The end of summer....

The Cleveland Indians won tonight, eliminating the Yankees from the post season. Now I was a Yankee fan during the horrible 70's and 80's. I am no stranger to not being in the post season.

But with Mo retiring and Andy retiring and so much injury this year the Yankees were like an ER, Jeter, Granderson, Texiera and ARod hurt most of the year--and worse than that for ARod.

They have to lose from time to time. Baseball is that weird game  where if you only succeed 3 times out of 10 you're a star. A sport without a clock. A diamond in a sea of green. Lots of angles. The game of summer.

And for me, with the Yankees out, summer is over.

(Did I ever tell you why I--a boy from southern West Virginia--am a Yankee fan? Probably, but it's a story worth another telling....)

My father was in NYC, waiting to ship out to Europe and WWII. The city couldn't do enough for the soldiers who were going to go and risk their lives for the USA. So my father and some of his friends got tickets to a Yankees/Dodgers World Series game. My Dad decided that whichever team won that game would be 'his team'...and by inheritance, his son's 'team'.

And the Yankees won.

That, back in the 40's of the last century is why Summer Ended for me today.

Something missing....

I have over the years come to embrace three questions my friend Ann taught me to take stock of things.

I have used these three questions to guide vestries toward a vision, to evaluate employees, to figure out why I'm feeling out of sorts, to help people get above their confusion, lots of things.

Here are the three questions.

WHAT WORKS?

WHAT DOESN'T WORK?

WHAT'S MISSING?

Ann's questions free us from useless conversations about Right/Wrong, Good/Bad. Blame/Guilt, all that yucky and ultimately unhelpful stuff.

The questions are about functionality.

WHAT WORKS? Things tend to either work or not. There is no judgement or morals or values involved in naming the 'working' stuff of life.

WHAT DOESN'T WORK? Same thing--no judgement involved--it isn't 'what's wrong?' There's actually nothing 'wrong' about stuff that doesn't work. It simply doesn't serve us well and, like a pen out of ink (one thing that 'doesn't work') all we have to do it throw it away or stop trying to make it work when it won't.

WHAT'S MISSING? This is the question that opens the way to Ah-Ha moments, to transformation, (not change...we usually try to 'change' stuff that doesn't work and make it work. That's a dead end.) The more things 'change', we all know, the more they 'stay the same'. Change is rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic--it makes you feel busy but they're going to end up on the bottom of the North Atlantic no matter how they are positions.

Asking 'What's Missing?' opens up the box where all the new possibilities are, where creation lives, where transformation can occur. "What's missing?" doesn't allow us to reconcile ourselves to what IS, it gives us permission to create something new ex nilio--'out of nothing', the way 'creation' works. And we create, interestingly enough, by 'saying so'. In the beginning was the Word....And God 'said'....

I want to engage the Cluster churches I share in a conversation about the future. Asking 'what's wrong?' or 'what's bad?' is a more than useless exercise. People will get all caught up in the wrong-ness and bad-ness of everything and never get to a place where they can 'create a future that wouldn't happen anyway.'

That's another thing I've learned from knowing my friend Ann--there are, in reality, two distinct and different Futures. There is the Future that will happen anyway if we just wait until it shows up. But there is also the Future we can create that wouldn't happen anyway.

It all comes down to this--do we want to be 'at cause' or 'at effect' in life? We can have a 'say' in the Future we create. The Future that's going to happen anyway, if we just wait for it, is going to make us mute and hapless and without possibility.

So ponder this about your life: What works? What doesn't work? What's missing?

Ponder that for a time....

Late at night

Late at night--though not that late--and I long for bed.

I am often awake late at night.
Sleep is something I love,
long for, adore.

I seldom, if ever have nightmares,
but I sleep near to the surface of wakefulness.

My dreams are most often mundane,
me working at some task,
succeeding but not knowing how.

In 13 days I fly to Ireland
to lead a workshop,
or, more accurately, to coach
three women to lead it themselves.

I have been to Ireland many times
to be a part of the workshop.
This time, I might leave people there
who can lead it without my help.

