The puppy cut

Bern has been cutting on Bela, our Puli, for three days. She cut enough hair off him to create a couple of small dogs. He looks so little now, which is a problem since he's a terrible, bad, awful dog.If we haven't invited you over in the past six years it's because Bela would most likely bite you. He goes crazy when the postal worker comes, jumping against the front door, snarling and foaming at the mouth. With his puppy cut he looks even cuter than he does normally, and harmless.

Not true. He bit our friend, Hank, who, thank the baby Jesus, didn't turn him in or he wouldn't be here now. We know how aggressive he can be so when we walk him we warn people off who want to come and touch him.

He's an awful dog. I wouldn't trust him as far as I could throw him, which, since he weighs 50 pounds, wouldn't be far.

But we love him to death--probably because we realize no one else would and it's our job to love him. He's great with us, though he tries to stop us from leaving the house--he's a Hungarian Sheep dog so our leaving is letting the flock get away. But he adores our granddaughter and guards them so well when they are here. He loves our daughter, tolerates our son, loves our-daughter-in-law and Mimi's partner Tim. And he loves John, Sherry and Jack and will tolerate Hanne who always comes for Thanksgiving. Beyond that group, he'd probably bite you. Alas.

But he does look so cute in his puppy cut for warm weather. You might think, if you saw him, that he'd be fun to pet.

Looks are deceiving.....

The best thing I ever tasted....

I don't have much of a sweet tooth. I take sugar in my coffee but mostly I prefer the sweet taste of fruit. I'm a sucker for any kind of fruit pie--strawberry, blueberry, cherry, blackberry, peach, apple Once and only once, I had grape pie. I don't remember where, but I remember that pie as if it were this afternoon! I don't like cake at all--dry sweet doesn't appeal to me the way the wet sweet of fruit does. Ditto for cookies and brownies and all that stuff--though I will vote for a chocolate quassant once in a while.

I prefer vegetables and greens and meat to sweet most of the time. And I've never met a kind of sea food I didn't love. My idea of a 'treat' would be nuts and raisins and seeds instead of a candy bar.

But, a few months ago I went to a Cold Stone Creamery (is that the right name? Is it Stone Cold or something else?) near my son's house in Baltimore to get ice cream for the granddaughters. Morgan likes gummy fish in chocolate ice cream (yuck!) Emma wants lots of sprinkles in vanilla and Tegan will eat anything cold and sweet. And I noticed they had salty caramel frozen yogurt. Two things I love salt an caramel. So I got a small cup for myself. I wish I had gotten a gallon! I loved it. And ate it before starting my car's motor because I made the mistake of taking a bite.

Sweet and salt is something I love. I put salt on watermelon and cantaloupe and any other melon. I also salt apples (learned from my grandmother's knee) and even pears. Sweet and salt is much better to me than sweet alone.

Today in Stop and Shop I saw a salt/caramel pie (450 calories a 1/8 slice) so I didn't get it. But then I found Talenti Gelato in the flavor of Sea Salt Caramel. So I bought it. I didn't open it in the parking lot since I didn't have a spoon. But when I got home I did and it is the best thing I've ever tasted....

The first four ingredients  are caramel, milk, eggs and sugar (they're only a couple more) and blended in are pieces of chocolate covered caramel truffles. Holy Cow, is that sweet AND salty. The best thing I've ever tasted.

Bern is out with her women's group for her birthday dinner--I'm thinking I'll so down and finish off the pint of gelato.

(My spell check rejects 'gelato', which I know is how it's spelled, and the options it gives go from gelatin to cleat to glad--go figure. What self respecting spell check wouldn't have 'gelato' in it's computer brain? Gelato is better than Ice Cream, I think--not quite as sweet....)

Learning to speak French....

Well, I never learned to speak French, but some things recently have caused me to ponder how my personality has changed over the years, like learning a new emotional language.

At Easter, my son Josh told a couple of stories about how erratic and touchy I was when he was small--like pulling the whole family out of a restaurant at some perceived slight by the wait-staff and yelling at people for reasons he could not understand.

My bishop, Robert Atkinson, when I was a priest in West Virginia, called me 'my young Turk' because I was so contrary and argumentative and would take offense at the slightest provocation. I started considering all that and began to wonder when I changed.

I was telling someone today about what a rabble-rouser and malcontent I was in my younger years and she was astonished. "But you seem so laid back," she told me, "how could you have changed that much?"

I really don't know when it happened, but it happened. At some point, probably gradually or maybe at some pivotal moment, I simply stopped taking Everything personally. It's about impossible to get a rise out of me these days. There's even a member of one of the three churches in the Cluster I serve who has an 'impeach Obama' sticker on his car. I joked with him about it rather than attacking him with all my previous high-test self-righteousness. So he wants to impeach the president I love...he's still a nice guy and I like him. Lord, how far I've evolved!

