Number 1000

first post

This is the 1000th post I've done. It's only right and proper and good that the 1000th be the first ever, back four years and several months ago. If for no other reason to let you an I know what the title means. Shalom, jim

Sitting under the Castor Oil Tree (March 7, 2009)

The character in the Bible I have always been drawn to in Jonah. I identify with his story. Like Jonah, I have experienced being taken where I didn't want to go by God and I've been disgruntled with the way things went. The belly of a big old fish isn't a pleasant means of travel either!

The story ends (in case you don't know it) with Jonah upset and complaining on a hillside over the city of Nineva, which God has saved through Jonah. Jonah didn't want to go there to start with--hence the ride in the fish stomach--and predicted that God would save the city though it should have been destroyed for its wickedness. "You dragged me half way around the world," he tells God, "and didn't destroy the city....I knew it would turn out this way. I'm angry, so angry I could die!"

God causes a tree to grow to shade Jonah from the sun (scholars think it might have been a castor oil tree--the impications are astonishing!). Then God sends a worm to kill the tree. Well, that sets Jonah off! "How dare you kill my tree?" he challanges the creator. "I'm so angry I could die...."

God simply reminds him that he is upset at the death of a tree he didn't plant or nurture and yet he doesn't see the value of saving all the people of the great city Ninivah...along with their cattle and beasts.

And the story ends. No resolution. Jonah simply left to ponder all that. There's no sequel either--no "Jonah II" or "Jonah: the next chapter", nothing like that. It's just Jonah, sitting under the bare branches of the dead tree, pondering.

What I want to do is use this blog to do simply that, ponder about things. I've been an Episcopal priest for over 30 years. I'm approaching a time to retire and I've got a lot of pondering left to do--about God, about the church, about religion, about life and death and everything involved in that. Before the big fish swallowed me up and carried me to my own Nineva (ordination in the Episcopal Church) I had intended a vastly different life. I was going to write "The Great American Novel" for starters and get a Ph.D. in American Literature and disappear into some small liberal arts college, most likely in the Mid-Atlantic states and teach people like me--rural people, Appalachians and southerners, simple people, deep thinkers though slow talkers...lovely for all that--to love words and write words themselves.

God (I suppose, though I even ponder that...) had other ideas and I ended up spending the lion's share of my priesthood in the wilds of two cities in Connecticut (of all places) among tribes so foreign to me I scarcly understood their language and whose customs confounded me. And I found myself often among people (The Episcopal Cult) who made me axious by their very being. Which is why I stuck to urban churches, I suppose--being a priest in Greenwich would have sent me into some form of shock...as I would have driven them to hypertension at the least.

I am one who 'ponders' quite a bit and hoped this might be a way to 'ponder in print' for anyone else who might be leaning in that direction to read.

Ever so often, someone calls my bluff when I go into my "I'm just a boy from the mountains of West Virginia" persona. And I know they're right. I've lived too long among the heathens of New England to be able to avoid absorbing some of their alien customs and ways of thinking. Plus, I've been involved in too much education to pretend to be a rube from the hills. But I do, from time to time, miss that boy who grew up in a part of the world as foreign as Albania to most people, where the lush and endless mountains pressed down so majestically that there were few places, where I lived, that were flat in an area wider than a football field. That boy knew secrets I am only beginning, having entered my sixth decade of the journey toward the Lover of Souls, to remember and cherish.

My maternal grandmother, who had as much influence on me as anyone I know, used to say--"Jimmy, don't get above your raisin'". I probably have done that, in more ways that I'm able to recognize, but I ponder that part of me--buried deeply below layer after layer of living (as the mountains were layer after layer of long-ago life).

Sometimes I get a fleeting glimpse of him, running madly into the woods that surrounded him on all sides, spending hours seeking paths through the deep tangles of forest, climbing upward, ever upward until he found a place to sit and look down on the little town where he lived--spread out like a toy village to him--so he could ponder, alone and undisturbed, for a while.

When I was in high school, I wrote a regular colemn for the school newspaper call "The Outsider". As I ponder my life, I realize that has been a constant: I've always felt just beyond the fringe wherever I was. I've watched much more than I've participated. And I've pondered many things.

So, what I've decided to do is sit here on the hillside for a while, beneath the ruins of the castor oil tree and ponder somemore. And, if you wish, share my ponderings with you--whoever you are out there in cyber-Land.

Two caveates: I'm pretty much a Luddite when it comes to technology--probably smart enough to learn about it but never very interested, so this blog is an adventure for me. My friend Sandy is helping me so it shouldn't be too much of a mess. Secondly, I've realized writing this that there is no 'spell check' on the blog. Either I can get a dictionary or ask your forgiveness for my spelling. I'm a magna cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa ENGLISH major (WVU '69) who never could conquer spelling all the words I longed to write.