Like a task I work at in a dream,
and succeed without knowing how.

Ireland is so green it is almost painful.
Like a dream about 'green'
which is a job I have to do
and accomplish without knowing how.

Or why.

Not long now and I'll be abed,
waiting for dreams
that come or not.

Either way,
I'll be grateful.

These are the days

These are the days I live for and love so--those days when the night temperature in 25 degrees cooler than the high in the day. 50 F tonight and 75 F tomorrow. What I love is to wear a sweater and shorts in the same 24 hours.

Sleep is easy, profound and full of wondrous dreams when the temperature falls to 50 after being in the high 70's that day. Windows are always open. Air conditioners are mute and needless. The night temperature keeps the house cool even in the 70's in the next afternoon.

I have this memory about growing up in the mountains of southern West Virginia. We were almost as far south as Richmond, Virginia, but we were much higher up. My memory is that, because of the altitude and the mountains, Spring and Autumn were 4 months each and Summer and Winter were two months each.

Spring an Autumn have those 25 degree swings. Summer and Winter don't. It just seems to me that in the mountains Spring and Autumn hung on and on, reluctant to let go to what came next.

Oh, it was hot there--HOT--and no one had air-conditioning. And it was cold there--oh, so COLD--and snow out the gazoo. But neither lasted long enough to have you begin to pine for something else. By the time you got tired of Winter's cold and snow, Spring had snuck in a month sooner than expected and 65 in the day and 45 in the night became the norm. And when Summer had begun to wilt you, Autumn made itself known and it was a 72/50 mix of day and night.

I'd never live in southern West Virginia again. It would be too depressing. The county I grew up in had 70,000 inhabitants in 1950. Today, it has 27,000. It is a 'ghost county' the size of Rhode Island. Plus, Right Wing crazies have taken over the state. In the Democratic Primary in 2012, a inmate of an Oklahoma prison got over 25% of the vote against President Obama. I kid you not, look it up.

But though I'd never live there, I remember this. That was the perfect climate. All four seasons but the two bad ones shortened and the two loved ones lengthened.

That's what I remember.

These nights like tonight would go on for four months back in McDowell County....

Another chance...

Sunday I'll be talking with Rowena Kemp about working with the Cluster. She is a new deacon who, hopefully will be ordained a priest in December. She is brilliant, thoughtful, cautious and dynamic. I can't wait to work with her.

One of the most important things I've done as a priest is be a supervisor of seminarians, interns and deacons. Almost 40 altogether. I don't try to 'form' them in any way. I simply try to draw out of the the skills and talents and gifts they bring to ministry. For the most part, I believe, I've done that with some grace and humility. There are people all over the church now who worked with me and with my rather odd style of supervision.

My odd style is this: I ask more questions than I answer, I listen more than I talk, And I don't much care about how well they 'do' what they 'do'. My concern is 'who they BE as priests. Most of the people I've 'supervised'--and that's such a strange word for who I am for them--can already 'do' all the things a priest 'does'. They just  need practice. But what I want to tease out of them is 'who they BE' in the matter of their priesthood. I want them to 'BE' in a way that matters, a way that makes a difference to the people they serve.

One of those folks I've worked with once said to me, "either you have no ego or an ego the size of Montana." Truth is, I have an ego the size of Canada, not Montana.

I don't have 'ego problems', I have an ego too large for problems. I wrote a few days ago about how much I 'like' myself. That is a function of having a Canada-sized ego. Nothing much bothers me or throws me off my game or threatens me. If you asked priests around the Diocese of Connecticut to describe me in one word (those who know me) it would be something like 'unconventional', 'calm', 'opinionated' and 'laid back'. To be calm and laid back which still being opinionated requires a surplus of ego. To be 'laid back' in the midst of parish ministry requires an ego the size of Canada.

