Bishops

Bishop Laura Ahrens visited St. Andrew's today. She was great--high energy, humorous, engaging, able to get everyone involved in the conversation.

On the way home, I was trying to remember how many bishops I've served with and for. There were two in my time in West Virginia and 8 or 9 in Connecticut--Connecticut always has multiple bishops...the Diocesan and a couple of what are called suffragan bishops. Suffragans are assistants who share the load with the Bishop bishop.

Maybe there were 10 in CT--though I can't be sure. (I am sure Bishops might be surprised that they blur in the memory!) OK, Aurthur, Brad, Clarence, Jeffery, Drew, Jim, Laura, Ian. Eight, like I said.

Bishops are mostly part of the background noise of parish and community life. We know they are there, there's just not a lot of day-to-day proof they are. And, far as I can see, that's good--around if you need them but not in the way.

I used to long for the time when Episcopal Bishops walked the earth like Giants. That used to be the norm, before elections became so terribly democratic (not that democracy is 'terrible', quite the contrary, but because the election of bishops is firmly in the hands of the people, they are so thoroughly vetted no Giants or Ogres get through. I've decided, in my elder years, what I used to call "vanilla bishops" are just fine. Most all the bishops I've served with and for have been decent, well-meaning, gifted people. That's, in the end, what you need as a bishop, not some personality larger-than-life.

The only bishop I've had who was a throw-back to the Ice Age of Bishops was Wilburn Camrock Campbell III. Bishop Campbell did not suffer fools gently; however, neither did he suffer smart, well meaning people either. It was the Campbell way or the highway.

Here's one example: Bishop Campbell owned two Doberman Pincers. They came to his office with him most days. He even had a huge old chair where they would sleep. When you came to visit him, you're initial reaction was "how kind, he's giving me the best chair in his office". The problem was, while you sat there there were two 90 pound dogs staring at you and showing you their teeth! People didn't visit Campbell's office often or for long.

Another story. When I was in seminary, I spent the summer between my Junior and Senior year working at the Highland Education Project with 'Pop' Bailey. (Most Protestants in southern West Virginia couldn't get their mouth around "Father"--too Roman Catholic--so they called Ross Bailey "Pop". The HEP ran work camps for Episcopal Teens the summer I was there. Kids came from places like Chicago and Boston to have culture shock and 'help the poor'. I was their native guide because I spoke the language and understood Appalachians, being one myself. The HEP was 12 miles from where I grew up.

There was a lay reader in HEP--there were two churches (Keystone and Davy) and only one priest--so Dominic Lagatto and I would traipse off the Davy three Sundays a month to lead Morning Prayer. One Sunday, to my complete and utter surprise, Dominic didn't end Morning Prayer but plowed right on into the Prayer of Consecration and celebrated the Eucharist. I've never been one to keep with rules and regulations and since most of the people who came to the church in Davy had been to a Holy Roller service the night before, I thought the sacrament might be good for them.

On the way back to Keystone, I told Dominic never to breathe a word about what he had done and I'd keep mum and it would probably not be something he should repeat often. However, when we got back to HEP, folks from Davy had already called Pop to let him know how much they enjoyed the Eucharist from Dominic's hand and somehow ('how' I know not, this being long before texts and cell phones) Bishop Campbell heard of it Sunday night. On Monday morning, he was in Keystone and Dominic (a frustrated RC priest if there ever was one) was called on the carpet and read out of the church. I was there. It was brutal. I was humiliated for Dominic and tried to speak up for him only to be battered by the bishop myself.

Last Wilburn Camrock Campbell III story (though there are many, many more). One of my friends was a student at Virginia Seminary. He had a scam of sorts going since he'd go to WV and buy dope and then sell it to Virginia students. The Seminary found out and expelled him. Campbell flew to DC and my friend picked him up at what was then National Airport. They stopped to get a bottle of Scotch and then went to my friend's dorm room. Campbell called my friend everything but a straight man and tore his room apart. Then they went to the Dean's office. Campbell walked right in without speaking to the Dean's secretary, picked up the Dean's phone without asking and dialed General Seminary in NYC. (He had already assured my friend had been accepted at General and said that on the phone in front of Virginia's Dean.) The Bishop hung up the Dean's phone, said, "you're losing a good man", and left with my friend.

Great theater! And, my friend was a great priest in the end. But is that the kind of behavior you want from the person with 'authority' over you and you're work?

I think not.

Lots of Bishop Campbell stories left. Some showing how a Giant can move the Earth. Others illustrating how Ogres can destroy the Bridge they guard.

Maybe I'll come back to them sometimes.

But, for now, I'm so joyful and thankful for Bishop Laura and Bishop Ian being part of my ministry and my life.

  

The ground is frozen

We hoped to bury Luke in our little pet cemetery beside our back deck where 2 dogs 4 cats, a bird and who knows how many Guinea pigs lay resting. But the ground is frozen bone hard.

We agreed this morning to take him to be cremated. I went to the movies and when I came home, Bern was out. I called the Animal Hospital and they said to bring him in.

I drove all over Cheshire with Luke in his box in my car's trunk, looking for Bern. Found her in Big Y and told her I was taking him.

