Things you forget you love...

Yesterday I noticed that for the first time in a long time, there was no snow at all in our yards on on our house's roof or anywhere on our property. I breathed a sigh of relief...

Then, I woke  up to snow everywhere and I remembered that I forgot that I love snow. I could love it again because I know it's not sticking around for months or weeks or even days. So much snow this winter made me forget that I love snow, the wonder of it, how it falls on your face, how our Puli, coming back from his morning walk, looks like a snowball until he shakes it all off on the front porch.

So I started thinking about things I forget I love. I've made a list.

1. Avocados--for some reason we don't eat them much, but I put some on our salad tonight and remembered I loved them.

2. Seagulls--there are seldom any in Cheshire, but one was in the Stop and Shop parking lot the other day, obviously deranged or lost to be so far from the sea, but there he was and I remembered I love sea gulls.

3. Sea-salt caramel gelato--actually, I never forget I love this--I simply try to curb my craving from time to time and then give in and....it's magic....

4. Rubber bands--you hardly see rubber bands any more and forget about them, but I opened a drawer on my desk I seldom open and found a bag of Smart Living high quality Rubber Bands, assorted sizes that weighed 1/4 pound. Heaven!

5. Sponge Bob Square Pants--Bern, through some odd and inexplicable moral stance--doesn't watch cartoons. But the other day, when she was out, I walked by the TV room and she'd left on the TV and there he was, that lovable little, undersea guy. I watched an episode and fell back in love.

6. My Dad. I just realized that tomorrow is his 107th birthday. April Fools' Day is when Virgil Hoyt Bradley was born. And I was born a couple of weeks later 40 years later. My mom and dad were much older than my friends parents since I was the only child of a 40 year old father and 38 year old mother. I had friends in southern West Virginia whose grandparents were my parents contemporaries! Sons and fathers have issues. And Dad and I had our share. I came home with Bern the Christmas after we had married with a beard and when Dad greeted us at the door and was appalled, he wandered off into the snow in his bedroom slippers while my mother assured us he'd come back before he froze to death. He was a right-wing Republican (for all the wrong reasons, not to admit there are any 'right' reasons) and I was a left-wing Democrat. (However, as right-wing as he was, he wouldn't recognize his party today...he'd have to be a moderate Democrat to be in the same place on issues he was back then as a Goldwater man....)

But tomorrow would be his birthday and I suddenly am aware of how profoundly he loved me and how he taught me to catch a baseball and bought me a dog that I loved for years, a beagle named Fatso, though he wasn't, and how he was so proud of me in college and seminary and how, even though he was a 'Hard Shell Baptist' (google it if you dare!) my being an Episcopal priest seemed to be something he approved of more than the college English teacher I intended to be. And I remember how, when he came to live with us in New Haven, he would wander away, and I remember how painful it was for both of us for him to go into a nursing home and how disconcerting it was for both of us as he slipped into dementia and how the last time he was at our home in New Haven, he soiled himself and as I was cleaning him in our downstairs bathroom he was weeping and telling me over and again how sorry he was that I had to do that though he had done it for me hundreds of time and I remember how I was with him in St. Raphael's hospital and told him, "I'm going home now, Dad," and he replied, "so am I", though he wasn't, I knew and if he'd been a parishioner I would have known what he meant and as a son I didn't and when I got home the phone rang and he was dead and Mimi hugged my legs and said, "you're an orphan, Daddy" and I was.

And tomorrow is his birthday, and like the late snow, I am so glad, so honored, so humbled to remember that I forgot how much I loved that man, my father, my Dad....Virgil....

rain

I actually love rain. It comes from visiting Cleve Bradley, my step-grandmother, whose house had a tin roof. One night in the rain sleeping under a tin roof will make you love rain forever.

When I was 10 or 12, somewhere in there, I shot 100 foul shots at the basketball goal in our yard every day, no matter what the weather. And shooting foul shots in the rain was the best. I'd end up soaked and peeled off my clothes in the bathroom after such an outing and wrapped myself in towels dried by the air and sun and not a clothes dryer and would lay on my bed, covered with towels for a while and ponder how wondrous the wet basketball felt in my hands and how being wet was like being born, since we come from the sea. (I was a science geek at that age age and pondered how amazing it was that water gave life....)