I can tell you this, being detached while still engaged and involved is a lot less stressful than the tension convention I was when I was younger.

I met up with one of the Wardens of St. John's, Waterbury about a year after I retired. It was in a store somewhere. He asked me how I was liking retirement. "I'm a lot more relaxed," I told him.

He looked at me like I was a crazy person. "A lot more relaxed!" he exclaimed, "you were so relaxed when you were the Rector of St. John's that I thought we needed to check your vital signs! You must be unconscious most of the time now...."

Well, there you go: from 'young Turk looking to pick a fight at the drop of a hat' to comatose. I ponder the transformation, the learning of a new language of being. I haven't walked out of a restaurant because of the service since Josh was a pup. Nothing much bothers me. I have learned not to say "I don't care" when I'm asked something that I really don't care one way or another about because people tend to hear that as 'I'm not involved or interested'. Now, I've learned to say, 'why don't you decide?" I am involved and interested in my life--every moment of it--but I have a kind of detachment I never practiced or worked on that has simple evolved from my annoying younger self that makes me happier and, I believe, makes people around me happier since they don't have to worry about what's going to set me off next....

I used to, as I look back, sort of careen through life from one fight to the next. Now I glide or sidle (which most people don't know what it means) or drift through life from one moment to the next, enjoying each moment enormously but not expending a lot of wasted psychic negative energy.

When people ask me about my spirituality--an annoying question I've learned to simply lean into and answer--I tell them I'm a contemplative left-wing nut. Which, perhaps I am, given that in my aging I've learned to speak French without knowing a word of the language....

Spring, at last...?

Easter is over, now maybe spring can come.

Our granddaughters from Baltimore were fascinated that there were clumps of dirty, multi-times frozen snow still dotting our yards when they were here for Easter. But now Bern is outside raking the front yard and their are flowers poking their heads out of the long dormant earth.

Lucky for me, I don't rake up to Bern's standards so I never have to rake, or cut the grass with our push mower or do anything in the yard. That's her exclusive realm and she's welcomed to it!

She had a birthday this week and it would be improper to reveal her age though she is 3 years younger than me and I turn 66 next week. Plus she's been getting SS checks for a year so you might be able to figure it all out. If you saw her you might think she was in her early 50's or late 40's. If you saw me you might wonder if I could drive myself to the crematorium.

But, I'm healthier than I look. I saw my urologist today. I think it's been seven or eight years since my prostate cancer surgery and radiation. And it's been a year since I stopped taking Lupron to drive my PSA down and my PSA is, as Dr. Kurz said, 'undetectable'. He told me I was the first man in 5 years to go off Lupron and still have no PSA a year later. So I don't have to go back for a whole year. I've never quite said it, but I think it's safe to say now that--at this moment--I'm a cancer survivor. That feels good though the truth is I'm so good at denial that if  you asked me if I'd ever had cancer and I didn't think about it for a moment, I might say "No"!

There's something to be said positively about denial--at least you don't dwell on things and worry yourself into a tizzy....

I wrote a poem once about watching Bern work in the yard. I tried to find it in the two 2 foot piles of stuff on the second shelf of the bookshelf beside the table where my computer is. To no avail. I have to be at St. James, Higganum tomorrow all day 9-4 because they are hosting a safe-church training for folks around the diocese who deal with children or old people. And, for reasons beyond my comprehension, they want a priest 'on site' for the training. I've tried to imagine why. Would someone freak out remembering how they sexually abused a child or beat up an old person and took their Social Security check? In either case a police officer and social worker would make more sense than a priest. Am I supposed to hear confessions? It all seems suspect to me but I'll be there in the little library some of the members created in what would have been my office if I ever had need of an office. I didn't have an 'office' the last decade of my full time ministry. It just seemed silly to me. I had the 'office' where I'm typing this so what did I need with one in a church 12 miles away? I preferred to walk around and talk to people.

Anyway, what this is about is that I'm going to load my 4 feet of stuff I've written into bags from supermarkets and take it with me tomorrow and try to find that poem and see what all that stuff is....

Tomorrow promises to be warm again and sunny.

Spring is struggling to get to Connecticut.

Tom Cruise and Aliens

So, my friend, Mike Miano, sent me an email about my blog about 'what friends are for' saying he hadn't meant to "disturd" with the picture of me on the toilet. I've always thought Mikey was the craziest person I knew personally. But then, I don't know Tom Cruise 'personally'.