I just don't 'care'. Oh, I am super involved and compassionate and 'present'. Anytime I've said "I don't care" about matters of ministry people have rightly rebuked me. What I mean by "I don't care" is that I can be detached enough not to be part of the 'drama' of church life. I'm always 'interested' and 'intrigued' by the drama of 'church life' but it mostly doesn't entangle me.

So, what I want folks I supervise to lean into is how to 'be present' in the chaos that is often church life in a way that makes a difference and matters and brings presence and calm and healing.

That's what matters to me. It has not always been so. I used to become an actor in church dramas. But no more. I am a member of the audience who has, because of my role and my ontological presence, an opportunity to be 'present', to 'be', in a way that matters and sorts things out and makes a difference.

Now Rowena gives me another chance to interact and question and 'be' with her in a way that might  empower her as a priest to 'be priest' in the midst of both the mundane and chaotic moments of the life of the church.

I've probably posted this chapter of stuff I've been writing since I retired. But I'm going to do it again anyway....

Job Descriptions

A seminary classmate of mine who was also a priest in West Virginia when I was there was once riding an airplane from Los Angeles to Chicago. My friend, let’s call him Joe, was wearing, as he seemingly always did, a clerical collar and black shirt, black suit and black wing-tips. Joe is a very large man so his priest outfit always made him look like a black-out curtain from the London Blitz. He spent the flight talking amiably with salesman from the mid-west. They developed one of those airplane friendships and exchanged business cards as the descent began toward O’Hare. Just as the 747 was taxiing up to the gate, Joe’s new friend asked, “What do you do?”

Joe glanced down to make sure his uniform was in place—and hadn’t they talked about the church somewhere over Idaho?

“I’m an Episcopal priest,” Joe replied, confused.

The salesman smiled. “Oh, I know what you are,” he said, “I was just wondering what you do.”

It is an interesting observation and question. What on earth does an Episcopal priest do? How can we describe a role that I believe is more ontological than functional? What’s the job description?

Once, at a cocktail party in New Haven, surrounded by Yale ‘people’—the population of New Haven is divided between Yale ‘people’ and the masses of the unwashed—I had a long conversation with a physicist from India with one of those delightful post-Raj English accents that sound like a bird’s song. You hear that accent most every time you call customer services (aka “help!”) for your computer—they all seem to be in India. Since I didn’t have on a clerical uniform—and never once flew in an airplane with a collar on lest I be seated besides some psychologically disturbed stranger who wanted to confess at 40,000 feet—I had told him when we greeted each other what I ‘did’. And he told me what he ‘did’. It’s what people do.

(Here’s a fascinating thing: back in the Appalachian Mountains where I grew up, when people met for the first time, the question that came trippingly off each of their tongues was “where are you from?” not “what do you do?” I haven’t asked enough people who grew up in rural places if that was true back home to know if it is purely an urban/rural distinction. But I know and know fair well that back home you could tell a lot more about a stranger by knowing where they were from and “who their people were” than you could by finding out how they earned their money. I still have the tendency to ask people where they spent their formative years, believing as I do that there is a wealth of instant knowledge and intimacy in discovering someone’s roots. But, in the place I live now and amidst the people I know now, the first question is almost always, “What do you do?”)

So I told the Indian physicist that I was an Episcopal priest and he asked me with the guilelessness of someone who was ‘from’ a place half-a-world away and who was Hindu if he was anything religious at all, what my ‘work’ consisted of.

Even then, I had begun to believe that being a priest is an ontological rather than a functional thing, so I fished around in my brain for some way to describe succinctly what my “being” in the midst of a parish looked like. I came up with a thought that I’d stand by today. “I am a member of a community,” I told him, “and I function as the leader of that community in our ritual life. And I am very aware of what is going on in and around the community so that when I think I see God breaking in to the day-to-day, I can say ‘Stop! Look! There’s God’….”

He considered that in that lovely, calm and timeless way people from the Indian sub-continent have naturally, took a sip of wine and then said, smiling knowingly, “You’re a process observer.”