I supose I'll just ask your tolerance.

Memory Lane....

This is my 999th post on The Castor Oil Tree. It is only fitting that it be about 'memory'.

My trip to West Virginia with Mejol (my spell-check always underlines her name, not surprisingly, since she is the only 'Mejol' in the USA) brought me deeply involved with memories of my childhood.  I tend to live 'in the moment' and memory isn't usually a part of 'where I live'. But this trip disrupted the way I live normally and threw me into the past--a place I seldom visit.

It's not a choice I make to live in the now--it's just the way I'm made up psychologically. I live, normally, as if 'this moment' is the only moment that matters. Being with Mejol and Aunt Elsie reminded me that it is 'the past' that has made me a person who lives in the 'now'.

I've mentioned before in these musings and ponderings that, for no reason I can comprehend, my childhood and most of my life has been contented and without drama. My life has fit me like a glove fits a hand. I have no 'great tramas' that I've had to deal with. I've been happy and safe and satisfied most moments in my life. I have to dig deep to find moments that were deeply disturbing or left a scar. I've been profoundly blessed in that. So, perhaps it is that my life has been so comforting for most of it that I am comfortable just living in what is 'right now' and not dealing with 'the past' or worrying about 'the future'. I don't know. But if that is true, I give thanks for it with all my heart.

But Monday through Thursday of this week, that way of being was interrupted by astonishing memories of my childhood.

I don't sleep well when Bern isn't in the bed with me (and our Puli dog, Bela, for that matter) and I didn't sleep well at all on Monday, Tuesday or Wednesday night this week. But when I slept, I had dreams of the past, of times long ago, of people long dead, of being young.

Mejol is part of my earliest memories. She was five when I was born, but in my memory she seemed much older than that to me. I think she is an 'old soul'. Her life--unlike mine--has been full of pain and fear and drama. She's navigated all that, I think, because of her 'old soul'.

The 'old soul' part of her wasn't a part of my memory of her in my life. That only came later as I looked back and pondered it all. She was simply there, a seamless stitch in the fabric of my being.

Riding with her in her car I discovered that I hear much better out of my right ear than my left. When I was driving, I heard every word of her soft voice. When she was driving I had to ask her time and again to repeat what she had just said. Valuable information, I'd say.

Though normally, I seldom dwell on the past, this trip gave me that opportunity and blessing.

Who I am today, who I've always been, was shaped and molded by Mejol and Aunt Elsie and countless others--mostly family. This trip made that crystal clear.

I've sometimes thought 'who I am' leaped full-grown into existence all by itself.

Oh, no, I've learned these last days, traveling to West Virgina and back in time. I was formed, shaped, molded, created by my past.

This, I tell you, is a gift to know and a reminder to remember.

You can live in 'the now' if your past gave you that permission and formed you that way.

After this journey with Mejol into our past, I will never be the same. I will ponder 'who I am' differently.

That is a blessing I do not deserve. And I welcome it....

Aunt Elsie and Denise

Mejol and I went to West Virginia to visit our Aunt Elsie and our cousin, Denise.

(Before that: my personal Fact Checker, Charles Dimmick, emailed to let me know the name of the restaurant we went to in Baltimore was the Paper Moon Cafe and sent their web page to prove it--and he was right...as always. I often wonder how it would be to be 'right' as often as Charles. Of course, I will never know....)

Aunt Elsie is the only surviving child of Eli Jones and Lina Manona Sadler Jones, my grandparents. She was the sister of Cleo (my mother), Georgie (Mejol's mother) and Juanette (I can't be sure I spelled it right--it was pronounced 'Won-ett'). There were three sons in the midst: Ernest, who died as a child, Leon, who died in his teens, and Granger, who, along with his wife, Elsie May Taylor, sired 8 of my first cousins. (I always called her "Aunt Elsie May" to distinguish her from Aunt Elsie. How many people, I wonder, outside of Appalachia, have ever had two Aunt Elsie's?)

Denise is the only first cousin out of 18 who is younger than me. Aunt Elsie and Uncle Harvey adopted her when she was six or seven or so (remember, I have no concept of linear time!) I was 8 years older than her when that happened.

