some stuff you missed...

I didn't have my computer for about two weeks and, not surprisingly, things happened in those two weeks. I'll try to catch you up.

66 is not a prime number. It is divisible by 2, 3, 6, 11, 22 and 33 along with some other numbers that didn't come to me easily. So, turning 66 is not a prime birthday like 5 or 7 or 11 or 13 or 17 or 19 or 23 or 29 or 31 or 37 or 41 or 47 or 51 or 53 or 57 or 59 or 61 (did I get them all?) Next year, though, I'll turn 67, which is a prime number. I'd look forward to that except it would mean looking forward to one year nearer the grave.

How I came to be 66 is a mystery to me. Last I looked I was 37 and had two children aged 9 and 6. Now I have two children who will be 38 and 35 this year. How did that happen? The last 29 years have sort of sped through without passing GO and collecting $100.

On my 66th birthday I did this: had a pedicure for over half-an-hour, went to see "42" at the cinema in Southington (which I recommend highly!).after eating a chili dog for lunch and went to dinner with Bern at Luna in Cheshire where I ate raw oysters, raw clams, sesame  crusted tuna and grilled sea scallops over sea weed and a creme bulea. Any meal that includes 4 things or more from the sea is a meal to remember.

Then we went to Baltimore after church on Sunday and came back Wednesday. 5 hours down and 5:25 back. Josh and Cathy hate to hear these numbers since they are always coming to CT on holidays and it takes 7 or 8 hours....

The girls were amazing. So smart, so beautiful so wondrous. Well, I guess anyone would say that about their grandchildren. But Morgan, Emma and Tegan are all that and moreso.

We had Tegan all day Monday and Tuesday and on Tuesday I went to pick up Emma and Morgan at 3:15 at the Calvert School. On Monday they had ballet which is more important than grandparents so they didn't get home until Cathy picked them up after 5.

Here's something that ties together the Calvert pick-up and being 66: when I got there, following Cathy's directions, I was 15 minutes early and, because I'd been drinking a lot of fluid to keep my allergy mucus loose, I needed to pee. You are the only ones that will know this, but I had an empty water bottle in my car and peed into it and poured it out before going over to gather the girls. What a humbling thing peeing in a water bottle is.

And, since Cathy had emailed a picture of me to the school so they'd know it was okay for me to gather Morgan and Emma, the elegant black man/assistant principal standing in front of the door to the school, said, "you must be Jim Bradley". I agreed and a call over his walkie-talkie brought them tumbling out, wild with excitement to be picked up by their Grampie.

On the way back to their house, following Cathy's precise directions, Morgan kept telling me 'this is right, Grampie". Emma didn't seem to have a clue.

Morgan also found a lighter in the back seat and asked me what it was. "A lighter", I told her. And when she persisted about why I had it in my car I told her I smoked cigarettes from time to time. At that they both started yelling at me in that way that makes an oppositional personality like mine want to light up in front of them.But I didn't.

And all that reminds me of a poem I wrote a few years ago. I think I'll try to reproduce it here.

When I tell my granddaughters about Junkos

“Let me tell you about these little birds,”

I'll say, “that I saw in Seattle....”

(There will be lots of questions then:

“Where's Seattle?” “Is it far?”

“Can we go there?” “How'd you go?”

They move along a story

the way they pump the swings

in the park down from their house--

quickly, rising higher, full of wonder.)

Then I'll tell them how the cook

in the conference center where I was,

saw me watching the little birds.

He was smoking a cigarette,

watching me watch the birds

while I smoked as well.

(I'll leave out the part about cigarettes.

Let their parents deal with that someday....)

“They're called Junkos,” he called to me.

“The little birds?” I asked.

He nodded and blew smoke.

I jerked my head as one flew by,

almost skimming the grass.

He told me there were two kinds.

The ones with gray heads were just Junkos

and the ones with black heads were called

'hooded Junkos' with their black hoods.

Junkos are small and quick.

Swallow like, with long splashes of white

on their wings when they fly.

