Dick Reid and Eternity (revisited)

The Rev. Dr. Richard Reid has died. (And I was thinking of 'eternity' just the other day!) My mentor, professor and friend has found out what is on the other side of "this" one way or another.

He taught New Testament at Virginia Seminary when I was there. He was so good that I took a couple of classes from him even though I had fulfilled my required NT studies in my two years at Harvard Divinity School.

I didn't take his "Introduction to New Testament' but I heard legends about it. It seemed every year, after Dick's first lecture, one or two students withdrew from Seminary. They were people who read the Bible like a believer. Dick read it like a scholar. The scholarly study of the New Testament is a challenge to people whose beliefs are rather literal about what the New Testament says.

Once in a class on Mark, I think, someone asked Dick this question: "Professor Reid, how many of the words of Jesus in Mark do you have confidence are verbatim, words he actually said."

Dick thought for a few moments. "At least a couple of dozen," he finally replied. I watched the student thinking, 'how can I get out of this class and into a one taught by a believer?'

But Dick WAS a believer. That's the whole point. He 'believed' the gospels would stand up to intense and scientifically based scrutiny. He believed God was big enough to be probed and examined and put under the microscope of scholarly commitment and survive.

Once another student asked him, "Dr. Reid, where do you stand on 'who will be saved'?"

That, to me was an odd question because I avoid 'standing' anywhere on that. I'll leave that to God, thank you very much.

But Dean Reid (he was the Associate Dean of the Seminary as well as a professor) gave one of the best two answers to a theological question I ever heard. He said, "I am a hopeful Universalist.  There is nothing in the sacred writings of the Jews or Christians or Muslims that indicates that all will be saved. But the God I worship wouldn't leave anyone out of the party...."

Pretty wonderful, I thought. I'm not sure the student that asked the question felt the same!

One of my pet peeves about the Episcopal church is that the clergy get superb "theological education" and the laity receive what is called "Christian education". Seminaries of our church are rigorous and devoted to scholarship, with taking the gloves off and going at holy things with bare fists. Most of the stuff that happens in parishes masquerading as 'adult education' is really warmed over Middle School level. Most of us priests wouldn't dare answer a lay persons questions as honestly and probingly as Dick Reid and all my mentors from both Harvard and Virginia (and Manfred Meitzen who taught religion at West Virginia University, where I first caught the God-bug) did.

I honestly don't want to worship a God who doesn't stand up to the best nit-picking examination my mind can do. Really, what kind of God would that be?

I mourn Dick Reid and thank him and thank God for him.

(By the way, the other of the two best answers to a theological question I ever heard came from my friend and one-time Lay Assistant, Bryan.

Bryan was telling some folks at a coffee hour about the three week, silent Buddhist retreat. After about 10 minutes of Bryan telling them how much he got out of it, one of the rather literal minded folks in the group said, "Bryan, tell me, are you a Christian?"

And Bryan answered without a pause, "at least!"

Not bad. Something for all the 'at least Christians' out there to lean into and embrace and ponder.)

eternity

I was part of a 6 way conversation on Tuesday about Eternity. Heaven and Hell and all that.

I wasn't sure what exactly we were discussing so I asked: "are we talking metaphorically here?"

And the answer was clear that we weren't.

My eyes glaze over, my mind goes blank and I lose control of my bladder when people start talking about heaven and hell.

Back where I come from, there's a joke that goes like this: "What's 'eternity'?" "Two people and a ham."

That's about as deep as my thinking goes about eternity and heaven and hell and what happens when we die.

I told my dear friends on Tuesday that from time to time, because I am a priest and people tend to think I know about such things, someone will ask me what I think about what happens when we die?

I tell them the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth: I don't know.

I tell them, if they're still listening after the truth about what I believe, that I do 'believe' something happens after we die, as long as nothing is part of something.

That usually gets me blank looks if not disappointed looks.

But that's the truth: I just don't know and have no idea.

Sometimes people take my response as meaning I don't truly believe in God. But I do. I trust that there is a God. But what happens when we die is something I leave completely up to Him/Her/It. I have no opinion on the matter.