I love rain so much that I thought at one time I should live in Seattle until I found out that the annual rainfall in Connecticut is just about the annual rainfall in Seattle.

I was just on the back porch smoking a cigarette (OK, I know it is socially unacceptable to smoke! I get it! Leave me out of your political correctness!) Looking toward the street light on the front edge of our property and I noticed droplets of rain falling from the lines, golden and wondrous. At first imagined there were fireflies dropping from the rain but then, after a moment or two of actual thought process, realized we won't have fireflies in Connecticut until July or so.

Anyhow, it was beautiful to see the rain falling, catching the golden light of the street lamp. Another reason to love rain.

I especially like rain in September on the beach on Oak Island, North Carolina, where we go every September. There is always lightening far out in the Atlantic, streaking down to touch the water there. Again, the beauty of a rainy night.

Our daughter Mimi is with us for a day or two. She has a job that takes her back and forth from NYC to the Berkshires--she's the new development officer for Jacob's Pillow, a dance place. Tim, her fiancee is going to be away for a week doing work stuff in Chicago  (for Linked In, whatever that really is) so she came to see us for a couple of days rather than driving back to Brooklyn. The fact that Mimi is under our roof and it's raining is yet another reason I love the rain because my love for Mimi is boundless.

Our Puli dog doesn't like the rain, so taking him out for his 10 pm walk is going to be a pain. But he loves Mimi like I do and has been ecstatic since she arrived this afternoon, following her around, laying outside her bed room door, smitten, so maybe Mimi being here will make him not so upset about going out to pee in a half hour or so.

Rain, like Mimi being in our house, makes me feel safe, good, comfortable, assured, warm....

Ba-KET-ball

That's what Bern and I call it in our personal patois--Ba-KET-ball. Just like we call 'sleeping' "see-pin" and 'comfortable' "comproble". I suspect people who've known each other one year short of half-a-century and have been married 43 of those years develop a vocabulary all their own.

We still call motorcycles "mo-mo-cycles" which is what Josh called them as a toddler.

But I'm writing about ba-KET-ball right now. It's March Madness and Bern is almost certifiably 'mad' by the sweet sixteen.

As far as I know, she doesn't have an athletic bone in her body, but she loves sports--basketball and tennis most of all.

I tried to teach her tennis when we were dating, but when she figured out you had to chase your own balls--that there weren't ball-boys-and-girls, she lost interest in learning.

What is wonderful this year is that she was in West Virginia last week and didn't get around to filling out a bracket. So, it's much more calm watching with her because she isn't always worrying about who she picked to win. (Five or six years ago, she won two consecutive bracket pools with some friends of ours and people they worked with. After the second win, they banned her....)

I didn't fill out a bracket either, so it's lots more fun for me. Normally, when I do pick winners, I lose the sheet of paper and don't remember who I picked. And woe unto me if I keep up with my bracket and do better than Bern....Hell hath no fury like a woman bracket is out scored....

We have this running argument because I root for the same teams I've always rooted for and she roots for teams she's come to like lately. It's just a psychological difference. For example, if Satan played for the Yankees, they'd still be 'my team'. But she doesn't like the LA Lakers (my pro ba-KET-ball team) because she thinks Kobi is a jerk.

We do agree on one thing in college sports: our three favorite teams are West Virginia University and whoever is playing Virginia Tech and Notre Dame that day....

Our agreed upon mutual hatred of Virginia Tech and Notre Dame has contributed mightily to our 43 years of marriage....

The only time I was ever in Germany

It was on the way to Israel in December of 1999. We landed in Frankfort in the wee hours of the morning. I had forgotten all about it (but at my age 'forgetting' is normal....) But I was reading from the notebook I took on that trip and found this poem.

