Another unread poem

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

unread poems

Last night was the Middlesex Cluster's talent show. It was great fun and very funny. I read three poems and was supposed to read more but the show ran long and I gave up my second slot. So, I thought I'd post the poems I didn't read here. They're longish so I'll just do one at a time.

The Trouble with Finitude

I try, from time to time,

usually late at night after one too many glasses of wine,

to consider my mortality.

(I have been led to believe

that such consideration is valuable

in a spiritual way.

God knows where I got that....

Well, of course, God knows,

I'm just not sure.)

But try as I might, I'm not adroit at such thoughts.

It seems to me that I have always been alive.

I don't remember not being alive.

Granted, I have no personal recollections

of when most of North America was covered by ic

or of the Bronze Age

or the French Revolution

or of the Black Sox scandal.

But I do know about all that through things I've read

and musicals I've seen

and the History Channel.

I know, intellectually, that I've not always been alive,

but I don't know it, as they say,

“in my gut”.

(What a strange phrase that is,

since I am sure my 'gut'

is a totally dark part of my body,

awash with digestive fluids

and whatever remains of the chicken and peas

I had for dinner and strange compounds

moving inexorably—I hope!--through my large

and small intestines.)

My problem is this:

I have no emotional connection to finitude.

All I know and feel is tangled up with being alive.

Dwelling on the certainty of my own death

is beyond my ken, outside my imagination,

much like trying to imagine

the vast expanse of Interstellar Space

while living in Connecticut.

So, whenever someone suggests that

I consider my mortality,

I screw up my face and breathe deeply

pretending I am imagining the world

without me alive in it.

What I'm actually doing is remembering

things I seldom remember--

my father's smell, an old lover's face,

the feel of sand beneath my feet,

the taste of watermelon,

the sound of thunder rolling toward me

from miles away.

Perhaps when I come to die

(Perish the thought!)

there will be a moment, an instant,

some flash of knowledge

or a stunning realization.

“Ah,” I will say to myself,

just before Oblivion sets in,

“this is finitude....”

jgb

Pluto

Tomorrow is the Cluster Talent Show. I'm reading some poems. I've been sifting through poems to find the ones I want to read. Here's one that didn't make the cut but I like.

THERE MAY BE A WORLD BEYOND PLUTO

I read it on the internet just tonight:
"There may be a world beyond Pluto."

Poor Pluto, disgraced and diminished,
labeled less than a planet.
So small, so cold and so, so far away.
Pluto gets forgotten in the mix
of the solar system--demoted and damned
to the outer reaches of the sun.

Pitiful Pluto, so dark and chill--
but then there is the news, spread wide and far:
another world,
three times farther than Pluto from the sun--
we're talking 200 'AU's' from the sun,
based on earth being one AU
since we are still, Galileo not withstanding,
still the center of the universe.

'Planet X', in its leisurely 12,000 year journey around the sun,
would explain mysteries:
like the Kuiper Belt (whatever that is)
and confounding questions of people smarter
than you and me.

And it would give me--maybe you--
another metaphor for lonlinesss.

I no longer need to feel,
from time to tome,
like I'm on Pluto,
so unthinkably far away from comfort and love.
There is another world out there--
even darker, even colder, even more distant
that I can imagine myself
a citizen of....

jgb/6-19-08

Happy Anniversary to me....

Yesterday was the anniversary of my ordination to the priesthood. As of today, I 've been a priest for 37 years and one day. Astonishing....

I wouldn't even remember May 15 except that this remarkable man, Louie Crew, always sends me an email on my ordination anniversary. He also sends an email for my birthday. I would remember my birthday without Louie's email, but it warms my heart anyway.

Louie is a reasonably big deal in the Episcopal Church. He founded Integrity--a group for lesbian/gay/bisexual/transgendered Episcopalians 'and their friends'. The 'and their friends' piece is wondrous and vital. I was, for quite a few years when I served St. Paul's in New Haven and St. John's in Waterbury, the chaplain to an Integrity chapter. It was an honor and humbling as a straight priest to serve the LGBT community.

I once blessed a home of Ted and Lou, who met in high school and had been faithful to each other for over 40 years after that. They wanted me to bless them and their relationship as well. This was long before same sex marriages or even civil unions in Connecticut. My bishop at the time knew I was committed to same sex relationships and told me, after I visited him and told him I would bless a lesbian/gay couple if I asked to 'let him know' before the fact so he wouldn't 'read about it'. I called him about Ted and Lou and he 'inhibited' me (what a Medieval term!) from doing it. There was a retired priest who was a member of the parish I served who agreed to do the blessing of the union. "What are they going to do to me?" he said, "cancel my pension?" So we did it that way. I blessed the rooms of that home and Jack blessed Ted and Lou. One of the few things I regret in my 37 years as a priest is that I didn't bless the love and relationship of Ted and Lou.

My bishop now has allowed me to do gay/lesbian marriages since they are legal in Connecticut. The bishop before him allowed me to bless the marriage but not sign the marriage licence. So the same sex marriages I have done have all had a Justice of the Peace presence to sign the license. How humiliated I felt in those situations, not being able to say "you are married" to those couples. Now, at least in Connecticut. I can fully participate in the marriage of same-sex couples.