So, why do I think we should be 'good' as we can be if it isn't a way to get to Heaven?

Simply because being as good as we can be is what we ought to do and what the God I find so mysterious wants us to be.

Simply that.

Not a quid pro quo of any kind--not to spend eternity in fulfillment and joy rather than punishment and pain. 'Doing what is right to do' is reason enough to do that. Being honest and good and fair and compassionate and loving and generous is reason in itself. And the God I love and who loves me (though I don't know Him/Her/It very well) wants all that from me. So, it seems to me that's reason enough to strive and lean into all that.

What comes next--I have no idea. I hope there is some way I'll still be 'me' after I die. Or, simply being a part of the cosmos without a clear "Jim Bradley" identity would be fine. Or, nothing would be OK, given that being alive was such a privilege and a joy and a wonder.

I stand by my stand: I leave all that after death stuff to the God I love and who loves me.

Life has been a gift enough. Let God determine the rest and what comes next. I'm OK with that....

So, I bought a suit

So, I have a suit--Ralph Loren, for goodness sake. Deep blue with lighter blue highlights. Bern picked it out, I must confess. I also have a white dress shirt, some black loafers with a silver strap, two ties and socks with gold toes.

I've not ever felt so on top of fashion.

I even bought some boxer shorts in the same blues as my suit, though I sincerely hope my boxer shorts are never seen by anyone (besides Bern) who comes to Mimi and Tim's wedding.

I even bought a new belt. Who knows the last time I bought a belt since my reversible belt fell apart after taking it off for security at Bradley Airport five years or more ago, when I was taking a flight to Ireland, via London.

I went to the only Men's Store inside Bradley, something fancier than I normally enter and bought a belt that costs almost $60! I had to have my pants stay up crossing the Atlantic. That belt is now in shambles and I have a new one for Mimi and Tim's wedding.

It was less painful than I had imagined heading in. But I don't want to ever learn that 'shopping' is a pleasure since I'm a commitment 'not to shop'--to sneak into Marshall's and the Consignment shop in Cheshire and find whatever I need or not. Whether I do or not doesn't much matter since I don't care about what I wear. Clothes cover nakedness, nothing more, so far as I can see.

It's just like this: a car gets you from point A to point B and nothing more. So what car it is doesn't matter and whether it is dirty or clean, if it gets you from A to B, that's all that matters.

I'm very basic about 'stuff' when I reflect on it.

'Stuff's' purpose is to do what it is needed for and nothing more.

I'm not interested, most always, about 'stuff'. But I do like my clothes for Mimi and Tim's wedding--quite a lot, surprisingly enough.

Maybe it's because that 'stuff' is to celebrate them and doesn't say much at all about me. And I love them so.

Maybe that's it....This odd feeling about 'stuff'....

Bela and moisture

Our dog, Bela, hates the rain. He can tell when it is raining and almost has to be dragged outside to go to the bathroom.

This morning we crossed the road in a very light drizzle and he peed in our neighbor Claire's driveway, walked five feet and pooped on the grass between the sidewalk and the road. Then he looked at me to say, "that's it! Business finished! Home now! Dry now!"

Bern took him a couple of hours later to the canal for what is his 'big walk' and he did the same thing--pee and poop and that look that says, "home now! Now!!"

Being retired makes it lots easier to have a dog. We do the wake-up walk, the canal walk, he pees in the back yard at 2:30 or so, then the 'little walk' at 5 and the night pee at 11. Plus, when we're outside on the deck, he can go anytime. Lot's different than having jobs and not being home on any schedule. Maybe only retired people should have dogs--except that would keep dogs and kids segregated and that would be a shame.

Funny thing--Bela is a Hungarian Sheep dog, one would think his DNA would make him amenable to all weather, but he hates rain. What would the sheep do on rainy days? Wander free while he huddled under a tree?

