What I realize

What I realize from time to time (not nearly as often as I should) is that I am joyful, happy, satisfied, content, fulfilled.

The reason I avoid realizing how complete I am with my life is that my life brings me into daily contact with people who are not. And I feel the brush of guilt whenever I recognize how different it is from most people to be truly at home with your life.

I know I 'shouldn't' feel guilty about being joyful most all the time, but brought face to face with the suffering and oppression and dissatisfaction of so many, I tend to think, "well, why am I one of the few lucky ones? Why should I be satisfied when many aren't? What gives me this right?"

And, never the less, I am extremely happy with life.

The least little thing brings me joy. My friend, John, fixed my computer and put a new rotating page saver on it. I've spent time just watching the views change every three minutes. There's pictures of wondrous libraries, full of light and decorations and world globes and books--so many books. And a couple of the half-dozen or so pictures are simply pictures of books. The ornate leaves of books the spines of books. Books and always books....Libraries from dreams with decorative tile floors and dark wood and paintings on the ceiling. High windows and several stories of shelves, all full of books.

Those pictures give me great joy and make me glad I am alive.

Another joy of my life is Public Radio. How mundane that looks, but it it true. At home, our radio is always on to WSHU from Sacred Heart University. It is a classical music station. Our bird, Maggie, loves WSHU so we leave it on all day, watching her dance and hearing her sing to the classics. On our car and truck radio, it's always WNPR, the talk radio station. I love WNPR and all the shows when I'm driving. But I've noticed that since we have music instead of news all day in our house, I'm calmer than I was when it was news all day. Maggie deserves credit for that. When I called in our yearly pledge to WSHU I told them in was in honor of our bird, Maggie. They said they'd say that on the air, but I must have been out of the room or in my car and didn't hear it. I hope someone did and it made them smile.

I'm going to quit apologizing for loving my life and simply love it, love it to death. Which, I hope, is what I'll do. Love my life all the way to death....

What I'm pondering this week

1. How many words does my dog recognize? Or, more precisely, 'how many commands does he obey?' I don't have to ponder long...almost none....

2. Why (according to a recent poll) do 44% of  Republicans surveyed believe a time may come when Americans may have to have an armed rebellion against the government of the US?

3. How could any of those people think they would win an armed rebellion against the Army, Navy, Marine Corps and Air Force? Don't they know, ever how many guns they have, the military has about a billion more?

 4. What do people who believe 'climate change' is a myth think about the remarkable floods in the Midwest and brush fires 5 months early in southern California?

5. Have there always been dried cranberries and I just wasn't paying attention?

6. Why is the psychic and palm reader down Rt 10, almost across from Stop and Shop running specials? Today there was a sign in front of her house that said, "Special Readings today $10". Are things had for psychic's these days or what?

7. What would it be like to have siblings? I'm an only child who never 'got' the interactions between our 2 children and certainly don't get the interactions between my three granddaughter or any of the interactions between people who actually have siblings. Every time I think I wish I had siblings all I have to do it to talk to someone who does!

8. How does Twitter work? (Actually, I don't ponder that too much since I have no earthly desire to do it. But I do, occasionally wonder how it works, just out of normal curiosity.)

9. Why on earth would people 'tweet'?

10. Will hard copy newspapers and books really disappear some day?

11. Can I die before that day?

12. What in the hell was "Bird Notes" on NPR thinking when they had a Bird Note today about sea lions who eat fish tainted by DDT off the coast of southern California who die migrating north to Canada and wash up on Washing State beaches where scavenger birds eat them?

13. Whatever happened to the Old Testament God that would 'smite' and destroy Westbrook Baptist Church in Kansas?

14. What is my cat thinking about when he jumps up on the table beside my desk and stares at me while I'm typing this?

15. And since I don't want you to think all I ponder about are my animals, psychics, politics and social media, there is this: 'what did I do to deserve such a perfectly wondrous May day as today was? Or any of us, for that matter?

Stuff that happens

Here's what 'life' is--it's stuff that happens.

