creatures in the night

ok, so I'm watching one of the Yankee/Twins games--could have been any of the three since they all turned out the same..."the Yankees win....the Yankees wiiiiinnnn...." when Bern yells out to me from our bedroom--across the hall from our TV room (we believe TVs should be on the second floor...) "Luke has a creature!!!"

He's been staring at walls--our cat, Luke--for years, but apparently something came out of one of them and he had it in his mouth. So I chase him down the upstairs hall to the back steps and down through the kitchen into the dining room where he lets the creature go and it it alive, before I can grab it, knowing it is a mouse...tiny at that...he scoops it up in his mouth again and runs up the front stairs to the bedroom and under the bed.

Something vital is happening in the baseball game--but never mind, the Yankees win and the Boston Red Sox players are all home watching or out stalking children--all Red Sox players are pedophiles at their best....

Luke runs under our bed--or, to be precise, our futon...so it is hard to get him. But I grab his tail and drag him out and the mouse runs away behind the dresser. Bern is still yelling but the only thing to do is let Luke catch the creature again, so I go back to the game and Bern goes back to bed, as if she could sleep with a stalking cat and a mouse in the room....

Luke apparently catches the mouse again and leaps onto the be with it because Bern is hysterically shouting--"It's in the bed!!!"

So I go in, grab a shirt and catch the tiny mouse in it and carry it out on the deck and toss it off into the pet graveyard....two dogs, three cats, a rat and a multitude of genuine pigs are buried beyond our deck...

Then I go back to watch Mariano Rivera do what he does in the 9th inning,

The mouse is gone. Luke is still sniffing the bed. The Yankees win. All is well in the world.

WASHING DISHES

I start the dishwasher
during the Yankees game
after she goes to bed.

The dishwasher is stainless steel
and smarter than me--
She is flesh and blood
and also smarter than me.
What a quandary:
a woman
and a machine
both smarter than me.

I empty it after the game
(win or lose)
late in the night sometimes,
especially when they play
on the west coast.

Glasses go in the cubbard
as well as bowls and plates,
cooking dishes in the drawers.
Like base runners,
I line them up.

Cups on the hanger.
Implements: forks, spoons,
knives
all where they belong,
like players in the dugout.

Wiped counters and
water barely dripping
from the faucet--
like the 9th inning.

Now I can sleep.
Having done what little
I do
to make myself
useful
to her.

Home Run.
Walk Off.

riding the train

I went to Baltimore on the train and back as well, since I couldn't walk...I love the train. It takes about 45 minutes less time to get to Baltimore (even on the NE Regional since I'm too cheap to take the Accela). And, since I'm not driving, it is great.

Something I've learned about riding the train--always get on the last car. You have to walk down the platform quite a ways, but it is more than worth it. Nobody rides on the last car. Going down there were four other people and coming back, three. Both directions all the other cars were pretty full, but people who get on near the front of the train give up and take a seat in an almost full car before walking all the way to the last one through the train. I know the other cars are almost full because you have to go through them to get to the cafe car. But the last car--well, nobody there. Amazing.

I shouldn't have told you since now you'll be going to the last car and getting it all crowded. Alas, transparency isn't all it is cracked up to be.

While in Baltimore, I spent time with my first cousin Mejol and her daughter (my second cousin) Elizabeth. My parents, who thought they might not have any children, had semi-adopted Mejol before I was born. She went on vacations with them to the Smokey Mountains (imagine driving 5 hours or so through mountains to get to mountains....) So she was like my babysitter/almost sister/omnipresent cousin. I think I've mentioned that when I was 13 or so, Mejol locked me in her room with a copy of "Catcher in the Rye" and a Bob Dylan album. That was the afternoon that changed the direction of my life. (It was "Highway 61 Revisited" I believe--but Dylan is Dylan. Our son's middle name is Dylan.)

Over the years we have been in and out of touch. I've been terrible about 'keeping in touch', I don't know why. I believe my parents' only friends were 'family'. I grew up surrounded by 'family' but I never kept in touch. Alas.

Josh calls it my age showing itself--my sudden interest in family. But Josh and Cathy were so gracious to Mejol and Elizabeth. I really think they could be friends with Elizabeth and her husband and with Fletcher and his wife who have 2 boys a few years older than the twins. That would give me great joy. But then, everything IS about me, isn't it?

Being an only child I've been pretty self-sufficient and I've always been able to 'create' family from friends. But now I want it back.

I regret almost nothing about my life so far except that I never kept in touch. I'm pondering that a lot recently--my age, as you know, showing itself....

i've lived too long

I just googled (a verb that should not exist in the King's English) AOL and got 97,500,000 options in 0.8 seconds.

Why do I need that. I just needed AOL to get to my blog. I needed one option before Wednesday of next week.

97,500,000 options aren't options at all. Luckily--and because Google is Google--the only one I needed was the first one to sign on to AOL. But Jesus, Mary and Joseph, Christ Almighty God, what about the 97,499,999 other options? If I looked at them all I would be 127 years old and die on my keyboard with several tens of millions still to click.