Curious birds, a couple hopped

into the meeting room we used,

craning their necks and watching us

for a while, wondering about us,

I suppose, then hopped back out

the door we left open

because of the heat.

I told the cook about Junko visits

and he replied they came in the kitchen

from time to time,

then left.

I imagine Junkos

live in the East, as well,

and my granddaughters

could see them some day

in Baltimore.

I could look it up

before I tell them

in the green bird book

my friend John loaned me,

mostly forever, because

I love birds.

I could show the girls

the color plates of birds--

a multitude of them--

which I sometimes just

look at without reading the names.

But I don't think I'll research Junkos

before I see the girls.

I'd rather just wonder if I'll

ever see one here, in the East,

or if they live only on the Pacific

side of this wide land.

I like to wonder about stuff like that--

even stuff I could Google and know.

So I'll just tell them how much

I loved watching the Junkos

and leave it at that.

Let them wonder about the birds.

It's always good, I believe,

to wonder about things.

I pray those little girls,

wondering-machines,

will never stop wondering.

That is what I pray.

JGB 7/11/11

Alas, I'm an addict...

(I wrote this in long hand on April 16 because my computer was compromised and my friend John had taken it away. I just got it back today 4/25)

My computer started doing weird things a few weeks ago. Plug-ins (whatever they are!) were suddenly 'compromised' and not available unless I made them available by clicking on 'activate' which sounded too much like 'activating' a nuclear warhead for me to risk do it.

I did a couple of things my friend John suggested, neither of which made any difference. The 'compromised' plugins--which allow me to watch videos or listen to NPR on line--were still 'compromised'. So John came to fix it and after a while (during which he banned me from my little office) he took my computer home with him to try to fix the problem.

That was Sunday and now it is Tuesday evening and I'm sitting in front of my inert screen writing in long hand.

Th first thing I've noticed is that writing with a pen is awkward and much more difficult (and slower) than typing on a keyboard. And my handwriting, never Zaner-Blosser level, has disintegrated. I have difficulty writing with a pen since I so seldom do.

And I can't 'surf the web' or do email or play hearts or online checkers.

I read in front of the screen and write long hand and drink wine and am almost disabled not having access to my computer's world.

It might as wall have been cocaine. I am a computer junkie.

I need rehab. If I don't get my computer back by Thursday I might have to go to the Cheshire library (or use Bern's laptop) and play hearts all day. I might have to start writing letters and take them to the Post Office to mail. I might have to call people rather than email them....

All hell is breaking loose here at 95 Cornwall Avenue in Cheshire! I'm losing control. I don't even know what time it is since my computer isn't on or even here!

I'm going to spend my birthday tomorrow without a computer. This should give me pause since I'm old enough to have celebrated many more birthdays without a computer than with one....

So, here's my rehab plan having 'hit the pavement' with my computer addiction.

I'll log on once a day when my computer is back. I'll look at emails, write a blog, play some hearts and write whatever else I need to write. I'll spend no more than 2 hours at my computer--no more!

{But, I know the truth. Addicts always think they can 'handle it'. I may need an internet invtervention in the end....)

Joy needs a new word to make it mean what I feel

Tonight Tim and Mimi called.

Tim has been a part of our family for years and years--holidays and vacations together more than I can recall....but my memory isn't that good these days.

Tim and Mimi went to Bennington College at the same time. They were friends. Then when both of them were living in NYC they became more than friends. What do you call it these days--I've lost the lingo--lovers? partners? companions?

They've lived together for (well if I had any concept of linear time I could tell you) long enough, I believe, to be 'common law' married.

But tonight they called and Mimi has a ring (beautiful black diamond--we got a picture on email) and Tim apologized for not asking my permission to ask my daughter to marry him.

Ever since Tim has been with Mimi, from the first time we met him, he's been 'family'. God, we love him. A Techie and a Musician--what could be better in this brave new world?

And it has always been obvious that he loves, loves, loves our daughter. We've spent three or four vacations (my linear time thing again) with Tim and Mimi on Long Beach, North Carolina and dozens of visits to Cheshire and our visits to Brooklyn. And he loves her. And anyone who loves Mimi is, in my book, one of the best people in the world because Mimi is so terribly lovable.