Watching dawn come at Frankfort Airport

Staring out on a school of
     planes
(neatly arranged like huge
  patients in a ward
  attached with feeding tubes
  of walkways to the
  terminal)
dawn creeps in.

It comes as a lightening
    of the sky
      from black
      to indigo
      to navy blue
      to steely gray.

Somewhere on the flight
somewhere over the north Atlantic
somewhere at 37,000 feet
I lost six hours.
Dawn comes late in Frankfort
   in December
but my watch is still at
   10 'til 2 in the tiny
   hours of Eastern Standard Time.

Who owes me these six hours?
How do I get them back?
All around me members of
my group are sprawled
  on black, comfortable
   seats,
dreaming that in sleeping they
  can steal back the time.
But those six hours are
   simply gone, I tell you!
Poof! Disappeared! Lost....

Now a monorail passes outside the window,
   people lit up inside, heading for airplanes.

I can see planes dropping to earth
and leaping away on faraway
runways.

People are trapped inside
each of them, headed toward
Budapest, Singapore,
New York, Moscow,
New Dehlia. Losing
or finding hours as they
go.

I hope someone nice finds
 the six hours I lost
 and uses them well.

Lazy day

I've done almost nothing today. I slept until almost 10 and took the dog out and watched a little tennis on TV and ate three meals. And oh, I did go to Bob's to by 2 pairs of pants (gray and dark blue--I only have one pair of pants that aren't jeans or khakis) but my wardrobe isn't what I want to write about, I want to write about what a lazy day this has been.

Well, I did buy Bern a birthday present and card while I was out looking for pants. And I read almost a whole book and will finish it before I sleep. And I played hearts on the computer and talked to Bea at the Cluster office and wrote half a dozen emails and was outside for a while looking at the sky, thinking of the dwarf planet some scientists found in the last few days. And I fed the dog and the cat both breakfast and dinner and took a shower.

Just goes to show you, even on a lazy day, things happen, stuff gets done almost in spite of itself.

But I'm retired. I need a lazy day now and again....

It's gotten cold again

The chill in back in the air for a few days--maybe a snowfall, either a dusting or a blizzard, depending on who you listen to.

If you asked me "what is you're most positive character trait?" I would tell you this: patience.

So, I'll wait for Spring to be sprung. I'll wait for warmth to come and stay. I'll be patient.

I wasn't always, you know, patient. I used to, 35 years ago, have proudly on my office wall at St. James in Charleston, WV, a poster that said, "God, give me patience...NOW!"

And that was who I was.

At Emmanuel Church, Killingworth, we read the chapter below. What people wanted to know was this: 'were you really that arrogant, that unkind, that self-centered?" and the answer is, resoundingly, 'yes!'

And I know now all that bluster and arrogance was to cover for my self-doubt and not knowing what I was doing...always a bad thing for a human being....I'm just thankful and humbled that with teachers like Fr. Dodge, I grew out of all that and learned humility and patience.

Spring will come. It will. And I'll be here to greet it.....

Father Dodge and Hot Stuff

When I arrived at St. James, the congregation was being served by Fr. Bill Dodge, a retired school teacher who was a Title Nine priest. Title Nine is a strange little piece of Canon Law also known as “the old man’s canon”—though to be politically correct it should now be known as “the old wo/man’s canon”. (If it’s not “ageism” to call people “old” these days….) Episcopal Church law is more strict about ordination than most any denomination; however, Title Nine is an “out”, a way around the rules for those late in life who feel called to priesthood. If the Church determines the call is legitimate, the candidate is allowed to study privately, usually with a near-by priest or group of priests and be tested after the term of study is met.

That’s what Fr. Dodge had done. He’d become a priest through the back door. When I was newly ordained, after four years of theological study and two (count ‘em—two) Master level degrees, I had little patience with Title Nine priests and even less with Fr. Dodge. He was in his 70’s and, to my exalted standards, not up to snuff. But I was going to be a deacon for a year and needed somebody to help me liturgically. Deacon’s Masses, which are weird both theologically and as liturgy, would serve from time to time, but the congregation deserved a “real “ Mass monthly or so and Fr. Dodge was the best I could find. Plus, for reasons beyond my comprehension, the parishioners seemed to have a deep affection for him and were always happy to see him. It wouldn’t have been astute of me to get rid of the old codger since I needed him and the parish wouldn’t like it.

