A week from right now (8:06 pm) we will be three hours into a flight to Rome on the way to Sienna. Bern, her brother Dan, Josh and Cathy and the girls and me--35,000 feet up over the Atlantic.
Dan has been planning this trip for a couple of years and it's going to happen. I never thought it would, but it's going to. Amazing! Italy wasn't on my 'bucket list'--in fact, I don't have a 'bucket list' unless it's living long enough to see the end of Game of Thrones and read some books I know will be written by people I love to read. And seeing my grand-daughters (including Ellie, who isn't born yet) reach some milestones in their lives.
I'm not much of a traveler. I'm a home-body personified. And when I do travel I want to go to places where I can sit down and read in a lovely surrounding. Pretty dull, huh? That's me to a tee.
My dog is snoring behind me--one of the reasons I don't like to travel. He is getting onto 12 and slowing down a bit except when the mail carrier comes and Bela is as fierce as he's ever been. We'll have to leave him twice in a few months--for Italy and for Oak Island in late September when Mimi and Tim and Ellie will come. They're not going to Italy since Ellie is due to be born in 5 or 6 weeks and Mimi being on an airplane wouldn't be the best thing to do.
But it's all come clear now--Italy is going to happen!
I ordered Euros from the bank today. I bought a passport wallet to wear around my neck--lots of pickpockets, I'm told, in Rome.
One good thing will be getting away from Donald Trump for 9 days or so.
He's wearing me out.
Maybe by the time we're back Hillary will be ahead in the polls by 70%/30% and both the House and Senate will be ready to be taken back by the Democrats.
That would be worth flying 1/5 the way around the world for.
Friday, June 3, 2016
Wednesday, June 1, 2016
Something from the past
When I was looking for something else, I came upon this post about the church being irrelevant.
I believe it now more than ever. Thought I'd share it again.
I believe it now more than ever. Thought I'd share it again.
Wednesday, January 27, 2010
irrelevancy isn't so bad....
My last post may have seemed like a bummer of sorts--the church is irrelevant: woe are we!
But it isn't' that bad. In fact, I think being irrelevant to the culture gives the church a wondrous opportunity to play a different role than the church has--in the last 1600 years--normally has played.
For well over a millennium, 'Christendom' meant something. It meant that the Christian Church was 'relevant' to the society and culture of what we somewhat inaccurately call 'the Western World'. All geography depends on where you are standing at the moment. I guarantee you that most people who live in Iraq and Israel places like that, don't think of themselves of living in 'the Middle East'. People who talk about 'the Middle East' are standing somewhere else and looking over there and naming it.
Leaving that strangeness behind, let me share with you a fact: "Christendom" is gone. The church is not 'relevant' to the culture and hasn't been for a good while now.
But that is not bad. I personally think it was a problem for the church to be propping up and legitimizing Western Culture. There was a complicity that I think was unhealthy for the church. So, being 'irrelevant' in what was essentially an compromising and unhealthy connection with the culture is not a bad thing.
Christianity, in and of itself, is not totally irrelevant in all places. But where it is--oh, take Nigeria where Anglican bishops have done nothing to oppose the criminalization of homosexuality with severe penalties even for those who 'associate' with gay folk--it is not a good idea to my mind. And the 'religious right' plays much the same role in the US. Pat Robertson has publicly stated that the earthquake in Haiti was God's judgment on the 'pact with the devil' that Haiti made 200 years ago by allowing voodoo and Jerry Falwell blamed 9/11 on homosexuals and other sinners. God knows who believes nonsense like that but I'm betting quite a few folks do.
But, for the most part, the so-called 'main-line churches' (and probably the Roman Catholic Church as well) are irrelevant to our American Culture. (How many RC families do you know who have never had a divorce or who all have 6 or 7 kids?--that's the base line of irrelevancy....)
None of which is a bad thing. I'm personally pleased that RC couples who are battering each other one way or another no longer feel constrained to stay together because of the the church and that birth control isn't something couples discuss with their priests. (You see, some of the trappings of 'being Relevant' aren't bad things to lose....And that fish on Friday thing was simply a centuries earlier attempt to support Italian fishermen...)
So, being irrelevant as we are...there are remarkable possibilities for the church. Like this--we can be the fool, the jester, the gadfly, the prophet, the shaman, the joker, the wondrous and so needed foil to the nonsense of the culture.
Just one example of how this irrelevant church keeps thinking it is relevant and matters to the culture--the culture, the state of Connecticut, has outrun the Episcopal church by legalizing same-sex marriages. We should have beat them to it as the joker and Trickster of the culture, yet, even though they got there first, our Bishop has yet to even 'catch up'. I still can't sign a marriage license for a gay couple. We should have been out in front, flaunting the culture that takes us as irrelevant and pointing the way for the larger society.
Come on, being on the edges, being loosed to dance and be fools for Christ and to flaunt the eccentricities of a society and culture we are no longer responsible to shore up with our support, that's a remarkable calling for the Church 'to be....'
I love and adore the opportunity to hang out on the limits of the society and the edges of the culture and proclaim, not support of the status quo but an outrageous and Godly alternative to the culture and the society and 'the way things have always been done..."
