That kind of morning...

I'm celebrating at St. James in Higganum for Lent and Easter. St. James has church at 9 a.m. (a very un-Anglican time, by the way!) and is at least a half-mile away. So I have to get up before 7, take the dog out, eat breakfast and leave.

This morning was that kind of morning so I didn't get up until 7:08 and the dog sniffed more than he did his business, so I didn't eat breakfast before I left.

Turning off I-691 onto I-91 N. an unmarked car (rather sporty car!) pulled me over with full lights and sound. The State Police Officer asked me where I was heading.

"Church", I told him, trying to score points.

It turns out that my registration expired in February of 2013--or was falsely cancelled (one of the problems the CT DMV has had)--and the officer could have impounded my car then and there but since my insurance was current and I was a church-going type, he let me drive away but told me, "you're in the system" (ominous that!) and needed to get this worked out asap. He also told me "it could happen to any of us. Don't beat yourself up...."

I worked the whole encounter into my sermon--talking about how 'each moment' holds the possibility of encountering God and finding grace. We need to 'live in the moment', as cliched as that sounds. I felt grace and I drove away, hungry and shook up, but still on my way to church.

Church and the class I'm leading on John's gospel were great!

Sometimes the 'moments' on that kind of morning can be grace-filled.

But just to prove it was 'that kind of morning', when I went to use the bathroom before coming home (something men of my age always do--pee before getting into a car!) I almost wet myself because I'd put my boxer shorts on backwards and there was no opening to be found!

The problem was, I buy all my clothes bigger than I need. I like 'loose things', even shoes. My feet are 10 at most but I buy 10 1/2 or sometimes, for boots and such, 11's. Same with boxer shorts, so I can't tell they're on backward.

The rest of the day has turned out better than this morning boded. (Is that how you spell the pass tense of 'bode'? My spell check didn't catch it but it looks funny to me.)

Hoping your tomorrow morning isn't 'one of those'....

the folly of the gods...

This morning, when I brushed my teeth, shaved my neck and cheeks and took a shower, I used more water than many around the world have in a week.

For some reason, I have had a growing awareness of my privilege. And it is a troubling experience.

I'm 68 years old and never in my life have I wanted for much of anything. And I've never lived in fear. I've always known where my next meal is coming from...or some meal months in the future. I've always been able to drink tap water with no concerns. We don't lock our doors except when we're away for several days. I just assume I'll be as safe and free tomorrow as I've always been.

The list could go on and on--I am privileged and safe and secure in a way most people on the earth aren't. It is a sobering thought--'why me?'

I hear politicians take my privilege for granted and see it as an example as 'American Exceptionalism'--we simple 'deserve' what we've got that so many don't.

I'm profoundly troubled by the divides around the world and in my own community.

It was a commercial on TV that advised not to let the water run while you brush your teeth that prompted all this introspection.

I don't remember who paid for the ad, but it pointed out how many of the world's people spend vast amounts of time walking miles to get water for their families.

That message got inside my skin and mind and heart.

How blessed and privileged I am! And the question is 'why?'

I'm not sure there is a reason besides the luck of my being born in the US to hard working parents who believed absolutely in education.

And I'm as yet not sure what to do about my sudden insight into how inexplicably blessed I am.

I'll start with this: being always, every moment, grateful for my life and to be more compassionate toward everyone.

I hope I'll be led to add to that response. But I know this and know it fare well--I will never again, not ever, take my privilege/luck/good fortune/blessedness for granted.

Not ever.

(And you shouldn't either...by the way. Maybe that's another part of my response to the sudden, intuitive knowledge of how blessed I've been--I'll remind others of their blessings....)

Watching my photos....

Somehow, I don't remember how, I got my computer to give a slide show of the photos I have stored on it when it goes to sleep.

Sometimes I just sit and watch them scroll by.

They are all at least 8 years old because the only grandchildren in them are Emma and Morgan as babies and they're now 9 1/2.