He, of course, had to explain to an English major that a ‘process observer’ was an indispensable role in the sciences. Much of what science is about is watching experiments and noting what happens. It is, he told me, rather tedious and painstaking work (not unlike the day-to-day ‘duties’ of a parish priest) but finally indispensable to the march of scientists to the day when they will have the String Theory down pat—the theory that explains just about everything.

“A process observer”, I said to myself, giving that little voice in my head a line to speak of my composition instead of just listening to it chatter on of its own volition. I rather liked it, yes I did.

The actuality is this: one of the things parish priests DO, it seems to me, is “point to God in the process.” We do it in the Eucharist—all the sacraments—in a most obvious way. “You may think this is just fish food and bad port, priests say in the Mass, but I’m going to ‘point out’ to you that this is ALSO the very Body and very Blood of Christ. How about them apples?” Or, like this: “You may imagine this is just a little baby and some water and some oil, but I’m going to reveal to you a different way of looking at all this…a way that brings to mind the Creation and the Exodus and John the Baptist and Jesus and the oil of anointing a royal child and the fact that this squirming little creature is actually the most loved Child of God.” Or this, for example: “I know everyone here believes you are simply a man and a woman anxious to get dinner over and shed these clothes and do what men and women do in the dark, wine-soaked night. But I tell you a Mystery—you are beloved of God and God approves, blesses and watches over you. Go after each other with passion and zeal, it is as the Almighty has arranged it!” Stuff like that is what priests “do”. Process observing—seeking to un-conceal the oldest String Theory of them all: that God is in control in some way we cannot recognize or even understand.

Once, a few years ago, the remarkable Organist/Choir Director of St. John’s—the finest musician I’ve ever known who doesn’t have a big, fat attitude—found a Spiritual he thought I would like, knowing I’m partial to Spirituals. It was called I Believe This Is Jesus and went like this: “I believe this is Jesus….Come and see, Come and see….” Bob’s idea was that I would, after the fracture of the host, sing the “I believe this is Jesus” part and the choir would respond, “Come and see. Come and see” and then do the rest of the song while I administered communion to those at the altar. Great idea—real ‘process observer’ stuff…I’d break the bread and then indicate the bread and wine and sing, “I believe this is Jesus.”

So, without telling anyone but the choir, that’s what we did. I broke the bread, took a deep breath since I’m rocky about my singing ability, then broke into song. When the choir responded, “Come and see. Come and see.” I did something like point to the bread and wine and sing along, shifting from foot to foot, remembering why I loved Spirituals—you can’t stand still and sing them. I turned to give communion to the others at the altar—including the assistant Rector and our Parish Administrator—and they were all staring at me as if I were a crazy person just escaped from the sanatorium with sharp, deadly weapons. After I force fed them the bread and wine—fattening up the Christmas goose—they nearly dissolved into that kind of laughter that there is simply no way, no way in heaven and earth, no act of will available to human beings to repress. The “I believe this is Jesus” Mass passed immediately into St. John’s lore. We still laugh about it—others laughing more than me since I was just ‘process observing’ and ‘reporting’—and I can still do it. I’ll do it for you if you ask me nicely.

I have this ongoing conversation with my bishop and others about ontology and function and what a priest “does”. I come down hard on the “being” side of the distinction. I actually think a priest’s job description is to ‘be’ in the midst of the community. The functional stuff is neither rocket science or brain surgery. In fact, most everything a priest does—since we are the last of the ‘generalists’—someone else could do much better. Say Mass, for example—I’d suggest training in theatre would make for a more dramatic Eucharist than studying Theology ever could. Visiting the sick, another example—couldn’t a nurse or social worker pull that off with great aplomb? Teaching adult classes—well, give me someone trained in education every day to someone who can recite the Nicene Creed by heart. Counseling the troubled—a seminary education makes you a ‘counselor’ as much as a class in auto mechanics makes you a jet pilot. Parish priests, if they took my advice, would avoid counseling like the plague and get a rolodex full of references. I can ‘listen’ to someone’s problems but I seldom, if ever, do I know an answer. I actually get ‘hung up’ in the problems, find them fascinating and probably wouldn’t want them to go away. Call a real professional, that’s my advice to a parish priest!

