The fox I saw on Cornwall Avenue

A week or so ago, I thought I saw a fox on Cornwall Avenue as I was taking my dog for h is morning walk. It was crossing Cornwall about a block future down than Bela and I were.

But I didn't say anything about it because I thought Bern would think I was slip-sliding away and start calling nursing homes about vacancies. Plus, the dog didn't react, but he was mostly thinking about peeing and pooping and it was a block away.

Then today, in the back yard, Bern and I were talking to Naomi, our next door neighbor about the baby robins in a quince tree in our yard that leans against the fence that divides our yard from Mark and Naomi's yard. And two of Naomi's kids--Phoenix and Eva were there along with a girl from the next house down (Linda and Scott's) whose name I can't think of and she was saying that her mother (Linda) saw a fox in their next door neighbor's yard.

So, at last I could claim to have seen a fox myself on Cornwall Avenue since Linda is probably under 40 and no one would think she had dementia because she saw a fox on our street.

(All this is significant because I did get out of my car while it was still running today and was walking toward our front door until I remembered I had heard WNPR as I was walking away from the car. I sometimes wonder if I shouldn't be in the home. Getting out of your car and walking away while it's still running makes me ponder about my faculties a bit....)

However, I'm glad to know someone besides me had a Fox Sighting on Cornwall Avenue. Yea!

I can't park any more....

Here's something I've noticed and have been pondering: I can't park any more.

Not that I can't do parallel parking, I do that just fine. But when I pull into a parking space, head-on, I don't pull in far enough.

It's a mystery. I've notice over the last few months that when I pull into a parking space in a strip mall or anywhere, when I get out, I'm no where near the line in the front and my car's butt is sticking out too far. Several times I've gotten back in my car and pulled up and then gotten out and noticed I still wasn't far enough up in the parking place.

What does this mean, I ponder.

Why can't I pull fully up into the parking space?

Does it have to do with not being able to 'make a commitment' or 'follow through on a promise'? Am I being overly cautious or have I begun to lose my sense of space?

Is this the beginning of dementia, not being able to locate in space?

Have I become tentative in my aging--not able to go all the way forward, holding back, stopping short?

Who knows?

On the other hand, maybe I've always parked short and, in my dotage, have started to notice this short-coming for the first time.

Maybe, just maybe, I'm gaining insight as I grow older.

Getting more alert, more introspective, noticing more about my life.

Well, yeal, that and over two dollars will get you a cup of coffee at Starbucks any where. Even if you don't pull all the way into the parking space outside....

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.