I asked him months ago if he minded if I referred to him as my 'son-in-law' and he told me he has long referred to Bern and me as his 'in laws'. New rules for a new world.

And now they are going, at some point, to get married.

There is no 'down side' to this night. Tim and Mimi are going to get married. God is in his heaven and all's right with the world....

Joy. Joy and tears of joy are with me this night..."Joy" doesn't quiet do it. I need a different word to express what I feel...."enchantment"...that just might do.

I love both of them so, so much. And I am enchanted by their news....

The Wedding Album

Our wedding album--Bern's and mine--was out on the counter where I keep red wine. I normally only drink white wine, but I like to feel sophisticated from time to time and was getting a glass of red when I noticed the wedding album.

It's out, I know, because the granddaughters were here at Easter and love to see Bern and I as younger visages of ourselves. And, Jesus Christ, we were young! I was 23 and Bern (then 'Bernadine') was 20. God help us, what were we thinking?

September 5 we'll have been married 43 years. Lots of poets and rock stars never lived 43 years and we've shared a life that long. There have been very high 'ups' in all those years and several very low 'downs'. I sometimes tell people I've been married five or six times but always to the same woman.

How those children that we were managed to stay together this long, I'll never know. Dumb luck would be my first guess. Or maybe 'love' though that got severely tested quite a few times.

I really wish I had a smart phone and could download some of the pictures from that wedding album for you to see how young and fresh and eager for lust we were in those pictures. And see family and friends that were there with us.

Bern had cousins and friends and her sister as bridesmaids. I had only friends, though my second cousin--now nearing 50--was the ring bearer. My dad was my 'best man'. I think it was the best gift I ever gave him.

Bern's parents and mine are in lots of the photos--all dead now and for years, decades.

We have Bern's wedding photo over our kitchen fire place. It's a bit of a joke. We refer to it as the "Wedding Princess" and she is stunning, beautiful, a bit mysterious, lovely. We tell the granddaughters that Bern is a Queen in the photo. Sitting in front of the fireplace is a 3 foot by 2 foot photo of me with my lion hat on taken by Fred Jenks in St. John's library over four years ago. We tell the girls that's a picture of a fool

The Queen and the fool. That's us.

I didn't have a beard when we got married, only a long moustache and a Beatles hair cut. My  hair and moustache were dark brown, nearing black. That's how young I was. Today every hair on my face and head is gray or silver or yellow/white.

I initially ask myself, "who were those people?" so young and fresh and eager for life to come. Then I ponder it all and see Bern and myself in those photos at the beginning of what has been--for all the ups and downs--a remarkable 43 years. And I remind myself that I still love and live with that incredibly young, wondrously fresh woman.

We had been a couple, on and off, since she was 14 and I was 17--now we're talking a year short of half-a-century we've been together. High school sweethearts, we were. And there we are in that album, feeding each other wedding cake, kissing, my gazing at her while she looks out into the horizon, probably wondering what she's gotten into.

I remember those incredibly young people. They did ok for a marriage. OK indeed.

Way past 'average', I'd say.

And I still gaze at her when she doesn't know I'm looking, and I see that fresh young girl and the woman she's become.

We grow old together. But deep down I'm that dark brown haired boy and she's that ethereal young Queen. They're here with us as we roll into the 60's at too fast a speed. She actually looks more like  her 43 year ago self than I do.

I don't hold that against her...I rejoice in it.

Bern is not 'the love of my life'. She is, in a real way, 'my life'. It's just 'who I AM'. I am married to Bern. Like that. And joyfully.

I'm so joyful I spent that 20 minutes with the Wedding Album. It made me realize more clearly who I am...and why....

Observing the passage of time....

I'm coming up on the anniversary of my retirement from full-time ministry three years ago. My. how time does fly when you're  having fun!

