Solstice (a day early)

It's 8:39 p.m. and I just came in from the deck where I was reading a book. I could probably have stayed a few more minutes before it was too dark to read.

I love the Solstice. I don't paint myself blue and dance around like my ancient ancestors did in the British Isles, but I do love the longest day of the year. I was looking forward to the 'Strawberry Moon'--what a full moon on June 21 is called. There are decades between on Strawberry Moon and the next, but it's cloudy in Connecticut so I'll have to live another 20 years or so to see the next one. Though by then I probably won't know what the moon is!

I wish all days were this long and this mild. I am a fan of the light, though I usually sleep well into it most mornings.

From today on, the light begins to fade seconds a day until the dark of New England winter returns.

Ah, well, seasons are what they are.

(This year on the Solstice there were three muskrats in our yard eating clover. I'm not sure where they live. There used to be a couple of acres of woods behind our back yard but a McMansion ate up a lot of it. It was good to see them in any event. Later this summer when the mulberries on the bush behind our yard fall off and ferment, we'll be treated to drunk muskrats for a week or so. Something not to be missed. Muskrats are not the most agile of creatures to begin with, but in their cups they are amazingly clumsy. Seeing them took away some of the sting of missing a strawberry moon.)

Happy Solstice! Lean into the Light!

What's up with this?

My blog tells me over 80 people have viewed this post in the last day or so. What's up with that?

Thursday, October 24, 2013

Toradh caithimh tobac--ba`s

That's what it says on the Malboro Gold Originals I've been smoking for two weeks. I bought a carton at the Duty Free Shop at the Dublin Airport. If I'm doing the Euro-Dollar exchange anywhere near right, the ten packs of cigarettes cost about $4 a pack, less than half what they cost in Cheshire.

That I still have a pack plus some others after two weeks tells me I don't smoke nearly as much as I feared. Most smokers, when they count, are horrified that they smoke more than they thought. So, give me a break on that, OK?

Yes, I KNOW I shouldn't smoke. And I do. OK? Leave me alone. I'm a priest, I stand with the oppressed and the most oppressed people in the Western world are smokers. I'm just standing with my people....

But since absolutely everything in Ireland has both Irish and English on signs, notices, directions, etc., 'whatever', each pack of cigarettes has the warning "Toradh caithimh tobac--ba`s" on it. The English translation is below: "Smoking kills". You have to admire a language that requires 22 letters to say what 12 say in English. And such wondrous words! When I try to pronounce them (which I can't for the life of me) they sound like Klingon. But if an Irish speaker said them they would sound like a bird song, really. I've listened to Irish a lot and it is a language to be sung, not spoken. English is so mundane in comparison.

No wonder the Irish love song and poetry and story so much--it sounds like birds.

I'm listening as I write this to Maggie, our parakeet sing along with the classical music station we always have on beside her cage.

With a little practice, I believe, Maggie could speak Irish. All birds, it seems to me, are Gaelic in their bird souls.....

Orlando

It is late and I don't have much to say that makes much sense about Orlando.

We were in Italy and got the news in drips and drabs from devices the Josh and Cathy and Dan and Bern had.

Would it be awful to admit I'm glad we weren't here to be washed over by it 24 hours a day? It was awful to hear about, but it came--as I said--in drips and drabs rather than in MSNBC pillar to post coverage.

I preached about Orlando today. How many times have I had to preach about a mass shooting? More than a dozen times, for sure. And this one so horrible in so many ways: LGBTQ folks and most of this Hispanic.

What makes life so frightening and difficult is the false notion of The Other.

LGBTQ folks are "the other" to many. Trump wants to 'build a wall' to keep 'the other'--Hispanics out. Muslims are 'the other'. Blacks and Asians are 'the other'. Everyone has an 'other' they fear and fret about. And it's not just white folks. Everyone has the other. And 'the other' is a lie.

There is no 'other'.

Here's a story I told in my sermon about Orlando: A wise and godly rabbi is sitting with his disciples by a river as dawn is breaking.

The rabbi asks, "How much light is enough light to see?"

One of his disciples answers: "There is enough light to see when you can tell the goats from the sheep across the river."

The rabbi thinks and then says, "No, that is not enough light to see."

Another student says, "There is enough light to see when we can tell the myrtle trees from the olive trees across the river."

After a long silence, the rabbi says, "No, that is not enough light to see."

His disciples grow silent and wait as dawn comes. Finally the rabbi says, "There is enough light to see when you can look into the face of any human being and see the face of God."


We sit in darkness when we fear the Other.

We need enough light to see....

 

The trip over

On Friday, June 10, we dropped Bela off at the puppy motel (a really wonderful place called Holiday Pet Lodge in Wallingford--the only place that would put up with him!) and drove to Newark Airport.

