Privileged

I woke up this morning (after hitting my snooze alarm four times) and what I felt was this: privileged.

I only set my alarm on Tuesdays (to go to Clericus) and Sundays (to go to church). But I enjoy the snooze alarm so much, maybe I should set it every day. I'll ponder that....

When I wake up (as I have for over 67 years now, thank God) I realize how privileged I am.

I live in a free country. I live in a safe town. I have a wife I love like a rock. I have two wondrous and gifted children (both of whom read a lot). I have the best three grand-daughters ever. I've never been abused in any way. My parents and my extended family on both sides loved and spoiled me. I'm smarter than I need to be. I have a remarkable sense of humor. Nothing much makes me tense or anxious or mean. I read a lot. I'm older than I ever imagined being and still feel decades younger than I am. I know how to type and write a blog. I love white wine. I can eat almost anything and not feel bad later. I love my life. Almost everything either amuses or engages me. I am a liberal Democrat and an Episcopalian. Olives are wondrous--as is blue cheese and Italian ices and Marlboro Red Label cigarettes (I know, I know, don't hassle me about that, ok?) And I really enjoy bird songs and our Puli dog and Lukie our cat and Public Radio and movies and our parakeet and TV and the Yankees and the night sky.

I don't have to spend any part of my day walking somewhere to a well and carrying water home on my head in a bucket. The electricity is always on. Our house is heated and cooled as needed. Bern's garden gives me joy. I do almost nothing most of the time (besides reading a lot) and have all the money I need and more I don't need.

So, why shouldn't my attitude on awaking be 'privileged'?

Perhaps better, it should be called blessed, since I'm a priest and all.

Don't know why that wasn't the word I first thought of.

I am, by God, BLESSED!!!

And because of that, by God, I am grateful, humble, privileged, wondrously thankful, ecstatic, That's what I plan to be tomorrow, when I wake up, whenever I do, not prompted by an alarm clock...it could be nearly 10 a.m., by the way, since I'm retired and that can be...but whenever I wake up tomorrow, one more day toward paradise and so grateful to be alive, I plan to feel 'blessed' and ecstatic.

I promise you that....

Stuff that makes my head feel like it's about to explode

1. Parallel Universes

We started a conversation about parallel Universes today at Clericus. Mike seemed to know more about the physics that I do. But it makes my brain seriously near exploding to talk about how, in a parallel universe things might be happening differently. Like I might have married someone besides Bern, had different children, been killed in Viet Nam (For my friend, Bobby Joe, who was killed in Viet Nam, I hope things worked out differently in his parallel universes), had different grandchildren, committed suicide, had parents that didn't love me, won the Nobel Prize.

I have enough to deal with in this Universe. Don't blow up my mind with other options....

2. Bit Coins

I don't even know what they are or how it works and yet today I listened to an hour long discussion about 'Dark Wallet', where you can keep you Bit Coins secret. Bit Coins aren't, in any sense I understand, "real". My checking account will be worth as much tomorrow as it is today. And the day after. Bit Coins, as I understand it, can be worth vastly different amounts from day to day. You could get rich tomorrow or be broke. And to have a "Dark Wallet" to keep them in in doubly brain explosive since they aren't 'real' and the 'dark wallet' isn't REAL either. Leave me out of this conversation.

3. People who don't believe in Climate Change

I have no time to even discuss folks who don't believe in Science.

4. Made up days

Last week I discovered there was a 'Daughter Day'. I called Mimi and wished her well. I wish now I hadn't. I don't have a Father or Mother any more so I don't need to observe the made-up days of Mothers' Day and Fathers' Day, but I am a Father so I'll have to endure it in June. How about a "CPA Day" or a "Garbage Collectors' Day" or a 'Day Care Provider' Day? Those make as much sense. When, by the way, is "Guys whose brains are about to explode Day?"

Birds--how I love them....

I was sitting out on our deck at dusk and heard the songs of at least half-a-dozen birds. Wondrous! Beautiful.