So, here I am, trying to describe “what I do” when the reality I deal with tells me that being a priest is much more about ‘being’ than ‘doing’. I have this argument with my bishop and lots of colleagues that will go on and on. I truly think that priesthood is about ontology, about ‘being’, much more than it is about ‘doing’ or the function we fulfill in the Church of God. This obviously is a result of my remarkably high view of the sacraments. I believe ‘being a priest’ is contained and fully lived out in the ‘being’ part. What I “do”—like talk to the leader of the Narcotics Anonymous group that uses St. John’s on Tuesday mornings about how most of the folks in that group—unlike the other 12 step groups that use the space—are ‘court ordered’ and there to score some dope and don’t give a good god-damn about the fact that there are other people in the building—the soup kitchen, the office staff, the clericus group, a meeting of a diocesan committee, just plain folks coming in and out to ask for help or tell us something or just check in with the staff. And never mind that there are sometimes funerals on Tuesday morning and receptions in the Library after the funeral and that we need some level of quiet and respect in the building. And then I have to deal with the email from the leader promising to ‘fix’ the problems if they can only, only, please, please, continue to use the meeting space. And I have to deal with the countless ‘drop-ins’ looking for a bus ticket or a meal or a motel room or something even beyond all that. I can refer most of them to the social worker in the soup kitchen but I have to talk with them and get enmeshed in their stories along the way, before sending them to someone who might actually be able to help them. And I attend endless meetings—in the parish and without—to deal with endless issues and come up not knowing our elbows from our assholes most of the time. And there are statistics to keep in a big red book about what we’ve done in terms of services. And there are budget matters to be addressed—can we buy this or pay for that…stuff I never got taught in Seminary. And there is the eternal ‘planning’ for things that are going to happen or not in the parish. And there are meetings…oh, I already mentioned that, but there are so many that it seems to require a second mention. And did I tell you about the parking lot and making sure the rented spaces are used by those who rented them and the dozens of people who come through the church each day aren’t in some lawyer’s space? I don’t do all of that, but I fret about it.

Most of the day-to-day stuff I do is fretting about something or another. And, in most cases, there are about three billion people who could fret about those things and be more effective than me. So, what do I DO? I’m not sure, not at all. My “doing” of stuff seems in many ways a bit crazy. And the source of great fretting and anxiety.

Here’s the quintessential Jewish joke, my friend, John, told it to me today. An e-mail arrives. “Start worrying,” it says, “letter to follow.”

I’m always ‘worrying’ about my ‘doing’…but I truly subscribe to the notion that ‘doing’ isn’t what being a priest is all about. What being a priest is all about is exactly that—“being” a priest.

You want to know the thing I hear most from parishioners of St. John’s? Here it is: “I didn’t want to bother you, I know how busy you are….”

My theory is that either we priests have created “busy-ness” out of nothing or else we are so deluded as to think that the nonsense we use to fill our days and make us feel like we’re ‘doing’ something has overcome the glaring reality that we are ordained to ‘be’, not to ‘do’. Back in 2000 when I visited 37 of my Virginia Seminary classmates, one of them—a guy who was only with us for a year and who had been a RC priest before he married a woman with five children—told me that he was pleased to have left VTS and gone to a parish where he had remained for 25 years. “I’ve been here long enough,” he told me, “so that people accept the fact that ‘being a priest’ is the only job in the world that is focused on ‘being’ rather than ‘doing’.”

What a thought—a whole career path focused on “being” rather than “doing”! And what a pity that people think I’m busy and shouldn’t be bothered by their petty concerns and wonderings and questions and longings. That is, in fact, precisely what my job entails, to be free and available and ready to “be” with people whenever they need that from me. I don’t suggest that my ‘being’ will “save them” or “heal them” or do anything much more than simply ‘being’ with them in their joy or confusion or pain or loss or wonderment. There is a wonderful term in psychology—the “non-anxious presence.” Therapists long to provide that service for their clients—just to ‘be’ with them, whatever is going on, without anxiety. A calming presence is what most of us need when ‘stuff’ is happening in our lives. We just need someone to “be” there—at our death bed, in labor hall, in the ER, when we’re troubled and confused, at the celebrations of the transforming moments of our lives. Just that—a shadow in the background who is simply “there” without attaching themselves to the emotions and feelings of the moment—that is what most of us need, most of the time. And that is, so far as I can see, how a priest can “be” in the midst of the community he/she serves.