(It’s embarrassing and humbling to listen to myself talk like that! I thought of myself as such “hot stuff” in those days! I was God’s gift to St. James Church and worldwide Anglicanism as well. At least that’s what I thought. The truth is, looking back, I was brash, arrogant and unkind almost all the time. Hot Stuff, indeed!)

In addition, I considered myself a liturgical genius---the be all and end all when it came to ritual and celebration. In fact, I’d spent four years at Harvard and Virginia Seminary, neither of which has any claim to teaching liturgical practice. Liturgy at Harvard had been mostly of the “feel-good”, lots of balloons and readings from Kahil Gibran. Worship at HDS began with Unitarian politeness and didn’t go much further or deeper. In fact, any resemblance to Christian, much less Anglican worship was totally accidental. A typical chapel service would include—in no particular order—readings from the Koran or Hindu scripture, a little jazz played by my friend Dan Kiger or other musical students, some silent meditation and the singing of some of the hymns of Hildegard of Bingham. The Archbishop of Canterbury would have been horrified! The closest thing to a Eucharist I remember was when Rabbi Katinstein brought some Passover bread and Harvey Cox talked about the religious symbolism of sharing food and we all went up and took a piece for ourselves. I loved it, felt I was in the forefront of liturgical renewal.

Virginia Seminary was, when I was there, a “Low Church” seminary. That meant that worship was restrained, proper and in good order. That (“restrained, proper and in good order”) meant that no Popish nonsense would be allowed to infect the purity of Protestant worship. One of the lame jokes we often told was this: “You know what streaking means at VTS? Running through the chapel in full Eucharistic vestments!” There was a lot of controversy at the seminary when I was there because altar candles had been added to the “communion table”. Candles made some of the faculty nervous. You shouldn’t open the door to “catholic” practice---first come candles and then (gasp!) incense and the adoration of the blessed sacrament!

Once, during my senior year, some of the students from more High Church dioceses organized a “high mass” with chanting, bowing, genuflecting, incense and much crossing of oneself. I was fascinated. I’d never seen such a thing. My old nemesis, Reginald Fuller, was the celebrant. He was “streaking” around the chancel in his vestments, censing the altar, chanting in his Oxbridge accent, genuflecting like one of those little yellow birds that keep dipping into a bowl of water. Several of the faculty walked out in a huff at such going’s-on. There was serious discussion over sherry about suspending the student planned Wednesday services.

That one service was all I knew about Anglo-Catholic worship when I arrived at St. James. Fr. Dodge, I have to admit, seemed to know when to cross himself and genuflect (which I couldn’t do without nearly falling on my face). St. James, like most African American parishes, had been founded in a rich High Church tradition that disappeared when the first white priest came to be their Vicar. So, one good reason for keeping Fr. Dodge around was so I could figure out how to celebrate in a way that was Anglo-Catholic in a mirror dimly. So, those times I’d let him come and celebrate I’d watch him out of the corner of my eye to try to find a pattern to his movements.

However, Fr. Dodge didn’t seem to follow any discernable pattern. I came to believe that if he ever knew what he was doing, he’d forgotten how and was crossing himself at random places in the service. Even though I didn’t know how to celebrate a real mass, I resented him for not knowing! And that wasn’t the end of my complaints about him. His hands shook when he elevated the host and chalice, sometimes spilling wine on the fair linen. He’d lose his place and I’d have to prompt him with a stage whisper several times during the service. He mispronounced words all the time. Several times, rather than “in your infinite love” he said “in your INFANT love”! I mean really, how much could the good folks at St. James and I stand of this sloppiness?

