Better than I thought...and what a loss....

I actually lasted 9 days since my 11/12 post promising to stay off the media and news.

Good for me, I have more self-restraint than I imagined.

But Lordy, Lordy, what a waste of blog-worthy material.

I could have done several about Kim Kardashian's butt and Obama's decision to fix immigration by himself. Never mind the Lake snow in Buffalo or the apoplexy of Republicans regarding the aforementioned 'fix' of immigration.

The first two options on my spell check to 'Kardashian' were 'cardigan's' and 'Krishna's' either of which would have been preferable to Kim's butt!

My spell check also hates all possessives, of "Obama's" was suggested to be replaced by 'IBM's' and 'Obama'. At least the president's name without the 's is in my spell check.

Plus, people died--Mike Nichols foremost among them, director of The Graduate. which, if it didn't change the life of any baby-boomer, should have....

A lot of stuff happens in 9 days--my Lord, Mockingjay Part One opened today (I saw it and say go see it as soon as you can if you are a Hunger Game freak like I am!)

A lot of stuff happens in 9 days that I might have written better posts about than the ones I wrote. But I did endure without writing about anything in the news or the media. Good for me. Bad for you because I could have had some ironic and humorous things to say about Kim's butt. But (butt) you'll never know them, will you?

The Big Check Came!!!

I got my cut of the class action suit today! (Well, never mind that I didn't know I was one of the plaintiff's and had never heard of the suit....)

What matters is the suit existed and I got my cut today!

The lawsuit was 'Citizens of the US vs. Angie's List, Inc.

What happened was, I joined Angie's List so I could write a favorable review of the guys who did our roof last year. They were great and even paid for me to join Angie's List to see if the compelling nature of my prose could get them business. I hope it did.

That was the first and only time I ever went on Angie's List except for going on a month later and cancelling my membership--or that's what I thought I did. Bern pays the bills so I never look at credit card bills unless she asks me about that charge to "Too Foxy for You". She catches false charges from time to time and handles it. But I do the taxes, which is when I start going through bank statements and credit card bills looking for deductions.

And lo and behold, charged to my card every month for the six months since I cancelled was a $7.99 item to Angie's List!

So, I called and complained and finally got off the damn list--which I don't get anyway...when I needed work done I asked friends and neighbors to recommend folks.

Apparently, I was far from the only one who cancelled on line and kept getting charged because a big old Law Firm filed a class action suit against mean old Angie....

How they found out I complained, I simply don't know. Does a business have to report complaints to some agency or something?

Anyway, the check came. It came in the form of a post card with a cover on it. I undid the sticky and there was my post card sized check. I took it to the bank immediately (actually I was on the way to Stop and Shop where I bank is anyway....)

The Teller had never seen a postcard check but it was obviously good. The grandchildren don't need to worry about college costs now that I got my $5 settlement!

Five measly dollars to thousands of people and thousands of dollars (who knows how much?) To my lawyers and Angie's lawyers.

Well, at least justice was done....

Why I love New England

When I tell people who don't live here why I learn New England I always start with the 'we have four seasons' line.

Truth is, I only love three of the seasons we have here. I often imagine I love winter and the snow and the chill and all--but I don't. I love that we have three seasons I love...winter, with just these few cold days...winter, I think I could do without.

Is there anywhere to live that has 3 seasons? I doubt it. Autumn has to have Winter waiting behind it right? Or why else would the leaves fall so the snow doesn't always break the trees?

So, I guess I have to endure the next few months. Lordy, Lordy, I really don't like the really cold weather. The snow is beautiful but it would be great if it would melt between storms so it doesn't pile up and get dirty and turn to ice.

I still love New England, it's just a little harder to remember why as Winter comes.....

I'm not as dumb as I look...seem...appear to be....

So, in my last post, I took down an earlier post in which I thought I'd been unkind or unfair or cruel.

Then, one of the 3 people who read the offending post (only 3 did) emailed me this:

You wrote:

"This morning, I removed a blog post that I did last night. Only 3 people saw it before I took it down and I hope they keep quiet about it."

Yes, I read it, and thought it a bit out of character for you.

 

(having copied that, I can't get back to the original font--Lord, I hate computers!)

 

But I was correct about what I did. Thanks, Charles. Even if I can't find the correct font.... 

 

Something I've never done before...

This morning, I removed a blog post that I did last night. Only 3 people saw it before I took it down and I hope they keep quiet about it.

I took it down because I went beyond ironic to cruel in it. It was about the Congregational Church here in town and some of my interactions with the staff. I thought I was being humorous, but I was being unkind instead. So I took it down.

One of the problems about writing on a screen is that there aren't the same internal limits that we have we writing a letter by hand. The physical experience of holding a pen, it seems to me, opens up a sub-conscious area where we actually imagine the person we're writing to reading what we wrote a few days later.

Email, Face-book (which I don't do), Twitter (which I don't understand much less 'do') and all the other media things (isn't one called Instagram?) free us from the image of the person reading what we write on a screen--mostly because we  have no idea, really, who all will read it.

I've gotten in trouble trying to be ironic or humorous in emails (mostly one's I've sent to bishops or members of the staff of the Diocese--see my other post from 11/17!) and it's not easy to straighten out. I actually believe we 'read' stuff on a screen differently than we would read a hand-written letter that we hold and touch.

The 'touch' is missing on a screen. And I lost 'touch' last night when I wrote something more cruel than ironic, more unkind than humorous.

I'm glad I removed it. That reminded me of the letters I've torn up and never sent (bet you have some of those if you remember when we used to 'write letters'...) It felt good to remove that post, just as tearing up a letter because you finally realized the person who would read it might be confused or hurt by your words in ink on paper.

