I must be becoming a contemplative

OK, Ted told me today I hadn't blogged lately. So I will.

It started last night. While I was studying a website about the square mileage and population density of the states--don't ask, it's too long a story--I got this sudden message on my computer about a 'critical error'. The message stacked up message after message like a deck of cards. In just a moment I lost the internet. Then I noted that lots of my little icons had taken leave as well. I still had Solitaire and Hearts so I played awhile, imagining that somehow the Lord or Bill Gates would miraculously heal my computer.

Then I turned it off and turned it back on to realize all that was left was solitaire and hearts and the 'start' icon. So I played solitaire and went to watch the Yankee game, imagining that by some good fortune, all would be well with my computer in the morning.

When I turned it on today, my rotating screen saver of remarkable vistas of beautiful places was gone and my 'sticky notes' with a rough 'to do' list was all that was left besides hearts and solitaire and the 'start' icon.

So I played hearts--it pains me to admit that my addictive personality is focused on playing hearts these days.

Bern was going to talk with our friend John, who is my personal IT guy, the one who built my computer for me, so I told her to tell him I was down to games and 'start' and sticky notes.

He came up at 6 and started fooling with things that are as far from my ken as brain surgery and the string theory of physics and speaking Bulgarian. He allowed that it seemed pretty simple and he did computer magic for a ten minutes or so and then we had dinner while the computer (I guess) talked to itself and did things I neither understand or want to understand.

Then I went up to my office to watch the computer talk to itself and tell me in terse terms what it was talking to itself about while John and Bern stayed downstairs and talked. John is very smart and very funny. Bern prefers the company of smart people and I prefer the company of funny people so it is little wonder John is our good friend.

Finally, the computer finished its internal conversation and started windows. I got on line, I checked out the other things I use and John was about to leave when I clicked on my "libraries" icon and found it empty.

So he came back up and worked for 45 minutes or so restoring all the stuff in my libraries--photos, music, documents.

I watched him for a while and then did some other stuff and came back and watched him some more. He told me several times that he'd 'never seen anything like this before' and that he wasn't sure how, or if, he could fix it.

Here's what was MIA:

*family photos I'd stored...not a lot but some I love.

*a little music--I listen to NPR instead of music, so there wasn't much there either.

*My novel "The Igloo Factory", my fantasy novel "The Princess and the Sailor", my murder mystery "Murder on the Block".

*about 400 sermons and sermon outlines.

*notes for my novel "The Bananaman" which once was written but then lost and I've been trying to reconstruct.

*all my poetry

*all the stuff I've written for Bern for Christmas (She gives me some graphic art each year--collages, paintings, etc, she creates and I write her poems and stories...that's what we give each other for Christmas.

*all the letters I've written that I've saved.

*my folder about the Middlesex Cluster and my hours and mileage log

*my folder and class outlines for the courses I teach at U.Conn in Waterbury

Granted, lots of that stuff is in hard copy and wouldn't have been lost. But a significant amount of it--all the sermons and poems and Middlesex stuff and U.Conn stuff and the letters would be lost forever.

The good news is, John recovered all of it through clicks and key strokes I'll never understand.

The better news is, in the midst of all that stuff being lost, I was, as best as I can describe it, 'eerily calm', like I was watching something happening that had nothing to do with me, like I was detached and safe when a whole bunch of stuff that means a great deal to me was gone from this universe.

I even remember thinking, during the Lost time, "I should be upset and anxious and distracted". Instead, what I really felt was, "all will be well". Maybe it was my faith in John to recover all that stuff, maybe.

But maybe, after all this time, I am becoming a contemplative---fiercely 'involved' with the world and simultaneously 'detached' emotionally.

Something to ponder. Recently I have found myself able to be 'present' in important ways to what was going on around me, but to, at the same time, be able to have 'distance' from it all emotionally.

It's what I've always sought to be in my ministry and my life--"a non-anxious presence".

It seems to be coming naturally these days.

Ponder, I will. Reflect, I must. (As Yoda would say....)

eyebrow crap

I always forget, but each year when the weather starts to change the the high and low temperature gets 20+ degrees apart, I get crap in my eyebrows.

I have rather full eyebrows and what happens is that a scaly mess starts to form on the inside of each eyebrow and inexplicably spreads across the bridge of my nose.

Some years I've scratched it with the dirtiest part of the body--my fingernails--and it's gotten infected and I have to have topical and oral antibiotics. What a pain that is, a runny, pus filled bridge of my nose isn't a way to make people love and adore you.

I've experimented over the years and hope I can keep it from getting viral this year. (Maybe I should wear rubber gloves so I don't scratch it too bad.)

Even when I rub it, it's like the snow in those snow globes. Maybe I should put a reindeer and Santa on my nose and people would think the crap was part of a theme face.

