Remembrance and Support

Tonight was the Cluster's annual service of "Remembrance and Support". It is designed to be an outlet for people who, in this season and rush and forced gaiety, have suffered loss that makes it difficult for them to live into the 'holiday season'. In fact, the hurried time of buying and selling and giving and receiving of this time of year--the carols in the mall, the lights everywhere--make them feel even more alone and full of grief.

It's a lovely service. There are readings from scripture (Comfort, Comfort my people from Isaiah among them. And prayers about loneliness and loss and sadness and then, after a chant from the folks at Tazai, people write down names of those they have lost to death or conflict and other things they've lost and bring them up to light a candle while someone reads the names and concerns.

Quite lovely. This year, the planners asked me to do a homily. I did it without notes but I'll try to capture it's essence here.

Memory is one of God's greatest gifts to us. Memory anchors us to the world and to who we are and whose we are. Memory ties us to the past and to the present and to reality itself. I know, for myself, and I suspect for many of you, that I would rather lose my life than lose my memory.

Tonight I want to tell you about my father's death. He died almost half my life ago. My mother died even earlier--I was only 25 when she died. My parents were in their 40's when I was born. They had given up on having and child and then...there I was! In southern West Virginia in those days, my parents were the age of my friends' grandparents. They were older.

My father was a 'farm boy' until he became a 'coal miner' and then fought in WW II. He was in a unit that built bridges across rivers so Patten could drive his tanks apart and then my father helped blow up the bridges. A strange kind of 'engineering' job for sure.

One night in February of 1983, I think it was, my father called me at 2 in the morning. He told me, "your friends are here and they're going through my things. If they don't stop, I'm going to get my gun!"

I asked him to find one of my 'friends' and let me talk to them. He was gone for a long time and came back to say, "I can't find them now...."

Something had snapped in my father's mind. Something frightening. I told him I'd be there the next day. So I flew from Hartford to Pittsburgh to Charleston, West Virginia in a snow storm. The WV State Policeman at the entry to the West Virginia Turnpike from Charleston to Princeton, listened to my story and let me drive on. "But the turnpike is officially closed," he said, "so if something goes wrong don't expect to be rescued anytime soon."

When I got to Princeton, I found a pay phone. Remember pay phones? And called my father. I told him to take his pistol and put all the bullets on the table with the pistol open so I could see it through the kitchen window. I went to his house and he'd done just what I asked.

He was a mess, psychologically and physically, so after a few days of doing business: getting me on his check signing list, putting his house on the market, stuff like that, the two of us went back to Connecticut.

Bern and I hoped he could live with us in the Rectory at St. Paul's, New Haven. He loved to walk so I took him around the block and told him he could walk that as much as he wanted but he could never, ever cross a street. And that worked for a while. But one day Bern called me at the church and said, "you're dad's been gone for over an hour".

So I circled and circled the block, looking in all the stores and didn't find him. Then, several hours after he'd left for his 'walk' I got a call from a bus driver who had completed his route all the way across the city at the Yale Bowl. My dad had given him my phone number. He's been riding that bus for hours, without paying, but the bus driver had decided he was harmless and let him ride.

So, within the week, he was in a nursing home in Hamden, a town next to New Haven. He was there for several years. His dementia progressed rapidly to the point that he seldom recognized me. He thought I was his cousin, Ralph, or one of his brothers. Which was fascinating since he'd talk to his cousin or brother about me! That was the most positive thing about his dementia...I finally got to know what he thought of me....

He was an 'escape artist'. They finally had to tie him in a wheelchair at the nursing home so he just wouldn't walk out. But he'd stay by the door and when someone came in he'd ask them to hold the door and off he'd go, pumping his wheel chair as hard as he could.

Once he somehow got himself stuck in the elevator. The nursing home called me and told me they didn't know how he'd be when the elevator guy got him out and asked me to come. I was standing in front of the elevator doors when they opened. My father looked at me and said, "why did you put me in there?" I had to laugh.

Then he had a medical problem and had to go to St. Raphael's  in New Haven. I went to see him and we had the most cogent conversation we'd had in years. It was wonderful. He seemed so much 'the way he used to be'. After a long while I said, "Dad, I'm going home", and he responded, "Oh, I'm going home soon too." If he had been a parishioner I would have sat right down in the chair again and waited because I would have known it wasn't a 'dementia statement' but a hint of what was going to happen next. But he was my father. You can't be a doctor to your family and you can't be a priest either.

I drove home in about 10 minutes and when I walked in the phone was ringing. My father had died while I was driving. He'd gone home.

My daughter Mimi, who was 8 or so, hugged me and said, "Daddy, you're an orphan". And I was.

