the world I live in

I live in a world where there are lots of locally owned, small jewelry stores.

I needed a new watch band, mine about to break completely off on one side, so I went to my local jewelry store to get one.

Problem is, there is not a single jewelry store in Cheshire. I went to the one I remembered, in the same building with a pizza shop and, much to my chagrin, I found a cupcake store where the watchbands should be.

So I got in my car and drove down RT 10 to Hamden. Hamden is, I believe, the largest town in square miles in the state...may be wrong but I think so. I think I drove most of Hamden--down Dixwell and cutting across and coming back on Whitney. Miles and miles I drove. But no jewelry store. None. Not one. I found one place that was a clock and watch store, but it only sold clocks and watches, no replacement watch bands.

Finally, after vowing to the Baby Jesus I'd never do it, I went to Walmart in Hamden Plaza and found a watch band. It is, I believe, only the third time in my life I've been in a Walmart. Once in West Virginia on a whim. And once in CT because I needed something they would surely have. I hate Walmart--aisles too narrow, stuff piled too high, too much stuff. But I broke my solemn vow and went there, there being no little neighborhood jewelry stores in the two towns of Cheshire and Hamden. (Oh, I know I could have found a jewelry store in a mall in Meriden or Waterbury, but I resent malls only a little less than I resent Walmart.)


I was walking the dog this afternoon and realized that all my neighbors had dug up the dandelions in their yards and thrown them out onto Cornwall Ave. I was horrified! Where I grew up dandelions were a food group, just like gravy. You mostly ate them wilted in bacon renderings, but they were also good unwilted. For Easter dinner, we had dandelion risotto Jack made from dandelions he picked on the grounds of Bethesda Lutheran Church in New Haven. It was heavenly. (I even, years ago, had some dandelion wine...it's not Pino Grigio, but it is pretty good.)

No local jewelry stores, people wasting dandelions--what else is an illusion in the world I live in.

I live in a world where people drink water from a faucet instead of a plastic bottle.

I live in a world where phones have rotary dials.

I live in a world where most everyone smokes.

I live in a world where people 'drop in' rather than email.

I live in a world where you call your doctors by their first name (since they do that to you....)

I live in a world where people give great respect to the President whether they agree with him or not.

I live in a world where 'please' and 'thank you' are the two things you say most often.

I live in a world where athletes are heroes, not criminals.

I live in a world where everyone agrees that everyone should have healthcare.

I live in a world where FACEBOOK isn't the 'social network', the 'social network' is you friends and family.

I live in a world where strangers are simply friends you haven't met.

I live in a world where God is Love rather than Judge.

I live in a world that includes drug stores that have a soda fountain.

I live in a world where there was a mechanic where you get your gas rather than a convenience store.

I know, I know, I really know--I live in an illusion.

But, it is my world and I prefer it.

Welcome to my world.

Want to join me...?

The root cause of all bad things

Remember how every once in a while Pat Robertson assigns blame for natural disasters on some sin or another? Like Haiti's earthquake was God's judgment for the island's history of voo-doo....

And what about those idiots from Kansas that show up at military funerals to celebrate God's judgment on American for not condemning (and stoning, I suspect) homosexuals....

Clearly such thinking is terrible theology and downright hateful. But I have a suggestion that might just get to the bottom of all the terrible things Mother Nature is doing around the globe....

It's because of Donald Trump's hair.

Truly, the powers that be just can't take Donald's hair anymore. And, since we have to see it so much these days what with his idiotic ravings, I can understand Nature's anger.

What's worse than his hair is that it covers a head without a brain in it.

He wanted evidence that Obama was born in the US. Well, I want evidence that the Donald has any grey matter....He needs to post clear evidence that brain cells exist in his cranium, beneath that hair....That's what I'm demanding to see.

Join me at Donaldshowusyourbrain.com....

long time no blog

I notice I haven't written here for over a week....well, it was holy week, after all, and Easter and all that....

So, I'll catch up....

MY ALMOST NEW JOB

Nothing is signed yet, but I am scheduled to begin a call as the Interim Missioner in Charge for the Middlesex Cluster (4 churches in Higganum, Killingworth, Northford and Westbrook) on May 1. It's really part time--12-13 hours a week--and the Missioner who retired at 72 was full-time, so I insisted it be called 'interim' because if, over time, we discover the Cluster needs more than the 12-13 hours I'm willing to give, that I would fold my tent and move on with no problems. It's a fascinating ministry--four churches that have very different cultures and ethos'--who have been bound together to seek to perfect 'total common ministry' for now 30 years. There was a fifth church in Durham, but a few years ago they opted to hire a part time priest to serve only them and leave the Cluster. Too bad. I really buy the concept because it empowers lay folk to 'be the People of God' and consigns the ordained to liturgical, functionary and supportive role.