It has been a journey. And things are looking up and positive. More and more states are legalising marriage equality. Things might be just becoming right at last.

What you fall into...

Tonight we had the Cluster Council (if you're new to this blog, I am currently the Interim-Missioner-in-Charge of the Middlesex Area Cluster Ministry--the IMIC of MACM for short. It's three churches in places like Higganum, Killingworth and Northford) and I realized my role for those three wondrous and lovely communities.

I am their Cheerleader.

I'm actually the perfect match for this ministry because I've more or less given up on the traditional model of doing church (a congregation led by a priest to minister to the needs of the congregation). And MACM, God love them, isn't that. They practice, more or less, for better and for worse, what is called Total Common Ministry. That means the Priest isn't 'the Boss' and doesn't have the final authority in the community--the laos (the 'People of God') play that role and the priest is around to do certain rites and rituals that our brand of Christianity has assigned to an ordained person.

So MACM is a different paradigm for being church. The laity is in charge and I hang around waiting until they need a priest. I really, really like that. It's what I've always wanted "church" to be. And, I have, in my own way, as much as I could, tried to live that out in the three remarkable churches I served before I retired: St. James in Charleston, West Virginia for five years; St. Paul's in New Haven, CT for 5 years and St. John's in Waterbury, CT for 21 years. The problem was, no matter how much I shared MY 'authority' I dared to share and delegate to the laity, it was still my authority....

It is often difficult for those locked into the Traditional Paradigm of  'doing church' to recognize or acknowledge the radical distinction between that paradigm and Total Common Ministry. And what I've realized in my two years of  'doing church' in the Cluster is that most of them are either so used to doing it this way that they don't realize how remarkably distinct it is OR they are unconsciously locked into the old paradigm and don't realize that what they do, day to day, is anything special.

But they do it--whether they take it as routine or don't even realize it. THEY DO IT!

And what I decided tonight is that my role in their midst is to be their Cheerleader and point out, in all times and all places, that what Total Common Ministry 'is' and 'means' is remarkably and distinctively different from what 'the old Church' does and looks like that they need to understand how they have an understanding of 'church' that is more 'community' than 'institution', more 'egalitarian' than a "hierarchy", more 'all for one' than 'one for all'.

I am so honored, humbled and gifted to have fallen into this mission and ministry it takes my breath away. So what I will do, from this day forward, is always and everywhere let St. James and St. Andrew's and Emmanuel know that their 'communities' are functioning much more like the 'early church' functioned than the 'dying church' is functioning.

They need to know that they are special and unique and living out what being 'followers of Christ' really means. Not to make them proud....no, not at all, but to make them humble and vulnerable so that they might lean into being the humble and vulnerable People of God in Higganum and Northford and Killingworth.

For that is what they are.

I see it and know it.

My role is to make sure they see it and know it as well.

not so suave as I imagined...

As worldly-wise, street-smart and with-it as I think I am, sometimes I can be an absolute dolt. As naive as the day is long. A babe in the woods. All that and more. A rear Rube....

In the last week I had received three letters from three different Hyundai dealers offering to buy my 2007 Elantra for up to $7850! All the letters told me, in one way or another, that they had a need for a larger inventory of 2007 and 2008 Hyundai's. So I spent a bit of the week pondering what on earth could cause a sudden demand for 2007/08 Elantra's. Had they come into fashion? Was Beyonce seen driving one? Did Kate Middleton tell a reporter she admired them?

Or was there a flaw in them so horrendous that Hyundai couldn't survive a public recall so dealers were asked to buy them up for enormous losses to avoid public humiliation for the company?

Or was a new action movie coming out with Tom Cruise and Matt Damon driving 2007 Hyundai's down the canals of Venice and Corporate knows there will be a big demand for them when the movie premiers?

Or did they suddenly realize that these Hyundai's are the best cars ever made (which I wouldn't disagree with giving that I love mine) and that they can sell them used for even more than they sold them new and do a double-dip  profit off 2007/08 Elantras?

Those are just some of the thoughts that went through my head this week while pondering why on earth three different dealerships would want to buy my little black Hyundai (which really loved the few days of rain because it washed off all the bird poop that had accumulated on the front hood and windshield and part of the roof because I park beneath the tree on the west end of our front porch.)

So my good friend, Fred, was coming to pick me up to go to Alice's wake (the wonderful woman I wrote about a few days ago in 'Spring is not a good time to die') who did, sadly die. Fred was an intern with me at St. John's in Waterbury the last two years or so before I retired and knew Alice from there.

I had one of the three letters in my pocket, having opened in on my porch while waiting for Fred, and since Fred is one of the people that knows more stuff than I can imagine, I thought I'd ask him about why these various Hyundai dealers were interested in buying my car.

So I told him about the letters and he looked at me with the combination of reasonableness and sadness that a person might look at a child who is about to know there is not Santa Claus.

