Some People and things that just have to go away...like for always...

There are just some people and things that we would all be better off, happier, more profoundly fulfilled if they just went away. Like for always. And the list, it seems to me, just gets longer.

1. Miley Cyrus: I'm just sick of hearing about her nude photo for charity, the fact that she has dental implants, her ever changing hair style, anything about her. Let's face it, Hanna Montana was not War and Peace. She needs to just go away and take Billy Ray with her--he wasn't that good anyway.

2. Justin Bieber: the monkey thing was reason enough, but now he was involved in a bar brawl that spilled out into the street. Witnesses said his body guards (since when does a 19 year old need body guards or go to bars in the first place?) brutalized several people. I can't judge his singing since I've never heard a single song he sings. But he would do us all a favor by going away...and make Canada a decent country again.

3. Edward Snowden: I have no real opinion about whether he's a whistle blower or a traitor, but I'm just tired of hearing about him. If nothing else, he certainly deserved to live for a month in a Russian airport. How cool that must have been....

4. Back Page: it's been revealed by the FBI that most of the pimps in the recent nation-wide sweeping arrests and liberating of underage girls made their contacts through social media...mostly the website Back Page. (I'd suggest 'social media' needed to go away but I think this blog would be included and I enjoy writing it....)

5. Alex Rodriquez: I'm a huge Yankee fan, but enough is enough. Alex, just go now....

6. Pat Robertson: did you know he just said on his show that transgendered people aren't 'sinners'? It's the first sensible thing he's said in 30 years. Pat, it's time to go....

7. Honey Boo-Boo: no explanation needed--and your stupid red-neck family too. And most all of reality TV except the house finder shows and the cooking shows and even some of them. There is no need for utter stupidity to be on cable TV. Which brings me to,

8. House Republicans: can't we get them a blood transfusion from John McCain for God's sake? I had an aunt--by marriage, not blood--who hated everything and everyone. Today she could be elected to the House of Representatives as a Republican.

9. Energy drinks: I've never had one and never will but what's wrong with coffee? And I would always refuse to pay nearly $2 for something that is hardly a gulp.

10. Kindle and any of the other devices where you can read what once came in pages with a cover: I want to feel a book in my hand, spill soup on it as I read while eating, have pages to fold down to keep my place, go to the library and carry home and carry back, see the author's photo. I pray devoutly that I do not live to see the extinction of books.

That's enough, but there's lots more...the list gets longer and longer....

A different sermon

I've been posting funeral sermons so I thought I'd give you another kind. This is a sermon I preached at the 'installation' of Deven Hubner as a Rector of a church in upstate New York. Deven had been married to Scott Allen, a long time friend of mine from back in West Virginia and one of the seminarians who worked with me at St. Paul's, New Haven. By the time of this sermon--1997 or '98 or so, they were divorced but still friends--Scott was there for this sermon. 

It was a sermon I greatly enjoyed--not just for Devan, but for my friend Jorge Gutierrez, who was a priest in that diocese at the time and who came to Devan's installation. (Priests are 'installed' as Rectors, much like a major appliance....) I still have a picture of Jorge, Scott and me from that day. We were all close friends. I haven't spoken to either of them for years--yet, we are the kinds of friends who could take up where we left off without a pause or a beat.

God love them. And God love Deven. I haven't seen her for years, but she's a great priest.

D’s Sermon

A hot air balloonist set off one fine May day from just outside London. He expected a calm trip but a sudden storm blew in off the English Channel that took him north for over an hour. When his balloon was deflated, he found himself suspended in a tree beside a small Anglican Church. Looking down from his precarious perch, he saw the Vicar leaving the church and heading for the Vicarage.

“Father, Father,” the balloonist called out, ready to dial his cell phone and tell his friends where to pick him up, “Father, can you tell me where I am?”

The priest looked up and smiled, “Yes, my son,” he said, “you’re stuck in a tree.”

“Just like a priest,” the man muttered to himself, “what they say is often TRUE but it is seldom helpful….”

****

It is my hope that this sermon will be more “True” than “helpful”. And it is my sincere and devout prayer that Deven’s ministry in your midst will be like that as well—more TRUE than HELPFUL.

****

Another story.