I even saw two young Blue Jays. I'm not sure I've ever seen baby Blue Jays before. We have lots of Robins and Cardinals who are young--but a Blue Jay is a new one on me.

I sometimes think that it might be better in the long run for us humans to simply disappear and give the world back to animals without our carbon footprint.

A baby Blue Jay doesn't exist simply to give me pleasure. It exists because the world belongs to the creatures.

If we weren't here, the polar ice would return. The climate change we've caused would, soon enough, regress. And creatures would live without fear of our taking away their land to make subdivisions. Actually, it wouldn't take very long at all for nature to take back the space the humans have claimed. My house is 214 years old. It would only take a decade or two without our caring for it for it to began to be overcome by nature. Creatures would find a way in, trees would grow near the foundation, vines would overcome the walls. In a century or so, there would be little recognizable as a human habitation.

Maybe Nature would be better off without us.

But I'd sure miss the birdsongs at dawn and dusk. I truly would.....

Distopian hopefulness

My friend, John Anderson, sent me this poem, thinking I would like it. I do, but it is terribly troubling and right on. Thought I'd share it with you.



A Brief for the Defense --Jack Albert
Sorrow everywhere. Slaughter everywhere. If babies are not starving someplace, they are starving somewhere else. With flies in their nostrils.
But we enjoy our lives because that’s what God wants.
Otherwise the mornings before summer dawn would not
be made so fine. The Bengal tiger would not
be fashioned so miraculously well. The poor women
at the fountain are laughing together between
the suffering they have known and the awfulness
in their future, smiling and laughing while somebody
in the village is very sick. There is laughter
every day in the terrible streets of Calcutta,
and the women laugh in the cages of Bombay.
If we deny our happiness, resist our satisfaction,
we lessen the importance of their deprivation.
We must risk delight. We can do without pleasure,
but not delight. Not enjoyment. We must have
the stubbornness to accept our gladness in the ruthless
furnace of this world. To make injustice the only
measure of our attention is to praise the Devil.
If the locomotive of the Lord runs us down,
we should give thanks that the end had magnitude.
We must admit there will be music despite everything.
We stand at the prow again of a small ship
anchored late at night in a tiny port
looking over the sleeping island: the waterfront
is three shuttered cafes and one naked light burning.
To hear the faint sound of oars in the silence as a rowboat
comes slowly out and then goes back is truly worth
all the years of sorrow that are to come

today was Emmaus...

I don't have the sermon I preached today written down, not even notes. But the gospel was the journey to Emmaus and when I got home I found a sermon on my computer that I preached on April 14 some twelve years ago. Because I love the Emmaus story so, I thought I'd share this sermon, written 7 months after 9/11.

APRIL 14, 2002

We don’t know why they’re going to Emmaus, we are told only of the journey, not the reason for it.

Maybe they lived near Emmaus and were simply headed home after spending Passover in Jerusalem.

Maybe they had business there—business so vital that it had to be handled even though their hearts were broken and their minds confused.

Or maybe they felt they had to “get out of town”, had to escape the hysteria that had gripped the disciples since Jesus’ crucifixion. So maybe they just needed to get away and sort out their feelings and thoughts at a distance.

We don’t know why they’re going to Emmaus, we only know they are.

And we don’t know exactly who they are. We only know one of their names: Cleopas and his name appears nowhere else in the gospels. John’s gospel tells us one of the women who stayed near the cross was “Mary, the wife of Clopas.” The names are similar and if Cleopas and Clopas were the same person, we might speculate that his companion is his wife, Mary. But all that is conjecture. We don’t really know who they are.

We know this: they were not members of Jesus’ inner circle. But they must have been followers of his because they knew the details of the women who went to the tomb at dawn and came back to tell “the apostles.” Cleopas and his traveling companion had been with the Eleven before they sat out for Emmaus. More than that, we do not know.

Truth be told, we don’t even know where Emmaus was! There were two villages called “Emmaus”—one some seven miles from Jerusalem and the other nearly 20 miles away. Both are a long walk, even for people used to walking, so scholars have tried to locate some place closer to the Holy City. But, in the end, we don’t know where Emmaus was.