Some of the photos are in Josh and Cathy's apartment in Brooklyn, where they haven't lived for 6 or 7 years. Most of the photos are in and around the house we've lived in for over 25 years. Some, very artful, are taken on Block Island, where we used to go for vacation.

At least 3 cats and 3 dogs are in them. Catherine and Luke and 'big Fatty'--our worst cat ever--who had a name once but became 'big Fatty' and, late in his life, 'big F***'. Really. An awful cat. There is dear Sadie dog and Bela as a puppy and Cathy and Josh's now dead dog, Sumi. Great dogs all.


The only people in the photos are Bern and me and Josh and Cathy and Mimi (no Tim, a little before he was always around) and Morgan and Emma as babies. There are photos of Bern and Mimi and me holding the babies, with them happy or unhappy or asleep. There are photos of the remarkable views from Block Island and of Sadie and Bern and I in that magical place.

There are photos of Josh and Mimi and Cathy and Bern together. And of me with Josh and of everyone with a dog or cat or two.

There's one shot that brings tears of joy to my eyes of Bern working in our yard, raking leaves. She is so lovely in that photo it makes me week.

There are photos of the 5 of us in NYC, on the street and in a restaurant, Mimi pulling up her sweater to cover her mouth, Josh and Cathy looking weird, everyone but me on the street--this must have been the day Josh was accepted to the bar in NY--all those.

And photos of a wondrous white flower on our back deck that I cannot name and will never forget.

Did I say about Bern and Mimi and Josh and Cathy and me with those babies? I think I did.

And the one with Josh and me on the deck, laughing. And Bern asleep in our bed with Luke and Sadie asleep with her? And me holding Bela (who now weighs 50 pounds) in one hand in our back yard when he first came to live with us? And those babies--now 9, going on 10.

I've left some out--like one I didn't take of Mimi waving to the camera and pointing to Sydney, Australia in the distance when she was there.

I sit and watch them scroll through--memories from almost a decade ago that are a part of me each day as I watch them.

Lovely, they are. Some bring me near tears of joy. What a wonder to see (and relive) a Life long past and to know it again.

How blessed I am by my photos.

Did I mention the one with Luke in my suitcase, waiting to go somewhere? I printed it out for Bern after Luke died. Luke has 'moved on', just as he was waiting to do in that photo.

I watch them over and again. They give me great joy and great thankfulness for the life I have had and the life I have.

Blessed, that's me....

apple butter and hot tea

I was a sickly child. That may be hard for people who know me now to believe! But I was a scrawny little kid until I hit 7th grade--then I grew, in two years, to my current height. (Or, probably an inch taller than I am now--I'm the shrinking old man of your nightmares.

Anyway, being sickly, I had to take medicine (mostly what we called 'sulfur drug' though Lord knows what that was or if it's even used anymore). I have always had a hair-trigger gag reflex, so swallowing pills--then and now--was difficult.

My mother's solution was apple butter. She would get a spoonful of apple butter and put the pill in it and I could swallow it. ("A spoonful of apple butter" {not 'sugar'} "makes the medicine go down.")

Over time, unsurprisingly, I developed an aversion to apple butter since I associated it with being sick.

Recently I've started taking an over the counter joint medicine which says "do not chew" on it. I usually chew pills up to swallow them, except for capsules, for some reason I can swallow anything that is a capsule.

So, I went to the store and bought--you guessed it--apple butter. And it works great. My aversion is gone. I don't put it on toast yet but might someday.

Which brings me to hot tea. I drink cold tea every day but haven't had a cup of tea for decades.

Part of my sickliness was asthma. My grandmother knew hot tea was good for wheezing since my grandfather had terrible asthma. Truth is, I learned much later, tea (real tea, not these flavored things masquerading as 'tea') has aminopolin in it--which is a natural bronchial dilator. So, as in so many ways, Mammaw Jones was right! But I soon got sick of tea because it actually made me feel sick when I drank it.

