The Moon was out early today

It was 4:30 p.m. or so,
I was walking the dog
and putting out the garbage
and recycling stuff,
and there, up in the sky
in the north-east
was the moon.

I don't know why the moon was out.
I should know such things,
being pretty smart--above average,
at least.
It's something I'm sure, about
the position of the earth
in regard to the sun
on a bitterly cold day
in February
in Connecticut,
that caused the moon to show up
so early when it was still
daylight.

But then, as I was pondering
the scientific reason
for the moon's early arrival,
I was caught up in the fantasy
that, because the moon is so cold,
showing up in the afternoon
of a cold, cold day
might have something
to do with it.

Being partial,
as I am,
to the moon
(and its waxing and waning)
I imagined for a while,
walking the dog
and putting out the garbage,
that maybe the moon,
cold as it is,
likes to visit Connecticut
early on cold, cold,
cold days.

Just to check in with us
and see how we're doing
in the chill.

That pondering gave me joy
(freezing cold as I was!)
to imagine the moon,
like your favorite aunt,
was just checking in
to see how we were managing
with so much snow
and cold.

Thank you, moon....

A Place to be

I'd bet that everyone reading this has a favorite chair, a side of the bed they sleep on, somewhere they feel most comfortable. Things need to be 'just right' in the space we inhabit, in the place we 'be'.

The ante goes up when the space, the place is a holy place, a holy space--like a church.

I told two stories in my sermon on Sunday about holy places and holy spaces. I'll tell them to you as well.

First is M. In my first parish the baptismal font was in the back of the church. Back then I was much more into the rules and canons than I am now and I thought that since baptism was admission to communion rather than a requirement for entering the sanctuary that the font should be up front, near the altar. So, I moved it there.

Five years later, at my going away party at St. James, M. came up to me and told me, "I've forgiven you for moving the baptismal font." I almost said, "thanks for not worrying me about that for five years". Instead, being on my best behavior, I asked her why moving it was a problem for her. She told me that the font had been given by her parents in memorial to her grandparents and had always been at the back of the church.

At St. John's, where I was Rector for 21 years, K., who always sat in the second pew on the pulpit side suddenly stopped coming to church. She was an on-the-edge member, on disability with two teen age kids she was raising alone. I knew she sometimes came to the Soup Kitchen near the end of the month so I hung out until I saw her. I sat with her at her table and asked her why she'd disappeared.

"My pew got taken away," she told me. I was confused, but then I remembered that we had four baptismal Sundays a year with 8-12 baptisms and we'd just been through the Sunday after Easter (designed to have a good crowd on 'low Sunday') and Pentecost--both baptismal Sundays and the families of the children were spread over the first three rows of each side of the center aisle each time. So K's pew was 'taken away'.

She was a marginal person who thought many of the people at St. John's thought they were better than her. And, more damaging, she thought many of the people at St. John's were better than her. So to be displaced from her 'spot', her place, her space, was profoundly painful for her.

Of course, both of those stories--both M and K--were irrational.

But when we talk about our place to be, rationality is the last consideration.

Feelings about 'place' and 'space' are profoundly personal and emotional. And when that 'space' and 'place' is also considered 'holy', well, that just multiplies the feelings....

Ponder 'the space' you occupy for a bit and the 'place' you feel is holy.

Ponder and imagine what depths of the subconscious 'place' and 'space' occupies within your being.

I think you might be surprised by how important 'place' and 'space' are to you.

Human beings need to take up 'space' and need a 'place' to be. Just 'to be'.

Something I've posted before but need to again

This poem about 'Finitude'  has been here before. But I'm feeling close to all that a lot these days. I wrote a letter to Bern to be opened upon my death because I wanted to be in charge of my memorial service and to let her know all the details she'd have to deal with.

When I wrote this poem, I was much younger. There was irony and humor in it. But in the last few years (how the hell am I 66?) it races closer to the bone. So, here again is one of my favorite poems I've ever written.