I read on line that Tom Cruise had been interviewed by a UK journalist about the movie he's working on, the plot of which is that he's part of a crew that's come back to earth to extract needed minerals after aliens had driven the humans from the planet. And Tom admitted he believed in aliens. This news is so expected that I can't see why it is news at all. I think Tom was deflecting attention to himself by saying that. If there are aliens among us, Tom Cruise, in my mind, would be a prime suspect.

I don't go see Tom Cruise movies or John Travolta movies anymore. Bern doesn't see Woody Allen movies because he married his step daughter and for some reason that offended her sensibility. I don't go to Tom Cruise/John Travolta movies because I don't want to give $9 (actually $5 since I'm a senior) because I won't give money to any Scientologist. Scientologists are lower on the theological food chain to me than Mormons and that Baptist Church in Kansas who believe God is killing American soldiers because of homosexuality.

Scientology--which is neither 'science' or 'religion'--are only higher on the theological food chain than Pedophile priests. Compared to Scientologists. Pat Robertson is my best friend. I have what I know to be a totally 'irrational' dislike for Scientology, though there are lots of 'rational' reasons to dislike them--like the labor camps they put some of their members in, like their having IRS recognition as a 'church' when what they are is 'pseudo-science' masquerading as a 'pseudo-religion', but let me stop there.

I usually have a strong tolerance for cults. When people were talking about cults a decade or more ago, I told them about my friend who joined a cult that took all her possessions, cut her hair, changed her name and controlled where she lived, what she did and who she associated with, all without paying her much of anything. My friend Jeremy is a Sister of Mercy in the Roman Catholic Church.

Cults, like beauty, are often in the eye of the beholder--or 'the beholding of the eye', which is much the same thing.

But, Scientology, give me a break! Really, how does that fit into the religious spectrum in any meaningful way? A guy who wrote science fiction novels invented a science fiction religion. I'd rather be a member of Kurt Vonnegut's invented religion Bokononism that be a Scientologist.

Vonnegut dreamed up Bokononism in his book Cat's Cradle. Here, briefly, is the Creation Story of Bokononism: One day God decided to let some of the mud sit up and live. And the mud that sat up and lived asked God, 'What does this mean?" And God replied, 'does it have to mean something?' And the mud that sat up said, 'of course'. And God said, 'well, I'll leave that to you.' And God went away.

One of the hymns of Bokononism goes like this: "Fish got to swim/Bird got to fly/Man has to ask, 'Why? Why? Why?'"

All that, it seems to me, makes a lot more sense than L. Ron Hubburd's invented religion.

Scientology even makes less sense than Mormonism. But don't get me started on Mormonism, please!

(The religion Mike Miano would invent would make more sense than either of those. It could have to do with sitting on the toilet. Maybe he should get busy on that while we're still able to think....We're getting old, Mikey. Invent a religion that makes sense of that....)

  

What friends are for...

One of my college roommates sent me an email on April 1st. The message line was "Brad tries out for the WVU bowl team". When I opened it the email said: "Go Brad..." and then "April Fool".

There was a picture attached. I opened it and it was a picture of me as a college sophomore, sitting on the toilet in the apartment three of us shared....

People who knew me in that era of my life call me "Brad". Once, as an affectation in high school, I wanted to be called "J. Gordon" like "F. Scott". Anyone in my family calls me "Jimmie", except for one branch that called me "Jimmie Gordon". Most of my grown up life I've been "Jim". No one has ever called me "James" except the people who call me on the phone trying to sell me something or have me give money to some cause.

My freshman roommate in Arthur I. Boreman Hall was Mike Lawless, who graduated high school with me. Sophomore year we moved to an apartment with the greatly to be desired address of "69 Richwood Avenue". Mike was a student in mining engineering as was Mike Miano (who sent me the picture). Both Mikes' were in school a semester and working somewhere in mining the other semester. It was just lucky that they alternated semesters, so one was there when the other wasn't. Our third room mate was a kid named Doc Likens (I think his name was Henry). I have no memory of how we found him to share the three bedroom apartment over a laundromat, but, like me, he was there both semesters. We didn't call Doc "Doc" for his brilliance. I'm not sure why we did. He brought the name with him. He was the messiest person I've ever lived with. Mike Miano was the neatest.

My junior year I lived in an apartment further up Richwood Avenue with a kid two years younger than me named Jo-Jo Tagnesi. Jo-Jo and I grew up together in Anawalt. The woman who owned the apartment lived downstairs and we lived upstairs. I can't remember her name but I do remember we had to pass through part of her living space to get upstairs. So, besides Doc, I only roomed with people I already knew.