A group of wealthy Americans are on a safari in Africa. Things are going well except that the natives who are carrying much of the equipment stop every hour or so and sit quietly on the ground for 15 minutes.

Finally, one of the Americans goes to the head guide and says, “look, we’re paying you a great deal for this safari, yet your workers stop too often and rest too long. What do they think they are doing?”

The head guide, being as polite as possible, tells the impatient American this: “Our tribe believes that if you move too quickly you will outrun your soul. So we must sit on a regular basis and let our souls catch up.”

Well, the rich American is outraged. “That’s the craziest thing I’ve ever heard,” he says.

The head guide nods, “Of course you think that, having long ago left your soul far, far behind. But our souls hover near and we will wait for them to join us again.”

***

It is humbling to be with you this morning. I thank you for your hospitality. I thank Bishop McKelvy for allowing me to preach in his diocese. There will be some heresy spoken today, Bishop, but not so much or not of any ilk that you will have to report back to Bishop Smith in Connecticut. That is my hope.

Mostly, I thank Deven, your new Rector, for the privilege and honor of “coming north” to celebrate with her and with all of you about this new ministry you have begun. I’ve known Deven longer than either of us wants to admit. She has been an important part of my life and my ministry. And it is with unspeakable joy and not a little trepidation, that I bring to all of you, this morning, the “good news” about this relationship between a Rector and a Parish.

I’ve been a parish priest since 1975. I have served three of the most remarkable congregations in this church—the present one, St. John’s on the Green in Waterbury for 16 years. So, I’m not just a guy you met at a bar when it comes to parish priesthood. I do know what I’m talking about. I only pray that God will give me the grace and the words to speak to your hearts and your souls about this “love affair” you and Deven have begun.

Two things, I hope, she will bring to you as precious gifts and you will accept them in that spirit are these:

I hope she will give you Truth rather than Helpfulness. And, I hope she will make you stop in the midst of your shared ministry and shared lives—as often as necessary…and it may be very often indeed—to let your souls catch up with you.

You see—from one who’s not a guy at a bar—the parish church exists for this and this only: TO FIND AND BE FOUND BY GOD.

That’s all you are here for, that’s all your common life is about. Finding and being found by God is the only reason this church exists. Everything else you do emerges from seeking and being sought by God. So, lean into Truth and make sure you don’t outrun your souls.

***

A third story, this one told by John Mortimer in his memoir.

It goes like this:

A man with a bristling grey beard came and sat next to me at lunch. He had very pale blue eyes and an aggressive way of speaking.

He began, at once and without any preliminary introductions, to talk about yachting in the North Sea.

“But isn’t it very dangerous, your sport of yachting?” I asked.

“Not dangerous at all, provided you don’t learn to swim. I made up my mind when I bought my first boat, never to learn to swim.”

“Why was that?” I asked.

He told me, “when you’re in a spot of trouble, if you can swim you strike out for the shore. Invariably you drown swimming for safety. As I can’t swim, I cling to the wreckage and they send a helicopter out for me. That’s my tip, if you ever find yourself in trouble, cling to the wreckage.”

I want to suggest to you that there are many worse metaphors for the parish ministry of your Rector and for the parish life of this congregation than “clinging to the wreckage”.

I want to suggest to Deven that her most vital and important role in your midst, as your priest, is to be about her own “soul work”. And “soul work” it seems to me at least, has a lot to do with clinging to the wreckage of life until it becomes, literally, a “life preserver.” It is the wreckage that will save your soul.

And I want—just like a suggestion—to suggest to you, to this parish community, that “clinging to the wreckage” is an apt paradigm for your life together as the Body of Christ. The wreckage of your individual lives will lead you to new life and the wreckage of your common life together will sustain you and support you and give you, in the end, a wholeness and salvation you could not imagine.

Finally, here at the end, I want to turn to scripture.

In John’s Gospel this morning, Jesus says to his friends, “abide in my love.”

Back where I grew up, in the mountains of Southern West Virginia, people actually used the word “abide”. They didn’t pronounce it that way, but if you were walking down the street in front of their house and they were on the front porch in rocking chairs and a swing, they would say to you, “Come on up and bide a spell.”