Then he told me, kindly as he could, because Fred is kind as well as all knowing, "they don't want to buy your car. They want to sell you a new one so they've offered you outrageous prices so you'll come in and take a test drive and not feel cheated when they give you less than the letter said."

I must admit, from a few words into that explanation I suddenly realized the real reason for the letters and the fake checks. Fred, as usual, was right on correct. Of course they wanted me to come see them (even leaving a phone # and a name to set a time convenient for me to drop by) and surely the $7850 they were willing to give me for my car would go down when they saw the dents and dings and the 67.000 miles on the odometer, but when they told me they could put me in a 2013 Hyundai for only a tad more than I'm now paying a month--and let me drive the obviously superior machine...well, we might just make a deal....

My car is almost paid off, a month or two. So their computers must spit out that information to various Connecticut dealers who then make me offers to buy my car.

And for most of a week I was pondering "why would they want to buy my car?"

Here's the moral to this sad tale of naivete, Beloved: "Pondering" is one of the most important thing we thinking mammals can do. However, 'pondering' something that should have been as baldly obvious to me as it was to Fred (and later Bern when I told her this story--she even snickered a bit while I was telling it and snickering is a common and normal reaction to blind naivete) is not only a waste of good pondering-time, it makes you look like a Rube.

So, when you turn to pondering, make sure you aren't wasting valuable pondering-time on what, to someone with half a brain should have been as plain as the look on your face.....

Just fair warning and just me talkin'...or more correctly, 'typin'....

Mother's Day 2013

Shouldn't it be Mothers' Day? Probably.

If my mother were alive today she would be 102 years old. She was born on July 9, 1910. It's a little sobering to realize my mother would be over a century old if she had lived until now. Most likely because it reminds me that I am older than she was when she died. She died the day after my birthday when I was 25, that would be in 1972. She never met her grandchildren. Josh was born in 1975 and Mimi in 1978.

She had a hard life. Marion Cleo Jones Bradley was one of four girls and three boys born to Lina Manona Sadler Jones and Eli Jones. Two of the boys, Leon and Ernest, died in childhood. The Jones family were dirt poor during the Depression. My mother and her sisters would go to the slate dumps, where the trash from the coal mines was put and pick the slate for stuff that might burn. Elsie, her youngest sister, who is the only one still alive, wore boots to school for a while since she had no shoes. My grandmother ran a boarding house for a while, cooking and cleaning for single coal miners who needed some place to live. My Grandfather--mother's father--was sick from working in the mines and unable to work for much of his life.

Three of the Jones girls somehow went to college and became teachers. My mother was a teacher just after high school and took summer classes at Concord College in Concord, West Virginia and Bluefield State College in Bluefield until she had a Master's Degree. Aunt Georgia did much the same thing. Aunt Elise, the younger one, helped by her family had a proper college education. All of them taught all of their lives. My mother most often taught First Grade, imagine that. Mostly, during my growing up, at Pageton Elementary School. I went to school in Anawalt, where we lived. Pageton was about 8 miles away so my mother never taught me.

I'm not sure I remember the sound of my mother's voice since she's been dead 41 years. I have pictures that can remind me of  her face. She was a consummately pleasant and gentle woman. I don't believe she ever raised her voice to me in all my life. At least I don't remember it. We were common people with common interests: family, church, education, mostly that.

The thing I admire most about my mother and remember most fondly happened when I was quite young. She and I  went to the Pilgrim Holiness Church in Conklintown with my grandmother. My father waited out in the car because the Pilgrim Holiness people were too extreme for his Baptist tastes. And one Sunday, when I was 5 or 6, Preacher Peck asked for prayers for the sinner out in the parking lot smoking cigarettes and reading the Bluefiled Daily Telegraph.

My mother came to find me in the middle of the prayers since I was sitting with some small kid friends, took my hand and led me out of the church to the car where my father was, indeed, smoking and reading the paper. We drove away together and never went back.

I've defied authority a bit in my life and I like to think I got that from my mother. But I don't know.

This Mothers' Day I'm wondering what she would have made of my life after she died. I'm wondering if she would have loved our children and approved of my becoming an Episcopal priest. (We became Methodists after Preacher Peck's discretion  and she knew I became an Episcopalian, but she never knew I became a priest.) She expected me, logically, to become a teacher--but on the college level, not first grade. My parents were of the generation that believed each succeeding generation would 'move up' from them. And I truly wanted to fulfill her dream for me. I wanted to get a Ph.D. in American Literature and teach in some small liberal arts college and write the Great American Novel. But somewhere in there God got in the scrum and I got side-tracked.

One vendetta I will share. When Bern and I got married, I started growing a beard. I have it still. The first Christmas we came home from Cambridge, late into the night, and my father opened the door, embraced Bern and then me and saw may beard and wandered off, in his bedroom slippers, into the snow in tears, my mother welcomed us into the house and said, "Nevermind, Virgil will get over it....it's an interesting beard."

He came back, and, as Mother predicted, got over my beard and we had Christmas.

Happy Mothers' Day, Cleo. Wherever you are....