But my aversion to hot tea has remained. I can barely sit at a table where someone else is drinking it! I must try it soon. If I like it, I will regret shunning it for 50+ years.

If apple butter is ok now, what about hot tea?

Such a joyous time....

A week ago, on Shrove Tuesday no less, Nathan Ives was ordained a priest in God's church by Bishop Laura Aherns at Emmanuel Church in Killingworth.

Nathan has been working as a deacon in the three church cluster I serve and now will take over one of the other two presbyter roles, rotating around with Bryan Spinks and me.

I don't know how many ordinations I've attended (not as many as some priests who see attendance as 'showing the colors'...I just go to the ordinations of people I really care about) but Nathan's was one of the best!

Laura was great--relaxed and humorous--which set the tone for the whole thing.

John Burton was the preacher. I normally drift off during ordination sermons (unless I'm preaching!) but John's was really good. Years ago, when John was new, he came to Waterbury and helped a group of volunteers build a huge labyrinth in St. John's Close. He was a good leader and shunned using any measuring instrument besides string he had cut to map the contours. I was amazed at that, at first thinking a tape measure wouldn't be a bad idea! But in the end, John's way was the best way.

Anyway, John and Nathan may be the only two priests in CT that own sheep. So the 'good shepherd' gospel from John's gospel was the reading. John did a funny but accurate comparison between being a shepherd (warts and all) and a priest (warts and all). It was totally unsentimental, which is what makes me drift away during ordination sermons--the sentimentality of it all.

Priesthood is, it seems to me, one of the last callings that requires 'being' more than 'doing'. And 'being' is simply that--just being who you are in whatever comes up. John's sermon illustrated that.

A good crowd on a snow covered evening. And a good party afterwards.

Folks in the Cluster know how to celebrate--whether liturgically or gastronomically!

(I once told Michael Spencer, in my ordination sermon for him, to never forget that he was 'an almost irrelevant functionary of a nearly irrelevant institution'. And I meant it though it made the bishop who ordained him furious with me. Christendom is over--the Church isn't the norm for society and hasn't been for decades (we're always the last to know!)--it is time to truly lean into and 'be' on the edges of things...like people's hearts and longings and love and doubts. I think Nathan will fit in well with that job description....)

Last of the cold?

It's 10:43 p.m. I just took the dog out to pee. It's 10 below zero on our back porch.

Tomorrow afternoon, it's suppose to rise to freezing (32 degrees). It will feel like spring!

Today, coming home from church, I was driving through Hamden and saw two Quinnipiac University students walking through calf deep snow with short sleeve tee shirts on. It was, then, about 8 degrees above zero. 

I can only hope they had been drinking heavily to protect them from the cold. But it was just past noon, so I hope they started early!

The cold makes the social contract break down. People don't pick up after their dogs when its this cold. Covered from head to toe, people don't give greetings. Drivers seem a little crazier than they already are. College students go out in tee shirts.

I understand why alcoholism is prevalent in places like North and South Dakota and Maine and Minnesota.

The cold can drive even the most sober to drink.

Hopefully, those two young men in the snow with tee-shirts on had been driven to that.

Tomorrow will give a taste of sane temperatures. Then it starts getting better and better. In the 40's during the next week.

Heaven! Anything above 10 below seems sublime tonight.

Lent I sermon

Let me be clear--parts of this sermon are more than a decade old. The wonderful poem by Anne Sexton that is quoted (finally, if you put the pieces together, in its entirety) was the impetus for the sermon as far back as 2001. I fiddled with it to preach it again today. I like it a lot. It teaches me the wisdom of Lent.

LENT I 2/14/16

          I walked for many days,

          Past witches that eat grandmothers knitting booties

          As if they were collecting a debt.

          Then, in the middle of the desert, I found the well….

          In the first Century, the Judean Wilderness was called Je-SHIM-mon, which means, literally, ‘The Devastation.’  The wilderness of Judea is an area 35 miles by  25 miles—almost 1000 square miles of devastation. From Jerusalem to the Dead Sea, the desert drops down 1200 feet to the lowest point on the face of the earth.

