So cold the moon

So Cold the Moon

I went out on our back porch,

which faces East,

and the wood creaked from the cold.

My teeth got cold,

smoking a cigarette.

It's almost too cold to smoke,

but not just yet.

Smoke in my mouth and smoke

from our neighbor's chimney

in front of the moon and Venus,

just below.

The moon is so full tonight,

through the smoke,

and so cold.

I used to hate the chill,

but no more.

Something clear and silent

about the cold

gives me a quiet joy.

Something pure and crystalline

about such cold.

Something smokey and dark,

and something in the moon,

so high, so frozen, so alone.

Except for Venus, just below.

To the East from my back porch.

And smoke—across the moon

and in my mouth,

with my chill teeth.

Jgb

Epiphany 2015

OK, I've had it with the NYPD

I've been watching with amazement as Police Officers have turned their backs on Mayor de Blasio at the two funerals of NYPD officers executed last week. The only thing odder is that the assassin, claiming to be avenging the deaths of unarmed Black men at the hands of the police, chose to kill a Chinese and a Hispanic police officer.

This second back turn was not only to the mayor but to the Police Commissioner in New York who told them not to do it.

I've been trying to think of what the equivalent action would be in my life--to turn my back on a bishop I did not agree with or felt unsupported by? I've certainly sat in the private office of several bishops and aired my differences with them, but it would never occur to me to try to embarrass a bishop in a public setting. Such things aren't done in polite society to your superior.

I guess the NYPD has shown it doesn't travel in 'polite society', which, if I understand it, was roughly what de Blasio said in his campaign for mayor. And a lot of New Yorkers must have agreed.

To Protect and Serve has become to 'Dis and Taunt.

Whatever happened to the chain of command in the police? Why do they think they can disobey their Police Commissioner and disrespect their mayor.

No wonder people are afraid of the police. Hell, I'm Afraid of the Police and I'm an aging, white man with nothing worse than a speeding violation on my record! Imagine what young minority males must feel toward them.

And please, will someone with some sense take away the equipment from local police that makes them look like Navy Seals on the way to get bin Laden!

Who guards the guardians, after all....

Another unpreached sermon

I was all ready to give this sermon at St. James for Epiphany but on the way there I remembered doing something very similar two years ago. I checked the service book and, sure enough, 2013. One of the neat things about working for three churches is that you can recycle sermons you like. But not after just two years.

I told some folks at coffee hour about my change in direction and someone asked, "do you think we'd remember something from two years ago?"

"Of course," I said, "I never underestimate lay folks."

And I never do.

But this is worth posting here, I think.

Epiphany

Listen to the words of Isaiah:“… A multitude of camels

shall cover you, the young camels of Midian and Ephah…”

Epiphany gets me thinking about Camels.

Camels are remarkable creatures—a miracle of design. Without Camels the history of northern Africa and what we call the Middle East would have been very different.

And the Magi wouldn’t have made it to Bethlehem.

Camels have two humps and are larger than their one-humped cousins, the dromedaries.

Those two humps are made of fat for the camels to live on when there’s nothing to eat.. And when they do eat, they eat the sparse, thorny plants that survive in the desert.

Camels have thick fibrous pads on their feet to keep the heat of the sand from burning them and to maintain better balance. They can travel 70 miles a day and can store 30 quarts of water in their stomachs. In extreme heat they can go without water for nearly a week.

Camels have flaps on their nostrils that close during sandstorms.

They are a miracle of design. You couldn’t make up an animal more suited for that part of the world than a camel. And since they can carry 600 pounds on their backs, they made trade and exploration possible in the harsh, barren regions of the middle East.

Because of Camels, great and sophisticated civilizations flourished in one of the most inhospitable areas of the world.

Camels almost certainly carried Balthazar, Melichior and Caspar on their long journey to from Babylon to Judea.

So, Epiphany makes me think about camels and about those exotic astrologers they carried to Jesus.

Bethlehem was a tiny village in the first century when the Magi arrived. A back-water town. A “one horse” town—or, more accurately, a “one camel” town.

The Magi were wealthy men from a high priestly caste. They were sophisticated—and important enough to demand an audience with King Herod and to cause a stir in Jerusalem.

Bethlehem must have seemed strange and primitive to them.

I have a mental picture of the Magi as they approached Joseph’s simple working class house. They must have wondered if their calculations were somehow off, it they had read the heavens incorrectly. How could the Golden Child the stars had foretold be here in this ordinary place?

The word of their arrival would have spread like wild-fire through Bethlehem. The whole village must have come out to gawk and wonder at these astonishing foreigners. Their caravan would have drawn a crowd of on-lookers, pondering what would bring men of unimaginable wealth to such an unimportant place.