They were wonderful at the Hospital. I had to uncover his head so they could know he was dead. Everyone was kind and the young, female vet didn't blink when I told her he hadn't been to a vet for 15 years. "Wish I could avoid doctors like that," she said.

She also told me when older cats start losing weight rapidly, there is seldom any intervention that isn't invasive and painful and, in the end, animals are better off to die without treatment if they aren't in pain.

It may have been what she tells pet owners to make them feel better--and it worked for me....

When I came home, Bern was damp eyed and told me she'd started crying in Big Y and had to leave before she was through.

"Did you get the groceries?" I asked.

"Barely," she said, tearing up.

That's what they do to you--these creatures you invite into your lives...they get under your skin.

In a big, big way.

Rest well, Lukie....

Sadness and relief

Our Cat, Lukie, finally died about 11 p.m. last night. I was there with him and Bern got out of bed to join me.

Mourning, it seems to me, is sharper and shorter with pets.

With pets there is never 'unfinished business'. They love unconditionally and there is nothing we could have said or done and didn't that would have made that love deeper. They just love you--no residual anger, no things left unsaid, nothing to 'make up' to them.

We wept together, Bern and I, wrapping him in his blanket and putting him in a box I'd been saving--a box from the holidays that he climbed into more than once (what is it about cats and boxes?)

We wanted to bury him today but freezing temperatures and 5 inches of snow ended that hope.

He's safe on the back porch in his box. Maybe tomorrow we can dig his grave.

I will miss him so....But after so long a dying, I am relieved for him as well.

Lukie has moved on.

Still dying

I can't quite belief Luke is still alive at 10:45 p.m. on 2/4/16.
What a fighter he is.

He hasn't eaten for nearly a week. Hasn't drank water for three days except what Bern squirts in his mouth with an eye dropper.

And he lives, hardly moving, but alive.

Half a dozen times I've thought he'd died. And he hadn't.

Tonight maybe. I'll go now  and take out the dog and sit with Lukie, hoping he'll die.

He's been so noble dying.

But it's time.

I love him so and want it to be over for him.

I have a picture of him sitting in a traveling bag that was ready to leave.

If I could I would put it here--that picture--(but I'm not that tech savvy)--and say, with the picture, "Luke is traveling on...."

And I wish he would.

Really, I do.

I love him so, but watching him die is so painful I can hardly breathe.

Surely he won't live past this night.

And I've been thinking that since Tuesday.

I love him so. Enough to wish him dead now.

That much is how much I love him.

Lukie

Our cat, Luke, has taken to his bed to die.

He's lost half his body weight and doesn't walk around any more.

But he is seemingly pain free, so we aren't taking him to be put down.

Bern lifts him out of bed and stands him up to drink water several times today. He hasn't really eaten since Saturday. She washes, dries and brushes him twice daily. He really likes that.

We've put his bed in our TV room and one of us is with him most of the time. We rub his head and he still purrs a bit.

It is so hard to see him ending like this. Luke has been a great cat--huge and yellow and puppy like--he always came when we called him.

He was so loving and active and curious.

Now he mostly sleeps, waiting for what comes next, I suppose...though I can't know that.

I miss him as a well cat. I will miss him greatly in what I hope, for him, is a short time now.

He has been deeply loved. Will be still.

It is hard to lose a pet. Having been able to care for him and say good-bye has meant a lot to us. I only hope his comforts have been met.

Talking to hear your head rattle!

That's what my Mammaw Jones used to say to a room full of grandchildren.

"Pond my Swanee", (another thing she used to say), "you all are just talkin' to hear your heads rattle..."

This wondrous auditory came back to me while I was upstairs and heard the dog bark several times. When I went down, I asked Bern, "why's your dog barking?" (Like most people, I suspect, the dog belongs to the other person when misbehaving!)

"Just to hear himself bark," she said, and I remembered Mammaw Jones. Thanks, Bela and Bern, for that memory. It is precious.

About that "Pond my Swanee" saying Lina Manona Sadler Jones used the say: I tried for years to get her to tell me what it meant and she couldn't. Then, English major that I am, I happened across a mild-curse from Elizabethan times.

"Upon my swanlea!" was a saying of mild surprise and astonishment.

Another thing English majors learned is that the English and Scots-Irish settlers of Appalachia were shut off for a long time from the larger culture and some of the sayings they brought with them endured and were transformed.

"Upon my swanlea!" became, over time, my grandmother's expression of not totally positive astonishment at how her grandchildren could chatter on endlessly.

'Nonie' (a transformation of 'Manona') was one of the best. One of the best ever.

I was blessed to  have been her grandchild.

"Pond my swanee", ain't that the truth....

Full of Sound and Fury

MSNBC is covering the Iowa Caucuses all night long. It will be the same in the New Hampshire primary. Iowa has 6 electoral votes and New Hampshire has 4. That's 10 out of 538! That's around 2% of the Electoral College.

I am sick to death of hearing about 2 states that, in terms of diversity, have next to nothing in way of reflecting what America looks like!

In Iowa about 40% of the Democrats describe themselves as 'socialist' and over half of the Republicans self identify as 'evangelical, right-wing'. There are no other states where that would be true.

So, what's the fuss? Why do we care? What is so newsworthy besides the national media says it is.

To complete the quote in the title: ...signifying nothing..."

Wake me up when the voting 'really' begins....