“Biding a spell” meant simply this: just sit here and “be” with us.

“Abiding” is a passive verb—it implies nothing more and nothing less that simply “being there”.

What I want to suggest to you—to Deven, of course, but to all of you as well and as passionately—is that you have entered into a “love affair” with each other and what you need to do…most need to do…always need to do is this and this only: “Abide” in each other’s love.

There is much to “do” and many “tasks” and lots of “committees” and a multitude of “works”. All that will take care of itself if you simply “abide” in your love of each other and God’s unbridled love for you.

Some advice for the journey:

Long more for Truth than helpfulness,

Stop often and wait for your souls to catch up;

Cling to the wreckage together;

Abide in love; and

Seek always to find and be found by God.

There is nothing else. That is all there is. May your life together in ministry be filled chocked full of Truth and Waiting and Clinging and Abiding and Seeking.

That is enough. That is more than enough.

Amen and amen....

Maybe it's just me....

Maybe it's just me, but it seems that I encounter lots of folks mumbling to themselves these days--mostly in the Stop and Shop in Cheshire.

Look, I spent most of my adult life in or around cities--Boston, Washington, DC, Charleston WV, New Haven and Waterbury, both in CT. I've had plenty of experience with people mumbling to themselves. But most of them were homeless folks with some serious mental illness issues or alcohol issues or drug issues. Now, it seems to me, the mumbling has moved to the suburbs.

I was talking about this to the young woman who works in the package store I frequent. She is very young and thin and fit and, I must say, alluring. I was telling her about the old people in Stop and Shop who were mumbling to themselves while shopping.

"Did you check for a blue-tooth in their ear?" she asked.

"These were not blue-tooth kind of folks," I told her, they were like your grandparents age.

Then we talked about how there ought to be some generally agreed on limits to the use of cell phones in public places.

"Some people talk about really personal things," she told me (though I already knew), "and it's impossible not to listen in." (I already knew that as well--but it was great to hear someone at least 40 years younger than me say it.)

One old mumbling man was behind me in the frozen food aisles. I wanted some frozen raspberries but I almost left without them because he was so disconcerting.

As I was checking out (eggs, turkey sausage, 2 packs of raspberries on sale for 2 for $6--regularly $3.69 each) I was a bit frustrated that Eva, the check out clerk, was so slow and had to call the supervisor to put a key in her register and type something in twice for reasons I neither comprehend nor want to. But then I saw one of the mumbling old women I'd seen before pushing her cart toward the door, mumbling. She had on a hat like you'd see in Australia in a Crocodile Dundee movie except it was the stars and stripes and she was mumbling to beat the band. I was suddenly glad Eva was so slow and I wouldn't have to encounter the flag hat woman. (Actually, I've come to understand, you don't 'encounter' mumblers at all. They are in their own mumbling world and you aren't. It's much akin to a close encounter with some strange and odd being--a fox or a peacock or a penguin, for example, that you didn't expect to walk near but did.)

But Eva wasn't quite slow enough and the supervisor didn't have to be called enough times and as I left Stop and Shop another familiar woman mumbler was right behind me because I was polite enough to let a couple of new shoppers go in front of me with their carts before I left the store.

This woman is quite large and very annoyed. I've seen her several times, almost always at Stop and Shop, and she is seemingly upset with the powers that be or the check out clerk or life in general because her mumbling is quite angry and aggressive though it is so softly spoken that I can't hear it (thought I'm not sure I'd want to and, on the other hand, I want to very much altogether....)

She was walking down the aisle of cars right behind me and I thought of running but didn't and then she went to the right and I went to the left to our cars.

Mumblers driving cars might be as dangerous as people talking on cell phones. I don't know, but I think the mumbling continues when they turn the key and start their cars.

Is it just me? Am I super-sensitive to the odd and quirky folks? Or are the mumblers following me because they know they make me anxious--someone who is seldom anxious is made anxious by folks mumbling to themselves.

Or maybe they are the Cosmos's way of letting me know my future fate--my personal Hell--to endlessly walk the aisles of Stop and Shop mumbling to myself about the prices, the quality, the inequity of being 'old' and having to shop with people so much younger than you and not being able to find the aisle where the jam is....

dogs and cats

So, several times a day, when I first wake up (which could be between 7 a.m. and 9:30 a.m.--I am retired you know) then in late afternoon and just before I go to bed, I take Bad Dog Bela out to do his business (when did peeing and pooping become 'doing our business'?)