I love being retired. I have my time with the Middlesex Area Cluster Ministry and my teaching at Olli at UConn's Waterbury branch and my participation in leading Making a Difference Workshops for the Mastery Foundation a few times a year. Other than that, my time is my own. What a joy. I read five books a week. I dabble in writing. I do this blog. I sleep until I wake up. I eat when I'm hungry. I hang around and bother Bern. I go to movies. I am very fortunate that the Church Pension Fund and Social Security and MACM pay me more money than I deserve. In 2012, for example, my income was greater than I ever made working full time as a priest....Imagine that and ponder how wondrous my retirement is.

But as I approach the anniversary of my retirement, I feel a twinge of nostalgia for the 20+ years I spent as Rector of St. John's, Waterbury. Until the last 3 years, those were the best years of my life.

In celebration, I want to share with you my Sermon Last. The final sermon out of well over a thousand sermons and homilies and reflections at St. John's. I'd estimate somewhere around 2500 on Sundays and Wednesdays and Holy Days. And this is the one I feel best about, feel most completed with, honor most.

Sometimes 'the last' is the best.

So I share it with you, two weeks or so before the third anniversary of its preaching.

THE LAST DANCE/DEEP IN THE OLD MAN’S PUZZLE

In one of Robertson Davies’ novels, someone asks an aging priest how, professing to be a holy man, he could devour a whole chicken and a bottle of wine at dinner. The priest answers:

“I am quite a wise old bird, but I am no desert hermit who can only prophesy when his guts are knotted in hunger. I am deep in the Old Man’s Puzzle, trying to link the wisdom of the body with the wisdom of the spirit until the two are one.

In my two decades in your midst, I have feasted on Joy and Sorrow, on the Wondrous and the Mundane, trying always to link the wisdom of the body to the wisdom of the Spirit…Deep in the Old Man’s Puzzle….

****

A few years ago, for our anniversary I gave Bern a drawing by an artist named Heather Handler. It has a weird looking tree on it and these words:

“Sit with me on hilltops, under trees and beneath the skies.

Then speak softly and tell me the story, once again,

About why we met, and how someday we’ll fly….”

That sentiment was about our relationship—Bern’s and mine—and it also speaks to me and you and our shared ministry and our relationship in this place for over twenty years.

Today—this day—is our ‘last dance’. Friday we will part. I will go my way and you will go your way. And both ways are full of hope and joy and not a little anxiety and unknown wonders. Both ways lead to this: they lead us deeper into the Old Man’s Puzzle and they lead us to flying….

There is no doubt in my mind that “why we met” was because of the will and the heart of God. But when I came here, I could not have ever imagined staying so long. And now that I am leaving, I cannot imagine leaving so soon.

Yet I know this—we, you and I, will soon learn how to fly.

Today we sit on the hilltop, beneath the sky and speak softly.

And then we part, you and I. The last dance always ends. And the future lies ahead, beckoning, inviting, always to be created….

I cannot thank you enough. I cannot thank you completely. There are not enough words—though I am a man of many words—to give that thanks in a way that matters.

Instead, I will bless you.

And these are my words of blessing: VOCATUS ATQUE NON VOCATUS, DEUS ADERIT….That means this: “Bidden or unbidden, God is present….”

Whether we call upon God or not—God is always there…profoundly there…totally there…here…and now….

I leave you, as I found you, with God in your midst and deep in the Old Man’s Puzzle.

You have let me be a part of that for these years. God was here when I arrived and God guided us—you and me—on our journey together…and God waits, ready and glorious, to lead you on as I leave and to lead me on as you stay here.

And there is this: God will teach us how to fly….And puzzle us more and more.

I love you. I adore you. I will miss you more than you imagine…more than you CAN imagine. And I bless you and thank you.

Keep trying, in every way possible, to link the wisdom of the body—WHAT YOU DO—to the wisdom of the Spirit—WHO YOU ARE.

And start trying out your wings……

April 25, 2010

The sermon I never preached...

I was checking out the documents in my computer and came across the sermon I never preached. I don't know what year it's from, though it must be recent since it mentions this blog. And I don't remember writing this and I thought I'd share it with you because it is so odd. I like odd, in case you haven't noticed...

