what is, seriously, really, no kidding, honestly...more rare...?

A day in June, and it is only June 2nd. I'll sign up for this for as long as it lasts....

I walked around our back yard just a while ago. It is a riot of life. Bern has been nurturing it and loving it for so very long now. Purple flowers and red flowers and pink flowers and white flowers and cantaloupe colored flowers and black pansies--black, I tell you! Amazing...black flowers. And greens of so many hues I could never describe them, even if I had the words, which I don't.

On the side of the house is an area that has been taken over by ferns...half a dozen or so different kinds, eternally in the shade of the hemlocks. I love ferns. Once, when I was in college, I was the "Nature Boy" at a summer camp, since I swim not well and don't do crafts. I would take kids into the forest and point out ferns and fauna and trees. I was relatively good at it, I imagine, having grown up in the woods and knowing most trees by leaf and some by bark. But I don't know flowers, except pansies, especially black ones.

It is 63 degrees on our back porch at 6 p.m. The wind is strong out of the north east. I have on a long sleeve shirt. The sky is Carolina Blue with a few fast moving clouds. I could live, quite joyfully, somewhere it was always like this.

What is, after all, so rare as a day in June?

We had little steaks for dinner the other night. Yesterday I took the left overs and cut them as thin as I could a put them on non-gluten bread with mayo and onions and tomatoes and some cheese and decided to 'toast' them, as we used to say in my family. We had 'toasted cheese sandwiches' which are 'grilled cheese sandwiches' by another name. I sat down at the table to eat my sandwich and it kept falling apart. I was so annoyed and perplexed and upset.

Then, at some point, I realized, "If the only thing wrong with my life is my steak and cheese sandwich keeps falling apart, how lucky and blessed am I?"

Out the window of my little office, the trees are waving madly at me. It is probably still in the low 60's and the sun is out and the wind is blowing and God is truly in his heaven and all is right with the world.

What an idiot I am to worry about whether the onions are sliding off the bread on a steak sandwich....

I love my life. I truly do. And in abundance.

How joyful, lucky and blessed I am.

And it IS June, after all.

What could be better?

Well, I guess 'what could be better?' is if almost everyone loved their life the way I do.

That would be stupendous. Truly. What a moment devoutly to be wished.

I think I understand, this late afternoon in June, what the Native Americans mean by 'a good day to die'.

I could die happy today.

How rare....

I need an ornathologist

Mama Robin is back on the nest. What's this mean? Can she be having another brood? Is that possible? Given all the work she and Papa Robin were doing, when did they find the time?

(Oh, well, I guess people do have two children within a year from time to time. You must just find the time....)


I'm getting ready for the Making A Difference Workshop at Wisdom House in Litchfield next week. I've helped lead dozens of these workshops and every next one is so much not like any of the other and so remarkable in and of itself. I love this stuff.

I just took a shower and put on a tee shirt I sleep in sometimes. It has the St. John's, Waterbury logo on the front left breast--an eagle designed by Judy McManis years ago.

On the back it says, DANGEROUS MYSTICS AND SPIRITUAL REBELS.

I wish to hell I'd made that up, but I think, if I remember correctly, it was made up by a guy named Brian Reagner who helped design the original Making a Difference Workshop and helped redesign it years later. I was in on that 'redesign' and love that I was.

Brian, according to legend, since I wasn't there to hear it when it came into existence, was pondering what people who take the workshop should come out of the experience 'being' (the workshop is about, of all things, 'ontology', "the study of being". And that was what he said, as I've been told....

DANGEROUS MYSTICS AND SPIRITUAL REBELS

And during an adult confirmation class a decade or so ago, one of the participants, Jim Morgan, as I remember it, asked: "What will we be when this class is over?"

And I said, quoting Brian without thinking because it is the best thing, the very best thing, to be:
DANGEROUS MYSTICS AND SPIRITUAL REBELS.....

God bless us all, not much better to 'be' than that.

I'm working on my class in June--8 one and 1/2 hour sessions on the Early Christian (so called) Gnostic writings.

I'll wear my tee shirt one day.

Reading the Gnostics will, if nothing else, make us into "Dangerous Mystics and Spiritual Rebels"....Those are the Christians I want to be around and hang out with and create a future with and ponder possibility with.

Those folks and our Robins....

Not bad company all the way around....

granddaughters and dreams....

I've quoted this from Denise Levertov, one of my favorite poets, before...but I'm too lazy to go find out where.

Ms. Levertov said, at a meeting of poets and theologians (what a novel and wondrous concept!!!)

"The Crisis of Faith is the Crisis of the Imagination. If we cannot 'imagine' walking on the waters, how are we to meet Jesus there?"