I spent Lent and Easter at St. James in Higganum. It is a remarkable community that really buys into Total Common Ministry. They need a priest like a fish needs a bicycle. But they tolerate us (there are 3 other presbyters who rotate, along with me, among the churches).

I even did my first ever 'Sunrise service' at 6:30 a.m. in the labyrinth the community built in memory of Jean Minkler, the mother of my dear friend Steve. There were 25 people there and we left the better part of a loaf of bread for the birds. Then we ate pancakes.

There were some gnats in the woods in the early morning. One of the guys who stayed back to cook the breakfast asked me, "Jim, what was all that arm movement all about?" He'd looked out to see if we were almost through and saw folks shooing gnats.

"We were in the spirit, Wayne," I told him.

(more tomorrow....)

being happy

My friend John, who is a very unconventional therapist, told me the other day what he sometimes tells his patients.

LISTEN: You can either 'be happy' or have all the reasons you can't be happy.

Did you really read, mark, learn and inwardly digest that?

Here's the question--how can you 'be happy'?

John says, and I absolutely, positively agree: you simply choose to 'be happy'. You either choose that or you choose to 'have' all your considerations, excuses, reasons and stories about why you can't be happy.

I'd prefer to be 'joyful' rather than happy, but I think the same criteria applies: You can either be joyful or have all the reasons you can't be joyful.

So, the search for happiness is solved. It is a choice you make that has nothing to do with the circumstances of your life. The 'circumstances of your life' contribute to the 'reasons' you can't be joyful. You can have them, whatever they all (and I realize we all love our misery) or you can simply choose to be joyful, whatever the circumstances of your life.

That simple.

When I was a young, baby priest in my first parish, whenever I got discouraged, depressed, unhappy, I'd go see Arlene.

Arlene was not much older than me. She had three kids--one in elementary school, one in junior high, one in high school. Shortly after her youngest had been born, Arlene was diagnosed as having muscular dystrophy, which moved aggressively and put her in bed for the rest of her life. Her husband couldn't take it, caring for her and all, and , God bless him, left.

So Arlene was a single mom with a limited income with three kids and she couldn't leave her bed.

They brought her hospital type bed, on wheels, downstairs and she slept in the living room and when it was time to make dinner, one of her kids rolled her into the kitchen to oversee things.

Her children were all honor students though their mom would never be able to go and see their work or talk to their teachers or see them graduate.

And, when I was depressed, discouraged, out-of-sorts, it was Arlene I went to see to get me back on track, cheer me up, convince me of joy.

The circumstances of her life were, at best, horrendous. She had every consideration you could imagine for being 'unhappy' and without joy. And she was the one I'd go to see when I was out of touch with the joy in my life.

Arlene simply chose to be happy, joyful, profoundly alive. She preferred that to 'the reasons she wasn't happy, joyful, alive.

And when I left her, so restricted and in pain and knowing she wouldn't quite live to she her youngest be on her own, I was in touch with the joy and happiness that comes, always and eternally, from within, in spite of circumstances.

Under your castor oil tree, I invite you to ponder this: You can either be happy/joyful or have all the reasons that isn't possible.

It is a choice, as weird and strange as that might seem.

I'd advise that you choose happiness, choose joy and let the 'reasons' and 'circumstances' go the way of all flesh.

Just a thought.

One more reason to send me to the Home

So today I come home for lunch and Bern is out (she left me a note to tell me she was out, which I would have figured out eventually and that the dog had been to the Canal for his daily long walk on the old B and O canal cum horizontal park.)

I ate my lunch--a ham and cheese sandwich (Boar's Head rosemary ham with double Gloucester cheese, mayo, tomato, Boston lettuce and white onion with a little 1000 Island dressing on Everybody's walnut and cranberry seven grain bread...I recommend it). The bread is the best bread I've ever eaten, a meal it itself.

While I was eating and reading the novel about an Alaskan private investigator named Kate Suhgnan (a series I love) I felt a tad chilly. But I had on a very light sweater because I'd come back from doing the funeral of a wonderful woman, Ginny Tillson, in the unheated chapel at Evergreen Cemetery (I wrote Seminary rather than 'Cemetery' until I backspaced it out...something Freudian in that, I suspect.) I loved Ginny and knew I'd need a light sweater under my alb. But I decided to go upstairs and put on a heavy sweater since I felt a tad chilly.)