This is what we do know: two travelers set out on a journey and encountered a stranger on their way.

A friend of mine says there are really only two ways to start a story. Either “someone begins a journey” or “a stranger arrives.” This story is so rich and rare that both those things happen at the beginning.

And this is what else we know: the two travelers tell the Stranger their tale of pain and confusion and he teaches them what the story means.

And we know this, as well: as they arrived at their journey’s end, they “urged him strongly” to stay with them. The Stranger became their “host” at dinner and when he took, blessed, broke and gave them bread and in those actions, in that moment, they knew the Stranger wasn’t a Stranger at all. They had shared the road with Jesus.

Finally, we know this: after Jesus disappeared, Cleopas and his companion remembered how their hearts “had burned within them” as they journeyed on the road and they left immediately to go back to their community in Jerusalem, to share their news. And when they arrived, the mood of fear and confusion had been changed to rejoicing because Jesus was risen from the dead, Simon Peter has seen the Lord. And they shared their story too, the story of the breaking of the bread.

This is my favorite passage from the gospels—it is so rich and full that I wish we could spend hours just being with the Emmaus story.

I want to spend the rest of our time this morning looking at encountering Strangers and welcoming them into our lives and to our table.

I always tell the seminarians who minister with us at St. John’s that the best way to preach is to always “preach to yourself.” Preach to yourself, I tell them, and let the people in the congregation eve’s drop.

I’ve seldom preached a sermon so much to myself as this one. But you can listen in.

Of all the negative effects of September 11 and the events since, the one that pains me most is the new-found fear of the Stranger. It began with the irrational, but understandable, fear and distrust of anyone who seems to resemble an Arab or a Muslim. But it seems to me that it has mushroomed far beyond that. In many ways, it seems to me, we have “circled the wagons” as a culture. Our society has taken on a “siege mentality”—a distrust of whatever and whoever is not familiar and immediate to us.

I notice it in myself—and what I should talk about is ME, and let you see if you recognize yourselves in it.

I have a low-level anxiety that I didn’t have seven months ago. I notice that I don’t smile and greet people on the street the way I used to. I notice that I avoid crowded places—which I never much liked—even more than before. I haven’t had to be on an airplane and I’ve noticed I’m relieved that I haven’t needed to fly. Someone I care for deeply told me last week that I seemed “paranoid”. And since she said it, I’ve been wondering if there isn’t some truth in that. I know that I’ve been more self-absorbed—I find myself “complaining” more and being more skeptical and cynical and negative about world events and daily events than I’ve been before. My life-long tendency toward being a hypochondriac—something I’ve dealt with well for a decade—is creeping back into my day-to-day experiences. I sleep well, but I haven’t been dreaming much and my dreams have long been a way for me to sort though what’s going on in my inner life. I feel cut off from my inner life. I don’t pray as much. I feel lonely sometimes, something I almost never feel.

All little things—things that taken one by one might be explained by indigestion or too little sleep—but taken as a whole, I can see a shift in my life that matches our culture’s mood. This is just about me, but you can listen in….

At least I’m beginning to notice these things. I think they’ve all been true for months now and I’m only beginning to notice. But noticing is good: being present to the darkness is the first step toward embracing the Light.

And that’s what we’re called to do as Christians—face the Darkness and embrace the Light. Find new life in the midst of death. Cling to hope and live out of hope in the midst of despair. Remember how our hearts burned within us when all occasion spoke of chill and loss. Invite the Stranger into our hearts and lives and to our Table.

But all that is part of “the next steps.” The first step is to “notice” the darkness and pain and death and hopelessness—not flee from it, not deny it, not avoid it, but recognize and acknowledge all that.

The beginning of healing, for me (since this is about me) is to “notice” and recognize and acknowledge how broken and incomplete and dis-eased I am.

The first stranger I must welcome is the Stranger within me—the one who “always” journeys with me, the one I cannot leave behind, the one I cannot avoid except at my own souls peril.