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 ice

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

Whine and cheese

OK, now I'm going to whine about the weather. I know I wrote not so many days ago about how we New England folks shouldn't complain about the weather. But at this point, over a week into below freezing weather with a shit load of snow every where, I'm ready to speak out.

The snow has stuck around so long during below freezing but sunny days, that the sun, by virtue of being a star throwing off heat beyond imagining, has melted a bit of snow by it's own will each day which then freezes again and makes everything slicker.

Our walkways, dutifully shoveled down to as far as we could, are now like luge tracks and we take our lives in our hands just to leave the house. And driveways everywhere are now covered by 1/12 inch of ice and treacherous as all get out.

I was just out on the back porch and it is snowing at 8:06 pm on Sunday, February 9. With any luck, there will be a couple of inches of snow on top of the ice and make walking easier.

But when you look at the 10 day forecast and see the day temperature doesn't get above 34 or so and at night it goes down to 20 or single digits, the apocalypse can't be far away.

(But I have some fine Stilton and some creamy Bree to eat on rice crackers, so the End doesn't seem quite so near.....)

Theatre for a change

I ponder movies and books here from time to time--but tonight I want to tell you about a play, Fairytale Lives of Russian Girls that is playing at the Yale Rep through Feb 22.

There are several things that make it special. First there is the 6 woman ensemble that performs it--they are all wonderful, some of them in multiple roles. Secondly is the script that takes rather dark images from Russian 'fairy tales'--which are more like horror movies, very Grimm-like, not the fairy infested, beautiful princesses, brave princes, happy endings of our scaled down versions of bloody tales, supposedly because they would be too brutal for children.

What a cop-out. Children know horrors we can only guess at as adults. In his remarkable 1973 book, If you meet the Buddha on the road, kill him, Sheldon Kopp gives an Eschatological Laundry List of a partial register of the 927 (or was it 928?) Eternal Truths.

Number 25 is this: Childhood is a nightmare.

"Fairytale Lives" brings childhood's nightmare to the stage through clever dialog, long, intense monologues, music by the actors (Bern tells me that 'actors' is an ok name for both men and women) via a take off of the Russian group 'Pussy Riot', and sound effects also done, in plain view to stage right, by the members of the cast.

The play is part bringing the dark stories of Russian lore (which begin not "once upon a time" but a much more direct "They lived. This happened") and part a political commentary on the Soviet Union today and their contempt for Americans. The main character (though this is an ensemble work) is an 20 year old Jewish woman born in Russia and raised in southern California as a religious refugee from the Soviet Union who goes back to Russia to take a class in 'Business Russian' (which turns out to be a class about Russian Fairy Tales) and to 'claim her heritage'.

No spoilers here, but the other thing is, the play is hilarious in many parts. But because it was so dark as well...and so innocent as well (what better combination for a fairy tale with a bear and a witch?) the audience was hesitant, I think, to laugh out loud until near the end.

Yale Rep is expensive (our seats were $78 each) but this play is more than worth it.

(Warning to tall people: I have a sore knee from sitting through the play {done without intermission which is another accomplishment of the work} from sitting almost sideways in my seat. And I'm still telling myself I'm almost 5'9 when I'm not anymore....Just me talkin'....)

snow that stays

The current snow is going to be here for a while. I looked at the 10 day forecast and daytime temperatures don't get out of the 30's until Valentine's day and all the lows are 22 or below.

I remember other snows that stayed around.

Three or four years ago there were 14 storms, most of them on weekends, and the snow piled up around our driveway was over my head. And that all did havoc to church attendance, though I made it every week. Once we had 5 for the 8 am Eucharist and 21 for the 10:15 service and only a handful for the Hispanic Mass at noon--most of those people were not used to negotiating snow in any way.