My senior year, I was a Resident Assistant in a freshman dorm that was the living place of young men and women who had received 'late admission'. That meant they applied after the deadline or were admitted after people with better grades had been. You can imagine the general atmosphere of that dorm, I suspect.  Being an RA, I didn't have a roommate.

Sitting on the toilet, I had on a yellow button-down collar shirt. I think I had five of them, all alike. Yellow was my favorite color back then. Now, most of the things I own are some shade (mostly dark) of blue.

I have big horned rimmed glasses on. The most startling thing about the picture (besides how young I was!) is that I didn't have a beard. I had a modest moustache , but no beard. I didn't grow a beard until after Bern and I got married in 1970. I've had it ever since except for two times. The first time I cut it off was during a vacation when Josh and Mimi were quite small. Funny thing was, I cut off the beard part when we stopped to stay in a motel on the way to Long Beach, NC. The kids didn't seem to notice, but the second day we were at the beach I went into the bathroom and shaved off the beard. When I came out Josh and Mimi reacted with panic and confusion, running to Bern crying. They didn't appear to recognize me! It took me several days to get back enough beard for them accept me as their father.

The second time was once when I was on Block Island. The kids were mostly grown. I was subbing at St. Ann's Church on a Sabbatical for three weeks and then Bern and some friends were coming up for another couple weeks. I just got it in my head to cut off my beard. I did and looked in a mirror and thought I looked like a slightly smaller John Goodman. I had it mostly grown back by the time Bern arrived.

I searched my memory after Mike's email and picture of me trying out for the 'bowl' team to see if there could be any more damaging photos to worry about....I'm just glad I grew up before smart phones and tablets and the Internet and U-Tube. God knows what nonsense Miano could have gotten into these days....

Monday in Easter Week

So, I didn't post on Holy Saturday or Easter...I was busy. "The girls" were here--our three most beautiful, cutest, Supreme Court Justice/Nobel Prize Winner/ Oscar winner granddaughters. Finding a spare moment, much less 20 minutes to write something on my blog is an impossibility!

Plus their parents and Mimi and Tim, and our friends John, Jack and Sherry, never mind Sumi, Josh and Cathy's 14 something pit bull (sweetest dog ever) who has trouble going down steps and needs to go out more than your average dog....Just no time to sit and type....

One way I differ from most Episcopal priests is that I am not exhausted after Holy Week and Easter. Almost all Episcopal priests take Easter Week off...just like they take the week after Christmas off...because the drama and liturgies and spectacle has worn them out. This goes to my theory that more Episcopal priests than you would have guessed are introverts. Introverts, since they feed off 'what's inside them' get drained by the Big Honkin' Holy Days. I'm always amazed at how many Episcopal priests are introverts and therefore folded and mutilated after Holy Week and Easter. I'm doubly amazed at how many introverts choose parish ministry as a career tract. What's up with that? An introvert needs a nap after the service and coffee hour on the 13th Sunday after Pentecost--never mind the Super Bowl of Easter....

Extroverts, like me, on the other hand, 'draw' energy from what's going on 'out there'--from what surrounds them. So Christmas and Easter 'energize' people like me. I could do a dozen Easter services and then drive to New York for dinner and a show. You'd be surprised at how few extroverts are Episcopal priests. Extroverts don't collapse after the Holy Days, they go to the gym or a party. Extroverts like me feed on High Holy Days and need to work off the emotional calories we consume.

My wife is an introvert. So when I come home on a normal Sunday ready to have a chat and dance the tango, she doesn't know what to do with me. But Christmas and Easter rev me up so much that it is a blessing that there will be lots of people around eating more food than they should and consuming inordinate amounts of wine so Bern doesn't have to talk me down from my Liturgy/Sugar 'high'.

Introvert priests should be sent to Sensory Deprivation Therapy after Easter. Extroverted priests should be sent to do a Triathlon. Problem solved.

My granddaughters and their parents were at the Easter Service at St. Andrew's, Northford, which was glorious. Emma, who is six, sat on the aisle and waved at me throughout the liturgy. And when I was preaching from the aisle, she laughed at the funny stories I told in the beginning. The thing was, when I got to serious stuff (I'll send my sermon at the end of this if I can remember how to copy and paste) she kept laughing. It would have distracted an introvert, but for someone like me, it just kept me going.

If you're not familiar with Carl Jung's psychology, here's a short course: INTROVERTS come from the inside out, using internal energy to be present to the external world. EXTROVERTS  come from the outside in, using the energy in the external world to fuel what is internal.