Who knows.

Somewhere under the rainbow....

So it happened like this: I was on my way to a meeting in Portland and as I drove down Rt. 10 I saw an enormous double rainbow that seemed to stretch from Hamden to Southington. I even pulled into a strip mall to look at it. About a dozen people were in the parking lot taking pictures with their cell phones. (I don't have a cell phone that takes pictures, but if I did I would have taken one.)

It was a perfect bow. We could see it from one end to the other. The lower bow was bright and radiant. The upper bow was pale, almost opaque.

Simply astonishing.

I kept driving and when I turned onto I 691, I realized I was going to drive under the two rainbows. Lord knows how I didn't wreck, staring up as I tried to drive. In fact, there should have been multi-car pileups on both sides of the Interstate. Everyone, I'm sure, was craning their necks to see the bows when they passed beneath.

It was simply one of the most beautiful things I've ever seen. Jaw-dropping wondrous.

I'm not one who traffics in misty-eyed emotionalism about God. An associate Rector I worked with me used to say, wisely, "God is not a feeling." And God isn't.

But those double rainbows touched me deeply (and probably almost got me killed looking up at them driving 75 mph!)

I won't stand by this and will deny I ever said it in the future. And, those rainbows, for just a moment made me imagine that all this stuff I talk about all the time about God might, maybe, perhaps, be True.

obsession

My son and I both love fantasy fiction. I tend to like 'soft' fantasy--Ursela LaQuinn, Harry Potter, stuff like that. Josh tends toward the hard stuff. Gene Wolf and Donaldson, stuff like that. We agree on the Toilken and CS Lewis, but not much else.

So for years, Josh has been urging me to read George R. R. Martin's "Song of Fire and Ice" series. I resisted mightily, imagining it would be too weird for me.

Then the first book of that Series, A Game of Thrones, was made into an HBO series. Last time they were here, Josh set up his I-Pad and made me watch the first episode of the TV show.

Lordy, Lordy, I was hooked.

I borrowed the first book from him a few weeks later when we were in Baltimore. Then I bought the next three. There's only one next--Dances with Dragons--that is only in hard cover and will cost $30 probably, but I finished book four today and am already in withdrawal. I need those books! Each of them is over 800 pages, so I've read 3200 pages of the series and wish there were 3200 pages more.

I'll drive up to Waterbury tomorrow and buy the book and don't know what on earth I'll read tonight since I don't have Martin to read. And then, what a horrible thought, when I've read the 5th and final book, what will I do with my life then?

Maybe I should read a page a day for 800 days--over 2 years--just to satisfy my obsession but to drag it out.

Maybe I need "Song of Fire and Ice" rehab. "My name is Jim and I'm a Martinholic". I guess I could start at the beginning again, but there are other things I want to read and should read...but I need George R. R. Martin, do you understand? I've got to have it....I'm not sure I can live without it.....

Maybe the HBO series will do all 5 books, that could be a placebo of sorts, I suppose.

Have I made myself clear? These books are addicting.

Maybe I need an intervention and to read romance novels for a while....

strange bedfellows

OK, I know I'm too avid about sports. I could probably know a lot more about science, world affairs and French literature (not to mention opera) if my head weren't so full of sports junk. But it is. So it goes.

I am in the uncomfortable position the next two nights to root against the baseball team I love--the Yankees, of course--until I know Boston is losing to Baltimore. Boston and Tampa Bay are tied for the American League wild-card. The Yankees are in Tampa Bay for the last two games of the year, while Boston is in Baltimore. If Baltimore gets ahead, I can cheer for the Yanks since if both Tampa Bay and Boston lose they're still tied. But let the Red Sox get ahead and I become a Tampa Bay Rays fan. (They used to be the Tampa Bay 'Devil' Rays until idiot Christians complained so much. There are even people who think the Duke Blue Devils should change their name. Go figure.)

That's how much I hate the Red Sox. I'd hope the Yankees would lose two games if it kept Boston out of the playoffs. The Rex Sox are the AntiChrist so far as I can tell....

Last Saturday college football caused me to have another strange bedfellow: Notre Dame.

Normally when someone asks me who my favorite college team is, I tell them "West Virginia University and whoever is playing Notre Dame."

But I'm so mad at Syracuse and Pitt leaving the Big East that I was pulling for the Irish against Pitt.

What a tangled web gets woven when you get too emotionally involved with sports....

Bern Retired from Church

When I retired as Rector of St. John's in Waterbury, CT, Bern (my wife) retired from church.

The people in the Cluster Ministry I serve as Interim Missioner are all, understandably, curious about my wife. They keep dropping hints about how they'd like to meet her or ask, innocently enough, 'when is she coming to church?'

And I always tell them, "Bern's retired from church."

