in Grand Central Station

I went to NYC on Monday for a meeting with a group of people who are all committed to the Making a Difference Workshop that I help lead. I've known them all for years--some for decades!--and love them dearly. Since the meeting wasn't until 3:30 at 81st and Broadway, I got to New York before noon and had lunch with very pregnant Mimi and soon to be daddy, Tim. It was great to see them. Mimi is doing so well and Ellie will be with us in 6 or 7 weeks now. "Love" doesn't even do justice to what I feel for Mimi and Tim.

It's real clear to me that New York--at least Manhattan--has moved beyond 'exciting' for me to something like 'scary' or 'crazy'. Too many people. Too much noise. Way too much stimulation. "I grow old, I grow old, should I wear my trousers rolled or eat a peach."

But in Grand Central, as I was going up an escalator, something happened I'd been waiting my whole life to happen: in that busy, crowded place: someone yelled, "Hey, Jim Bradley!"

Down at the bottom of the escalator was Brendon McCormick, a dear friend I haven't seen for too long. We're both 'kinda retired' Episcopal priests. He was in Wallingford about as long as I was in Waterbury. We were even in a group with a psychologist for several years that the diocese helped fund to keep us all reasonably sane--or, at least, controlably (sic, my spell check isn't working) crazy.

He is a bear of a man--6'5" or so and big. But not so big these days. I had heard he has had some health issues, mostly joints and stuff, and I hadn't gotten around to checking up on him (my bad!).

He has a cane and moves slowly, but his wondrous smile and deep-deep good humor is intact.

He was in the city to visit his grandson. I had little time and he didn't either, but the sheer joy of seeing him was only exceeded by the wonder of having my named called out in Grand Central Station. I love stuff like that.

Tomorrow (or Saturday morning in Rome) I hope someone in the airport recognizes me!!!

See you in a week back here on this spot.

Read old stuff in the meantime--1600 posts should keep you busy. Go back to 2013 or 2014 and see what I was pondering then.

OK, finally, I'm with her...

I voted for Hillary Clinton in the CT primary, which she won. But it was pragmatic rather than enthusiastic.

I agree with Bernie Sanders about almost everything he says, but it is unrealistic to me to imagine it happening.

But tonight, after hearing Trump's first speech from a tela-prompter (which was a speech delivered by a man who didn't want to do it) and hearing Hillary declare herself the first woman in history to be a nominee of a major party for President--I'm with her.

I'll get a bumper sticker and a tee shirt and give some money.

She was so gracious to Bernie and his supporters. She was so clear about how unfit Trump is to lead my nation. She was so inclusive and inviting to all folks. She was so appreciative of this historic moment.

I have dear friends who have what I call 'Hillary doubts'. I hope they heard or will hear that speech.

I feel as optimistic as I have in a year about the future.

And Obama is revving up to campaign for her. If only Bernie does as well.

This could be, not just historic, but a salvation for the future my 3 (soon to be 4) granddaughters will experience and live into.

After that speech and the one she gave last week, I'm on board.

I'm with her.....

Counting down to Italy

We're leaving Friday, along with my brother-in-law, Josh, Cathy and our three granddaughters for Italy.

I won't be writing here for over a week since (of course!) my only access to the internet and to this blog is from my desk top in my little office upstairs off the back stairs of our house.

I hope you won't give up on reading. I think there are over 1600 posts now from under the castor oil tree. Look back on them a few years.

I'll have lots to say when we're back and a handful of posts before we go. Just wanted to let you know I'll go dark on the 10th and be back on the 18th.

I'll miss writing here--but not enough to go internet mobile!!!

Because Ray asked me to....

(After church at Emmanuel, Ray asked me if I were going to email the sermon I gave. Truth was, I didn't have a bit of it written down. It wasn't 'off the top of my head'---I usually read the lessons early in the week and let them roll around in my head and heart. I have a beginning and an end--it's just most of the stuff in between is relatively spontaneous, within the bounds of what I've been digesting during the week. But because he asked, I'm going to see what I can reproduce here from this A.M.)

I teach every other semester or so at the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute (know as OLLI!) at the Waterbury branch of UConn. You have to be 50 to take OLLI courses: see, getting older has some advantages!