I'm sure I'll ponder this more in the days and weeks ahead, but know this: retiring from full-time parish ministry will give me the opportunity to be even more irrelevant and irreverent than I already am....Praise be to God....
Fear not 'irrelevancy' doesn't mean the church doesn't matter...it means we "matter" in a way that frees us to be 'of God' rather than a part of the Culture....
But it isn't' that bad. In fact, I think being irrelevant to the culture gives the church a wondrous opportunity to play a different role than the church has--in the last 1600 years--normally has played.
For well over a millennium, 'Christendom' meant something. It meant that the Christian Church was 'relevant' to the society and culture of what we somewhat inaccurately call 'the Western World'. All geography depends on where you are standing at the moment. I guarantee you that most people who live in Iraq and Israel places like that, don't think of themselves of living in 'the Middle East'. People who talk about 'the Middle East' are standing somewhere else and looking over there and naming it.
Leaving that strangeness behind, let me share with you a fact: "Christendom" is gone. The church is not 'relevant' to the culture and hasn't been for a good while now.
But that is not bad. I personally think it was a problem for the church to be propping up and legitimizing Western Culture. There was a complicity that I think was unhealthy for the church. So, being 'irrelevant' in what was essentially an compromising and unhealthy connection with the culture is not a bad thing.
Christianity, in and of itself, is not totally irrelevant in all places. But where it is--oh, take Nigeria where Anglican bishops have done nothing to oppose the criminalization of homosexuality with severe penalties even for those who 'associate' with gay folk--it is not a good idea to my mind. And the 'religious right' plays much the same role in the US. Pat Robertson has publicly stated that the earthquake in Haiti was God's judgment on the 'pact with the devil' that Haiti made 200 years ago by allowing voodoo and Jerry Falwell blamed 9/11 on homosexuals and other sinners. God knows who believes nonsense like that but I'm betting quite a few folks do.
But, for the most part, the so-called 'main-line churches' (and probably the Roman Catholic Church as well) are irrelevant to our American Culture. (How many RC families do you know who have never had a divorce or who all have 6 or 7 kids?--that's the base line of irrelevancy....)
None of which is a bad thing. I'm personally pleased that RC couples who are battering each other one way or another no longer feel constrained to stay together because of the the church and that birth control isn't something couples discuss with their priests. (You see, some of the trappings of 'being Relevant' aren't bad things to lose....And that fish on Friday thing was simply a centuries earlier attempt to support Italian fishermen...)
So, being irrelevant as we are...there are remarkable possibilities for the church. Like this--we can be the fool, the jester, the gadfly, the prophet, the shaman, the joker, the wondrous and so needed foil to the nonsense of the culture.
Just one example of how this irrelevant church keeps thinking it is relevant and matters to the culture--the culture, the state of Connecticut, has outrun the Episcopal church by legalizing same-sex marriages. We should have beat them to it as the joker and Trickster of the culture, yet, even though they got there first, our Bishop has yet to even 'catch up'. I still can't sign a marriage license for a gay couple. We should have been out in front, flaunting the culture that takes us as irrelevant and pointing the way for the larger society.
Come on, being on the edges, being loosed to dance and be fools for Christ and to flaunt the eccentricities of a society and culture we are no longer responsible to shore up with our support, that's a remarkable calling for the Church 'to be....'
I love and adore the opportunity to hang out on the limits of the society and the edges of the culture and proclaim, not support of the status quo but an outrageous and Godly alternative to the culture and the society and 'the way things have always been done..."
I'm sure I'll ponder this more in the days and weeks ahead, but know this: retiring from full-time parish ministry will give me the opportunity to be even more irrelevant and irreverent than I already am....Praise be to God....
Fear not 'irrelevancy' doesn't mean the church doesn't matter...it means we "matter" in a way that frees us to be 'of God' rather than a part of the Culture....
No comments:
A sermon for David
Friday at 10 a.m. I'll be preaching at the funeral of David Gurinak, a priest of the church.
It's the fourth time I've preached at the funeral of another priest--and two others, much older than me (though I'm old!) have told me they want me to preach at their funerals.
This is not an avocation I ever looked for or imagined: preaching for my colleagues at their farewell service.
On the one hand, I am humbled and honored that others of my ilk trust me with this sad task.
On the other hand, it's a tad too much momento mori for me.
And who will preach at my memorial service? I know who I want but don't believe she'll agree. I've even put it in my 'open after my death' letter to Bern. But I don't think she will. So should I put in a 'second choice' and a 'third'? Or is that too embarrassing, to be second or third string at a funeral?
Here's one of the sermons for my friends and mentors and priests:
It's the fourth time I've preached at the funeral of another priest--and two others, much older than me (though I'm old!) have told me they want me to preach at their funerals.
This is not an avocation I ever looked for or imagined: preaching for my colleagues at their farewell service.
On the one hand, I am humbled and honored that others of my ilk trust me with this sad task.
On the other hand, it's a tad too much momento mori for me.