Everyday but Monday, Bern takes him for a long walk on the Canal--about 1.6 miles--where he can do more business but mostly walk. With me, on Mondays, when Bern is 'doing our business' by paying bills and such, I walk him on the canal. He doesn't walk as well with me as he does with Bern. But he does more business when we walk on the canal.

Here's the thing, whenever I come back with Bela from whatever walk we go on--before breakfast, late afternoon, just before be--Luke, our cat is waiting by the door. Luke has always been an indoors cat, which we promised when we adopted him about almost a year old at MEOW. He's outlived the other three cats we had when we brought him home.

We have a dog, a cat (Bern calls him 'our last cat') and a parakeet. That's the fewest animals we've had for several decades of cats, dogs, birds, a rat and lots of guinea pigs stolen from a kill lab at Yale.

But Luke, whose only been outside twice, when he escaped from the dormer door to the basement, where he's not allowed but finds moles to kill and bring upstairs (this is an 1850 house withe some dirt floors in the basement and, unfortunately, moles).

I imagine Luke is imagining some remarkable outdoor adventure when he is waiting for Bela and me when we come back from walks. But when we come back, he moves away from the door and runs deeper into the house. Bela mostly ignores him or chases him and mauls him for a bit until I call him off. (The mauling hardly ever happens...just when it does I get upset a bit.)

Maybe Luke wants to go outdoors. Maybe he just misses Bela and me when we leave.

Who knows what a cat thinks? Who would want to know?

Bill Penny

In my occasional funeral sermons, this is the one I preached for Bill Penny in Litchfield, CT with a Bishop celebrating. (Bishops always celebrate at the funeral of a priest--I'm trying to figure out how to get out of that!)

Bill was a remarkable priest and an incredible man. He was Archdeacon of the Diocese of Long Island for many years. He retired to Connecticut and came to our clericus and attended St. John's in Waterbury for several years, off and on.

Being asked to preach at his funeral was a great honor, extremely humbling and a treat beyond imagining. In his later years, Bill had macular degeneration and couldn't drive anymore. That will help you make sense of the beginning of the sermon.

I can only hope some of Bill's glory glimmers through in my words....

SERMON FOR THE FUNERAL OF THE REV. BILL PENNY

9/18/2007

The best job I ever had—best by far—was being Bill Penny’s chauffeur from time to time.

I am only one of a multitude of folks who were Bill’s chauffeurs—and though I always thought I was his favorite driver, I am as sure as sure can be that everyone who gave Bill a ride felt like “his favorite driver”. Bill simply had the God-given capacity to make whoever he was with feel like the best and brightest and most beloved. That gift of his is beyond compare, fondly to be wished, a holy gift.

And there is this: I was Bill’s driver to the General Convention in 1997.

We’d drive into Philadelphia each morning from Bill’s sister in law’s house and go to the convention center. I would feel like the one person entourage of an ecclesiastical “rock star”. We couldn’t walk ten steps without someone coming over to hug and kiss and love on Bill. And he would hug and kiss and love on them.

There were coveys of nuns who descended on him like teenagers around the Beatles—Bill was Paul and John and George and Ringo all rolled into one. There were bishops who would walk away from important conversations just to come over and bask in Bill’s presence. Just walking through the convention center, priests by the dozens and as many lay-people, would be drawn from whatever else they were doing to come and hold Bill near and feel his oh-so-fierce hug in return. (Sometimes, when he hugged me, I felt he was about to dislocate my shoulder or break some bone….Bill was a world class hugger…..)

I had known before that trip that Bill was a “special person”—what I hadn’t realized is how wide spread that realization was! Everyone he ever met, it seems, was made to feel so wonderful by just being with him that they never forgot it….And could never forget it.

And now Bill is dead. I hate this part. I want to rant and rage against God and the cosmos and the powers that be and say, “No, give him back to us…we still have great need of him….”