I have done what used to be called “EST training”. Almost all ‘religious folks’ think EST was mind-control and a monstrous intrusion into the life of those who submitted themselves to it. I am still involved in a group—The Mastery Foundation—that continues the work EST began. The Mastery Foundation is the religious spin-off of EST and I have been a leader of the Making a Difference Workshop for almost 20 years now. I took that workshop when I was considering renouncing my vows as a priest and what I came out of the three days with was my priesthood all new and shiny. The Workshop is ‘ontological’—it is about ‘being’, not ‘doing’. And back over a quarter of a century ago, when I was in an EST workshop, I called to tell them I couldn’t come to the second weekend because a beloved parishioner of St. Paul’s (the parish I served at that time) was dying and I had to be with him. The workshop leaders gave me much grief—understandable grief but grief none the less—about my ‘commitment’ to the workshop and what if I’d gotten hit by a truck, who would be with Aaron, who would be his priest then? But I rejected all the arguments they threw at me—some of it reasonable b.s., but b.s. all the same—and went to visit Aaron when I should have been in my chair at the EST training.

Aaron was in a coma and I couldn’t “do” much of anything. I couldn’t give him communion or talk with him or reassure him as he was slipping into that good night. So, after 15 minutes or so, I left his room, having anointed him and given him final unction—I could “do” that, after all. I rode the elevator to the lobby and was unlocking my car when I remembered the first weekend of the EST training and the emphasis on “being” that I had learned there. So I went back to the elevator and rode back up to the 5^th floor and entered Aaron’s room again. I sat by his bed for over two hours. From time to time I would read a psalm from my Prayer Book aloud, but mostly for me, since he wasn’t in my time/space continuum. And after two hours I kissed his 88 year old face and headed for the door.

At that very moment, he awoke momentarily from the coma of his last sleep and said, with the basso voice I’d known from him before this illness, “Jim, thanks for BEING with me….”

It never occurred to me in that moment to “do” anything. I didn’t rush to his bedside and give him communion. I didn’t open my BCP and say a prayer. I only said, “You’re welcome, Aaron.” And I left. Three days later I was the celebrant and preacher at his funeral. I had done my job. I had “be-ed” with him. That was what he needed and all that I could do.

Actually, I do have a definition of the job description of a priest. I’ve used it in a couple of ordination sermons that did not get me in trouble and I think I would bet the farm on it being—if not RIGHT—at least in the county where RIGHT lives. Here’s how it goes: the ‘job’ of a priest is simply this: to tend the fire, tell the story and pass the wine.

A parish priest has an enormous amount of discretionary time—don’t believe anyone who tells you otherwise. And that time should be spent being the Shaman of the Tribe. I really believe the metaphor of the Shaman is the once we priests should embrace. We walk backward and sideways, we speak words our mouths are unfit for, we do the holy acts and we dwell in the “being” of our being in the midst of the tribe. We are irrelevant except in moments when we are relevant. We wait with the expectant father, we sit by the sick bed, we pour water on the babies, we whisper nonsense syllables over bread and wine, we light the candles, we tell and re-tell the story of our tribe in old ways and ways made new, we anoint the sick and dying, we rejoice with the joyous, we are there when one of the tribe moves into that Good Night, we pour dirt on the casket, we unite the lovers, we sit and wait and are not anxious whatever is happening. Shamans are the role we can play in the Tribe who loves us and we love to death.