And who will preach at my memorial service? I know who I want but don't believe she'll agree. I've even put it in my 'open after my death' letter to Bern. But I don't think she will. So should I put in a 'second choice' and a 'third'? Or is that too embarrassing, to be second or third string at a funeral?
Here's one of the sermons for my friends and mentors and priests:
Sermon
for Bill
You've got the cool, clear eyes of a
Seeker of Wisdom and Truth.
And that up-turned chin and grin of
impetuous Youth.
I believe in you....I believe in
you....
This is a bit embarrassing.
When Meredith called to tell me of the
death of my dear friend, one of my mentors, one of my guides in the mystery of
priest-craft, I didn't think of some passage of Scripture or some noble hymn
verse or some profound thought from the Christian Mystics.
What I thought of were the opening
lines of a song from How to Succeed in Business without really Trying!
You've got the cool clear eyes
of a Seeker of Wisdom and Truth.
And that up-turned chin and grin of
impetuous Youth.
I believe in you....I believe in you....
One would hope that the word of the death of a dear, dear
friend, a valued mentor, an extraordinary guide, would prompt thoughts a bit
more substantial, a tad more remarkable, something less cliched and banal.
Yet, there is a certain logic to it.
Bill Penfield WAS one of the most
dedicated 'seekers of wisdom and truth' I've ever known.
And Bill Penfield, for all his
commitment and activism, all his idealism, all his faithfulness to standing
with the dispossessed and oppressed, for all that, even into his final years,
his grin revealed a marrow deep 'youthfulness'--an openness, an acceptance of
differences, a sense of adventure and wonder in the world about him.
All that and more.
For almost a quarter of a century now,
I have been privileged to be a part of the Waterbury Clericus. We meet every
Tuesday morning—most of those years at St. John's in Waterbury and recently at
St. Peter's in Cheshire.
The remarkable thing about that
Clericus is that most of its members, most of the time, have been retired
priests. Only Armando Gonzalez and Andy Zeeman and I, were consistantly members
as 'active priests'—and both Andy and I have now joined the ranks of the
retired. So, the beat goes on.....
In those years I have figuratively
'sat at the knee' of remarkable priests. A great Cloud of Witnesses. Week after
week I absorbed the karma of “priestness” from them and learned
from them and heard their stories and gloried in their wisdom and experience.
I've laughed with them, wept with them, come close to the bone of what 'being a
priest' means with them. You could not possibly pay for such wisdom, such
truth, such impetuous youth.
Bill was the Buddha among us. He spoke
little, but when he spoke, everyone moved to the edge of their seat, leaning in
to listen (because he spoke softly) and leaning into his wisdom and his truth.
Bill, for all his outward guise of
'respectablilty', was a Radical of the first order. With him dead now, I wonder
if I'm the only person left who glories in the description of “Liberal”. I hope
there are more, but one of us is gone.
The only time I ever had cross words
with Bill Penfield was after I told a story about how I was disappointed in
Bishop Paul Moore during the time when the Yale University pink collar and blue
collar unions were trying to form.
Bill didn't forgive Bishop Moore's
lack of support for those efforts, but he gave me an impassioned lecture on the
character and boldness and intellegence and generosity of his friend and
Mentor, Paul Moore.
Now it is my turn to be passionate
about the character and boldness and fierce intellegence, great generosity of
spirit and boundless good humor of my friend and mentor, Bill Penfield.
Bill was profoundly committed to
Incarnational Theology.
If the Holy had taken on Flesh, Bill
believed deeply, then all Flesh is Holy.
Consider the lessons and music Bill
picked for us to hear and sing on this day we remember and celebrate his
life....
Isaiah proclaims that God will make
for ALL people a 'feast of rich food, a feast of well aged wines, of rich food
filled with marrow, of well aged wines strained clear....”
Our boy did enjoy a good meal and fine
wine....
Psalm 139 tells us that God is always
with us, loving and caring. “You hem me in,” the Psalmist sings, “behind and
before and lay your hand upon me. Such knowledge is too wonderful for me....”
Bill shared with everyone he met, the
abiding notion of God's presence.
The theology of Psalm 16 is pure Bill
Penfield: “Gracious is the Lord and Righteous, our Lord is Merciful. The Lord
protects the simple....”
Bill spent his life and ministry
standing with the oppressed, the marginal, the simple folk of life.
“See what love the father has given,”
I John tells us, “that we should be called children of God.....” John's gospels
echos God's care for us: “Anyone who comes to me, I will never turn away....”
The inclusiveness of God, the
incarnational nature of living, the wonder of song, the joy of knowing the
nearness of God, the irrepressible optimism that God cares—those are things
Bill offered us, shared with us, endowed us with.
“Father like, he tends and spares us;
well our feeble frame he knows; in his hand he gently bears us, rescues us from
all our foes. Alleluia! Alleluia! Widely yet his mercy flows.”
That's Bill Penfield's God were
singing about. The God he loved and served and shared with us as a man, a
husband, a father, a friend, a priest.....
