed the 'clicker' test again. And I had a memory....

(This isn't the memory, this is why I have an air conditioner in my little office: the one I have now was in the TV room but it made so much noise you couldn't hear the TV without having the volume so loud you couldn't have a conversation without yelling. So Bern decided to take it out and replace it with a quieter one she had. She, by the way, does all the stuff like that since I've proved myself so incompetent in such undertakings that I'm no longer asked to participate. Poor me! And since the weather has turned horribly hot she decided to put the noisy air-conditioner in my little office, believing it would take the hot air coming up the back stairs from the kitchen and make the downstairs a little cooler as well. So far, it has worked quite well. I called her a 'heat manipulator' since, through a complicated ritual of opening and closing windows are certain times and putting fans on and off at other certain times, she has managed to keep our un-air-conditioned areas 74 or below in the hottest weather.)

What I remembered when I flunked the clicker test was the electronic voting at the General Convention of the Episcopal Church. I've been a Deputy during the last two conventions--Minneapolis in 2006 and Anaheim in 2009. Luckily the EC only meets every three years. Annual meetings would open untold possibilities for theological and programmatic mischief. Plus there are 4 lay folks and 4 clergy in each dioceses' deputation and the expense of gathering 800+ Deputies, never mind the cost of the House of Bishops, makes annual meetings untenable.

Since the House of Deputies has so many deputies, voting practice is an issue. At the last two GC's we've used electronic voting which requires using a little hand held clicker about the size of a cell phone. Needless to say--even though there are 800+ people of above average intellect involved--it has been a minor disaster, taking up more time than you can adequately imagine during the 9 days of meetings.

The only thing that has made it bearable, if not a tad pleasant, is that the Chief Teller, who gives the instruction each time is a gorgeous priest from New York or Mass or somewhere. She is also very patient and extremely humorous. Gorgeous, patient and funny--how much better could it be? She also has an accent I really can't place (she may be at least part Hispanic) that makes it a treat to listen to her explain in words of one or two syllables, how easy this process that confounds 800+ people really is....

(About accents, by the way: I love them and practice placing them. I can even tell the difference between a Peurto Rican accent and the a accent of someone from Cuba or Mexico. Anyhow, once I met a new member of the church I served in New Haven and after talking with her for a few minutes, I asked her, "Where's your accent from?"

She replied, cooly, "Actually, it's a speech defect. People seldom mention it."

She stayed at the church anyway...)

So what is it about the voting clickers that confound even those who have conquered remote controls of all kinds? The voting clicker has numbers 0 to 9 and three buttons, not really a complicated thing. (My friend John and my son Josh have multiple remote control clickers for their assortment of electronic mysteries. I can't figure out the one for the TV, much less cope with the others. Even when alone in places like John's and Josh's, I tend to watch whatever was on when I arrived though I know that have in excess of 600 channels cleverly concealed from my meager skills at clicking.)

I actually think the General Convention's voting clickers are a metaphor for how the EC and probably most mainline churches (though I'm sure Unitarians are more adept than most) are rendered incapable and laughingly distracted by anything that is new, different, out of the ordinary, edgy, etc.

I remember visiting St. Mark's in Raleigh, NC over twenty years ago. The parish was considering me to be their next Rector. In fact, they called me to that job and I turned it down after a weekend of anguished struggle for what would be best for me and Bern and the kids. A month later I was invited to interview for the position of Rector of St. John's. Things do happen for a reason.

At any rate, St. Mark's was growing so rapidly they were in their 3rd new building in the 25 years of the parish's existent. It was an ultra modern building with nothing nailed down--everything could be moved around within an area the size of a basketball court. The building was three years old and I asked them to tell me about the different configurations they'd used for worship. I was thinking about designing the space for different seasons, high holy days, all sorts of ways to place the furniture in that vast space.

They looked at me sheepishly. They had set up the space like a traditional church--font in the back, altar in the front, chairs in rigid lines--and never changed it in three years. The stuff might as well have been nailed down!

And there are always the complaints on Christmas and Easter and when we have multiple baptisms that "someone was in my pew". Lordy, lordy, a full church and everyone is a bit miffed! But then one day, a visiting Bishop sat in my chair and I almost made him move.....