Snow is different. He loves snow. In the winter he'll eat a gallon of snow and then go in the back yard and lay down, sometimes requiring me to come and force him inside. He doesn't seem to realize that he gets just as wet in snow as in rain. Of course, he's a dog and thinks 'dog' not human. Rain and snow are different to him though the results are the same since he gets covered in snow and it melts and he gets as wet as rain can get him.

Go figure. Trying to ponder the mind of a dog is a pretty pointless and hopeless thing to do, afterall.

watching Bern in the yard

I watched her on and off for two hours, from cloudy daylight to almost dark.

I have no idea what she was doing--well, actually, I do, she was recreating a flower bed in our back yard. What I didn't have any idea about was why or how or what it all meant.

Bern works with bricks and rocks and shells (some of which she brings back from North Carolina every year) and she makes divides between what is 'yard' and what is flower bed. We used to be able to play croquet in our back yard, but no more, Bern's creations of boundaries have made it impossible. Bricks and Rocks and shells, divide our yard into areas where it is obvious you can't walk.

Today, for two hours, as light failed, I watched her, on and off, create a new space that will have a particular purpose for being. I have no idea what that purpose will be--being oblivious to her 'grand plan' for our yard--but knowing it was with purpose.

She is a thin, wiry, supple woman in her mid-60's. She can squat for so long that my knees and ankles and hips begin to ache just watching her.

She never knew I was watching her because she was in a world all her own, doing what she was doing--whatever it was.

She dug in the dirt with a tool and then with her hands. She moved rocks and bricks around and then re-arranged them. She tamped down dirt with her hands and feet. Moving slowly, but with purpose, always intent on what she was doing.

I envy her connection to things--earth, rocks, shells, bricks--and her commitment to have them be 'just right' and where they were meant to be.

I am so disconnected to 'things' compared to her.

She had on thin, khaki pants, a dark shirt and a pink hoodie as she squatted and worked and moved around. I knew she had no knowledge of my watching her.

Her back may hurt tomorrow...that happens from time to time...but what she was doing was finished when I told her dinner would be ready in half-an-hour and she had a cigarette and then a shower.

As I carried our food up to the TV room, she said, "perfect timing" and we ate.

I am astonished by her. And though we've know each other since I was 17 and she was 14--a full fifty years, a half a century now, when she's like that...working in the yard...she is a holy mystery to me.

I simply don't understand. And I love that about who we are--that I have no understanding at all about who she is when she'd like that.

Mystery is engaging, wondrous, amazing. Especially after all these years.

odd day

It was cloudy and heavy all day. Not quite right for late September.

But then, nothing's quite been right this year. Winter was too cold, spring too warm, summer too cool and autumn, so far, too warm.

Don't tell me 'climate change' isn't real. Nothing is working quite right. During what has been called the hottest summer in history, New England hasn't had a day over 90.

Maybe living in New England is a good deal right now. Cloudy and heavy late September, but warmer than we would normally expect.

We still have our primary air conditioner in place--the one right beyond me that drives cold air downstairs because I close the door to the upstairs hallway. It's not on, of course, but if fall gets hotter, we have the relief.

Fans in the TV room and our bedroom will be enough, no matter how Indian Summer works out.

But an odd day, none-the-less, and a good time to live in New England, it seems to me.

Fireflies, Nintendo, bug zappers, my cat Catherine, and other cosmic thoughts

Every month for 21 years, I wrote an essay for 'The Outrider', St. John's in Waterbury's monthly newsletter. My essay was called, 'The View from Above the Close' because my third floor and then second floor office looked out on the Close of the church. (Like most things Anglican, we have funny names for simple things. Most people would call 'the Close' the yard or the lawn. The grass inside the gate and fence is, in Episco-speak, 'the Close', from 'enclosure', go figure.)

I happened today to be looking at hard copies of some of those over 200 essays when I happened across this one--entitled "Fireflies, Nintendo, bug zappers, my cat Catherine and other cosmic thoughts."

I wrote this in July of 1990. Catherine is long dead, alas. About a quarter of a century has passed and this was written in Summer rather than Autumn. But I want to share it with you to let you know what I was pondering 34.3% of my life ago. I wish I'd come across it in July, but I stand by it none-the-less.