So, we tend the fire. Everyone else is too busy in the tides and times of living to pay attention. The priest must add the green branch to the dying fire and blow on it until it takes and burns. The priest must know the history of the Tribe and breathe it into the fire as the fire turns to embers. We are the fire-tenders, the wood gatherers, the ones who choose between the green wood and the seasoned. That is who we “are” and how we “be” in the midst on the Tribe.

We also “tell the story”. It is a story everyone in the Tribe knows, on some level, in some way. So the way we tell it must annoy and inspire and provoke. It is the story of our particular tribe and of the larger tribe we are a part of. It is the story of a God who created us in the very image of God and of a God who took on our flesh and a God who died, as we shall die, yet rose from death to prove to us that Life is the last word, the ultimate word, the only word that matters. So we tell this story with mouths full of pebbles and in halting, stuttering words and with an eloquence we neither deserve nor can rise to, except the Spirit leads us. We tell the story as the tribe sits by the fire we tend and we watch their eyes…heavy and full of sleep, confused and questioning, brimming with tears. It is always the eyes we much watch—those subtle pathways to the soul—as we tell the story in old ways, often heard, and in new ways to surprise and delight and confound. We have tended the fire and told the story.

What is left is this—to pass the wine.

Whenever I do baptismal classes, I bring out the symbols that will be a part of the service: bread, wine, water, oil, a candle and the scallop shell I use to pour the water. Sometimes I mix people up so they’re not with their baptismal group, and give them one of the symbols to talk about and report back to the whole group about after talking. I’m always interested in the report back about wine. We are a part of a remarkably Puritanical culture where wine is not openly valued. And of course, I know, church basements and parish halls are full each week with AA meetings—there is a downside to wine. But my thought has always been that the ‘value’ of something can be measured most accurately by how much it has been misused and abused. Oh, take Christianity for example: what shit we Christians have left on innocent yards! The Christian faith has been so misused and abused that it must be of great value—the value of pearls and gold and silver.

Most of the groups who report back on wine don’t fully emphasize the joy and gladness and goodness of alcohol. They seldom reflect on why it is we call alcohol “spirits”. They don’t have the courage to be politically incorrect in our day and say wine is a good and gracious thing. Never has any group reported back by saying, “In Vino, Veritas”. So I have to tell them how valued and important the wine is to the tribe and those gathered by the fire, listening to the story. Invaluable, I’d say—that’s what wine is to the life and metaphor and myth of the Tribe. There must be wine to make us mellow and accepting and to “inspire” us and to bring the story to full bloom and to make the dying fire look like a wondrous and warming blaze that enlightens the darkness all around us.

So, the priest passes the wine.

None of those ‘functions’, those ‘tasks’, those ‘acts’ require ordination—that I would tell you before you said it out loud. Just about anyone could tend the fire and tell the story and pass the wine. But in our Tribe, at any rate, we have decided that there must be someone ‘set apart’ for those acts, those rituals, those liturgies. So we ordain priests and entrust them with the work of “being” in our midst to ‘do’ these little, so significant tasks. The Shamans of the Tribe walk backwards, speak in nonsense syllables and touch the holy things.

A dear friend, the wife of a classmate of mine in seminary, told my wife that when her husband was ordained, “his hands changed.”

My wife, God bless her, said she hadn’t noticed that my hands had changed but she did like to feel them on her body.

Here is the conundrum about being a priest: nothing changes. It isn’t the ordination that matters, it is the willingness to simple “be” when all the world is “doing” that makes a priest different, set apart, unique. Her/his hands don’t change, not a chance, that’s just an illusion. What happens, so far as I can tell is simply this: some sap decides to “be” rather than “do”. And the church applauds.

Truth is, it’s a great job—process observing, tending the fire, telling the story over and over again, passing the wine. What’s the down-side of that? Just don’t take yourself too seriously or confuse yourself with Jesus or decide you can save the world or anyone in it—keep to the job description: observe the process, keep the fire burning, tell and retell the story, take a good sip of wine before passing it around, figure out how to “be” rather than “do”.

Well, it’s worked for me….

Bad poetry

I was looking through some old papers and came upon a brace of poetry I wrote some four and more decades ago.