It's like the credit/debit card swipe machines. No two I've ever seen are alike. Why not? Why can't we agree on a template for swiping cards? Or, even more vital, why are there so many kinds of sneakers/tennis shoes/etc.?

And, since I went to my small package store today, why do we need so many kinds of wine? A nice white and nice red would suffice. Nobody I know needs a pink wine of any kind. All pink wines are part of the ananaphra of life. Ananaphra--which my spell check will not accept though it gives me more options than I need, including ionosphere, for reasons beyond all comprehension--means 'those things not necessary for salvation'. Pink wines fit that category. Yet, even in my little local package store there are hundreds and hundreds of wines. I'm reminded of Steven Arborgast (or abreast, airbags, aghast, and even angst, among other options from my spell check) who lived in the bush in Africa for several years, teaching. Toilet paper and paper towels and such were like legal tender there. Anything paper--I bought a coffee in the train station in Baltimore today and they gave me two paper napkins...a small fortune where Steve lived. And when he came back to the good ol' US of A, he was reacclimating quite well until he went into a Stop and Shop and walked down the paper goods aisle. It overwhelmed him to see 24 toilet paper rolls in one package--more toilet paper than he had seen in several years. He had to leave the store and go sit in a dimly lit, quiet room for several hours.

Too many choices.

OK, I am a socialist. I don't want 97 million options. I don't need a whole aisle of toilet paper or several hundred kinds of sneakers. I want someone (preferably President Obama--a native born American, a Christian, a moderate Democrat and our President) to narrow the options for me.

It's all too much.

I've lived too long.

being a democrat, cont.

So, today, just back from Baltimore and seeing the grand children, I took our dog, Bela, for a walk in the cemetery where we often walk. The Tea Party folks were up on Main Street, if front of the town hall where they are often on evening drive time. I saw a placard that said "Obama is a socialist". So, on the way back, I stopped and went up to talk to the man with that placard.

I had my dog with me so I thought I would seem benign. I really wanted to know what definition he had of 'socialist'. I am very left wing--but, at this time, short of being a 'socialist', though it is appealing to me philosophically. I approached him and asked if he could tell me what he thought a socialist was. He said, "if you don't know, don't ask".

I said that I did know and that the President is, much to my chagrin, a 'moderate democrat', not even 'liberal' or 'left wing', though I wish he were, but far short of a socialist.

He said he didn't want to talk with me.

I noticed that he, like most of the 30+ people there, had a glazed look in their eyes, much like my 4 year old grand daughter had when we watched a street magician on Saturday at a festival in Baltimore.

I said, "I just want a conversation..." and he replied, "we just had one."

So I sought out a guy about my age with a sign condemning the healthcare bill as "Obamacare" and recommending its repeal.

I asked him to talk to me about health care. He stared at me and dismissed me by saying, "the health care bill is all wrong."

I asked why and added, "I don't think it went far enough. We need a 'single payer' plan, what do you think of that?"

He called me a socialist. I thanked him and asked if we could have a conversation and he said, "we just had one."

I told him we hadn't and I'd like to know what he objected to in the bill--allowing children to stay on until 26? stopping insurance companies from canceling coverage when people got drastically ill or refusing coverage for prior conditions?

He too, called me a socialist, which I'm warming to after this event.

So I cried out to the group, "will anyone have a conversation with me about the issues on your signs?"

They gazed at me like kids at Disneyland and many of them laughed.

As I walked away, back to my car, some of them hooted at me and said I had bells on my shoes, which I don't understand, but one man called me a 'faggot'.

So, tell me how to engage these people in a conversation....

And I beg you, send this to all the people on your email list. I actually have believed that I could talk to Tea Party people. I'd like to. I need advice.

So, why am I a Democrat? I'm beginning to wonder why I'm not a Socialist....

Bob

Bob was the head of the search committee who brought me to CT in 1980. He was a dear, kind man who was committed to the church and social justice in profound ways. His funeral was today at St. Paul's and St. James. The beautiful sanctuary was pretty much packed. The music was incredible (a jazz quartet led "Lift Every Voice and Sing" and ended the celebration with "When the Saints...") They were fantastic. So was the organ--which was put in while I was Rector...I seem to have fallen into being around for new organs....

There were all these familiar faces--familiar except that they had all grown old! It was a joy to see people I hadn't seen for years--Bob still has the knack of bringing people together....

There were a gaggle of clergy--five us, including a former bishop--all of whom served at St. Paul's plus several others who knew Bob through his kindness and his works.

I had forgotten, over the years, what a beautiful sanctuary St. Paul's has (I still can't think of it as St. Paul's and St. James, much less--horrors!--what they call it: St. PJ's.) There is a carved wooden reredos with Jesus and St. Paul in the middle and little wooden statues of church luminaries around and beside them. The altar is an exact replica of the altar at St. John's in Waterbury!! Here's why: when I arrived, the altar was a piece of wood on top of two saw horses covered by frontals and such. Some memorial money was available and I started looking at altars. I saw the one in St. John's at a diocesan convention held there and we hired a craftsman to reproduce it. Little did I know I would spend 5 years in New Haven and 21 years in Waterbury standing behind twin altars....