Little stuff like that--like voting devices--throws the church off kilter. We really don't want to 'change' or 'transform' either. One thing CHURCH inspires in people is a longing for 'the way things have always been'.

It goes all the way to the top, in fact, as I think about it, the whole ''changelessness" probably starts at the top....

feeling my pain...

I realized this morning when I got up, that no one (in spite of Bill Clinton's testimony to the contrary) can "feel my pain". My pains--the nagging twinges from my left wrist where the tendon never healed properly from breaking my arm a few years ago, the ache in the top of my foot from where I wore sandals to walk the dog and bruised my foot, the occasional weakness in my lower back, the burning from where the poison ivy on my forearm is almost gone--nobody can feel that but me. We can sympathize when someone has a pain or hurt that we imagine is like one we had at some point, but we really can't feel another's pain. Pain can only be felt from the inside out.

Which got me to pondering the fact that the physical metaphor applies to ideas, thoughts, convictions, opinions, beliefs and confusions as well. Just as we can't get inside another person's body, we can't be inside their brains or hearts either.

All of which has caused me to wonder if I don't need to transform the way I listen to and am present with people I disagree with. After all, it seems clear to me right now, I can't adequately imagine what is going on in their minds. So, Tea Party members and Right Wing Republicans and atheists and radical Muslims and fundamentalist Christians have stuff sloshing around in their gray cells and their emotions that I cannot ever understand fully. Perhaps I have to lighten up with them and practice listening for clues about how their minds work differently from mine.

To batter the metaphor into unconsciousness: I seldom have headaches. So when someone tells me they have one, the best I can usually do is remember eating homemade ice cream at my Grandmother's house on hot summer days until my head hurt. As debilitating as the is to my memory of it, there is no way that memory even begins to touch the reality of another's headache.

In the same way, I've been pondering this hot morning that virtually cries out for homemade ice cream (peach was my favorite) that the mind and feelings of the priest who left St. James' in New Haven--and the Episcopal Church while he was leaving things--is far beyond my ken. I can't even imagine, not for the briefest moment, the thought process and obvious pain that led him to that decision and action.

So (just to let you know this is going 'somewhere'...anywhere!) it might just be I have no right to judge him in any way. All I can do is be present to the fall-out of his actions for the two Sundays I will celebrate and be with that broken and wounded congregation. Besides, most of my reactions and thoughts about him are without any standing in fact since I can't 'feel his pain' or 'think his thoughts'.

Gosh, I hate giving up judging other people with whom I disagree!

I've started calling the TEA PARTY the ME PARTY since it seems, in my mind, all they supposedly advocate and stand for comes back to a remarkably self-centered view of the world. I saw a picture of one of the TP folks who had a homemade sign on his trifold hat--one of those hats like they wore in the Revolutionary War...the kind we all imagine Paul Revere wearing. The sign said: LISTEN TO ME! My initial reaction was to think, "why in the hell should we?" Democracy, after all, can't function is everyone is ego-centered. Democracy, when it works well, 'listens to All of us' but no one more carefully than anyone else.

And the man I saw during rush hour last week, standing in front of the Cheshire Town Hall with a sign that said, "FACE IT, OBAMA IS A SOCIALIST!!!" I wanted to pull my car over and yell at him, "No he's not, you idiot! He is at best a moderate Democrat...."

But I realize I have no idea what that man feels or thinks and why he's come down in a place I find so far-fetched it would be laughable if it wasn't terrifying. Perhaps I need to listen to him for a while and "willingly suspend my beliefs" (sorry for mangling your words S. T. Coleridge...) long enough to simply be present to his thoughts rather than rejecting them and considering him a lunatic.

That won't be nearly as much fun, but maybe...just maybe...the beginning step of finding ways to live together in the world without insulting, rejecting or killing each other is to be willing to 'be present' in as full a way as possible, to 'the Other', whatever that means in the moment.

I have to ponder so more, but I know the Mastery Foundation I work with has this as an almost creedal statement, "Connection before Content". That has something to do with being able to 'bracket' our opinions, feelings, etc. long enough to find a relationship with the Other in the room.

This is going to take a lot of time in the sun beside my withered up Castor Oil Tree--but it might be time well spent.

We'll see....

another reason I've lived too long...

