"Thin Times"....

One thing I forgot to mention about All Saints' Day is the Celtic concept of 'thin times'.

The ancient Celtic people believed there were times in the year when the barrier between the living and the dead became 'thin' and spirits could pass back and forth. One of the 'thin-est' times of the year is this time--late October and early November. During this time, Spirits from the other side would come calling on the living and the living had to be careful not to slip through the 'thin-ness'.

When Christianity came to Europe, it only made sense to use this time of year to celebrate All Saints' Day (yesterday) and All Souls' Day (today). And on 'All Hallows Eve' (from 'hallowed'--holy...a reference to the saints) Saints might come calling. Treat them well.

Obviously, that's where Halloween came from--'hallows eve'.

Lots of stuff to unpack in all that which I'm not going to unpack right now.

I just notice that this time of year--days still a tad warm, nights plunging into chill, the shrinking of daylight...it is a 'thin time'.

Ponder how living in 'thin times' gives us access to the spiritual life in a powerful way.

The Feast of All Saints

Today is All Saints Day. It may be my favorite Holy Day--even ahead of Christmas and Easter--but Ash Wednesday is a close second to All Saints.

What I love most about it is the poetic imagery about death in the readings. The lesson from Isaiah 25.6-9 offers a feast on a holy mountain of fine foods and well aged wine when God will dry all tears and remove the shroud over all peoples by 'swallowing up death forever'. Something about God 'swallowing death' is so wondrous and poetic and final that I just have to love it.

Revelation 21.1-6a is the same theme: "See, the home of God is among mortals...he will wipe every tear from their eyes. Death will be no more; mourning and crying and pain will be no more, for the first things have passed away...See, I am making all things new."  No more death and all things new, who wouldn't devoutly and joyfully wish for that?

In the Gospel on this day from John, Jesus raises Lazarus from the dead, but speaking it into being (just as God 'spoke' the whole Creation into being) by saying, "Lazarus, come out!" (John 11.43) And, against all human wisdom to the contrary, Lazarus does.

I said some of this stuff in my sermon today at St. James in Higganum. I waited too long to write the sermon down--it's 6:33 p.m. now, I could have done it at 3 or so. I can't now.

I always know what I'm going to say in a sermon, I'm just not sure how I'm going to say it. And if I come straight home and write it out I usually get it 90% accurate, but my short term memory has a shelf life of 5 hours or so.

The other thing I love about All Saints is that 'we' are the 'Saints of God'. Really. No kidding. Trust me on this.

Garrison Keilor, that unlikely theologian, once, on his Prairie Home Companion, talked about the Feast of All Saints by suggesting when we come to communion we look to our left and imagine the communion rail stretches back into history and all those 'saints of God' who came before us are there with us, receiving the Body and Blood. Then, he suggested, we look to the right and imagine the rail stretching out into the eternity of the future and seeing all those 'saints' yet unborn that will follow us, joining us in the Sacrament.

I don't believe I've ever heard a more wondrous description of the 'communion of saints' than that.

I told that story in my sermon too. Wish I could reconstruct it in totality instead of piece-meal.

I also, in my sermon, right at the beginning, talked about the distinction in the first 4 or 5 centuries of the life of the church between the so called 'Gnostic Christians' and the Christians who became 'the church' as it was known for centuries. Gnostic Christians and Orthodox Christians disagreed on any number of things--but one was the nature of Death.

I teach about the Gnostic Christian writings at UConn in Waterbury from time to time. I always begin the class by doing a 'heresy test'. I ask the class to raise their hands if they believe in 'the immortality of the soul'. Most of the time a vast majority raise their hands and I tell them that they are 'heretics' because the Nicene Creed (which made the Gnostic Christians 'heretics') says we believe in 'the resurrection of the dead', not the 'immortality of the Soul'.

I don't give a fig about that distinction which forced lots of good Christians out of "The Church" in the 4th Century--what I give a fig about is God 'swallowing up death forever' and all of us being a part of the 'communion of saints'...dead and living and yet unborn.

I'm not help if you want to ask me "what happens after we die?"

I have not a clue. None whatsoever. Nada.

Somethings I simply leave up to God. All that about 'what happens' is part of those 'somethings'.

But this I know: on All Saints Day, we are all of us--dead, alive, yet to be--held together in the Heart of God.

That's enough for me.

Really.

Being one of the communion of saints is all I need. Truly.

I'm not kidding.