And the one time I let him preach—horrors! He read his sermon haltingly at best, mixing words up and shaking to beat the band. Besides that, if he’d had any kind of decent delivery at all, his theology was more Pilgrim Holiness than Anglican. He talked about Jesus as if he were a good guy from down the street, someone who would teach you a lot and lead you to heaven when you die. Obviously, he’d never studied homiletics—or much of anything else so far as I could tell. I was embarrassed for him, but more than that, I was embarrassed that I needed him.

So the day of my ordination finally came. I invited Fr. Dodge to be in the service out of guilt over what I planned to do. He was so excited about being near the altar with the Bishop and the two dozen other priests. He told me afterwards that it was one of the greatest days of his life and that he was so proud to work with me.

The next week I fired him.

Well, it wasn’t really a “firing”. I drove up to his house high up on a hill about 20 miles from Charleston and talked to him on his front porch. I explained how now that I was a priest I really didn’t need for him to drive all that way twice a month. I told him he needed to take it easier at his age. I reminded him that there were two churches much closer to his home that would probably be overjoyed to have his help. I thanked him for all he’d done and told him that I really didn’t need any coffee and that I’d had lunch already. “No,” I said, “I really don’t have time for a piece of pecan pie.”

He said he understood. He told me how much he’d enjoyed working with me and how much he’d learned from me. “You’re going to be a wonderful priest,” he said.

I thanked him and slinked away to my car. By the time I got back to Charleston, what few qualms I’d had about what I’d done were melted away. I was a priest—a wonderful one at that—and I was finally free of Fr. Dodge. Things would really get rolling now at St. James. It would be like releasing the emergency brake that had held me back while I was a deacon.

A month or so later, Remitha came to see me. Made an appointment and everything instead of just dropping in like usual. We even sat in my office and did small talk—something Remitha never did and wasn’t good at. Finally, she cleared her voice and began….

“I wanted to come and find out if anything was wrong with Fr. Dodge,” she said. “I notice he hasn’t been here since your ordination.”

I started explaining how since I was a priest now I didn’t need him as much. “And,” I lied, “at his age, he and his wife felt it was a long way for him to drive….”

She held up her hand and got up. “That’s fine,” she said, “just as long as he isn’t sick again….”

She was half way to the door when I caught my breath and said, “Again?”

She spoke with her back to me. “Well, his first stoke wasn’t too bad….”

“First stroke….” Is all I could get out.

“But the second one laid him up for months,” she said. Then facing me she continued in a soft voice, “but you know, since we didn’t have a priest, he got his wife to drive him down and he did the service sitting on a stool. He couldn’t give us communion, of course, but Morris and Ben did that for him….And when the service was over two of the younger men would carry him down to his wheelchair and…..”

I didn’t hear much more. I wished she’d stop talking or I’d be struck deaf and dumb or the floor would open up and I could crawl inside.

“You know what I admire most about Fr. Dodge?” she was asking when I tuned back in.

I shook my head and tried to speak. I think I was struck dumb.

“How he was willing to continue his ministry even though that wonderful reading voice he had and the regal way he held himself at the altar was taken away from him.”

“He had a good voice…?” I croaked.

“Sometimes he’d sing a solo for us,” she said, killing me with her matter-or-fact tone. “And I wish you could have heard him read the service,” she continued, consigning me with her smile to one of the lowest circles of hell. “Before the strokes he was one of the best speakers I ever heard. He gave up a career in radio to be a schoolteacher. Did he ever tell you that?”

I found that I was sitting back down though I didn’t remember doing it. “No,” I said, softly, “he never did.”

“Well,” she said, backing toward the door, “just shows what a humble man he was. Humility makes a man a wonderful priest….”

Then she was gone and I was left alone to consider humility.

(One of the things that happened at VTS on a regular basis was “Bridge before Lunch”. There were half-a-dozen or so card tables and while whoever was assigned to help set up lunch was doing their job, bridge would break out. My partner most of the time was Rodge Wood. I was a novice at bridge but Rodge was a master. He’d played in tournaments before coming to seminary. As inept as I was, Rodge carried me. We were a good team, so good that none of our classmates would play with us but the underclassmen could be duped into a game.