Sermon not preached on July 8

I used a quote in my sermon last week from Saul Alinski. It is a quote that turns upside down and inside out our normal assumptions. What we say is: “seeing is believing”. What Saul Alinski said was, “When we believe it, we will see it....”

I write this blog where I ponder things that confound me. Last week I pondered things like this:

*how does the cat know I just cleaned his litter box?

*why do people wear headphones when walking on the canal that shut out the sounds of birds and bullfrogs and the wind in the trees and the sweet whisper of the water?

*how many words does my dog know?

*if Jesus were here, would he go to church?

That's the one that's really got me wondering. If Jesus were here, would he go to church?

So a call comes to the Pope's office. Some Cardinal answers it and says, “you're kidding! Oh goodness! Amazing!

The Pope asks who's calling and the Cardinal says, “your Holiness, there is good news and bad news.”

“Tell me the 'good news' first,” the Pope says.

“Jesus has come back!” the Cardinal tells him.

The Pope crosses himself and gives a prayer of great thanks. “So what could be the 'bad news'?” he asked.

The Cardinal held his hand over the phone: “He's calling collect from Salt Lake City....”

It would be weird to have Jesus in Church: If he were a reader he'd say, “The Word of Me” at the end of the lesson.

If he were receiving communion—we'd have to say, “Ah, your Body...This is, Ah, your blood.”

If Jesus came back, He wouldn't come to church to worship himself—that would give new meaning to “Narcissism”!

But if Jesus came back, I think he would come to church. Not for the worship, not for the Sacraments, not for the scriptures....but for two things....THE HYMNS and The COMMUNITY.

Today we heard about Paul's Beatific Vision. He claims it is a man he knew, but it is surely him. He was lifted (in his body or not; God knows) to the realm of heaven. And in that vision of paradise, he realizes “Power is made perfect in Weakness”. And he decides to 'boast' of his 'weakness' so God's Power can be made perfect.

In Mark's Gospel, Jesus can't find community in his home town. They 'don't see it, because they don't believe it'. He is too familiar to them. They know his family. How dare he claim to be something they know he isn't.

Community doesn't “happen”. We create it. And we create it out of our weakness...out of our failure to be a community. We will only 'see' it when 'we believe it'.

There is a story of a people who lived on the edge of the sea but never sailed it. But it came to them that there was 'A Beautiful Land' just across the sea, so they build an enormous ship and set sail from all they knew to find that “Beautiful Land”.

The problem was, they were a landed people and were terrible sailors. People kept falling overboard so the wondrous ship had to endlessly circle to pick up those who had fallen in the sea. Over and over they circled, over and over, to save those who had fallen into the sea.

And the miraculous thing was, that by circling endlessly to rescue their friends, they suddenly arrived at the 'Beautiful Land'.

That is what 'community' is all about. Endlessly circling to bring those who had fallen into the sea on board. Our weakness and our compassion are what bring us, unexpectedly, to the place we sat out to find.

That is why Jesus would come to church (besides the hymns!). To be a part of both our weakness and our compassion. To set sail with us. To share our journey. To come, at last, with us at the destination by merely circling and circling and circling to make sure we all get there together.....

Something to ponder, I think....

School is starting for me

Friday is the first class of my course on The Gospel of Mary Magdalen at UConn in Waterbury.

I teach in the Osher Life-long Learning Institute. Which is for people over 50, people who want to be there studying what they want to know. Amazing....

All I wanted to be in life was a college professor then this God stuff got in the way. Instead of going to the University of Virginia to get a Ph.D. in American Liturgy when I graduated from college, I went to Harvard Divinity School on a Rockefeller Fellow grant and got hooked on Theology. Now, in my retirement, I'm getting to teach.

I've taught The Gospel of MM, twice before and a course on the so-called Christian Gnostic writing and a course, twice, on reading the Gospels side by side. And I love it! I was born to teach. My mother was a teacher. Two of her sisters were teachers. I have about half-a-dozen first cousins who were teachers. It's in the DNA, in the blood.

I'm so happy to be in a classroom. It just feels right somehow. I can't wait.....