As drives to Newark Airport go, it wasn't awful. We were there with four hours to spare but Dan and Josh and Cathy and the girls were already through security when we arrived! For reasons I don't understand, we got to go through 'fast security', which actually was. Sitting around an airport and then flying overnight was no fun--but we got through it.

Groggy and disoriented in the Italian sun (though it never was 'hot' while we were there) Enrico picked us up in a Mercedes 9 seat car to drive us to Siena. On the way through Tuscany we climbed an endless hill up to a remarkable little village called Pienza where we bought some wine and sausage and enough cheese for the whole trip before winding our way to the 'villa'.

Dan made all the arrangements for the trip, including Enrico, and I had no idea what a 'villa' might look like. Turns out it was a modern, 5 bedroom unit next to the unit where the owners lived. Spacious and air-conditioned, with a pool for us and us alone and a 15' by 10' room with no roof, so you could be 'outside'/inside. Remarkably comfortable and well appointed. A great place to live for 6 days.

Siena is the most beautiful place I've ever been. Built on hills, as most cities in that part of Italy are (probably for defensive purposes back in the 11th and 12th centuries) it is almost totally the color of sand with red roofs. (Here we tend to build in valleys beside rivers--but not in Tuscany! Getting all that stone up on top of hills to build villages boggles the mind.)

We found a grocery store in walking distance--not a Stop and Shop or Kroger's for sure--but really well provided with cheese and meat and fish and pasta and wonderful vegetables and fruit and, to my astonishment, when I converted the Euros into dollars in my head, considerably cheaper than US stores.

Bern and I went to the store and we had an extended anti-pasta with salad and good, good bread (I don't think the concept of  'ok bread' or 'ordinary bread' exists in Italy) and butter so creamy I was tempted to eat it with a spoon. Morgan, Emma and Tegan went to the pool while we assembled dinner--they are all water sprites.

Then blessed sleep.

More later about the adventure in Italy.

No way to run an airport

We're back from Italy after a week's trip with Josh and Cathy and our three granddaughters and Bern's brother Dan. We spent all but the last day in Sienna, which is beyond a doubt the most beautiful and one of the most livable places I've ever been (besides Cheshire, of course). I made notes and will be blogging for a week or so about the trip.  The last day and night we spent in Rome since we had a 9:50 a.m. flight to Newark and Sienna is over two hours from Rome and making the flight would not have worked. More about Rome later.

First, Rome's airport.

Rome is a city of over 2 million people--not New York or Chicago or LA--but a major European capital. And they have no idea how to run an airport. The airport is pristine and new and yet it is a nightmare.

You arrive at a building after a half-hour or more cab ride from the city (50 Euros--about $60). In that building, you stand in line to have someone look at your passport and give you a huge plastic bag for all the carry on tooth paste, shampoo, etc. etc. you have, even though you already have it in plastic bags.

Then you march through to a door to buses that take you to the actual terminal. Buses that are packed full of standing up people with luggage and take 10 minutes or so for the trip to the terminal. In the terminal, you pass through security and then wander around for quite a while trying to find your gate. Your gate will be in the midst of several places to eat something and dozens of high end stores. Since you're there two hours before takeoff you shop and spend money and eat in places that have no logic understood in North America.

Bern and I had a pastry, coffee and orange juice. But here was the trick. You had to order and pay at a place far to the side of the place where the food was and then present your receipt to the servers. Well, 3/4 of the people were not Italian and stood in line to order food before being told by the servers to cross the room and pay first. How do you order food at a place where you can't see the menu?

Then you check in for the flight--boarding as usual in the US in groups (1-5). The catch was, you checked in and rode escalators down two stories to be herded into buses again to ride 5 miles or so to the plane and go up outside steps to board. A Boeing 777 needed half a dozen buses to get everyone to the plane.

So, you stand in line to get a plastic bag you don't need. Ride a bus. Buy expensive stuff and eat in illogical ways. Then stand in line to board and ride another bus and stand in line to climb outdoor steps to the plane.

Not a way to run an airport, far as I can see. The terminal actually had walkways to board planes but the planes were all five miles out on the runway. Go figure.

Much more to come about Italy. Most of it much better than the seemingly random and illogical way Rome airport works.

Real Sermon for David

(I don't think the Gurniak family would mind me sharing the sermon I gave for his funeral last Saturday with you. He was a wondrous man. My sermon doesn't nearly do him justice.)

A SERMON FOR DAVID

You may be seated.

David Gurniak was very inquisitive. He  once asked me, when he and Jan were members of St. John’s in Waterbury and I was the Rector there: “Jim, why do you say, “please be seated?” to begin your sermons. Why don’t you say something like, ‘In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spririt?”