The windows are not nearly so impressive as St. John's Tiffany's, but they are striking in a certain starkness. The lighting is wondrous and the sound system--though the Priest in Charge has the same difficult I have about utilizing it though he is 30+ years younger--is very good.

I really loved being at St. Paul's back when we had babies. People thought of it in those days as 'the liberal parish'. It wasn't--St. John's social outreach is remarkably more widespread than anything St. Paul's has ever done...and no one in their right mind would call St. John's "the Liberal parish". But it was "a parish of liberals"--people who spent their lives trying to accommodate a world 'dying to get better' and simply needed to be nourished and cared for and sent out full of the sacraments into the work they did. The head usher at Bob's memorial service was a guy who taught Labor History at Yale back when I knew him., We started having the laying on of hands and prayers for healing once a month on Sunday and he always came up--most everyone did, but what made him coming forward special was that he hardly had a religious bone in his body. I once asked him why he came for prayers for healing since I knew he didn't think 'healing' or 'prayer' were efficacious . He came to church for 'community', not for the religious mumbo jumbo.

"Here's what I realize," he told me, all those years ago, "there is almost nowhere in my life that I can be touched intimately without complications. I come up to be touched...."

How much truer that is today. Episcopal churches should probably have anointing and laying on of hands at every event. Being touched is so vital and so rare in our day, alas....

So, it was like a homecoming for me. I was so humbled by the people I met and so honored to be among them.

Bob did all that, from beyond the door to whatever come after death.

Marge and her daughter Liz--Marge the most left-wing person I've ever known personally and her daughter who used to babysit our children in St. Paul's Rectory--were discussing the possibility of "Everlasting life" after the liturgy. Marge said to Liz, and then to me, "do you believe in this everlasting life stuff?"

I told her I didn't critique funerals.

She persisted and Liz (bless her) said, "You're a 'man of the cloth', you must believe this stuff...."

I had to admit I have no freaking idea what is on the other side of that door. I actually don't wonder much about it. It is a mystery to me, not having passed through the door yet. And I have found, over all these years, that my admitting that I don't have the foggiest idea about 'what comes next' is, ironically, comforting to people rather than off putting.

But I do tell a story in many funeral homilies (one odd thing was 'being at a funeral' rather than 'doing the funeral'--odd to me to be in a pew....) that goes like this: St. Francis of Assisi, everyone's favorite saint, once said--"Death is not a door that closes, but a door that opens...and we enter in all new."

Bob, my friend, has gone through the door. He now knows if Francis was right or not. Or not.

Death seems like a closed door to me, at any rate. But, then, I don't know, do I?

Something to ponder and then, one day a long, long, long time from now, I pray, find out....

democrats

I am a yellow dog democrat. For anyone who doesn't know what that means, I would vote for someone's Labrador Retriever (a 'yellow dog') against the Virgin Mary if she were running for crossing guard as a Republican.

I tried being an independent but it didn't work out.

Back in 1980 (remember that long ago?) I pulled my VW Bus (what else?) into the parking lot at St. Paul's in New Haven. There was a little lady with a driver holding a box waiting on me and there was a John Anderson for President bumper sticker on my car. The little lady said, "we just won't talk about politics, will we?" and had her driver carry in a box of welcome food for us. It was a wonderful . Heart of palm, capers, some tenderloin steak so fresh and sweet you could have held it raw in you mouth and your saliva would have melted it, smoked oysters, handmade pasta, imported candies for our children, English tea biscuits, two nice bottles of wine, fresh asparagus--lots of stuff we weren't used to in Charleston, West Virginia.

She told Bern and I she just wanted to welcome us to our new home. Her name, she said, was Mary House. I later found out she was Mary "Bush" House--sister of Prescott and aunt of George. No wonder my Anderson sticker was a problem!

But being an independent didn't work out. So, after that (having been a Goldwater Republican as a teenager) I became a yellow dog democrat.

More later....

My Autumnal Equinox

My Autumnal Equinox

I stood an egg up on its end.

I listened to the crickets from the porch.

I grew like a pumpkin in its patch.

I flew to the dark side of the full moon.

I visited my left ventricle and my medulla obbligato
in a minuscule vehicle fashioned from filaments
of gold and mesh of mystery
by the Green Man in our hemlocks.

I pitched (and won!) the 7th game
of the World Series.

I became Henry Kissenger
for Halloween tricks and treats.

I talked to all the Saints
and all the Souls
and was charming and disarming to them all.

I was the first frost on the grass in the back yard.

I was Scooby Doo's balloon in the parade
and the yams at Thanksgiving dinner.

I thought of you
and knew
what
love
truly
is.


jgb 9/21/10