When Bill was Chaplain to the Clergy,
he would simply 'drop in' from time to time, genuinely interested in what
we were doing, even more
genuinely concerned about how we were being. The only agenda he
had when he dropped in was what the concerns of the priests he cared for were.
That is a rare thing, a person who is genuinely interested, genuinely concerned,
willing to listen, willing to love.
I probably shouldn't tell you this in
front of bishops....But I loved to sit with Bill at clergy meetings and
diocesan conventions. I could be as ironic and sardonic and, sometimes, as
disrespectful as I wanted to be. He would give me a stern look and then break
into laughter.
Lord, I'm going to miss that laughter.
Lord, I'm going to miss that man.
I know Meredith and Bill's children
will miss him most completely. But we will miss him profoundly, wondrously. We
were all “Bill's family” in a special way.
Here are words of the timeless poet,
George Herbert: “Where with my utmost art, I will sing thee./ And the cream of
all my heart, I will bring thee.”
Those of us here and many, many others
all around, were privileged to hear the song that was Bill's life and blessed
to taste the cream of his heart....
“Precious in the sight of the Lord is
the death of his faithful ones.”
“Precious” is the best word to end
with. “Precious....”
Tuesday, May 31, 2016
When will the madness end?
In the last few days Donald Trump has:
a) criticized the Republican Governor of New Mexico (the only Hispanic woman Republican Governor) probably because she hasn't endorsed him;
b) called the judge in the class action suit against Trump University for fraud, a Trump Hater and a Mexican. The judge was born in Indiana and is just doing his job;
c) castigated members of the press for asking him to reveal how the money he raised for vet's organizations has been distributed (until the Washington Post pointed out none of the money had been sent to any group--none of it had been!)
d) been endorsed by the state controlled newspaper in North Korea;
e) called William Kristol, much respected colemnist and writer, a 'loser';
f) continued to refuse to release his tax returns;
g) and on and on......
There was a cover story in this month's Atlantic Monthly called "Trump's Brain" by a deeply admired psychiatrist. Read it and weep.
Will the madness end....???
a) criticized the Republican Governor of New Mexico (the only Hispanic woman Republican Governor) probably because she hasn't endorsed him;
b) called the judge in the class action suit against Trump University for fraud, a Trump Hater and a Mexican. The judge was born in Indiana and is just doing his job;
c) castigated members of the press for asking him to reveal how the money he raised for vet's organizations has been distributed (until the Washington Post pointed out none of the money had been sent to any group--none of it had been!)
d) been endorsed by the state controlled newspaper in North Korea;
e) called William Kristol, much respected colemnist and writer, a 'loser';
f) continued to refuse to release his tax returns;
g) and on and on......
There was a cover story in this month's Atlantic Monthly called "Trump's Brain" by a deeply admired psychiatrist. Read it and weep.
Will the madness end....???
Sunday, May 29, 2016
Memorial Day
The Cheshire Memorial Day Parade passed two houses down from us. We didn't go watch it. Nothing about Memorial Day, just Bern and I 'don't' love a parade.
Lots of folks do. As I headed to church at 8 a.m. people were already putting lawn chairs and blankets out for miles along the route. The parade didn't start until 1 p.m.!!! Some people start early to get a prime spot for parade watching.
I was talking to a couple of people after church about WW II, which all of our father's fought in. One was saying how the war gave her father an appreciation for beauty and nature he hadn't had before the war. None of our fathers ever spoke of what they had experienced, except in very general and vague ways.
I know what my father did--vaguely and generally--he built bridges for Patten to drive his tanks across and then blew up the bridges. They didn't intend to come back, one way or another. One of the others asked if my father felt bad, destroying what he had built.
"No," I told her. "He was a coal miner. He was familiar with blowing things up and destruction."
My childhood memories of Memorial Days all revolve around the Memorial Day dinners in Waiteville, WV, where my father grew up. I think I wrote about it a couple of years ago. I'll try to find it and attach it here since I'm not as bright as I was a few years ago and it was probably better than I could reproduce.
(Found it! Here it comes....I hope....)
I have two 6 foot high bookshelves in my little office at home. One of
them is solid and has lots of the copies of stuff I've written and
several volumes of the Interpreter's Bible and my printer and two things
that have to do with my computer and Bern's which I don't understand
but which blink at me all the time and I know if I disconnected them I'd
be thrust immediately into computer hell, so I leave them alone,
blinking aimlessly, so far as I can tell. I also have pictures of my
children as babies and toddlers and a picture of my Dad and a chalice and
several stone lions on that bookshelf.
The other bookshelf is unstable and held straight by a piece of laminated coal that someone gave me because I'm from West Virginia. So, a week or so ago I decided to empty the unstable book shelf and give the books away. I gave the novels to the Cheshire Library and the religious books to St. James in Higganum for their library. I've never been attached to books as books. I go to the library in Cheshire weekly at least and check out books I want to read. And if I ever need any of the religious books, I know where they are. But they were very dusty and made me sneeze, so I can't imagine needing them any time soon.