I thought about that for a moment and replied: “I don’t know.”

He nodded and that was the end of that.

David was the kind of guy who took what you said at face value. I admired that in him.

O thou who camest from above/the pure celestial fire to impart

Kindle a flame of sacred love/upon the mean altar of my heart.

That’s the first verse of a hymn by Charles Wesley that David asked to be worked into the sermon at this service. And since I know better than to deny a last request of David Gurniak, I will try, as best I can, to do that.

David also wanted the preacher to talk about this lovely hymn in the context of the call to priesthood.

Again, haltingly and as best I can, I will try to talk about priesthood today.

Kindle a flame of sacred love/upon the mean altar of my heart.

David was a ‘big man’. I don’t have to tell you that. And I don’t mean simply in the physical sense of ‘bigness’, though that was true as true can be.

But David was ‘big’ in all ways: big in his opinions, big in his faith, big in his love, big in his heart. I never really knew David before he lost his leg.  But he always stood tall for me. Tall and ‘big’.

David’s heart, beloved, was not a ‘mean altar’.

His heart was massive, expansive, huge.

There let it for thy glory burn/with inextinguishable blaze,

And trembling to its source return,/in humble prayer and fervent praise.

David requested the Old Testament reading for this memorial to be the story of the Dry Bones.

I must say, I’ve never preached at a funeral where that was a reading!

I think there may be a story there, but I don’t know it.

But I do know this: what a priest is called to do is call forth life, call forth God, call forth resurrection.

I was once at a cocktail party in New Haven and found myself talking to a physicist from India. He asked me, “what do you do?” which is what people in New England ask strangers. Where I come from, in the mountains of West Virginia, you ask a stranger, “where are you from?” (More about that later….)

I told the scientist I was an Episcopal priest and he asked again, “what do you do?” And I told him, honestly, I was a member of a community who watched the life of the community and from time to time stopped everything and said: “That was God! What happened just then was God!”

The Indian scientist nodded, “you are a ‘process observer’ then,” he told me.

Part of ‘being a priest’ is being a ‘process observer’, watching, listening, waiting until God breaks into the ordinary—which is the only place to find God…in ‘the ordinary’—and then declaring God’s presence to the community.

Dry bones can live again. God does it. A priest declares it. That was a part of David’s life and ministry.

Jesus, confirm my heart’s desire/to work and speak and think for thee;

Still let me guard the holy fire,/and still stir up thy gift in me.

I only knew David for a few years. Many fewer than most of you. But in those years, I honored him as a priest, a mentor and a friend.

If I needed an ‘opinion’ about something going on in the parish, I would go to David.

David—and I know all of you know this—was always willing to give an ‘opinion’!

Here’s what I think a priest does. It’s probably simpler than you thought. I think a priest ‘tends the fire, tells the story and passes the wine.” That’s the job description as far as I can tell.

Guarding ‘the holy fire” and working, speaking and thinking for Jesus. That was David’s ‘calling’ as a priest.

And to work/speak/think for Jesus, David had to proclaim, as Paul did in today’s lesson: “Nothing…nothing…nothing whatsoever, can separate us from the love of God.

David’s life—and love: his love for those he served, for those he worked with and most, most of all, his love for Jan and their family—that was his ministry. His calling. His life.

Ready for all thy perfect will/my act of faith and love repeat,

Till death thy endless mercies seal/ and make my sacrifice complete.

In the gospel today, Jesus told his friends, “I go to prepare a place for you…and you know the way to the place I am going.”

Then Thomas, who gets all the good lines in John’s gospel, says, annoyed I think, “Lord, we do not know where you are going. How can we know the way?”

One other conversation I had with David comes to mind.

He asked me, after a funeral of someone we both loved, “what do you think happens after we die?”

I didn’t have to think this time, I merely answered: “I have no idea. That’s one of the things I leave up to God.”

David smiled that smile he had and chuckled. I don’t know if I passed the test or not.

But this I do know. St. Francis of Assisi once wrote: “Death is not a door that closes, but a door that opens and we walk in all new.”

Whatever happens when we die, I leave up to God.

And yet, deep in my heart, I long for the reality that David, my friend, my mentor, my priest, walked through an open door into the presence of the One who loves him best of all and was made ALL NEW.

All new. All new. God was where he ‘came from’ (I promised we’d get back there) and where he returned to.

Surely goodness and mercy shall follow him and he will dwell in the House of the Lord forever. And his sacrifice is made complete.

We love you, David. God loves you more. You are made complete. All New. All New. All New. Go home. Back to where you ‘came from’.     Amen.

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.