And we do. His family needs him and we as individuals and we as a church have “great need” of him—of his never-ending compassion, his great, good humor, his gracefulness and generosity of spirit, his wisdom about what was old and his openness to what is new, his love and his guidance and his eternal optimism in the face of life’s cynicism and his undefeatable hope in the face of fracture and fear.

We have need of knowing that whatever the evidence to the contrary, life is TERRIFIC….Really, life is Terrific….That’s what Bill believed, believed always, believed absolutely, without a shred of doubt….

“Enough about me,” Bill would be saying about now, “Proclaim the Gospel, Jim. Proclaim it….”

And this is the gospel I proclaim—the gospel Bill gave his life to; God is Love.

Not complicated at all. Not subtle in any way. A simple three word sentence that gathers up and contains all we know and all we need to know.

GOD IS LOVE.

In one of Kurt Vonnegut’s science fiction novels, there is a robot named Salo that had been programmed to travel the galaxies endlessly, searching for the answer to one simple question: “WHAT IS THE MEANING OF LIFE?”

Salo finally finds his answer from a lonely, forgotten woman who was marooned on one of the moons of Jupiter. “THE MEANING OF LIFE,” Beatrice tells him, “IS TO LOVE WHOEVER IS AROUND TO BE LOVED.”

I believe that would have been Jesus’ answer as well.

And I know it was Bill’s answer.

From Bishops to power-brokers to the people who run the fish store to clerks at Starbuck’s to folks down on their luck—Bill simply loved whoever was around to be loved. Whether he was pleading for compassion from the powerful or sitting on a bench on the Waterbury Green with the homeless—he loved whoever was around to be loved. And in that he proclaimed the gospel more eloquently and profoundly than any preacher can convey.

God is love—and love is stronger than death could ever be.

The Buddhists tell us that the illusion of separateness is the cause of human suffering. The illusion of separateness is the cause of human suffering. If that is true, then the acceptance of unity is the pathway to joy.

That, I believe, is the gospel truth that Bill embraced, leaned into and lived from. He didn’t seem to notice the separateness of the powerful and powerless, of brokenness and wholeness, of hope and hopelessness, of death and life. Bill seemed to accept, in ways both obvious and profound, the “unity” of God’s creation. He loved whoever was around to be loved.

And that is the good news I proclaim for him and from him.

He taught us to love by loving—by his eternal love of his precious Natalie, his blinding love of Priscilla and all her family, his loyal love to those he ministered to and with, his unflinching love of “the least of these” in our midst, and—most, most of all—his quiet and grateful love of the one who is Resurrection and Life.

My invitation to you is to carry from this holy space, this gracious time, a little of Bill’s Spirit—a sampling of his love, a touch of his humor, a dollop of his compassion. And my invitation to you is to carry from this service, this memorial, the unity of God, who is resurrection and life.

If we can carry that good news with us into the world, Bill will be pleased. If he were here, he would say that was “Terrific”, absolutely “Terrific”.

Godspeed, dear, dear friend. And may God’s blessing be with you and with us, who miss you so, this day and forever….

more about the 'conversation' we need to have....

I told you in my last post that I was honored and humbled to begin my ordained ministry at St. James Church in Charleston, West Virginia--a nearly all Black church. Besides me, Bern, my pregnant wife and Bea Weaver, who was married to a Black man, there were no other white people in the congregation. (Irony of Ironies, Bea was a domestic who cleaned the houses of many of the Black members of St. James!)

Since I worked for St. James, I decided to join the Black Ministerial Association and went to their meetings on a regular basis. Being the only white (and non-Baptist or Methodist) member of the group, they taught me many things. I believe my experience as a white priest in a Black community was much gentler and more gracious than the experience of a Black priest in a white community would have been. I've never talked to a Black Minister of a white Church except for a wonderful Episcopal priest from Philadelphia. He told me that he had been the interim priest for a suburban congregation on the Main Line--very affluent and liberal. But when the time came to call a Rector and he offered his name to the calling committee, one of the members told him in private: "Paul, we admire and respect you greatly...but we have daughters...."

Paul Washington was one of the most competent and accomplished priests in the Episcopal Church, but when it came time for a congregation in a wealthy, mostly progressive suburb to choose a Rector, he was ruled out, as a Black man, because they didn't trust a Black man around their daughters.