I did keep some books of poetry and a book called If you meet the Buddha on the Road, Kill him which I've had for 40 years or so, and my copy of Joachim Jeremias' The Parables of Jesus, absolutely the best book about parables ever, and Lamb by Christopher Moore (which everyone should read) and The Hundredth Monkey and The Giving Tree. Everything else is gone to Cheshire Library or St. James. Next week, when I get back from San Francisco, I'll take the rickety bookshelf down and out.
On it, though, I found a plate with a likeness of the New Zion Union Church in Waiteville, West Virgina dated 1863-1966. It was something I took from my parents home. Waiteville is in Monroe County, the most South-east county of the state. Monroe County is where White Sulphur Springs is, which is the only name you might recognize from the whole county unless you're from West Vriginia and realize Lewisburg, the county seat, is where the WV State Fair was held--and may still be.
Zion Union Church is called that because everyone in Waiteville was either a Baptist or a Methodist and there weren't enough people there to have two churches. So a Baptist would preach one week and a Methodist the next. And the graveyard for Waiteville was there where most everyone buried there would be in some way related to me.
We used to go to Waiteville every Memorial Day for the Dinner that raised money for the graveyard's upkeep. The dinners were unbelievable: fried chicken, baked chicken, chicken and dumplings, pork in an endless variety of forms, rare roast beef, green beans cooked into an inch of their life in fatback, mashed potatoes, boiled potatoes, baked potatoes, fried potatoes, potatoes au gratin, potato salad (lots of Irish folks there, including the Bradley/McCormick clan) sweet potatoes in several iterations, lots of jello salads, carrots and onions, peas and onions, just plain onions, gravy in several forms (gravy is a food group in Southern West Virgina) and desserts beyond imagining all topped with whipped cream or brain-numbing homemade ice cream.
Once, on some Memorial Day (linear time confounds me) I was wandering around the grave yard where countless ancestors were moldering in the grave, and happened upon two grave stones that said: JAMES GORDON BRADLEY and JAMES GORDON BRADLEY, JR. That is my name and I almost fainted away (I was, hard to believe, a delicate child). I'd never known I'd been named for ancestors. Those were my great and great-great grandfathers. My grandfather's name was Filbert and my father's name was Virgil. Go figure. I could have been James Gordon Bradley V but for Filbert and Virgil in between.
Another year, my crazy great aunt Arbana (ever know anyone named 'Arbana'?) had put confederate flags on many of the graves of my ancestors for Memorial Day. Though Monroe County was a boarder county and there are slaves somewhere in there, most of the Bradleys and McCormicks had been true blue Unionists. My Uncle Sid and Uncle Russell went around gathering the Confederate Flags and cursing their Aunt Arbana.
My great uncle Amos was buried from Zion Union Church. I was at his funeral when I was 8 or so. (Linear Time, like I said....) It was February and bone cold and the boys digging the grave were having trouble with the frozen earth and kept sending messages to the Baptist minister to keep preaching, which he did, for an hour or so before the grave was ready.
Great Uncle Amos was a man about 5'4". He was a McCormick. He liked a bit of whiskey from time to time and used to keep it in his barn where my father and uncles would go with him whenever we were in Waiteville.
The story goes like this: there was a revival at Zion Union Church and great-uncle Amos responded to the altar call. He had his head down and the Revivalist came by, laid hands on him and said, 'bless the little boys', though Amos was 24 or so. Afterwards, out in the night, some of his friends were kidding him, being much taller than him.
"God bless the little boys," they said, circling him out on the road.
"Hump," Amos is reported saying, though I don't know if this is true, "I'd rather be a little man like me and go to heaven than a great big son-of-bitch like all you and go to hell." Then, I was told as a child, he hitched up his britches and walked away. That was the night, the apocryphal story goes, that he met my great-aunt Arlene, who had been saved like him. Only her salvation 'took' and she was a teetotaler while Amos had some whiskey in the barn. Arlene was 5'10' and weighed about 200 pounds to Amos' 95. But they had, so far as I knew, a joyful if childless marriage.
New Zion Union Church, founded in the midst of the Civil War, is, so far as I know, still there, though I haven't been to Waiteville for 40 years or so. Maybe I'll go someday before I die, to walk the graveyard and say soft things to those of my blood.
That might be something I should do....
{Back to 2016. By the way, I never took that bookshelf apart. It's still here beside me! So much for good intentions and the road they pave....}
Lots of folks do. As I headed to church at 8 a.m. people were already putting lawn chairs and blankets out for miles along the route. The parade didn't start until 1 p.m.!!! Some people start early to get a prime spot for parade watching.
I was talking to a couple of people after church about WW II, which all of our father's fought in. One was saying how the war gave her father an appreciation for beauty and nature he hadn't had before the war. None of our fathers ever spoke of what they had experienced, except in very general and vague ways.
I know what my father did--vaguely and generally--he built bridges for Patten to drive his tanks across and then blew up the bridges. They didn't intend to come back, one way or another. One of the others asked if my father felt bad, destroying what he had built.
"No," I told her. "He was a coal miner. He was familiar with blowing things up and destruction."