They’d see us at a table and come over and ask if we’d like a game. Usually, since no one wants to be in over their heads, they’d say, “are you any good?” Rodge would answer for us both. “Jim’s bad and I’m OK.” Then we’d embarrass them for a few hands.

Once, over lunch, I asked Rodge why he didn’t tell other people the truth about his playing.

Rodge quoted scripture: “He who humbles himself will be exalted,” he said.

Somehow, I don’t think that’s what the passage means.)

“Humility” has the same root as “humus”, dirt, earth. True humility isn’t about demeaning yourself or pretending to be less than you are. True humility is realizing, beyond any doubt, who you are and where you come from. “Ashes to ashes and dust to dust.”

Being humble means being close to the earth from which we all come. A friend of mine often says she “doesn’t trust anyone who hasn’t had their face of the pavement.” What she means, I believe, is that once you’ve hit bottom you realize that whatever you accomplish or however far you rise the earth is patiently waiting for you. The bigger part of humility is perspective and point of view.

Things look rather distorted when you’re a Hot Shot. It’s like flying in a plane and thinking about how everything down on earth looks small and toy-like. Things may look that way from up high, but you best not forget that they aren’t really small—it’s just your perspective and point of view.

While Remitha talked to me about Fr. Dodge, knowing all the while what infamy I had committed, what a rat I had been, my face had descended from “on high” to the grit and grime of the pavement. The ground, the earth, the humus had swallowed me up. It was a blessed gift, one I’d need to receive countless times again.

I called Fr. Dodge and drove out to his house. I told him that I had been wrong. I told him that I wanted him to come back, twice a month, to celebrate and preach once each month. I told him I realized that I didn’t want to do it all by myself. I told him I was sorry and asked him to please consider coming back.

He was as gracious as before, only this time I hadn’t had lunch and we ate tuna-fish sandwiches on homemade bread, washed it down with sweet ice tea and each had two pieces of Mrs. Dodge’s pecan pie.

For a year or so after that, I sat at his figurative liturgical knee. I came to delight in his mispronunciations—“infant love” might work better than “infinite love” when all is said and done. It became a pleasure to prompt him or merely point to the altar book in the right place. I finally started “lining” out the service when he celebrated by pointing to each line as he read. (In fact, I train the seminarians who work with me these day to do that for me!) And, for the first time, I noticed how he was with the parishioners of St. James. He never pretended to remember names when he didn’t. He listened to them intently and didn’t say much in return. He smiled almost constantly and the slight crookedness of his smile from the strokes came to be dear to me. I never bought his simplistic theology, but I did learn that if we can’t talk about heaven we most likely will never be able to imagine it…or go there….

Then he died, suddenly and in his sleep. It was my honor to commit his ashes to the ground. I drove up to his house on the hill and scattered them in the garden he loved to work in, among his flowers and bushes. Mrs. Dodge told me how much “Billy” had enjoyed working with me and being at St. James.

“He told me many times that you were a wonderful priest,” she said, brushing away a tear.

“Takes one to know one,” I told her and she beamed.

“That makes him happy,” she said, “I just know it does.”

We left Fr. Dodge in the garden (and in the heaven he so clearly imagined) while we went inside to tell stories, laugh and cry and eat some pecan pie.

Someone...

I haven't recommended a book lately, but there's one I would love for you to read. It's by Alice McDermott and it's called Someone.

There is an elegance and beauty to Alice McDermott's prose that is hard to describe. And this novel is about very ordinary people. It begins between the two world wars in Brooklyn and seldom leaves that borough. Marie, the first person narrator is an unremarkable child when the novel begins and remains rather unremarkable as she grows up, has a family, grows old. But the story she tells is as remarkable as any I've heard lately. And full of grace and humor and deep, deep sadness.

The way Someone is told is as remarkable as the story itself. It is told in concentric circles, arching out to the deep future and then back to the past and passing through the present in both directions. It is not linear and yet it is so layered and so faithfully told and so rich and poignant and rare that I think it  has moved into my favorite novels of all time.

Treat yourself--but don't forget some Kleenex and your laughter....