We drove back from Baltimore today in 5 hours--door to door with a stop in NJ for gas, bathrooms and a Popeye's shrimp Po-boy---fabulous sandwich! Fried popcorn shrimp, mayo, pickles, lettuce and honey-mustard sauce on a soft, extra large hot dog bun. Popeye's is about the most tasty of all fast food, I think. Still, we pulled off Toone Street at 4:30 and into our driveway at 9:30, 281 miles and didn't even slow up at the tolls for the GW Bridge or across the bridge to 9-A and then the Merritt. Amazing, I think.

Being with my granddaughters--Bern and I kept Mogan and Emma, the twins, while Baby Tegan stayed with Cathy's parents. Josh and Cathy on a weekend in New York, all alone, no kids, lunch with our daughter and Tim on Sat and with close friends on Sunday. They had a great time. We had a great time.

Except...Whenever I'm with my granddaughters I realize how bereft of 'imagination' my life is. One example: we set up their pool on the back deck and could hardly keep them out of the water. Morgan and Emma (they'll be 5 in Sept) and I were out there. I'll do a Virginia Woofian 'train of consciousness' description of about 10 minutes, which won't do the 10 minutes any justice at all.

Both girls in the pool.

'Pretend we're Mermaids', Emma.

'We're Mermaids in our Castle in our cave', Morgan.

'Pretend we're asleep in our beds...." E

'And the water is our covers...' M

'Pretend I'm asleep and you wake me up...' E

'Wake up Mermaid, it's time for dinner....' M

They both jump out of the pool and go to the table where Bern has put dozens of things that can hold and pour water. They start pouring water from the pool into two dozen thing....

'Pretend I'm the Mama and you're the baby...' E

'Mama, I'm hungry....' M

'I'm fixing you tea and soup....' E

'Pretend I'm the mommy and you're the daddy....' M

'I'm hungry....' E

'I'm cooking dinner right now...' M

'pretend i'm a mermaid and you're fixing me sea weed....' E

E jumps in pool. M brings seaweed.

'Pretend I can't speak," E, making elaborate signs toward her mouth and throat.

'What happened to your voice, mermaid?' M, 'Can you sing?'

E begins a haunting mermaid song, a siren song at least, luring sailors to their death.

'pretend i'm a sea turtle and you're a mermaid,' M, making a good imitation of a sea turtle in the pool.

'pretend I'm a human being," E, 'look, I have legs....'

'pretend the girl wants a sea turtle for a pet,' M, swimming over.

Ok, that's about 3 minutes of the 10 and I'm frazzled trying to follow it all. Back and forth they go, most sentences beginning, "Pretend that...." and no plot developing because the next "pretend that..." changes the reality all together.

They include me, "Gampy, pretend you're the Mermaid, grandpaw...."

I get involved in trying to convince them that a grandpaw would be a Mer-Man and they loose interest in me, trying to impose reason on imagination, trying to teach when they are playing, trying to talk 'sense' when they are talking 'dreams, dreams, dreams and more dreams...."

"pretend that......"

I'm going to try real hard this week to recapture the 'pretend that...' that drives me, really drives me, really makes me alive. Like pretending that I am happy always, pretending that I am brave and strong, pretending that I can make a difference in life, pretending that life is so magical that I am a goof-ball for not living with imagination and wonder every moment I am given.

"Pretend That" is being in the ultimate 'present' of life--not the past or future, just right here, right now.

That, all the mystics of my Christian faith, have taught 'is the answer' to life's persistent questions. "Just BE".

Imagine that! 'Pretend that you are living in the moment...each shifting ever changing moment...and that in each of those moments you are fully present, fully engaged, fully alive....

That wouldn't be bad, would it?

In fact that might just begin to teach us something about what Jesus meant by 'life and life in abundance.....'

"Pretend that you have life in abundance every moment, every moment of your life...."

"Pretend that....."

Just imagine....

my fau wilderness

Did I spell that right? I meant to imply that 'my wilderness' is false.

Our back porch and deck, on the West and South side of our house is 'my wilderness'. I counted 21 trees that impinge on the West and South side of our house. Most are evergreens--long needle and hemlock. But there are two Sugar Maples, a red maple and a 150 foot high horse chestnut tree I thought was dead and was worried about the cost of removing it, but the bitter winter brought her back to life and she is full of leaves and nuts. Most of the trees around us are 100+ feet tall. This afternoon there were at least two dozen birds in those trees, screaming and dashing about--four or more types: I saw cardinals, robins, chickadees and wild canaries, but I think there were some sparrows in there too and the omnipresent crow or so.

Our back yard has chipmunks in abundance and more squirrels than I want and the occasional ground hog beyond the back yard fence, eating the fermenting mulberries from our next door neighbors bush and getting wasted....A drunk ground hog is a thing to behold.