My childhood memories of Memorial Days all revolve around the Memorial Day dinners in Waiteville, WV, where my father grew up. I think I wrote about it a couple of years ago. I'll try to find it and attach it here since I'm not as bright as I was a few years ago and it was probably better than I could reproduce.
(Found it! Here it comes....I hope....)
Tuesday, January 15, 2013
The Waiteville of my childhood
The other bookshelf is unstable and held straight by a piece of laminated coal that someone gave me because I'm from West Virginia. So, a week or so ago I decided to empty the unstable book shelf and give the books away. I gave the novels to the Cheshire Library and the religious books to St. James in Higganum for their library. I've never been attached to books as books. I go to the library in Cheshire weekly at least and check out books I want to read. And if I ever need any of the religious books, I know where they are. But they were very dusty and made me sneeze, so I can't imagine needing them any time soon.
I did keep some books of poetry and a book called If you meet the Buddha on the Road, Kill him which I've had for 40 years or so, and my copy of Joachim Jeremias' The Parables of Jesus, absolutely the best book about parables ever, and Lamb by Christopher Moore (which everyone should read) and The Hundredth Monkey and The Giving Tree. Everything else is gone to Cheshire Library or St. James. Next week, when I get back from San Francisco, I'll take the rickety bookshelf down and out.
On it, though, I found a plate with a likeness of the New Zion Union Church in Waiteville, West Virgina dated 1863-1966. It was something I took from my parents home. Waiteville is in Monroe County, the most South-east county of the state. Monroe County is where White Sulphur Springs is, which is the only name you might recognize from the whole county unless you're from West Vriginia and realize Lewisburg, the county seat, is where the WV State Fair was held--and may still be.
Zion Union Church is called that because everyone in Waiteville was either a Baptist or a Methodist and there weren't enough people there to have two churches. So a Baptist would preach one week and a Methodist the next. And the graveyard for Waiteville was there where most everyone buried there would be in some way related to me.
We used to go to Waiteville every Memorial Day for the Dinner that raised money for the graveyard's upkeep. The dinners were unbelievable: fried chicken, baked chicken, chicken and dumplings, pork in an endless variety of forms, rare roast beef, green beans cooked into an inch of their life in fatback, mashed potatoes, boiled potatoes, baked potatoes, fried potatoes, potatoes au gratin, potato salad (lots of Irish folks there, including the Bradley/McCormick clan) sweet potatoes in several iterations, lots of jello salads, carrots and onions, peas and onions, just plain onions, gravy in several forms (gravy is a food group in Southern West Virgina) and desserts beyond imagining all topped with whipped cream or brain-numbing homemade ice cream.
Once, on some Memorial Day (linear time confounds me) I was wandering around the grave yard where countless ancestors were moldering in the grave, and happened upon two grave stones that said: JAMES GORDON BRADLEY and JAMES GORDON BRADLEY, JR. That is my name and I almost fainted away (I was, hard to believe, a delicate child). I'd never known I'd been named for ancestors. Those were my great and great-great grandfathers. My grandfather's name was Filbert and my father's name was Virgil. Go figure. I could have been James Gordon Bradley V but for Filbert and Virgil in between.
Another year, my crazy great aunt Arbana (ever know anyone named 'Arbana'?) had put confederate flags on many of the graves of my ancestors for Memorial Day. Though Monroe County was a boarder county and there are slaves somewhere in there, most of the Bradleys and McCormicks had been true blue Unionists. My Uncle Sid and Uncle Russell went around gathering the Confederate Flags and cursing their Aunt Arbana.
My great uncle Amos was buried from Zion Union Church. I was at his funeral when I was 8 or so. (Linear Time, like I said....) It was February and bone cold and the boys digging the grave were having trouble with the frozen earth and kept sending messages to the Baptist minister to keep preaching, which he did, for an hour or so before the grave was ready.
Great Uncle Amos was a man about 5'4". He was a McCormick. He liked a bit of whiskey from time to time and used to keep it in his barn where my father and uncles would go with him whenever we were in Waiteville.
The story goes like this: there was a revival at Zion Union Church and great-uncle Amos responded to the altar call. He had his head down and the Revivalist came by, laid hands on him and said, 'bless the little boys', though Amos was 24 or so. Afterwards, out in the night, some of his friends were kidding him, being much taller than him.
"God bless the little boys," they said, circling him out on the road.
"Hump," Amos is reported saying, though I don't know if this is true, "I'd rather be a little man like me and go to heaven than a great big son-of-bitch like all you and go to hell." Then, I was told as a child, he hitched up his britches and walked away. That was the night, the apocryphal story goes, that he met my great-aunt Arlene, who had been saved like him. Only her salvation 'took' and she was a teetotaler while Amos had some whiskey in the barn. Arlene was 5'10' and weighed about 200 pounds to Amos' 95. But they had, so far as I knew, a joyful if childless marriage.
New Zion Union Church, founded in the midst of the Civil War, is, so far as I know, still there, though I haven't been to Waiteville for 40 years or so. Maybe I'll go someday before I die, to walk the graveyard and say soft things to those of my blood.
That might be something I should do....