As I was about to turn off my blog spot...which, by the way, I have trouble getting to, I know not why....I saw a message to the right. Here is what it said:

Browse and blog in side by side windows by dragging a tab to one side.


Maybe in the end this is several reasons why I have lived to long.

1. I have no idea what that message means.
2. Even if I did know what that message means, why would I want to do that, whatever it is.
3. I couldn't figure out how to turn off the 'bold' while writing #2.
4. I don't know how I turned it off the write #2.
5. the 'b' that means bold is still a different color than the 'i' that means italics but what I'm writing isn't bold and I simply pray that when I post this all will be well when I go back to my blog--which, did I mention, is difficult sometimes, I don't know why?

All that I don't know confounds me and tells me that perhaps I have lived too long.

I hope not.....

winged hope flies

I know I've worn you out with the adventures and misadventures of the robin nest on our front porch. This may be the last chapter of the story, bear with me....

To recap: after we thought there were no eggs, Mama Robin--or some Robin came back (who can tell one from another, after all?)

At first I thought she was having an hysterical pregnancy (or whatever you would call thinking she had laid eggs and she hadn't...). Then we saw little heads poking up, mouths open, and everytime I saw her she was carrying a worm or bug or something icky.

Then, just a day or so ago, I saw a robin sitting on the top of the nest and another with his/her head above the nest's edge. These were miniature robins--all feathered and colored and looking like they were ready to fly.

Today, I walked out on our back deck and one of them was under the stand where bern has a big pot with a strawberry plant in it. I was as startled and the bird was and she/he flew across the deck to the bench. I ran to get bern but when we came back (s)he was gone, though we heard the Mama yelling her head off....

"Will they come back to sleep in the nest?" Bern asked.

I have no idea. This may be it. Maybe, once they fly, they leave the nest for good. Perhaps even the mother will be gone now. Who knows about robins...? Not me.

We've fretted so much about them and just like human children, they won't call, they won't come back, they'll just go live their own lives....

But it has been wondrous to fret about them...and to have seen one of them fly. (s)he also defecated on our porch before he/she flew. Maybe shit comes before freedom....

If they are gone, I will miss them terribly and yet look at every robin I see with love and joy....It was so profound to share in their lives....though they didn't share in ours....

Life and flight and wonder and joy. Hope flies, after all this time....Hope flies....

Rule of the Universe #137

Never try to clean your glasses with the paper towel you just blew your nose on.

The backyard zoo

So, there is this multitude of birds in our back yard and a family of chipmunks and, most recently, a momma bunny and at least one baby bunny. Bunnies are so so cute....And nevermind our front porch robin and her two babies--always mouths open and she is running back and forth (flying actually) to bring them worms and bugs. On the way back to the porch there is always something icky in her mouth....

I sit on the deck with my binoculars and watch it all. We have a little bird bath and a dozen or so birds a day bathe there, amazing to watch.

I had begun to think this was always so and it is only now that I'm not gone most all day most all days that I've just never noticed before. So I asked Bern and she answered:
no outdoor cats.

Until last summer we always had an outdoor cat. Before that both Catherine and Millie were on the hunt and kill day after day. What a menagerie of creatures they left by the door--moles, baby squirrels, birds half eaten, lots of creatures. But they're both gone so the yard has become a cat-free-zone and the creatures are everywhere.

I truly love it, watching all this life....the zoo is open....

work comes along...

The Diocese has asked me to go do supply work at St. James' in Fair Haven next Sunday and the Sunday after. It's very flattering that they thought of me. I've lined up 4 other Sundays in July and August as well. However, the thing is, the Diocese isn't real sure where the Eucharist will be or if anyone will be there...They're paying me nevertheless so why would I complain?

The Rector left the Episcopal Church this week. It wasn't so much a surprise as it was sudden. So the Diocese is trying to find out what's going on with the congregation and who has a key and stuff like that. They might be meeting in a local school.

The Rector who left did so because the Episcopal Church is damaging his faith in God, or something like that. He's one of the ones who has been shaken up in the past decade by how horribly 'liberal' the EC is. (Point of view is everything: I think the EC is to the right of moderate!) So it is a bit ironic that they're asking me to go there. Geoff and I are as far apart theologically as Barney Frank and Rush Limbaugh are politically.

So, I'll keep you updated unless I'm held hostage until Gene Robinson resigns.