Come on, be a 'saint' with me....

Home

We made it home from Baltimore in under 5 hours with three stops. And I'm driving 80 on the New Jersey Turnpike and people are passing me!

We had a great short visit. Two nights. We always buy the granddaughter's Halloween costumes--Emma was a evil princess in black with hoop skirts, Morgan was a wood's man (woman), looking for all the world like one of Robin Hood's compatriots, and Tegan was a girl from Bali, looking for all the world like a girl from Bali in wondrous colors.

We went down on Thursday and went to Red Robin for dinner. The girls love Red Robin but it is really an awful chain. I'd recommend the onion rings and little else. But you go where the granddaughters want to go! Just the way it is.

They wore their costumes to The Calvert School on Friday (the tip off on this school is the insistence on being The Calvert School (as if there are others' claiming to be Calvert Schools...) But it is a great school if you like private and expensive and privileged, which it is. Sorry, I'm a public school snob. I did get a Master's Degree from Harvard but on someone else's dime, thank you. Friday was a half-day, so we had lots of time with the girls while their lawyer parents worked pretty late and go to spoil and cook for them.

When Josh came home, we hadn't been able to turn on the TV all day. Josh thinks Bern and I are 'cursed' about major machinery (and it is true that most times we go, something breaks) but this TV, expensive on the front end, was 10 years old and on it's way out--dim for sometime now. Josh tried to replace the bulb, which impressed me since I am the most 'un-handy' person ever. He got Bern's 'handy' DNA, obviously. (Secretly, I think, he was pleased since he'd wanted a new TV for his 40th birthday in August but didn't get one because they're considering moving and why replace a TV before you move, or something like that.) The other thing was about not being able to watch TV is that Morgan and Emma and Tegan didn't mind at all. They read and played until dinner. Just since Easter they've gotten so much more able to not be entertained. Tegan is 6 and can read about anything. She found Cathy's parenting guide and read a lot of it! Bern and I and our two kids are devoted readers. So proud to see it passed on to another generation. Reading makes life so rich.

 So, on Saturday morning, Josh and Cathy went to Costco and bought a 60 inch TV that weighed about a quarter of what the 10 year old 56 inch one did--technology marches on. Josh and I (mostly Josh, I just cleaned up packing material and such while he set it up and lifted when he told me too) installed the TV while Bern and Cathy and the girls went to a Halloween Party at the home of another Calvert kid. It was a great party with a kid costumed as Harry Potter, who was Harry's spitting image. 20 kids or so. What blew me away was that when Josh and I got their, the girls came and embraced me and insisted that I meet every kid! Joy beyond measure! Josh and I were there for the kids to play a game or two, then Cathy and Josh and I went to see a house they might be interested in out near the Episcopal Cathedral, Johns Hopkins and THE Calvert School.

It was an incredible house. 5000 square feet. finished basement and attic on 2 acres. Stone outside, hardwood inside, subtle paint, a kitchen to die for (with a prep sink across the room from the sink sink!) Amazing. It would sell for $1.3 million or so in Cheshire and $2.5 million or more in Greenwich , but in Baltimore is listed for $599,000 and will probably go for less.

Then we went to an Italian deli that is better than any I've ever been in and I've been in a few in Boston and New Haven and NYC. We brought lots of stuff home.

Bern suddenly felt sick (from not sleeping and not eating much and the speed of the drive--my thoughts only) just before the CT state line. So she went to bed with dry toast and I fed the bird, cleaned the litter boxes (3 when we're away) and drank some wine.

I have an extra hour of sleep tonight, thank goodness, but driving gives me a rush so I'm still here typing at 11:15 (actually, 10:15 thanks to Standard Time), but I'm going soon.

Glad to be home. Missing them already.

The girls...

Tomorrow morning we're taking the dog to the kennel and driving to Baltimore to be with the girls--our three granddaughters until late Saturday afternoon.

We've got the drive down cold. Once we made it home--288 miles--in 4 hours and 12 minutes!

But being with Emma, Morgan and Tegan...that you can never predict.

They are so smart and so good and so funny--well, just what I'd expect my offspring's offspring to be.

I have no way to blog until we get home on Halloween.

Maybe you'll hear from me on All Saints' Day....

Shalom, jim

The moon, the moon....

The moon, in the sky beyond the half dozen hemlocks beside our back porch, is as full as it can be in the eastern sky.