Today I went to the Social Security Office in Meriden, thinking it would be awful because the SSA claimed in a letter to me on April 5, that they'd overpaid me by $6850 dollars and asking me for it. It came down to my Self Employment bottom line on my tax return for 2011. Well, I wasn't 'self employed' in 2011, I was retired but Jane, who I love and who has done my taxes for years, just followed the computer program for 2010 and ended up making me 'self-employed' which is what clergy are, as dumb as that is, even though I always got a W-2 form like I worked for someone and had tax withheld though most 'self-employed' people make quarterly payments. Never mind.

The key was this, my W-2 forms--one from my pension for a lot more than I ever imagined a pension would be, a form from SS themselves and my form from the Middlesex Area Cluster Ministry which said I made $4,300 since the rest was housing--this amazing tax gimmick that clergy have that means you don't pay taxes on your housing costs. Amazing! Plus, I can still deduct the interest on my mortgage even though I don't pay taxes on the cost of my mortgage. Go figure....

Anyway, Jane submitted an amended IRS deal that means we'll get $3500 back since I was retired instead of self-employed when they get around to it. And I expected SS in Meriden to be a nightmare since I don't trust bureaucracy to ever work being an aging white man who was a week-end hippie in college--Phi Beta Kappa, Magna Cum Laude if you will, though I smoked a bit of dope on week-ends and had long hair. Nobody who came of age in the 60's trusts the government--especially not Social Security.

To my surprise and delight, the folks at Social Security were wondrous--so kind and helpful and understanding. They kind of  understood what I was saying and finally looked at my W-2 forms and went into the computer and removed the $27,800 or so SS thought I made and entered the $4300 I really earned from work. All t he rest was from my pension which can't be counted an 'earned income' since I earned it long ago.

They also cancelled the ticking clock on the $6800 SS said I owned them back from 2011. Lord help us, all this is so convoluted and complex.

They were wonderful and called me 'James' until I told them to call me 'Jim' and when we were through both of them--it took two to understand it all--said 'Goodbye, Jim and have a nice day". Maybe it's in the SSA handbook for what to say to those who come in about something.

But I loved it nevertheless...

My fear of hostas

Well, to be honest, I'm not really afraid of hostas--mostly they just weird me out. Not the full grown ones, that's not what I mean, I can take or leave those. What weirds me out is when the hostas start to come up in the spring.

Hostas (aka 'plantain lillies' in Great Britain and 'giboshi' in Japan) don't seem to be single plants. When they start to come up it's like a colony of plants, several inches apart that, when grown, look like a great big leafy plant with long flowers growing a foot or two higher than the leafs.

But the dozens of little shoots that start in the spring look like body parts of some alien creatures. And I imagine, though I'm sure I'm wrong, their is a huge 'host' under ground giving birth to these weird and disturbing shoots. I'm sure I can't adequately explain what bothers me about the shoots, but I walk around the plants with great suspicion.

We even have some hostas in our back yard but I don't go near them until the leaves are big enough to make it look like a single plant.

And on the walk I take with our dog each morning, we pass a yard that has a dozen or more hostas. I won't let Bela smell them until they're grown since I have imagined that the shoots would open up and swallow him or else pull him underground to feed the mother plant.

I told Bern about my fear of new hostas and the look she gave me was not understanding or sympathetic. The look was one of those "don't ever say anything that crazy again or I'll send you to 'the home' looks". I get them more often than you might imagine though always for comments I find harmless and benign.

But the value of a comment is up for interpretation, I suppose.

I'd just warn you to steer clear of the early hosta sprouts. That's my advice and I'm sticking with it.

Belated birthday poems

Since I couldn't get to my email, I missed two poems sent to me on my birthday and I want to share them with you.

The first is from Louie Crew, founder of Integrity (for GLBT Episcopalians and their friends). I was privileged, for several years to be the chaplain to an Integrity chapter. Louie always sends me a poem on my birthday. Here is this year's....

reVisit

Imagine the five minutes before your mother
learned that she was pregnant with you.

Imagine the five minutes before your father
 found out.

Let those minutes tick slowy by.
Fill in any blanks with your best guesses.

Connect intimately with their world
before you were.

Imagine the five minutes after they knew,
their readjustments, their expectations.

Then reconnect intimately with your gestation,
when you were becoming,
when you were a presence and a promise.