There are lots of stupid things people say when someone dies. "He/she is in a better place" is one of them--"what better place? They aren't with me!"

But one thing I've heard people say when someone dies is this: "they'll live on within you". That's where memory comes in and why it is such a precious gift from God.

I want to tell you about an image I stole, from, of all people, Garrison Kellier. Garrison once talked about All Saints' Day by referring to the altar rail in an Episcopal Church. Just imagine that when you knell at this rail and look to the left, you see, out to infinity, all those who came before you and when you look to the right you see all those, yet unborn, who will be One with you in the future.

That is truly, the 'communion of saints': we are all one at that railing. The Eucharistic Prayer I'm using at Emmanuel this Advent has a phrase that goes something like this: "and those we love who are separated from us now are present to us in this mystery...."

Memory allows that to happen. Loss and pain and suffering are all part of memory. But I've been dreaming of my father lately--and it's been good to be with him. He lives on within me. 

The pain never quite leaves, when people die. But the memory of the good times is healing. 

God wants to comfort us and soothe us and heal us.

We and those we love but see no longer live together in the heart of God.

We do. Remember. And be comforted and soothed and healed this night by the God who loves us best of all and hold us in the very heart of who God is.....Amen.



 

Oh no, not giraffes too!

Is there no end to our abuse of this fragile planet, our island home?

I just read online at the Huffington Post that Giraffes are nearing extinction. There are only 180,000 in the wild, a 40 % decrees in the last decade.

The decline is from both loss of habitat and poaching. The poaching is for their meat. Giraffes are easier to kill than most wild animals since they are docile and usually not afraid of people. And, as you can imagine, a giraffe provides a lot of meat. Some Africans even believe eating giraffe brain can cure HIV, which is rampant on that continent.

But giraffes, for goodness sake, what kind of world would it be without those crazy looking beasts? An animal obviously designed by a committee. How impoverished life would be without them.

Elephants and Rinos, the article said, are more in the public's mind for conserving. But I don't want to live on a planet without giraffes....

war on black men

Another grand jury did not indite a policeman for killing an unarmed black man though the medical examiner of New York ruled the death was a homicide.

Eric Gardner of Staten Island, whose death was on video, joins Michael Brown of Furgenson, MO as a victim of the war on Black men.

I just don't get it. Police, apparently, are immune from justice through the courts.

Unarmed and non-violent, Eric Gardner was choked to death by a policeman who was not indicted. He was being arrested to selling cigarettes one by one.

How come people who cost us jobs everyday by sending them overseas and people who rip us off on Wall Street and the companies who won't raise wages for fast food workers, and the owners of Walmart and the Koch brothers aren't strangled to death by police officers who get off?

Having a Black President and these two cases, never mind Travon Martin, shows how schizophrenic our culture is about race.

My unscientific observation in 25 years of living in Cheshire is that 3/4 of the people I've seen pulled over by police are Latino or Black. And the Latino/Black population of Cheshire is under 1%.

Go figure.

Something is wrong at the core. Something is rotten, not in Denmark, but here.

When will open season on people of color stop and go backwards? Ever?

The forgotten bottle

I was brushing my teeth after lunch (I am a brush and floss fanatic!) when I noticed a huge bottle of Rolaids on our bathroom shelves. It was 120 Rolaids and out of date by 6 months--who knew Rolaids went out of date.

There was a time, several years ago now, when I ate Rolaids like candy and drank that nausea inducing shade of pink Pepto Bismol like water.

I had forgotten about that. And I don't remember when it stopped. When my stomach stopped bothering me.

And I'm clueless about why I stopped needed stomach aides--clean living? I doubt that. Less stress--I'm not sure. Being retired from full time ministry--maybe....

Whatever the reason I haven't taken a Rolaids for years now.

I can probably throw them out, if I knew how since there is lots of stuff about how any kind of medication down the toilet gets in the water supply and stuff in land-fills almost never disintegrates.

But I'm glad, really glad, that I'm stomach distress free these days.

Maybe not 'clean living' but certainly 'living free...."

The 'normal' normal

Let's get this straight, right off, when our children and their spouses and our grandchildren are here with us, it's like heaven pulled down to earth, like 'the best it can be', like glory!!!

And when they're gone and it's just Bern and me and the dog and the cat and the bird and our house all to ourselves--as it's been for a night and a day now--well, 'normal' has settled in again.

Our children are 39 and 36, for goodness sake, and though Mimi lived with us for a year or so before she moved to New York for good, it's been 14 years since anyone lived with us for more than three or four days. "Normal" is that. And 'normal' is good.

Only Mimi (without Tim) will be with us for Christmas and she'll leave that Holy Day to catch a plane to Florida to be with Tim and his parents for the rest of the holiday. Josh and Cathy and the girls will be on a cruise with Dr. and Mrs. Chen, Cathy's parents.