Balthazar, Melichior and Caspar were used to marble palaces and royalty. Yet there they were, ducking their heads to enter the low doorway of a carpenter’s house, dropping to their knees on the straw-covered, dirt floor, opening gifts of astonishing value before a simple, teenaged girl and her toddler son.

Epiphanies seldom come on camel back.

Epiphanies are seldom wrapped in silk and gold.

Epiphany is the unconcealing of God in the midst of life. And epiphanies seldom come on camel back. God is seldom revealed, seldom unconcealed in the spectacular and remarkable events of life.

In fact, there is a dictionary definition of an “epiphany” that I memorized many years ago because I knew I needed to remember it. It goes like this: “an epiphany is the sudden, intuitive knowledge of the deep-down meaning of things, usually manifested in what is ordinary, everyday and commonplace.”

God is manifested to us like that: suddenly and intuitively. An epiphany points us past the surface meaning to the deep-down meaning, the essence, the very core and marrow of understanding.

But seldom is “god-ness” manifested in the unusual, spectacular and extraordinary. When God comes to us, it is in what is ordinary, everyday and commonplace.

Epiphanies do not have as much to do with “what we’re looking at” as they do with “the way we see.”

Let’s give the Magi credit—they knew how to see. For two years and thousands of desert miles, they had expected to find a Prince, a King, a Golden Child in a Royal Palace. Yet, when they entered that humble home in Bethlehem and saw that commonplace family in the midst of their everyday life with their ordinary little boy, they knew how to see. They brought out their gifts and they “fell down and worshiped him.”

If only we knew how to see so well.

When I lived in Divinity Hall at Harvard Divinity School, my best friend was Dan Kiger, who’s became a Methodist minister in Ohio. Dan and I played Gin Rummy every day for an hour before dinner in his room for a penny a point. All these year’s later, he still owes me money.

On the wall of Dan’s room was a poster consisting of thousands of black dots on a white background. I stared at it for countless hours while Dan decided what to discard. I thought of it as an interesting “impressionistic” picture.

Then one day, while we were playing Gin Rummy, a friend from down the hall came in to borrow an envelope from Dan. While Dan was looking for an envelope in his desk, Hank said, “that’s a great picture of Jesus” and pointed to the poster of a thousand dots.

After Hank left, I sat staring at the poster for a long time. “How’s that a picture of Jesus?” I finally asked Dan.

He got up and pointed to one of the thousands of dots. “That’s his left eye,” was all Dan had to say. Suddenly, I saw it—it was Jesus! And I could never again see it as merely thousands of dots.

Epiphanies are like that. If we only know how to see, God is everywhere in our world, in our lives.

We need eyes to see.

We need to see that God is manifested to us in what is common and ordinary.

We need to see the one dot in the millions of dots that is the left eye of God.

The Sufi’s have a saying. Whenever you hear hoof beats, look for a Zebra.

Those are the eyes we need. Eyes to see Zebras and Camels in the midst of what is ordinary…eyes to see God in the commonplace…eyes to see Star Light in the dust motes of our everyday lives…eyes to see the Christ Child in every child’s face….eyes to see what is “most holy” in what is “most mundane”….

Home again

Back from Baltimore in just over 5 1/2 hours--including stopping at the kennel to pick up the dog!

Josh and Cathy sometimes take over 7 hours--but they're always traveling on holidays and we go mid-morning or after the 5 pm rush hour.

A piece of road that's been worked on since they've lived in Baltimore (6 years or so) was finished just for this trip. They've opened I 95 express lanes both north and south from just before the tunnel to beyond the Baltimore Beltway. It makes an enormous difference to have now 7 lanes in both directions.

But who wants to know about that? Well, unless you're planning a trip to Baltimore....

Our granddaughters are still the most beautiful, talented and smart girls on the East Coast and maybe beyond. Tegan (who's 5) read us "The Spooky Old Tree", which is one of the Berenstine Bears books if you know children's literature. She's five! I suspected she could read a bit when they were here at Thanksgiving. Morgan works on complex lego things for an hour at a time--I wouldn't last 15 minutes. And Emma sings like an angel.

Good genes is all I can say....

Trading writers

My friend, Harriet, and I are constant readers. And once in a while we trade writers since there is, after all, a finite number of wondrous writers in the world--not that Harriet or I have exhausted that by any means. But we like the same sort of writers, mostly mystery, but not always, and we can send each other down paths of great enjoyment by sharing writers.

We had lunch before Christmas and I was able to tell her of Laura Lippman, who writes about Baltimore, where we're going tomorrow. And Harriet, God bless her, told me about Louise Penny who writes about a Quebec  detective named Gamach. I've read three already and two more are waiting for me at the Cheshire Library an email just told me.