{Back to 2016. By the way, I never took that bookshelf apart. It's still here beside me! So much for good intentions and the road they pave....}
Friday, May 27, 2016
"moral realism"
E. J. Dionne and David Brooks just completed their weekly commentary on the news on National Public Radio. Dionne is a progressive and Brooks an economic (not social) conservative--yet their conversations are enlightening, civil and full of compromise. The way all debate in this country should be--but sadly isn't. If you've never heard them they usually speak on Fridays.
Today, among other things, they talked about Obama's visit to Hiroshima. They were analyzing the President's speech and Dionne mentioned 'moral realism' as taught by the theologian Reinhold Niebuhr. (OK, where else besides NPR do commentator's reference theologians?!!!)
One of my professors at Harvard Divinity School was Richard Reinhold Niebuhr--nephew of Reinhold and son of another well respected theologian, Richard Niebuhr.
The students always thought being saddled with the name of such well-known brothers much have been hard on R.R. Niebuhr. How to live up to that?
R.R. Niebuhr did, however, did give me the most intriguing moment I ever spent in a classroom.
One lovely spring day he came in, weighed down by books, as usual. The birds were serenading Cambridge as he unpacked. The huge, angled lecture room held 80 or so students.
Without prelude, he went to the blackboard and drew a stick figure. "Homo religiosis" he said, stepping back to admire his drawing. He figured we were Harvard students so he didn't have to translate the Latin to 'religious man(sic)'.
After several minutes of silence except for the bird songs, he went back to the board and drew a flurry of lines around and through the stick figure, nearly obscuring it.
Then the stepped back and said 'the Chaos'--and we knew it must be capitalized.
He stared at the board for what must have been five minutes, though it seemed longer.
Then he moved his head, listening to the birds for a moment, gathered his books and left without another word.
It took quite a while for us to pull ourselves together and begin to leave by ones and twos. Not one word was spoken as we straggled out. It would take days to process the event, but none of us was ready to sully it with words.
We had witnessed a brilliant man from the most important theological family in American history, struggle with an existential crisis before our eyes. And, like the most critical of existential crises, he left it to echo in silence down through all the years of his students lives.
How does a religious person cope with the Chaos of the world's reality? That is the question Professor Niebuhr left us with.
His uncle's answer, what Dionne and Brooks called 'moral realism', was that the first step was to fully recognize the depth and breath of the Chaos. Fully 'know' it. And live morally into that Chaos. Not romanticizing or sugar coating the world or give simplistic (and wrong) 'religious' answers to the
Chaotic 'reality' around us. The answer is 'to stand for something' in the face of the Chaos. Simply that. Don't dream of defeating it, but neither be defeated by it.
Be who you be in the midst of Chaos and Evil. Stand for 'morality' in a senseless and amoral world.
Pretty good lesson, that....Don't you agree?
Ponder that as a life stance....
Today, among other things, they talked about Obama's visit to Hiroshima. They were analyzing the President's speech and Dionne mentioned 'moral realism' as taught by the theologian Reinhold Niebuhr. (OK, where else besides NPR do commentator's reference theologians?!!!)
One of my professors at Harvard Divinity School was Richard Reinhold Niebuhr--nephew of Reinhold and son of another well respected theologian, Richard Niebuhr.
The students always thought being saddled with the name of such well-known brothers much have been hard on R.R. Niebuhr. How to live up to that?
R.R. Niebuhr did, however, did give me the most intriguing moment I ever spent in a classroom.
One lovely spring day he came in, weighed down by books, as usual. The birds were serenading Cambridge as he unpacked. The huge, angled lecture room held 80 or so students.
Without prelude, he went to the blackboard and drew a stick figure. "Homo religiosis" he said, stepping back to admire his drawing. He figured we were Harvard students so he didn't have to translate the Latin to 'religious man(sic)'.
After several minutes of silence except for the bird songs, he went back to the board and drew a flurry of lines around and through the stick figure, nearly obscuring it.
Then the stepped back and said 'the Chaos'--and we knew it must be capitalized.
He stared at the board for what must have been five minutes, though it seemed longer.
Then he moved his head, listening to the birds for a moment, gathered his books and left without another word.
It took quite a while for us to pull ourselves together and begin to leave by ones and twos. Not one word was spoken as we straggled out. It would take days to process the event, but none of us was ready to sully it with words.
We had witnessed a brilliant man from the most important theological family in American history, struggle with an existential crisis before our eyes. And, like the most critical of existential crises, he left it to echo in silence down through all the years of his students lives.
How does a religious person cope with the Chaos of the world's reality? That is the question Professor Niebuhr left us with.
His uncle's answer, what Dionne and Brooks called 'moral realism', was that the first step was to fully recognize the depth and breath of the Chaos. Fully 'know' it. And live morally into that Chaos. Not romanticizing or sugar coating the world or give simplistic (and wrong) 'religious' answers to the
Chaotic 'reality' around us. The answer is 'to stand for something' in the face of the Chaos. Simply that. Don't dream of defeating it, but neither be defeated by it.
Be who you be in the midst of Chaos and Evil. Stand for 'morality' in a senseless and amoral world.