I preached at the funeral of a lovely man who sat behind my family for years at St. John's. Andrew looked like Cab Calloway and was a dear and always talked to my children as they grew. I was retired when he died and his family (all of whom were Baptists) had his funeral at Grace Baptist Church (an African American Congregation). When I started talking I thought I had five minutes worth of things to say, but I kept getting "Amen's" and "Speak it, Preacher's" and I went on for I don't know how long. Afterwards, Larry Green, the Pastor of Grace Baptist, told me I not only sounded Baptist, I sounded Black!

If Emma came to all my sermons I'd preach until she stopped laughing. (Another Jungian insight, Extroverts know when they've 'lost the audience', introverts don't have a clue because what they're saying comes from their heart, not from the reaction of the listeners....Neither is good or bad--thank God for Jung--they are just what they are.

My Easter sermon, I hope...

Easter 2013

People sometimes assume that preachers enjoy preaching on Easter. Like the Super Bowl or the World Series.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

Preaching on Easter is a nightmare.

First of all, anything that could be said about Easter has already been said hundreds of times, thousands of times, tens of thousands of times.

Secondly, what has to be proclaimed on Easter is something so foreign to our human experience that it defies expression. We human beings know that 'dead things stay dead.' Dead is dead. It is an absolute, something we all agree on. Dead as a doornail. Dead and gone. Dead things stay dead....

So, over the years of being expected to say something on Easter, I have resorted, more often than not, to tricks and jokes and slight of hand.

One Easter, long ago, before I began my sermon, I broke off one of the lillies and ate it. My point was that when people told their neighbor that their priest ate an Easter Lily, their neighbor would say, “I don't believe it!” Which is exactly what the disciples said when Mary Magdelean ran to tell them Jesus had risen from the dead.

When I ate the lily, there were a few audible gasps from the congregation. “Great,” I told myself, “I've got them now!” The truth was they knew (as I obviously didn't) that a lily could be a little toxic so they weren't hanging on my every word...they were waiting to see if I keeled over....

I never ate another Lily, but I did, on Easter, get phone calls from God, Jesus, even the Easter Bunny.

One Easter I'll never forget, I had our verger dress as the Easter Bunny, a full body suit and bring in a basket full of the symbols of Easter. Then I had the children join me on the altar steps—50 or more children—and began to ask them questions about the symbols the 6 foot 4 inch Bunny had brought.

When I got to an Easter Egg, I held it up and said, “can anyone tell me something about this?”

Courtney White, who is now a Medical student at George Washington University, piped up and said, “after a while, they smell like poop.”

Which was true, as days old, boiled eggs go, but hardly the “stuff” of a Resurrection sermon.

But maybe not. Maybe Courtney had some insight into the whole thing about the Body and the Soul, the Physical and the Spiritual.

Who knows? Really, Who knows?

So I have fudged and cheated and used smoke and mirrors for Easter sermons for most of my Easter sermon life.

And when all else failed, there were always bunny ears....

But just this week—this Holy Week—my best friend John, who is psychotherpist in New Haven, called me and told me what he's started telling some of his patients.

Here's what John tells them: “You can either 'be happy' or have all the Reasons you can't be happy.”

I found that remarkable and helpful and, most likely, True.

You can either 'be happy' or HAVE all the Reasons you can't 'be happy'.

I'd prefer the word “joyful” in place of “happy”. Happiness is fleeting, Joyful is down to the bone.

So, the way I'd say it: YOU CAN BE JOYFUL OR HAVE ALL THE REASONS YOU CAN'T BE JOYFUL.

Now we're getting close to what Easter is really about.

Jesus died. Died on the cross. Died a horrible death you wouldn't wish on your worst enemy.

And he was dead. Dead as a doornail. Dead dead. Dead and gone.

And God simply loved Jesus back to life. Loved him that much, that powerfully, that profuoundly. God simply went into that tomb and loved Jesus back to life.

And, I believe, God is willing to do that for us—for you and me—as well.

God wants to love us—you and me—back to life.

That's God's intention on this Easter day.

The rest is up to us.

You can either 'be alive', truly alive, having abundant life, right now, and always, OR, you can have all the reasons you can't be truly and abundantly alive.

God loves you 'best of all'. No kidding, honestly, believe me, God loves you more than you imagine, more that you can imagine. God loves you enough to bring you 'back to life', back to something truly alive and abudant, now and always.

That's what the empty tomb means. That is what Mary Magdelene's message is about.

Choose Life.

Because of Easter, it truly is your choice.

You can either “have life” or have all the reasons you can't 'have life'.

The tomb is empty. God loves you 'best of all'.

It's your choice.

Choose LIFE.

Alleulia, he is risen. He is risen indeed, Alleluia.

And so are we....