I like the Canadian feel of the Penny novels. Everything is a little more subdued, less frenetic and less violent than American writers or Scandinavian writers (God knows--so dark are those!) or even the British. Gamach is almost too thoughtful and kind and introspective, but not quite.

When I was on a tour of the Holy Land more than a decade ago with a group of Episcopal priests, one Bishop and a couple of lay-folks, our guide would laugh at each stop we made because of the questions the people wanting to sell us stuff asked her. I asked her what they were asking in Hebrew or Arabic and she told me this: "Everywhere we stop, they think you are all Canadian. You just don't seem like Americans to them."

Ever since then, I've wondered if Episcopalians should be Canadians? A tad more reserve and less noisy than other Americans.

I'd almost like to be Canadian--but it's cold enough for me in Connecticut, Quebec, from the Penny novels is a tad too brisk.

Laura Lippman and Louise Penny--if you like literary mysteries (like P.D. James, may she rest in peace) try them out, by all means.

Harriet and I give them two thumbs up.

That should seal the deal....

Going to Baltimore

We're leaving in the morning to go to Baltimore to see Josh/Cathy and the girls.

So I won't be back here until Friday night to tell you how it went.

So, from the bottom of my heart--"Happy New Year!" to each and everyone of you who drop in from time to time on this blog where I ponder whatever I ponder at the time.

No one ever read this

This is one of my earliest posts and I just noticed no one ever read it. Maybe I posted it again but I'm not going through over 1100 pages to find out. I just hope someone reads it now.

Tuesday, March 17, 2009

Church Time

I want to write about my concept of 'church time'. This concept and belief comes from over 30 years of being a parish priest. This is what I notice when I seek to explain 'church time' to people: most clergy acknowledge it as vaguely interesting but bogus. Most people just don't get it because in our culture 'time' is an absolute: an hour is like every other hour, a day just one more day, and months--except for February of course--are equal opportunity time measurements. However, some lay people--most of whom are very involved and committed to the parish--really get it and it gives them comfort as well as understanding.

Here's Church Time in introductory fashion: Most church going folks, even if they are very committed might spend two hours a week in church--one for a Eucharist and one for a coffee hour, an adult ed class, a committee meeting. So, at two hours a week, people spend 104 hours a year in church. That is the equivalant of 13 8-hour work days spread over a year. Imagine having an 8 hr a day job which you only went to one a month or so. I would content that you wouldn't accomplish much because the memory and learning curve would be so compromised and when you showed up for your day of work you would have missed almost a month of what your company was doing. No way to catch up or stay even.

Church Time is like that. I have trouble remembering what I did yesterday, but because I was back at church today, it began to come back and I could move on and make progress. A week has 148 hours (those reliable measures of time). If two or even three of them are spent 'thinking about or participating' in church, that's barely 2% of the weeks hours. Next to nothing. You might expect to spend that much time stuck in traffic in a week--and how much of the stuck in traffic time do you retain to build upon so you might progress and grow and expand????

However, 'church professionals', like me--I sometimes tell people who ask me what I do for a living is that I am paid to be religious--spend inordinate amounts of time thinking about church stuff--worship, music, education, outreach, program, evangelism...on and on. We have, at the least 50 hours a week to obsess on church stuff. Most clergy spend more time than that, let me tell you, because we clergy are so anxious to justify our very existence and being paid to be religious...which we--and most people--would think a silly thing to make a living doing. That's another post right there...But consider this: the 'professionals' spend at least 1/3 of every week thinking about church while even active members spend 2% or so. So, should we be surprised that most church folks don't seem to understand, appreciate, respond to 'church stuff' the way the clergy and staff do? If you spent 1/3 of your time obsessing on cacti and succulents and I spent, at best--who could imagine it--2% of my time in the same study, would you expect me to appreciate the subtleties and wonder of those plants?

"Church Time" requires those of us who get paid to do it to realize that those we work with, serve and minister to simply don't have the 'connection' to the issues we worry and fret and plan and scheme about. Their learning curve is very slow rising--it looks mostly like a straight line! And that is as it should be. So when they forget a meeting or say, "I meant to come to that class but just forgot" we should realize why. Lay folks are wonderful and profound and loving and truly committed to the parish. They simply have other lives, as they should, and don't live, breath, sweat and digest church stuff.

I'll leave it at that until later. But 'church time' helps explain why clergy misinterpret lay folks so profoundly and don't recognize the beauty and grace of their contributions. It also explains why clergy are almost continually frustrated because the enormous amount of time they spend wishing, hoping and dreaming about all the church could do is totally lost on lay folks because they really don't spend much time at all worrying about that stuff.