On the way past the thermostat, I notice the temperature was 60. No wonder I was chilly. We keep our house at 66 or 67, always wearing sweaters. So I went down in the basement to check the oil--still over 1/4 full, the breaker (on) and push the reset button. Nothing happened. So I went upstairs and called Standard Oil--which is a great company from my experience. After a few questions and my checking in the emergency switch at the top of the basement stairs was 'on' rather than 'off' (it was) they agreed to send someone within two hours--and they always do what they say, which is why they're a great company in my mind.

Bern came home and I told her the heat was off.

"Why do you think so?" she asked.

"Because the temperature is 60," I said, "and the funny thing is it hasn't gone down in the last two hours though it's colder than that outside."

"It hasn't gone below 60," she told me sternly, "because I turned it down to 60 since it was such a nice day."

She looked at me for a long time. "Did you check what the thermostat was set at?" she asked, in a way that I knew was something I couldn't fake.

"I don't know how to do that," I said, since our thermostat is controlled by buttons that I never touch, not knowing what they do.

She rolled her eyes, turned on her heel and somehow pushing buttons I don't understand, turned the heat up to 61 and our faithful furnace immediately turned on and pushed warm air through the vents.

"I'd better go cancel the service call," I said.

"I guess you should," she said.

So I did, explaining when the operator asked that it was all my fault, I didn't know how to work the thermostat, the temperature had simply been turned down, all my fault, my own fault, my most grievous fault and there is no health in me and my wife would probably send me to the home. I didn't hear any sympathy in the woman's acknowledgement that she would cancel the service call.

"How was I to know?" I asked Bern.

I think I saw her writing in a little book where she keeps evidence that I need to go to the Home. Alas.

loyalty

Approaching my 64th birthday, I have come to realize what is my highest value, my core commitment.

It is this, simply this, only this: LOYALTY.

That would make me worthy to be a Knight of the Round Table or, on another level, a "made man" of the Mafia. Those two possibilities reflect light from two very different directions. Yet I know this: What I Value Most In Life = LOYALTY.

I have always told people who worked 'for/with' me that I would be as loyal to them as they were to me and I would 'have their back' no matter what, if they gave me their loyality.

(Here is a scary thing: I value Loyalty more than Truth. If you are loyal to me, I will be loyal to you, even when you LIE. There is something dangerous about that promise, that I know. But it is a promise I make and will keep. In response, when I 'lie', I expect loyalty to overcome your commitment to 'truth' and that you will 'loyal' to me even when I lie.)

Here's where the 'pondering' comes in. God's love, it seems to me, is a lot like that. God will love us...be loyal to us...even when we lie and screw up.

God love us in a loyal way. God will put up with our nonsense and un-truth and out-and-out lack on anything that can remotely be considered 'integrity', so long as we are 'loyal'. All that nonsense and un-truth and lack of integrity is, gosh, I think "who we are". And God loves us anyway.

I'm loyal to my friend when they are really off the chart messing up.

I'm loyal to my wife when I don't agree at all about what she wants to do and does even though I disagree.

I'm loyal to my children when they don't live their lives the way I would live them.

So, what else is new?

Loyalty is my highest value. Highest of all. Even more than Truth.

Ponder that and what it says about me. And ponder your highest value and how, if you can find a way, it is superior to Loyalty.

Go figure that out and let me know.

Puli nests

Bern has been cutting our Puli's hair for several days. She is a mama bear about what she is doing once she decides to do it.

One of the great differences between my wife and I is this: she is a compulsive 'finisher' and I am a remarkable 'starter'. I Start projects with a commitment that is focused and absolute. Bern 'completes' things in a way I never could. So, opposites do attract, I suppose.

Our Puli, Bela, has 'hair' not 'fur'. It keeps growing and growing, as yours does. So, either you have to cut it back or let it grow and help it form dreadlocks so that he looks like Bob Marley's head with four feet, a tail and a face. We did that when we first got him, 6 or 7 years ago. He looked like the Puli's you see at the Westminster Dog Show. He hated it and we hated it, so once or twice a year Bern really cuts his hair back so that doesn't happen.

She cuts on him a lot. But once or twice a year she gets obsessed with it all and really cuts his hair.

He now looks like a different dog. Though he still weighs 50 pounds or so, he looks 15 pounds lighter, a shadow of his former self.

One of the three or four days of Bern's compulsive cutting, she did it out on the deck. So Puli hair was everywhere...I'm not kidding, handfuls of it, a paper bag full, Puli's have lots of hair.

She planned to sweep that hair up, but when she went out there were a veritable flock of birds taking the hair to add to their nest.

So, I am so joyful that Bela's hair will warm the hatchlings of several species of birds. Puli hair is luxurious, fine and, I am sure, warm and soft.

What a gift our bad dog Puli has given. A whole generation of birds will profit from his spring hair cut....