A few things first.

1. Newsweek, a few weeks ago, had an editorial by a man who had refused to budge on the issue of Nintendo games for his children. NO WAY, JOSE (or more accurately, NO WAY, MARIO! He had said to the incredible advertizing and peer pressure trying to convince him to let his children play Nintendo games. My children play Nintendo--in fact have moved on to Sega Genesid.

For the uninitiated, these are video games that usually involve slaughtering innumerable video enemies before they slaughter you. I've never seen the point myself, being a child of 'team sports' and the outdoors. Nintendo bores me. I simply don't have the time. However, I know my children can kill millions of video villains and still refuse to squash a spider or other bugs in their rooms. They squeal if I squash them--wanting me to capture and liberate them outside.

2. Where I come from, fireflies illuminate the summer sky like the Northern Lights. They swarm and blink. As a child I would catch a jar full on a July night, squeeze off their blinking tails and make a bracelet out of light. When I tell my children this, they scream and wail. They are not so cruel. Maybe I should have played Nintendo rather than slaughtered fireflies.

3. Our neighbors across the street have a bug zapper--a luminescent blue coil that kills bugs with a noise like static on an old Motorola radio. I went to a lawn party in August years ago when bug zappers were brand new. One of the guests was a Buddhist. Each time a bug died in a fit of static, he blanched and ached. The Cosmic Force moaned within him. The host turned off the machine. The party continued--insect bites were a small price to pay for having the Cosmos at peace with Itself.

4. Our kitten--Catherine--kills bugs for sport. She must have read King Lear at some point. Sometimes she eats them and shakes her head from the bad taste. Most often she chases them and catches them and plays with them until they die. There is no static sound. And if I see her chasing a firefly, I shoo her away.

Out on our back porch--our deck--the bugs rule. We burn citronella and talk about buying a yellow light. We get bit and listen to the static zaps across the street. And there are fireflies--"lightening bugs" I learned to call them--that flicker and fade from time to time. There aren't as many in New England as in West Virginia. There are buckets full there. In Cheshire, I can count them on my fingers.

Here's a summer evening cosmic thought for you--we are like lightening bugs...we glimmer and glow for a while and eventually a bug zapper or a kitten or time itself snuffs out our light. All flesh is like grass, the Prophet Isaiah said over 2800 years ago. Like the flower, we wither and die. And, I say, like the glowworm, we glitter and then fade away.

                                                                     ***

Out on my deck, in deep summer, life seems almost as fleeting as it is wonder-filled. How odd--noticing the fragile-ness of life enhancing its value. Something Rare and Precious. A Gift.

If I weren't so happy to be alive, I might think of some profound moral to all this. As it is, I will enjoy the fireflies, thank God for my children, honor the lives of bugs, acknowledge that Catherine was born to hunt and kill, despise the bug zapper across the street, slap and scratch when need be, and--being like the flower that faded--make the most of the moment.

                                                                   ***

Summer invites cosmic thinking. Some holy 'round the edges.

If you need some evidence about the wonder of God, I'd invite you to sit on my back porch for a while, just after dark. It is so still, you can almost hear the whisper of our Creator, singing the cosmos to sleep. And life whispers back, softly as a firefly's glow.



When I wrote this, we had more cats than anyone needs.Catherine, the kitten, gave us her daughter, Millie, so bad none of Mimi's friends would adopt her. Chuck and Luke came to us later at the same time. Chuck lived and died, a bad cat. Luke lives on, happy that the others are long dead, loving being 'the only cat'. When I wrote that, Josh was 15 and Mimi was 12--now they are 39 and 36 and Mimi is getting married in October. We've had three different dogs since I wrote that.

Life does move on and things change, evolve, transform.

But when I read what I wrote over 24 years ago, I still believe it. It still rings true.

Ponder what is Holy 'round the edges. Ponder how God sings the Creation to sleep. Ponder how life answers back, glowing....