So, this Thanksgiving, when all of them--Mimi and Tim and Josh and Cathy and Morgan and Emma and Tegan--were all with us, may not happen many times again. Thanksgiving seems to be the best bet in the near future for that to happen.

We'll go on vacation with Mimi and Tim for September's to come on Oak Island, North Carolina.

We'll go to Baltimore to be with Josh and Cathy and the girls several times a year. But the gathering of the clan will not happen often.

The 'normal' of our lives is that Bern and me and the creatures will be here and those we love so wondrously will be somewhere else.

I remember when Bern and I decided the holidays should have our parents come to us and not the other way around. That hasn't happened yet for us, but might, soon.

So here we are: a dog, a cat, a bird, a woman and a man in Cheshire, Connecticut, in the Northern Hemisphere of this planet where we live, which is how it is most of the time has been for 14 years or so.

This is 'normal'. And it is very good indeed. It's what we're used to and what we love.

A dog, a cat, a bird, a woman and and man do very well being who they are, alone, for most, most of the time.

We love it when they come or when we go to them. But this is the 'normal' normal. And it is just fine with us, thank you. Better than 'fine', when it comes to it, something beyond that....

Enough dressing already....

Thanksgiving was three days ago. I ate Thanksgiving dinner with my family and our four dear friends. Then, later, I ate more turkey, mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes with pecans, green bean casserole, the dressing I made (apples, onions, walnuts, currents, celery, two sticks of butter and bread) and gravy.

Friday, I twice ate turkey, dressing, mashed and sweet potatoes, green beans and gravy.

Saturday, I once ate all that except for the green beans.

Today, I had what I had yesterday for a meal.

Enough, already! I think the reason we seldom have the traditional Thanksgiving meal any other time is that we eat it at least 6 times!

I told Bern that I was through with all the Thanksgiving stuff. It is dead to me. Tomorrow I eat mussels.

You just can't eat that stuff that many times and stay sane....

Except for the gravy. I could eat gravy once a day forever. In fact, where I come from, gravy of all kinds qualifies as a food group. I hope it is always on the menu in some iteration in the Kingdom that is to come.

I can always eat gravy.

Don't eat the jelly from the village...

My 5 year old granddaughter Tegan was playing 'Mail Lady' a while ago, delivering mail to the adults in four different rooms of the house. I was checking email and heard her just down the hall at the room where Mimi and Tim slept.

"Auntie Mimi," Tegan said, "You've got mail."

"Thanks, Mail Lady," Mimi answered, I  hope my New Yorker came.

Tegan moved a couple of steps away, then went back.

"Don't eat the jelly from the village," she warned.

"Why not?" Mimi asked, always wanting to know 'reasons'.

"They fed it to the rats," Tegan almost whispered, delivering bad news along with the mail, "and the rats died."

"What should I do?" Mimi questioned.

"Don't even buy it," Tegan said, continuing her route.

Having the granddaughters here is better than Monty Python...and just as odd sometimes. I told Cathy what Tegan had said and she shook her head, "whatever goes on in my child's head?"

It has been an enchanting few days. Our whole nuclear family here with us (I don't understand why people made fun of George W. Bush's pronunciation of 'nuclear'--it took spell-check for me to spell it!) along with a friend since college (John) and three friends of nearly 30 years (Jack, Sherry and Hanna) for Thanksgiving dinner.

Morgan made place tags to tell people where to sit and helped me set the table--really two identical tables end to end that should seat 10 but we made seat 13. Emma and Morgan made menus, listing the whole meal, along with pictures of the dishes. And we ate and ate and ate and laughed and laughed and laughed and, each in our own way, silently pondered how Thankful and Grateful we should be.

Our Puli, Bela, met Josh and Cathy's Pit bull, Laura, for the first time and they got along! Praise the soon to be center of attention Baby Jesus!!!

Unfortunately, Laura decided to eat our Maine Coon Cat, Lukie. We have a Federalist House, which means there are stairways in the front and back--Laura and Luke made two circuits before Laura cornered Lukie at the back stairs and Cathy grabbed her before true mayhem could ensue. Since then, Luke has been locked in our bedroom with food and a litter box. He has the look about him of a catatonic mental patience (get it cat-atonic? OK, not funny for him.) We visit him from time to time with turkey to coax him out from under our bed. Reentry tomorrow might take awhile. But John works at the West Haven VA with post-tramatic-stress disorder, so we can call him in if needs be.

Really, it has been so full of joy and wonder. And I couldn't possibly put my arms around how much I am full of gratitude for.

But don't eat the jelly from the village, whatever you do....