There were 'daughters' aplenty at St. James in Charleston. The demographics were terribly skewed--about a dozen or more teenage girls and only one teenage boy. And none of the Black parents of those lovely girls distrusted me because I was White. And that has nothing to do with the indisputable fact that  most clergy sexual abuse is by White pastors of whatever denomination. What that had to do with is that those Black Folks were much more accepting of a White priest than any White congregation anywhere, I believe, would be accepting of a Black priest.

My five years at St. James--where both our children were born and baptized--was a post-graduate education in Race. I was at first astonished and then embarrassed and ashamed about how little--how pitifully little--I understood the Black experience.

Given, St. James was an anomaly: many of the members were faculty or administrators at West Virginia State College in Institute. I would often get up to preach to the 50 or 60 folks in the congregation and realize at least half of them had either Ph.D's or Master's degrees. Though West Virgina State was a state school, it had, in the past, had a reputation in the Black Community  close to Grambling and Howard. These were sophisticated and cultured folks by any measure. And they taught me, interestingly enough, how to be White in a non-White world.

I remember being at a Sorority Dance (Sororities and Fraternities were valuable social outlets for middleclass Black folks) and seeing my friend and parishioner, John's wife, dancing with a White Journalism professor at WVSC. "Why aren't you dancing with Charlotte?" I asked John. And he replied, tersely, "I don't dance, don't like fried chicken and don't eat watermelon."

I came to learn that for Black people, Black stereotypes weren't simply 'stereotypes', they were 'indictments': rules White Folks made to keep Black Folks 'in their place'.

Ben Gray, Senior Warden for most of the time I was Vicar of St. James, taught me a painful lesson one day after we went to lunch at the Black  VFW restaurant. When we came out there was a parade downtown for some holiday. We watched it for a while. Then Ben said to me, "Jim, you know how we are different?"

Well, I had a hundred answers, but not the one he had in mind.

Ben had been a colonel in WWII, one of the highest ranking Black officers. He'd also worked for the Post Office and the the Veteran's Administration. He had 3 (count 'em!) federal pensions in his retirement. He and his wife were both very light skinned and he once confessed to me that when they traveled in the south in years gone by, he'd had a turban in the trunk of his car. Wearing that and faking an accent, he and Mary could stay in motels that didn't allow Blacks. Imagine a colonel in the Army having to do that to have a good night's sleep....

"When you hear a band coming," Ben told me solemnly, like a monk teaching a novice, "you can decide you like the band from the sound, even before it turns the corner and you can see it....." He paused for a moment, knowing he was about to give me pain. "But I have to see the band, Jim," he told me, looking straight into my eyes, "I have to see a black or brown face in the band before I can like it."

We listened to a band around the corner for a while. "Do you see how that makes us different?" Ben asked me gently.

And I did. And it hurt. And it taught me something about being White that I'd never known before, never even considered, never dreamed of.

Being White means living in a bubble where 'being white' never comes to mind. While 'being Black' was something else altogether, something I couldn't imagine, couldn't comprehend, couldn't even dream of.

But I loved Ben and I knew he'd shared great wisdom with me. And though I couldn't 'be Black', he'd taught me a better way to 'be White'.

What a gift.

the conversation about race we really need to have....

I've talked to several people over the last week who I like and respect who just didn't 'get' what President Obama said about 'race' in his surprise appearance before the White House Press Corps. Those folks heard the words and understood them, but just didn't 'get' why he was talking about race.

That, it seems to me, is the problem and why we need to have the conversation about race that the President suggested we really need to have. What I heard him saying was that white folk just don't 'get' what it's like to be Black in America. And that's what we need to talk about: why we white folk don't 'get it' about what it's like to be Black.

It's akin to saying Jews don't understand what it means to be Palestinian. And vice-versa.

I'm part of a group that does a lot of work in Ireland between Protestants and Catholics. And what we've discovered is that if you ask Protestants in the north of Ireland to explain how the Catholics feel, they can do it. And if you ask Catholics to explain how the Protestants feel, they can do it. They can, to a great extent, 'tell each others' stories'. They really can. That doesn't make it any better, but it is interesting.