Plus we have the occasional rabbit and hummingbird, since lots of our flowers are red, and Bern once saw a coyote, or what she thought was one, across the back fence. Plus the insect critters--bumble bees and honey bees in the hundreds of rhododendron blossoms in full bloom. The bumble bees like our dog and he hates them. He is so hairy and curly that after a walk he is a echo-system and the bees are interested. He runs to the back door and wants to go in.

Besides bees, we have spiders. We read the kid's book to our kids about how Spiders are good, and then there is Charlotte, so we let them spin their nests wherever they wish and never disturb them. I kill ants and flies without guilt, but most creatures I leave alone.

So I have my wilderness.

But it could not prepare me for the wilderness of Higganum.

I was there today and walked the labyrinth in the woods behind the parish hall. It was lovingly and spiritually built. It is on a slight slope so you are sometimes walking uphill and sometimes down. plus their are rocks and tree roots on the paths that you must notice and avoid. (One of the things that you need to know about walking a labyrinth is that you need 'focus'. I usually suggest using the Jesus prayer and walking with your breath. But the rocks and roots in this labyrinth insist on 'focus'.....

I was planning for a time in the autumn when I'd offer a Saturday or Sunday workshop in walking the labyrinth and centering prayer--contemplative spirituality. I just need a date certain and we can start letting people know.

So, I'm walking the labyrinth and a huge hawk, wing span four feet or so, flies 8 or 12 or 16 inches over my head. I felt the wind from the hawk's wings on my face. He sat in the nearest tree and stared back at me over his shoulder. Talk about being focused!

I imagine he decided I was either too heavy to snatch away or I wouldn't taste that good. So he eventually flew away, again just over my head.

Have I made a friend or was that a warning?

I suspect the latter.

My back yard has no hawks, not wilderness at all....

(We're leaving tomorrow for Baltimore for a hit of grand-daughters and won't be back until Tuesday. I don't think I'll have time to blog since Josh and Cathy are leaving the twins with us for two days while they go to a wedding in NYC. Tegan, the 18 month old, will be with Cathy's parents, who live in Baltimore. We'll have the twins--4 and 3/4 years old.

Pray for us....)

something to share

I've probably shared this before, I looked back through 2011 and didn't find it, so, even if I did share it before, you've probably forgotten.

This is a poem that ends a chapter of some reflections I've been writing about regarding parish ministry. The chapter has the same name as the poem--God around the edges.

CREEDO

I believe in the Edges of God.

Truly, that is my limit on the whole question of Creed.

I don't believe in God storming out of the clouds

and smiting me to smithereens if I am bad.

I don't believe in a God who would wake me up,

pin me to my bed and give me bleeding sores

on my palms and the top of my feet,

much less my side.

(Explain that to your general practitioner!)

I don't believe in a God who would instruct me

to slay infidels or displace peaceful people

so I can have a Motherland.

I don't believe in a God that has nothing better to do

besides visit bedrooms around the globe

uncovering (literally) illicit love.

I don't believe in a God who frets

about who wins the next election.

I don't believe in a God who believes in 'abomination'.

I believe in the edges of God--

the soft parts, the tender pieces--

the feathers and the fur of God.

I do believe in the ears of God,

which stick out—cartoon like—on the edges of God's Being.

I, myself, listen and listen

and then listen some more

for the Still, Small Voice.

I believe in God's nose—pronounced and distinctively

Jewish in my belief--

I smell trouble from time to time

and imagine God sniffs it out too.

The toenails and finger nails of God--

there is some protein I can hold onto,

if only tentatively.

Hair, there's something to believe in as well.

God's hair—full, luxurious, without need of jell or conditioner,

filling up the Temple, heaven, the whole universe!

I can believe in God's hair.

God's edges shine and blink and relect color.

God's edges are like the little brook,

flowing out of the woods beyond the tire swing,

in what used to be my grandmother's land.

God's edges are like the voices of old friends,

old lovers, people long gone but not forgotten.

God's edges are not sharp or angled.

The edges of God are well worn by practice

and prayer and forgotten possibilities

about to be remembered.

God's edges are the wrists of someone

you don't quite recall but can't ever remove from your heart.

God's edges are rimmed and circled

with bracelets of paradox and happenstance

and accidents with meaning.

God is edged with sunshine,

rainbows,

over-ripe, fallen apples, crushed beneath your feet

and the bees hovering around them.

God's edges hold storm clouds too--

the Storm of the Century coming fast,

tsunamis and tornadoes, spinning out of control.

Blood from God's hands—now there's an edge of God

to ponder, reach for, then snatch your hand away.

God bleeding is an astonishing thought.

God bleeding can help my unbelief.

And most, most of all,

the edges of God are God's tears.