And here is something I believe devoutly: Denise was the best thing that ever happened to Aunt Elsie and Uncle Harvey. They were devout members of the Nazarene Church--my Uncle Harvey was a Pilgrim Holiness minister until something I was never told about happened, something about doctrine, I would imagine, knowing those two denominations, drove him to the Nazarene Church. They were incredibly strict and doctrinal. No TV in their house. No tolerance for smoking, drinking, dancing, short-sleeves for women, hair not in a bun for women (a lot of stuff for women that was almost radical Islamic). I used to go, as a child, to spend a week with them. Before we went to bed, we got on our knees in the living room and prayed for a long period of time.

Denise untied the knot of all that. Oh, it was terrible when it was happening, for all of them. But she, in a way, brought them into the 20th century and into a kinder, gentler kind of Christianity. And now, when Aunt Elsie is 89 (if my math is right) Denise lives with her and makes her life so good by doing what Aunt Elsie can't do for herself.

Denise has a bi-racial daughter named Lavonza, who came over when we were there with some of the best chicken salad I've ever eaten. I'd only met her once or twice before.Yet she hugged me and kissed my cheek like we were the closest of relatives. She works for a Jobs program and just got a promotion. She is beautiful--40 pounds lighter she would be 'fashion model beautiful'. And she is delightful--charming, funny, engaging--and obviously loves her mother and grandmother profoundly. Denise is divorced from a man that is not Lavonza's father. So the three of them are a Trinity of women, who, from my brief time with them, have found the best of life out of what might have been the worst of life.

It was a joy and privilege to be in the midst of this three generation family of women for a few days. They are my 'family', though I've seen them very little for decades. But for those three days, I felt embraced by them, as if no time had passed since our last meeting, as if 'blood' is all that mattered, even if the 'blood' wasn't literal.

When I was growing up, I thought Aunt Elsie was one of the smartest people I knew. All these years later, given all the smart people I have met over time, I still believe that. I often, often questioned her opinions and still do, but not because her opinions aren't 'smart', just because smart people can disagree.

The trip to West Virginia jerked me back in time to who I was decades ago. And who I am now was not disappointed with that person I used to be. Family stories I knew and was glad to revisit were told and some stories I didn't remember or didn't know came forth. All of it made me, and this is hard to explain, 'more Me' than I had been before the visit.

I'll write more later about this journey into the past and into a new present. Just not any more tonight.

The drive...

Mejol picked me up at Penn Station in Baltimore and we went to The Half-Moon Cafe to have dinner with Elizabeth and Fletch, her children and Elizabeth's boyfriend and Fletch's wife and their two sons. I'm not sure that's the name of the place but it had something about a moon in it and it was truly one of the outrageous places in the world. In the entry hall they had a collection of what must have been 4000 Pez dispensers--probably the whole corpus of Pez dispensers ever made. And on and on that kind of weirdness went: lamp shades made of hundreds of little dolls, huge sailing ships hanging upside down from the ceiling, Barbie's by the dozens, lots of old mannequins, mostly of children, sans clothes and (if I might say) a tad creepy--hanging from walls and ceiling and light fixtures. On and on....I'd like to spend a day or so in that cafe, looking at all the weird stuff. The food was wonderful and the company even better. I've seen Mejol's kids and others maybe four times in the last 20 years and being with them is like being with old and familiar friends. It is remarkable to me, but I feel like I've seen them every day for years when I'm with them. Part of that is Mejol, who has always been so special to me, but part of it is how special they all all.

After a night in Mejol's townhouse, we started the drive to Aunt Elsie's.

And there is this: once you pass Fredrick and are in western Maryland proper, the drive on I-68 W and I-79 S is as scenic and breath-taking as any drive I've ever taken. Being away from the mountains for a few years makes them surprise you all over again. And there are mountains! Mountains after mountains, after more mountains and then, more mountains and mountains after mountains after all that....

Fifty shades of grey can't begin to compete with 400 shades of green in the mountains of Western Maryland and North-central West Virginia!

Mejol said, at one point, "we drive and drive and it's like the scenery never changes." She was right.

Through the Cumberland Gap and down into Preston County, West Virginia, the mountains never end and on to Morgantown (where Bern and I both graduated college--home of Jerry West and Sam Huff's heroics) and south through the very middle of West Virginia to Charleston. And all that way--almost 300 miles--you are in the mountains.

A funny thing about I-79: there are lots of exits, but there's nothing there...no signs of life. One exit, I remember, promised three gas stations, a motel and four fast food places when you were a mile from the exit itself. As we sailed by, I saw the signs telling you which way to turn to get to those places: the closest one was 10.1 miles!

West Virginia is as big as New England (leaving out Maine) and has 1.6 million citizens. A lot of West Virginia is simply natural and empty of humans. You see more cell towers on I-79 than human habitations. At first the emptiness was odd and strange to me--but I grew up surrounded by miles and miles of nothing but nature and after a while it was a deep and satisfying comfort.