They don't know the whole story. For over 30 years, Bern went to church because she supported me, not because she wanted to. She was never a proper 'priest's wife' in the traditional sense. She didn't join the altar guild or the choir (though she sings beautifully). She did what she did and did it beautifully. Bern was an actress, so she always read lessons--read them so well that some people wanted to get off the rota to hear her read. And she would train readers if I asked her to, and she did that with passion and patience. She would, from time to time, direct some drama I was always coming up with for worship. And, at St. John's, she organized the nursery because by that time she was the Coordinator of a co-operative pre-school in New Haven and knew about kids in a way few people do.

And for years upon years, she hosted our New Year's Day Open House for anyone in the parish to come to our home.

When I retired as a full-time priest, she told me she was retiring from church. She had it coming.

What people don't know is that I promised her, when she agreed to marry me, that I'd never be ordained. I'd been to Harvard Divinity School and earned an M.T.S. but I had no intention of being a priest. I wanted to be a Professor of American Literature in some Mid-Atlantic states liberal arts college. Like William and Mary or Mary Washington or Washington and Lee--something like that.

So, I lied to her--it was an honest lie but a lie nonetheless--and when I was ordained she stuck with me and became a remarkable support to my parish ministry and never bowed to the expectations of a clergy wife, which made her the best clergy wife ever!

For over 30 years she not only 'played a role', but played it in an odd way. Luckily for her--and for me--the three parishes I served were 'on the edge' and not really typical. So they didn't object to Bern's claiming her space. God bless them all.

And I actually agree with her about church attendance. Sometimes when people want to know why I became a priest, I tell them "so I'd go to church." Left to my own devices, I'd read the NY Times Sunday edition and drink coffee and eat bagels on Sunday morning and watch all the Sunday morning News Shows.

I love the 'community' of church. That's most of all what I love about church. But if I weren't a priest my attachment to the 'community' would be Christmas and Easter and about 12 Sundays a year. I wouldn't be a good lay person. I would never serve on a vestry or any committee. I'm come to suck out 'community' about ever 4th Sunday and that would satisfy me.

But I am a priest. And I thank God I am. I love to be totally immersed in 'community' and the Middlesex Area Cluster Ministry gives me a group of communities to consume my need for community. And I'm a priest so I do it every week.

Bern is retired from that.I support her absolutely in her retirement. And, from time to time, I envy her freedom on Sunday morning.

I can see myself in the bed with the NY Times, a bagel with flavored cream cheese, a cup of Bern's hardy coffee and my dog and cat in bed with me as well about 10 a.m.

What could be wrong with that?

So, Jim, why did you become a priest?

So I'd go to church.

(Obviously there is more to it than that. But that is bottom line....)

something happens and then we talk about it....

One of the distinctions in the Making a Difference Workshop that I help lead is the distinction between the domain of 'presence' and the domain of 'representation'.

The easiest way to make the distinction is to remind people that 'something happens' and then we 'talk about it'. On the most basic level, most anyone would agree that of course, what we say about something that happened is different--distinct--from 'what happened'.

Think again, beloved. The reality is that we collapse the two domains and live in the collapse. For example, take the current political climate in our country--some event happens...the unemployment rate goes up, let's say: what Barack Obama says about that will have something to do with raising taxes on the wealthy and providing a stimulus plan. John Boener will say government spending and regulations need to be curbed back. And both of them will be convinced that 'what they say about what happened' is TRULY 'what happened'!

Also, consider how, if four people witness a car accident, you will get four different stories about 'what happened' and each will be convinced their story is True and the others not....

Or take what happened to me this morning while walking the dog on the Canal. As Bela was sniffing around, an older man passed us. I spoke to him and he didn't reply so I said to myself he was an odd person. After he was 20 feet or so ahead of us, he stopped in his tracks in the middle of the canal path. He didn't move when a girl on a bicycle came perilously close to him. Instead he stood stock still and stared. By now I have said to myself that his oddness may be dangerous. He seemed unhinged, deranged. I considered not approaching him. I almost told a woman pushing a baby carriage to watch out for him.

When I drew near, being cautious, ready to loose the dog on him or run if his twisted mind caused him to attack me.

About 5 feet away, I noticed he had hearing aids the size of outboard motors on. He turned to me, smiled, and said "Ducks."

So, what happened is this: the man passed me without speaking and then stopped to watch the ducks. And I had 'talked about what happened' in my head to such an extent that I had him a potential mass murderer.

We always live in the collapse between 'what happened' and 'what we said about it'--the challenge is to 'notice' when it happens and try to make the distinction between the two domains: the event and our evaluation, judgement, story, explanation, etc.

My deranged killer was, instead, hard of hearing and enamored of ducks.

Something to ponder in your life beneath your own Castor Oil Tree....