Tears of frustration, longing, loss, deep pain,

profound joy, wonder and astonishment--

tears that heal and relieve and comfort...

and disturb the Cosmos.

That's what I believe in:

God's tears.

Leaving home....

The robins are gone. They didn't say goodbye. They never write or email or call. Just like children, huh?

One day they were featherless little birds with more beak than body and Mama was going crazy bringing them worms. Then, what seemed like the next day, they were little robins standing on the edge of the nest wondering how to fly. Now they are gone.

Some days I wake up and wonder where that little boy and little girl that used to live with us went. They left home like Frank, Lloyd and Wright, my names for the 3 baby robins on our front porch. I know we had them for years and years that seemed like decades and decades at the time, but where are those little toe-heads Josh and Mimi? How did it happen so fast? How did all those years disappear like the fog in the morning? Those wondrous little bodies I used to carry and hold so near...how did they grow up and leave him so soon?

Today I went to church at St. James. I was sitting near the back and saw Scott walk in after communion. His wife and two children had been there from the beginning. After the recessional, I asked him if he'd like communion and he said yes. So we went down to the vesting room where I had a communion kit. Bryan had consecrated some wine and I had some consecrated wafers so I gave him communion while he held his daughter Sophia (which is Greek for 'wisdom', by the way) close to his face. I was reminded of holding my children like that when they were one year old, like Sophia. I almost told Scott to hold fiercely because the years would fly and like baby robins, so would Parker and Sophia....But I didn't. First of all, he would never believe me--having young children seems like the experience of eternity--and secondly, it was about me, not him, and my feeling of loss that Frank, Lloyd and Wright had fled the nest and long before them those little children I used to know.

Then, late this afternoon, I was out on the deck having a cigarette--I know, I know, don't start with me--and I heard unmistakeable robin calls coming from some of the trees around my house. I know Mama and Daddy's calls by heart, so, I thought it must be the babies (F, L and W) saying good-bye. Try as I might I never caught sight of them though they chirped for almost 10 minutes. But I did see a young cardinal, obviously a male because of the deep red of his head and back, but still with his darker baby feathers on his wings. There has been a pair of cardinals in our back yard all spring. I never found their nest, but this was obviously one of their chicks.

I was so happy I came in and fed our parakeets and gave them fresh water.

I've decided that birds are one of the great joys of my life. Even the hawk that flew over our yard about 60 feet up while I was hearing the robins. I pray the hawk won't find the robin babies. That bird was magnificent. I see an even bigger hawk on Rt. 9, coming back from Higganum, almost every time I drive that road. My favorite bird is the brown pelican whose largest nesting area is on Oak Island, NC, where we go in September. Expect lots of Pelican tales then. But I love all birds, even the hateful bluejay that shows up in our yard from time to time. Maybe not turkey buzzards, but I'll think that through.

Don't we all dream of being a bird? To fly, to soar, to know freedom from gravity, to meet the sky?

I feel enormously blessed that that faithful robin couple has chosen our front porch for two years running to have their nest. I hope they're back next year....It would be nice if they didn't pack up and leave so abruptly and never keep in touch....

Flavors

Ok, I ate a whole bag--a small bag though--of gourmet jelly beans tonight. I normally don't like sweet thing,I like salty things, but the flavors were wondrous. Things like watermelon and cantaloupe and blueberry and vanilla bean and lime and stuff that all had exactly the flavor they promised.

One thing about those jelly beans--you eat them one at a time to appreciate the flavors and savor them. Those larger jelly beans I just toss in my mouth and chew up together because the flavor is simply 'sweet'.

Some of the other flavors were chocolate pudding, red apple, toasted marshmallow, tangerine, Dr. Pepper, Cream Soda and buttered popcorn. That's only about half of the flavors.

I started thinking, what if they made gourmet jellybeans for people like me who prefer salt or tart to sweet. I've thought some up.

Kale, smoked salmon, deviled egg, green olive, cheddar cheese, spinach, hot pepper, french bread, salsa, dill pickle, blue cheese, yellow mustard, onion, garlic, french fry, chicken gizzard, anchovy, pepperoni, double Gloucester cheese, capers, bacon, soy sauce, pepper, Frank's hot sauce and kraut. Those are some jelly beans I could get addicted to, have to carry in my pocket, hide around the house, keep in the car.

Someone should patent that.


By the way, does your saliva have a taste? This is a serious question. Does the stuff your taste buds make and that is secreted in your mouth have a flavor?

Stop and taste it.

My saliva is smoky, a bit salty and very tasty. It always has been but I've never had the courage to ask other people if their saliva has a taste. I enjoy it. I'm glad it isn't sweet or fruity, though I do like sweet and fruity tastes--like that bag of jelly beans I ate tonight. I prefer smoky and a bit salty. My spit tastes like bacon, mostly.

How about yours?