How can I pray for the terrorists as well as their victims—and I know, deep down, I am called to pray for the terrorists—until I can embrace the revenge and anger in my own heart.?

How can I pray for my brother priests in the Roman Catholic Church, as well as for their victims—and I know, deep down, I am called to pray for those priests—until I can embrace the abuse and misuse of power in my own heart?.

How can I pray for the Israeli’s and the Palestinians—who seem literally “hell bent” on destroying each other—and I know, deep down, I am called to pray for both sides in that war—until I can embrace the resentment and jealousy in my own heart?

How can I pray for those who, in the name of SECURITY, would take away my rights and liberties—rights and liberties secured by heroism and sacrifice—until I can embrace the fear and distrust within me?

How can I pray for and support those more courageous than me who stand up and seek to make peace and find justice until I can embrace the cowardice and selfishness within me?

It is only when we can 'embrace' the Stranger within us that we are freed to 'embace' the Stranger beside us, sharing our road, opening our minds to 'the other', making our hearts burn within us....

Where are you Spring?

It's 40 degrees and raining right now. I have stubbornly worn sandals for the past two week, urging Spring to come in glory, to no avail.

It's 40 degrees and a cold rain is falling on the evening of May 3rd.

I often tell people about the seasons in Anawalt, WV where I grew up. In my childhood, even though we were south of Richmond, Virginia, we were far enough up in the mountains that the seasons looked like this:

Winter didn't really begin until after Christmas and only lasted until the end of February. We had lots of snow but seldom had a 'snow day' since we were far enough south that the snow tended to fall and melt over and over for about two months.

Spring came with a vengeance in early March and lasted through April, May and June. Verdant doesn't begin to describe how the mountains were for those four months. It was abundance multiplied by abundance. Abundance squared.

July and August were summer--dry and hot because of the latitude--but short because of being at 1800 feet or so above sea level. The altitude brought autumn in early September--and like spring--it lasted around 4 months...well into December because of how far south we were. It almost never snowed before Christmas.

Now, for my money, that 2/4/2/4 ratio of winter/spring/summer/fall is about as perfect as you could desire. All the seasons, but in a more pleasing balance.

Too bad that to live in Anawalt would be to live in an area where run-off from strip mines and mountain top mining has damaged the water, where the average age is the highest in any US county and the age of death is lowest, where 100,000 people lived when I was a child and now 27,000 live, where your kids ride an hour on a bus to high school and Oxycontin addition is higher than almost anywhere.

What a waste of a wondrous and gentle temperate climate....

Right now--on May 3--it is raining and 40 degrees in Cheshire....In a couple of weeks, I predict, it will be 85 and we'll all be complaining about the heat the same way we've been complaining about the cold since November. Connecticut is the Land of No Spring--straight from sleet to blistering heat most of the time.....Fall is nice here though. One out of 4 doesn't seem quite fair, though....

God Bless (truly) Janice Hahn

I have never been one for ecumenical worship and prayer. I am an Anglican for a lot of reasons that make worshipping with other Christians problematic.

Ecumenical worship is where nobody gets what they want from worship.

At a Prayer Breakfast in California this week, James Dobson, who is the head of a leaning-toward-
fundamentalist 'family' group, interjected his opinion that President Obama is 'the abortion President' into what was to be a 'religious' gathering, not a political one.

Janice Hahn, who is a member of California's congress, walked out and later said "James Dobson highjacked what was supposed to be a religious gathering and made it political.

Religion and Politics have, over the last couple of decades, become one in the same. Folks hold political views for what they see as 'religious' reasons and in an area where never the twain should meet, the two categories--religion and politics--collapse into each other.

If I wanted to make a political statement about my 'religion' I would have to say that Jesus taught an ethic of love for the outcast and condemned, at every opportunity, wealth.

That would not make me very good 'ecumenical' fodder.

That's why I'm not big on ecumenical things. I am an Anglican and a Liberal for lots of reasons.