We drove for hours through nothing but green and  mountains, the nearest thing I have to a sibling and me. We talked and talked and told stories and laughed and pushed back tears from time to time. And other times we drove in comfortable, companionable silence, engulfed by the wilderness, embraced by the mountains, entranced by the greens.....

I've missed being here...

By 'here' I mean both being in Cheshire and being under the castor oil tree.

I've been away since Monday--a night in Baltimore with my cousin, Mejol (the only one in the USA!) and two nights in Dunbar, West Virginia with my Aunt Elsie and cousin Denise and 2nd cousin, Lavonza.

I took my laptop so I could blog from there but I have an easy-back-door way to the Castor Oil Tree on my desktop. When I tried to get in on my laptop Blogspot.com asked me for my password. I tried three or four and none worked so I had to wait to get back here. I have notes and memories so I'll be writing about WV for a few days.

But not tonight--no matter what time it says I posted this (probably 7:55 pm or so) my blog is on Pacific Standard time for reasons I know not and it's really almost 11 pm and I rode/drove 6 hours with Mejol from Dunbar to Baltimore and rode Amtrac for 5 hours more to New Haven and I'm done in.

Tomorrow I'll tell you my adventures in Appalachia.

(Just one thing--we stopped twice for gas, going and coming, in West Virginia and both places had "West Virginia wine glasses". They were Mason jars with stems....Wish I'd have bought some....)

Mimi's here!

I almost wrote "Mimi's home!" as the name to this post, but that's not true. Mimi's 'home' is in Brooklyn with Tim and she lives some of the time in Sturbridge because she works for Jacob's Pillow. This used to be her 'home', but no more.

And when she's 'here' a deep, profound calm and peace falls over us all. It's already  here since Bern and I live within calm and peace, but Mimi brings the 'profound' piece.

I don't know why or how but I know when she shows up the calm and peace get like on steroids....

Sometimes, when she and Tim are with us on Oak Island, North Carolina, at low tide, the ocean seems like a lake, almost no surf, flat and blue as far as you can see.

Mimi has that effect on our home, though we laugh and joke and tell each other serious and not always pleasant stuff.

That's our Mimi--a little anti-tsunami of calm and peace, no matter what.

And when she's here--this time for a day-before-birthday-birthday--I can't stop smiling and feeling good.

It's not just that I love her 'that much' (though I do), it's that, no matter what, she brings me peace and calm.

Can't explain it more than that.

Bern told the dog that "Mimi is coming" about an hour before she arrived. He searched the house and barked and barked and even whined, which he almost never does...longing for Mimi. She is bad-dog-Bela's favorite person. I can't blame him.

Bern and Mimi and John Anderson and I had a dinner of potato salad and hamburgers on the grill--Mimi's request for her birthday dinner--and ice-cream cake (blue-raspberry and vanilla--which I bought at Sweet Claude's not even knowing blue-raspberry is her favorite ice-cream.) She said it was the first time she remembered a birthday cake with her name on it, though I think that's surely wrong.

She took a picture of it and sent the picture, I'm sure, to Tim. Tim sent beautiful flowers to her that arrived before she did.

Mimi and Tim are, to me, golden, wondrous, so good. The only thing missing from this day-before-birthday night is Tim. But Mimi is here.

Mimi's here tonight and I'm going to sleep like a baby.

Rush Limbaugh is crazier than the world these days....

OK, the Rush-Man, commenting on the Malaysian airliner that crashed or was shot down over Eastern Ukraine, observed that it was suspiciously convenient to distract media attention from what he sees as the impeachable offenses of the Obama administration at just the right time. So the thousands of children at the Texas border and Benghazi and American inaction in Iraq (oh, please, save me from Iraq!) not to mention an executive order making job discrimination against LGBT folks reportable and whatever other heinous offensives our first Black President has committed are being ignored on CNN because of the Malaysian plane. (Malaysian Airlines has had a really bad couple of months....)

The Rush-Man found it all, and I quote, 'a little eerie'.

So, in Limbaugh-land, Putin told the Russian leaning dissidents in Eastern Ukraine to shoot down an airplane so the main-stream media wouldn't be focused on Obama's Right Wing invented problems here in the US....Oh, I get that....

There has to be an eighth realm of hell that Dante didn't know about for people as stupid and vile and vindictive as the Rush-Man. There just has to be...with punishment that would make him want to die for good so much that he would love the President....

That would be justice and righteousness. And not at all 'eerie'.