          The Judean desert is one of the most rocky, empty, inhospitable places you could imagine. It looks more like the Moon than it looks like Connecticut. There is an otherworldliness to that place. The heat of the arid afternoon is brutal, but not surprising—what is surprising is how cold it gets when the sun falls out of the sky like a ball rolling off a table.

          And though rain seldom falls in that place, when rain comes it comes in cloudbursts that flood the wadii’s with such force that human beings can be knocked to the ground and drowned in the desert.   

          I walked for many days,

          Past witches that eat grandmothers knitting booties

          As if they were collecting a debt.

          Then, in the middle of the desert, I found the well….

          According to Matthew’s gospel, after Jesus’ baptism, the Spirit led him into the Devastation—into the Judean wilderness—to be tempted by the devil.

          Matthew does not refer to Satan as “the Evil One” or “the Enemy”: instead, he calls him ‘o di-ab-oy-os, which means the slanderer…the one who tells lies.  Jesus’ “temptation” is the challenge of slander, of lies, of the “un-true.”

          In English, we tend to think of temptation as something “drawing us into sin or evil.”  But the Greek word is peir-a-zein, which is more akin to “testing” or “trying.”  Peir-a-zein does not refer to a purely negative action. “To be tested” contains the possibility of learning and growing…the chance of finding unknown strength.

          Then, in the middle of the desert, I found the well.

          It bubbled up and down like a litter of cats

          And there was water, and I drank,

          And there was water, and I drank.

          In the midst of the devastation of the desert, The Slanderer tempted Jesus with three lies.

          The first lie was this: personal longings and needs are more important than patience and endurance.

          Jesus was hungry and the devil dared him to turn stones into bread. But Jesus knew it was a lie and grew stronger.

          The second lie was this: quick results and instant success are better than wrestling with reality.

          To leap from the Temple and be unharmed would cause the Jews to acknowledge Jesus as their Messiah. Jesus knew it was a lie and learned wisdom.

          The third lie was the most seductive of all: Power and Control will win hearts.

          To worship Satan and rule the world would have let Jesus “control” the people of the world. Jesus knew it was a lie and learned faithfulness and powerlessness.

          Then, in the middle of the desert, I found the well.

          It bubbled up and down like a litter of cats

          And there was water, and I drank.

          And there was water, and I drank.

          Then the well spoke to me…..

          Jesus’ time in the Wilderness is a metaphor for our own journey, our own “testing” and trial and temptation.

          The desert, the Wilderness, the Devastation—it is not ‘OUT THERE” anywhere.  We are not called by Lent into a place “out there….”

          The desert of Lent is a metaphor for the inner journey we are called to make—the wilderness places of our soul we are called to visit and be tested by and drink from.  And the Wilderness is where the Well of God can be found.

          The Light dwells beyond our inner darkness. Life and Hope can only be discovered if we will walk in the Shadow of Death and Hopelessness. There are no short-cuts, no easy ways, no simple answers.

          The Slanderer within us whispers lies. And the way to Truth is through un-Truth.  The Well of God, the Water of Life is in the desert places of our hearts.

          Lent calls us—as individuals and as a community—to self-reflection and prayer. That way is the Wilderness Way. And it is the only Way to Freedom and Life.

          There is no Holy Week without Lent. There is not Easter without Good Friday.

          We live too much on the surface of things. Lent calls us down deep—down into the unconscious life, into the bone and the marrow of life, into the deepest Darkness where the light will truly Shine, into the driest desert where the Well of God bubbles “up and down like a litter of cats….” Where there is water and where the Well speaks to us.

          Then the well spoke to me.

          It said: Abundance is scooped from abundance,

          Yet abundance remains.

          Then I knew.

          Abundance is scooped from abundance, yet abundance remains.

         

          In the desert of Lent, we will know….we will know…..