OK, I know the moon doesn't really shrink and then swell, it's all about the earth blocking the sun that reflects off the moon. I know that. But I like to think the moon does really shrink into darkness and then swell into wholeness. It seems right.

"Lunatic" comes from the Latin for 'moon'--luna. And I truly believe the moon has an effect on the way we are.

At St. John's, all the years I was there, we dreaded the full moon. Crazy people got crazier and people who didn't seem crazy got a little bit crazy.

Folks in the Soup Kitchen acted out a bit more. Street People became more aggressive. And a Vestry meeting on the night of a full moon would devolve into nonsense.

No kidding.

I actually knew today that the moon would be full tonight. I had this energy unlike my normal energy--just a little off the grid. I said things to people I probably wouldn't say at a quarter moon or half-moon and never in the dark of the moon.

I like believing the cosmos has some power in our lives. Like the moon drives us a bit. And the seasons make us different. The Spring 'me' is different than the late Autumn 'me'.

We are looked over and driven by the stars. Don't tell me astrological signs are meaningless. I am Aries on the cusp of Torus and that rules my extroversion and my irony. I really know that.

If you get a chance, go out and look at the moon tonight or tomorrow night. A full moon is a lot of energy. Really.

Frank

Frank was a member of St. Andrew's in Northford. He died Saturday at CT Hospice in Branford, overlooking the Long Island Sound. He was 80.

When I first spoke to Cheryl, his only child, we talked mostly about being only children watching parents die, how lonely that is. Her mother died several years ago. I went through the same thing though my mother died 13 years or so before my father. It is an odd thing to be the only person who knows them the way you know them and watch them slip away. No one is there to share in the memories--they are only yours. That conversation was on a visit to Hospice when Frank was asleep the whole time--unable to be awakened. Two only children, we were, sharing one of the dark things about having no siblings.

After he died, I told  her I was supposed to be in Baltimore on Saturday, when the funeral was, but that I would come home early and let Bern ride the train home and she told me she didn't want me to do that. She said visiting Frank, as I did at Yale New Haven Hospital and Hospice was more important. Plus Ted, a priest Frank knew much longer than he knew me, was doing the funeral and could do the whole service perfectly well.

Today I met with Cheryl and her cousin, Clair, who is shepherding Cheryl through all this, I offered once more to come home early. She didn't know why I was to be in Baltimore and when I told her I would be visiting my grand-daughters for the first time since Easter, she did some very expressive movements and said, "My father would never forgive me if I asked you to shorten your time with your granddaughters. My father was all about family...."

Frank spent his life working against prostitution and human trafficking. Way ahead of his time. His daughter told me people thought he was crazy, worrying about such things. But Frank told me he'd gotten over 200 women off the street who stayed off the street and built new lives. Few people I know can say they saved that many people!

He was a remarkable man. I would have left Baltimore early--at 6 a.m. to get to the noon service--for Frank. But I wouldn't want him never to forgive his daughter for making me....

And Ted will do a wonderful job.

Why email is a bad idea

So, I noticed on the Clergy News from the Episcopal Church in CT that Nathan Ives, our new Deacon in the Cluster was listed as being 'missioner' of the Middlesex Area Cluster Ministry, I emailed him to poke fun at that (since I'm the 'interim" 'missioner', not him.)

But he got concerned and emailed Linda at the Commons (the diocesan headquarters) to get it right.

It was perfectly 'right' from the beginning. I take nothing personal, nothing, I just thought it was humorous. But now it becomes an issue.

NEVER, EVER use email to truly communicate anything besides dates and times.

I've often had email be the Evil One on many occasions because email cannot convey skepticism or irony and most everything I say is either skeptical or ironic.

Perhaps, you might say, I should be more concrete and factual in email. And I should. But I am prone to skepticism and irony and don't know how to convey that from a keyboard.

Anything that isn't factual and concrete should never be conveyed by email. That's what I believe and am convinced of, by the way.

I've know so many email wars--my own and others--that ensued because email can't convey subtlety and nuance in any way.

Email me about when and where we are to meet. That will work. Or what time to call you. That will work. But don't try to go beyond place and time and fact in an email.

It will always end in horror. Seriously.

And never, ever try to be funny or ironic in an email. I can guarantee you that won't work. Never. Ever.

Email is a bad idea, truly.

Maybe me should revert to phones and since you can't see anyone on a phone, revert to doing anything of import face to face.

That I could agree to and applaud.