I've torn up lots of letters. But this morning was the first time I took down a post. Though I've never done that before, it felt 'good' and 'right' to do it.

Taking nothing that seriously...

I had lunch with one of my best friends today and she was bemoaning the nature of the Episcopal Church in her part of the woods. "They're just to 'self-important'," she was saying.

"Do you mean they take themselves too seriously?" I asked.

"They take everything too seriously!" she said.

Then she reminded me of an ordination to the priesthood sermon I gave for Michael Spencer, about how I made him stand up and told him, "always remember, Michael, that you are an almost irrelevant functionary is a mostly irrelevant institution."

"That's what I like about you," she said.

"My clinging to irrelevancy?" I asked.

"In a word," she said, "exactly...."

And it is true. I don't ever 'not' think of myself as mostly irrelevant. Some people I have told that get rather huffy. "Why, for goodness sake, you're an Episcopal Priest," they say.

And I reply, in a word, "exactly...."

You need to hear me out on this. I'm not saying priests don't 'make a difference' and a contribution to the world. We do, quite often. But so do other irrelevant things. Take poetry--poetry brings beauty and truth and wonder and insight to me...but poetry, in our time and culture, is essentially irrelevant in the overall scheme of things. The economy is relevant. War and Peace is relevant. Poverty and discrimination are relevant. Climate change is relevant. Disease is relevant. The vast distance between the rich and poor in this country and even more so in the developed and developing worlds is hugely relevant. The incredible deep divides among people is relevant.

But poetry and the Episcopal Church? Give me a break.

There is nothing wrong with being irrelevant. Actually it's a great way to go 'undercover' and make a difference in people's lives. Poetry and the Episcopal Church do that--behind the scenes of what is Important and Relevant and Serious in the world. It's that poetry and the Episcopal Church simply aren't that big a deal in the day-to-day relevancies of Life. (My spell check didn't like 'relevancies' though it offered 'irrelevancies' as a doable option--but that would make a really awkward sentence structure to say what I said, so I'll go with my, apparently, new word.)

My bishop at the time, who heard me say the 'irrelevant' stuff, tried to tear me a new one in the vesting room after Michael's reception. But Michael had some very good wine at the reception and I'd had enough that I just said, "Bishop, think about it! You are the mostly irrelevant titular head of a mostly irrelevant institution." And left him gaping at my audacity...or,, perhaps, my accuracy. (I don't think I've used the word 'titular' in conversation before or since. But it cut him short and I went back for another glass of Michael's good wine.

So here's an example: our bishops in CT have been very vocal about gun control since the tragedy in Sandy Hook. I appreciate their stand and find it moving, but it is irrelevant. Gun control is fought out on the political front--the NRA vs. 'gun control groups'. Nobody is ever going to say, "oh, my God, the Episcopal bishops of CT are for gun control, obviously we must do what they want!"

Even more irrelevant are Episcopalians who are members of the NRA getting upset with our bishops. I know a member of the Episcopal Church who has, for all intent and purpose, left the church because of what our Bishops have stood for. In the first place, what Episcopal Bishops say is irrelevant to the larger discussion. In the second place, to, in effect, leave a loving, irrelevant community because of what a bishop thinks is cutting yourself off from the love, affirmation and affection 'church' can give and does give for some irrelevant (in the 'big picture') conversation.

It's OK to be irrelevant. That doesn't mean the ministry of the church doesn't matter. It does 'matter' on the individual level, just not globally. The irrelevancy of the church in no way precludes the church 'making a difference' in an individual's life.

We just have to stop taking ourselves so seriously about everything. In the 'forest', the church doesn't matter, but it matters greatly to the 'trees'.

And that's good. That is healing. That is life-giving in many ways.

We just to have to stop thinking we 'matter' on the Big Picture stuff and deal with the day-to-day of ordinary people stuff.

Really.

You can be vital and life-giving and important without being relevant.

Really.

Ponder that for a bit....Don't take stuff too seriously, just notice how it IS serious on the micro-level. Just that.

My Dad's day

I know it was in Princeton, because I can see my Mom and Dad around the table in the Dining Room there. They were doing the bills. That's what they did every month, together. Bern does our finances and has for years. If she dies before I do I'll have to get a CPA to do my finances as well as a cleaning service and a yard service. (I don't do anything of importance besides empty the litter box, take out the trash and feed the creatures.)

So, I must have been home for a holiday or summer vacation from college, because I never lived in Princeton until I went to college.

Anyhow, what happened was this: it was the first month ever, in their marriage, that my father made more money than my mother. She was a school teacher and he had lots of jobs--running a bar, working my uncle in a grocery store, picking up dry cleaning and finally, as an insurance agent. I have no idea how insurance agents are paid, but it has something to do, I believe, with a cut of each policy they sold.

And that day, sometimes after 1965, his cut of policies was more than here teacher's salary.

He was delighted, that I remember, as excited as I ever saw him, happy and fulfilled. Given that he was a man born in the first decade of the 20th century, to have gone that long having his wife make more money than him must have stung.

That's all I remember. His unhidden joy to, at last, have been the main wage earner in our family.

I don't remember what my mother said, though I'm sure she was fine with the reversal. She, after all, was a 'woman' of the early decade of the 20th century. She might even had been uneasy about bringing home more bacon than my dad for all those years.

I'm not sure why I'm thinking of my parents so much these days. They've both been dead over half of my life.

But I remembered that night around the dining room table when my father finally was the 'wage earner' of the two.

I remember that clearly.