One of the classes I teach is called "Reading the Gospels Side By Side". If I asked all of you to write down the 'gospel story', I'm sure you  could. But what you wrote would be a conflation of all four gospels and the point is, they are very different. I sometimes say, "isn't it nice to have four friends named Jesus instead of just one?"

Luke's Jesus is 'compassion' all the way down! In contrast, John's Jesus heals and does miracles to 'make a point'. John's Jesus' 'signs' are all to demonstrate 'who He is'. John's Jesus is all about demonstrating his identity.

But Luke's Jesus simply responds to the needs about him. He is 'compassion in action'.

In today's gospel, after he's healed the Centurion's slave, he enters the town of Nain and encounters a funeral procession. A widow's only son has died and Jesus is so moved my the woman's plight that he raises her son from the dead.

We need to remember something about the culture of first century Judaism--women are not 'persons', they're 'possessions'. Women belong to their father and then their husband. A woman without a man to belong to is essentially a 'non-person'. So, this widow, like the widow in the lesson from 1st Kings today, 'belongs' to her son. It is her son who will care for her and keep her from dire poverty. We don't like to recognize such stark and awful injustice, but it was true.

So, Jesus' compassion was for the widow and he felt it so deeply he resurrects her son.

Luke's Jesus is all compassion all the time...

So, having done that, let me get to what I really want to talk about: today's collect.

I usually don't talk about collects. Collects are written by a committee and most of them sound like it!

But the collect for today is so simple and sweet, it's worth a second look. Listen:

O God, from whom all good proceeds: Grant that by your inspiration we may think those things that are right, and by your merciful guiding may do them....

Think about that. God is where 'goodness' comes from and the prayer asks God to 'inspire' us, send the Spirit into us, that we 'may think those things that are right' and then, with God's guidance, 'may do' right things.

That's pretty simple and basic, isn't it?  I think, more often than not, we make this whole religion thing too complicated. We make it too much about what we 'believe' and not enough about what we 'do'.

If we 'think those things that are right' and 'do them', what else matters. If we can be always compassionate, always caring, always loving, always just--what else could possibly be required by God? What else? That seems enough to me.

Some of you know I have a real problem with the Nicene Creed (or any 'creed' for that matter) because it's about 'belief' rather than action. Give me 'right action' any day over 'right belief'.

I once led a class on the Nicene Creed at Christ Church, Capitol Hill when I was in seminary. I opened the class by saying something like, "I'll just start reading the Creed and just raise your hand if you have an issue." Then I said, "I believe in God..." and five hands went up! I knew then that was a tough group....

Here's an example of my problem with 'belief'. It's the 'filioque clause'. When I was at Virginia Seminary, there was really no prayer book. The 1928 Book of Common Prayer was in revision and there were a whole series of drafts for the new book: the Green book, the Zebra book, the Blue book, on and on.

At some point during those revisions, the 'filioque clause' was removed from the Nicene Creed. Here it is: "We believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the giver of life, who proceeds from the Father (and the son)...."

"And the Son" is the filioque clause. It was removed because the Orthodox Churches don't say it. The Orthodox Creed says..."the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the giver of life, who proceeds from the Father. With the Father and Son he is worshiped and glorified."

So, in chapel, when the Creed without the 'filioque clause' was said, lots of people would yell, loudly, AND THE SON, though it wasn't there in print. I was in a class where we discussed this change and I said, "the 'filioque clause' is one of the great non-issues of this or any other age."

Betty, who was sitting beside me, burst into tears at my heartlessness about those three words. I just didn't get it. There was so much theological outrage that the final draft put the clause back in the Prayer Book. I still don't get it.

That's the thing about making this whole 'religion' thing about 'belief'. People just believe differently. I don't much care what they believe, if the truth be known, but I'm real interested in how they live out their lives, in their actions.

What if the whole thing is simply as simple as today's collect? What if all that matters is that we acknowledge God as the source of 'goodness', ask God to inspire us to 'think those things that are right and ask God's guidance to 'do' what is right? What if it's that simple?

Be compassionate. Be fair. Be just. Be loving. Think right things and do those right things.

I don't know, but that might be more productive and ultimately more holy and more healing than anything we might or might not 'believe'.

Think right things and do them. What if that's all that's required?

Amen.

In just a week....

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.

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.

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....

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:

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....”