Then back in the winter of 71-72, when Bern and I were newly married and living in Cambridge, MA, it started snowing in late November and didn't stop until late February. The temperature at all times was below freezing for most all that time. That's the winter I lost my wedding ring and a "Hungarian Sheep dog" found it in the snow and brought it to me in her teeth. So I decided we needed on of those dogs. Unfortunately, there are two breeds known as "Hungarian Sheep Dogs". The one who found my ring was a Commadore. The one we ended up with was a Puli. Commadores are white, weight over 80 pounds and silent. Pulis are black as midnight, about 50 pounds and bark for a living. We're on our second Puli now. They are stubborn, independent, beyond training and astonishingly loyal. we've loved them both. Finney, the first one, when we were young and had young children, was my favorite. Bela, our current Puli is loved by Bern more than any creature we've ever lived with--and there have been dozens. I can forgive him his faults because it makes my heart swell to see how much Bern loves him.

Then there was the snow in Charleston WV in the early 80's of the last century when our street, Hazelwood Avenue, was impassable for about a week. That's when our first Puli was alive. I let him out the front door after 12 hours of snowing and the snow was up even with our front porch, which had five steps up to it. He ran off the porch and disappeared into the snow. I had to go dig him out.

That happened to Bela on Wednesday morning this week after the big snow. He ran off the steps to our deck and couldn't get back. I literally took a shovel and dug him out so he could get up the steps.

Those are the snows that hung around that I remember most. But having lived all my life in places where it snows a lot (except for two years in Alexandria, VA where one year there wasn't even a killing frost) I'm sure there are more awful 'staying snows' I don't remember. One of the things about being me is this: I have a remarkable capacity to forget bad things.

I don't even ponder that capacity...I just give thanks for it.....

Photo from the past....

My friend Mike Miano sent me a photo today of 10 people around a table at what he tells me was a Newman Club meeting at Gary's Country Club.

Well, so he says.

I have no memory whatsoever of this event or where it was! Neither does Bern.

But the faces I know.

They are faces from my childhood, my adolescence, my young adulthood, and two of them are with me still--much older than then, but with me still.

At the far right of the frame is Bern in half profile, only her face and just a hint of her hair. She is in that photo, as now, beautiful.

Then there is me, black framed glasses, actually wearing a tie with dark, dark brown hair. I wish I were savvy  enough to put the photo on this post, but I'm not. If for no other reason so you who know me could see me with dark hair and a hint of a moustache and young, so  young.

Then there is Jane Jaspers, a lovely, wonderful young woman that I often thought about asking for date, but never did.

With her is Kyle Parks, who I knew from the time I was in first grade until we were out of college. Kyle was my best friend for years and years. Then he went to Viet Nam as a Navy pilot and I avoided the war by going to Harvard Divinity School. I haven't seen him since. That particular war divided people in ways like that. I miss him from time to time. For 16 years we were best friends.

The next person, right in the middle of the photo, is, I believe Christine Rogg, younger than me but another dear person. Then there is Leo Kroll, Bern's age, who we knew into college years until he killed himself. I never knew why and regret not knowing or not knowing how to stop that.

Above Leo in this long ago photo is Tottie Cardwell, a good time girl and dear friend of Bern's. Tootie was from one of the richer families and a toot.

Beneath her is the only person I don't recognize. A lovely young woman who doesn't fit into the cracks in my brain enough to recognize.

Then there is, in barely profile, Anthony Pisano, Bern's first cousin who lives in Providence, RI with Uncle Frankie, who is 90. 'Tony' is still in our lives and a dear man--growing old as we are.

Then, inexplicably, at the bottom left of the photo, leaning in to get in the photo, is Jim Hines, who was from Welch, not Gary, and who was a good friend of my brother-in-law Dan in later life. Jim was a victim of AIDS and before he died was an activist and actually worked for the city of Philadelphia as an coordinator of  AIDS services.

I loved Jim but have no idea what he's doing in this photograph.

None of this much makes good sense, like most memories of long ago. But those are people I'd be proud to spend an evening with--especially if I get to be 20 again....

(I probably got one or two of the faces wrong--but I'm getting old and feeble. But I did have several endorphin rushes looking at that photo--though I don't remember the occasion at all--and am so happy Mike sent it to me. I really was THAT young once! Now I have proof.....)