Pretty good lesson, that....Don't you agree?
Ponder that as a life stance....
Wednesday, May 25, 2016
Sudden Summer
It was in the 80's today, with low humidity. And it may be 90 tomorrow.
Here in Connecticut, we went from a cool, rainy Spring to a Sudden Summer.
It's going to cool off in a few days, the weather people say, but it's a real shock.
Connecticut is, like Ireland, a place where people say, "don't like the weather? Wait a few minutes."
Also, I read online that, though CT was cool and rainy in April and much of May so far, April was, world wide, the hottest April on record!
121 degrees in parts of India. A remarkable drought in much of Africa and Asia.
OK, if any 'climate change deniers" read this blog. Let me know how you can defend that in face of, what are they called again?--The Facts.
(The sad truth is, 'climate change deniers' probably don't read my blog. The very sad truth is, they read blogs of 'climate change deniers' and nothing else. And folks who read these musings and I, would never read a 'climate change denier' blog....)
This political cycle has proved that we are as divided a nation as we have ever been--and that can't be good in any way. The divide gets wider and deeper by the day.
I wish I could fix climate change only a little less than I wish I could fix the deepening, widening divide between us as a nation. Because climate change and nothing much will be 'fixed' as long as we're this divided.
I have four stickers on the back of my car. I call them, to anyone who asks, my four persons of the Trinity.
One is the state seal of West Virginia. That's where I came from and in many ways, that's who I am. Monti semper libere--is our motto, we West Virginians: "Mountaineers are always free". God love us.
The second is the latitude and longitude for Oak Island, North Carolina, where we have gone for vacation as a couple, a family, a family with friends, and with Tim and Mimi and John and Sherrie--all told well over 30 times. Oak Island matters. In my "do not open until my death" letter, I ask that some of my ashes be left on the waters off Oak Island.
The third is the Episcopal Church seal. Nough said about that.
The last is, from 4 years ago, an "Obama 2012" sticker. He was a very good president, I think, who could have been a 'great president' if it weren't for this 'divide' among us.
I'm not even sure what the 'divide' is any more since both Trump and Bernie (eons apart politically) are tapping into the divide.
I don't think it is as simple as 'the establishment' vs. 'the people'. I think it's more complicated than that, though I don't quite know how.
But, since our planet, which has been around for billions of years, is getting hotter and more unstable than its ever been--we need to turn our attention to finding 'common ground' rather than making what divides us deeper and wider.
It's not just the republic that needs us to do that--find common ground--it is this fragile earth, our island home.
Really.
Ponder that, please, please, please with sugar on it.
It's that vital and important.
Like the life of the Planet.
'nough said.....'
Here in Connecticut, we went from a cool, rainy Spring to a Sudden Summer.
It's going to cool off in a few days, the weather people say, but it's a real shock.
Connecticut is, like Ireland, a place where people say, "don't like the weather? Wait a few minutes."
Also, I read online that, though CT was cool and rainy in April and much of May so far, April was, world wide, the hottest April on record!
121 degrees in parts of India. A remarkable drought in much of Africa and Asia.
OK, if any 'climate change deniers" read this blog. Let me know how you can defend that in face of, what are they called again?--The Facts.
(The sad truth is, 'climate change deniers' probably don't read my blog. The very sad truth is, they read blogs of 'climate change deniers' and nothing else. And folks who read these musings and I, would never read a 'climate change denier' blog....)
This political cycle has proved that we are as divided a nation as we have ever been--and that can't be good in any way. The divide gets wider and deeper by the day.
I wish I could fix climate change only a little less than I wish I could fix the deepening, widening divide between us as a nation. Because climate change and nothing much will be 'fixed' as long as we're this divided.
I have four stickers on the back of my car. I call them, to anyone who asks, my four persons of the Trinity.
One is the state seal of West Virginia. That's where I came from and in many ways, that's who I am. Monti semper libere--is our motto, we West Virginians: "Mountaineers are always free". God love us.
The second is the latitude and longitude for Oak Island, North Carolina, where we have gone for vacation as a couple, a family, a family with friends, and with Tim and Mimi and John and Sherrie--all told well over 30 times. Oak Island matters. In my "do not open until my death" letter, I ask that some of my ashes be left on the waters off Oak Island.
The third is the Episcopal Church seal. Nough said about that.
The last is, from 4 years ago, an "Obama 2012" sticker. He was a very good president, I think, who could have been a 'great president' if it weren't for this 'divide' among us.
I'm not even sure what the 'divide' is any more since both Trump and Bernie (eons apart politically) are tapping into the divide.
I don't think it is as simple as 'the establishment' vs. 'the people'. I think it's more complicated than that, though I don't quite know how.
But, since our planet, which has been around for billions of years, is getting hotter and more unstable than its ever been--we need to turn our attention to finding 'common ground' rather than making what divides us deeper and wider.
It's not just the republic that needs us to do that--find common ground--it is this fragile earth, our island home.
Really.
Ponder that, please, please, please with sugar on it.
It's that vital and important.
Like the life of the Planet.
'nough said.....'
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