Celebrate your wholeness.
You are a presence and a promise still.
Gestate anew.
For this is your day.
reJoy it.
reJoice in it.
                                             --Louie Crew



And then, from my dear friend, Ann Overton, who I've known since 1987 and worked with in the Mastery Foundation for much of the time since. She sent this....

When we are alone on a starlit night,
when by chance we see the migrating birds in autumn
descending on a graove of junipers to rest and eat,
when we see children in a moment when they are really children,
we we know love in our own hearts;
or when, like the Japanese poet, Basho,
we hear an old frong land in a quiet pond with a solitary splash--
at such times the awakening, the turning inside out of all values,
the 'newness', the emptiness and the purity of vision
that make themselves evident--
all these provide a glimpse of the cosmic dance.
                                             --Thomas Merton

She added, "happy birthday, Jim. And keep dancing!"


If you ever have a thought that  you'd like to give me joy, send me a poem....
      

How sweet it is...

I'm back to my email. I obviously called 'tech support' when the woman in India wanted to do unspeakable things to my computer just after I'd had a new hard drive installed.

Yesterday I called the correct number--the one for 'reset my password' and it was all done talking to a voice recognition system without encountering another human being from India or anywhere. How sweet is that?

And tomorrow is May 1--May Day.

I feel better today than I have since New Year's Day. A visit to my doctor tells me that for the first time since then I don't have fluid in my lungs. What could be sweeter than non-fluid lungs? Well, May, perhaps. The cruelest month is over and about time, I'd say....How sweet is that?

Did  you ever hear 'Bird Notes' on NPR? It's these little minute long moments about our winged friends.

Sunday I heard one about the song of Cardinals. Did you know that for most North American songbirds, the females don't sing? But, this time of year, the female Cardinal answers the call of the male Cardinal in a softer tone and they find each other by call and return.

This morning, out on our deck, I saw a male Cardinal--red as can be--singing his "Wet,wet, wet, wet you song". Then I heard a response from a yard or two away. Then the call and response were repeated and the female, much less colorful, flew into the same tree the male was in. One more call and response and they were on the same branch.

I left them then, not wanting to be an aviary voyeur and to give them their privacy.

How sweet is that?

I wore a sweater this morning. Spring has not really sprung. But I shed it by the afternoon. What's the old saw? You know you live in New England when you wear a sweater with shorts....

Well, really, that's rather sweet too....

250 years is not an inconsiderable amount of time....

Today I was a part of the 250th Anniversary of St. Andrew's Church in Northford. It is one of the churches in the Cluster and we canceled church at the other two and lots of folks from Emmanuel and St. James came to St. Andrew's.

All three of the presbyters--Molly and Bryan and me were there along with 4 former clergy in the Cluster and our Bishop and Tom Ely, the Bishop of Vermont, who  began his ordained ministry as the first clergy-person of the Cluster. Tom preached and Ian celebrated and it was a wondrous liturgy. We processed in to the first 2 verses of 'The Church's One Foundation' and after a prayer by Ian we processed out of the church to the new meditation garden created there to bless that and then back to the new front doors--painted red as they should be!--to bless them and then the whole congregation came back in singing "For all the Saints".

It was truly wondrous. I read the gospel and for the first time ever I took the book up to Ian to have him bless me...I usually shun such liturgical nonsense as having the bishop bless the gospel and its reader. But he made the sign of the cross on the book and then on my forehead and I didn't hear what he said because, for reasons I need to ponder, I was so moved by his action that I couldn't pay attention to his words.

Tom was ordained a priest at St. Andrew's--the only one ever in that quarter of a century ordained there--and his second daughter was born on his first Christmas Eve as an ordained person. So he was an incredible and just right choice to be the preacher. I told him afterwards that he was much too good a preacher to be a bishop.

He and Ann, his wife, met in southern West Virginia working at the Highland Educational Project in Northfork and Keystone and Welch. I actually worked at the same place the summer after my first of two years at Virginia Theological Seminary. I grew up about 12 miles from there. When connections like that get made, I always say, "Big world, small church..." which is true.

All in all a great way to spend a Sunday. How lovely and loving it was.