The scene is needed to be set: I had met Bern in my Senior year of  High School, when she was but a Freshman. There was another boy, a year younger than me and two years older than Bern, who pursued her endlessly. Even today he sends her birthday cards--which used to annoy me and now amuses me. What does he imagine--that my 63 year old wife would run away to Texas, where he lives, to shack up with his 65 year old self? There is something pitiful about his adolescent love for her that has not aged at all. I have come to feel sorry for him. They haven't seen each other for over 45 years. When do you give up?

But the poems I found were from me in my freshman year of college, for Bern in her sophomore year of high school when I wasn't sure I could keep her through the miles and hours of our separation and while she was still seeing Nolan everyday in school.

So I share two of them with you. I was an English major and came under the spell of Shakespeare and iambic pentameter right away. Ok, here they are, bad poems both....

Love, long ago when thee I first did love,
You gave great hurt which broke my heart in twain
And left we doubting all that stands above,
And left me fearing love could nothing gain.
In darkest night, that Hurt didst plung my sou,
Did numb my mind and my poor broken heart.
Did passion quench and all my worth turn cold;
That Love which flamed with his own darling Dart.
Then did my too young love diseas'ed die
And deeper love was born to take it's place.
For then I knew the worth of all the sky
That 'round you whirled to gain from you your grace.
   Great Paradox--I truly loved that Pain
   That did me prompt to woo anew and gain.


Bad enough for you. Here's one more that will set your teeth on edge....

Were I so false as I am True to thee,
My every thought would base betrayal plot,
My heart would daily plan your misery,
And very Passion would from Vileness rot;
Were I so cruel as I hope I am kind,
I would bestow jewels of glaz'ed glass
To win your heart and so to tempt your mind
That me you'd love and grief I'd cause would last.
If I could hate as I you do so love,
I would thee torment and pain thee so well
That I would torment even saints above
And make them make for me a hotter hell.
     But since I'm kind and true and love thee so,
     Those self-same saints give heaven here below.

OK, all in all bad poetry, but in the end it worked. Bern and I have been together for 49 years and married for 43 of those. Not a bad outcome for bad poetry....

(The post I wrote on September 4 called '43 and counting' has had 4 times more views than any post I've ever had. Something about a long, long, long love must appeal to people....)

Lukie in the sun...Bela in the moonshine

I went into our bedroom this afternoon to put on jeans and a sweater because I was feeling a bit chilly from the 60-something temperature. There was sunlight shining on a little square of our bed and Lukie, our cat was sprawled out in the sun. Every bit of his rather large body was bathed in sunlight and the rest of the bed was in shadow.

Leave it to a cat to find pleasure wherever it shows up.

Life might not get better than that, finding a bit of sunshine on a September afternoon to take a snooze in. Really.

As soon as I quit typing this, I'm going to take Bela, our Puli dog, out for his last bathroom of the day. We most likely won't get out of the front yard before he pees. But I know we'll be bathed in moonlight because it an almost full moon tonight and it it clear and by 10:30 p.m. this time of year, the moon is above all the trees around our house and will light our way.

Bela is so BLACK that moonlight is necessary to see him. Often on the back porch and deck, I loose sight of him and he'll brush against me when I don't expect him to be there. I have a flashlight on the ready in the kitchen because if he goes down in the yard at night that's the only way I'll find him.

Light and darkness. Sun and moon. Warm days and cool nights. A cat and a dog.

What's better than all that except Maggie, our parakeet is singing along with the classical music on WSHU from the radio beside her cage and Bern is upstairs watching TV, probably getting ready to go to bed.

Simple things are all I need to give me joy. A yellow cat and 'black as midnight in a cypress swamp' dog and singing bird and the sun and the moon, Bach on the radio and Maggie singing, warmth and cool and the woman I love upstairs moving around.

That's all it takes to give me joy.

Lucky me. So blessed, really.

Most of the time I feel like a yellow Maine Coon Cat taking a nap in a patch of sun.

Just like that.