Black Folk and White Folk, in this country, can't tell each others' stories. We just can't. And that is the conversation we need to have. I suspect, deep down, that Black Folks can tell our White Folks story a lot better than we can tell theirs' because they pay more attention to us than we do to them. That's just me thinkin' out loud, it's not the Truth.

I grew up in the southern most county of West Virginia. We were farther south than Richmond, the capital of the Confederacy. And the place I grew up was almost equally divided between White and Black--about 50-50. Nowhere outside the deep south in those days had those demographics.

So I 'knew' Black Folks from my birth. And I paid a lot more attention to them, since there were so many of them, than I would had I grown up in suburban Connecticut or suburban 'anywhere', where Black Folks are in a distinct minority.

And here's the Truth about my experience (it's not just me talkin') I was never ever afraid of a Black person when I grew up. But then, I wasn't afraid of any White person either. AND, the Black folks the age of my parents called me, almost invariably, "Mister Jimmy" and I didn't know any Black folks my age since my father forbade me to play with them and I was an obedient boy. And, until I was in my teens, it never bothered me that Black Folks of a certain age called me "Mister Jimmy" or that I didn't know any Black Folks my age.

How crazy is that? I grew up surrounded by African Americans and never once questioned why the adults treated me with deference (even knowing my name when I didn't know theirs) and I don't remember a single conversation with a Black child my age though there were at least as many of them as White children. How crazy is that?

I never went to school with a Black kid until my Senior Year of High School when the Black school since over three male athletes and two brilliant girl students because everyone knew the schools would be combined the next year and those 5 young people (football and basketball stars and honor roll students) were to pave the way.

I liked them all, and because I was smart, I was in the same classes with the two girls and one of the boys. It was the first time I ever talked with Black Folks my age. (When I went to college, I became good friends with Ron Wilkerson, who went to the Black high school about a quarter of a mile from the White high school. He used to tell his friends, when he introduced me, "Jim and I went to different schools together!" It always got a laugh because we all--Black and White--back then, understood what that meant. We were noble enough to know it had been wrong, but not yet empowered to critique and reject it.)

My first call as a priest was to an African-American parish in Charleston WV. Our children grew up around Black people and when we moved to New Haven, Josh and Mimi would rush over to Black Folks on the street or in a store and embrace their knees. Most of the Black Folks were horrified and would raise their hands to show us they weren't touching our children.

How crazy was that? In the 80's of the last century, good and decent Black folks were afraid that a white child hugging them might be misinterpreted?

I also served two other parish that were deeply integrated and worked for a few years in a Training Center that was 95% minority students.

So, I have some 'creds', as we say. I have lived and loved and had my being among Black Folks for much of my adult life. And here's the awful truth....

Tonight, a Sunday in July, I was out on the back porch and saw two Black teenaged boys walking down Cornwall Avenue, in the road, not on the sidewalk.

They were dressed no differently than the dozens of white teenage boys I see every day on Cornwall--mostly in the road and not on the sidewalk. And I felt, for just a moment, until I caught myself, an irrational feeling. Like this: 'what are they doing here?' 'what is this about?' 'Who are those kids?'

Then I caught myself. Then I took a deep breath and thought how important it is for us, as white folks, to have the discussion on 'race' the President began.

More than most people in Cheshire, and I feel safe in saying this, I 'know' Black Folks and have been taught much about race by them and have loved them and been loved and accepted by them.

So, if I could feel those irrational feelings about those two innocent black teens for even a few moments....

Well, you know what I'm saying. We need to talk about 'race' in a way we never have before. And we have to approach it in a way none of us wants to approach a conversation--we need to admit, straight up and from the beginning, that we have much more to learn, as White folks, than we have to teach, that we come at a 'race' conversation as people who have been half-asleep while Black people have been wide-awake, that we don't have a clue what it means to 'be Black', no more than we know what it's like to defy gravity. We can't levitate and we can't 'be Black', but we can begin to listen and commit ourselves to learn, and we willing to discover how stupid--I really mean that, how "STUPID" White Folks are about Black Folks.

Only if we're willing to do that can the conversation begin....Only then.....That's the only way it will work and that's why it hasn't worked yet.

So agree not to levitate and to be really 'stupid' so the conversation can begin....