last night

Well, I was up so late last night I didn't get to write about the Democratic National Convention. Not only did I watch it all, Bill Mahre (is that how you spell it? Maher, maybe) had an after Convention show.

In my lifetime--which goes back beyond the middle of the last century--there has never been such a difference between the two parties.

Trump is the zombie killer. Hillary is the baby kisser. It's that profoundly different.

And, since Trump isn't really a Republican with traditional Republican values, he handed the Democrats the 'patriotic card'. I've never seen so many American flags as last night.

I've been trying to read as much as I can by Trump supporters to see if I can have any idea whatsoever about how they see the world. 'World view' isn't a term I use much when talking about Americans because I sort of have assumed we see the world pretty much alike. Now I know what a self-delusion that is.

The world Trump describes might as well be in another galaxy from me. Everything in that world is distopic, frightening, negative and terrifying. That's not my world. I'm a realist: I know there are lots of bad things going on, but I'm a Pelagian as well. I believe in the deep-down, basic goodness of humankind in spite of the evidence to the contrary. I think the Evil in the world is created by human beings and that human beings can create Goodness to overcome the Evil.

The homage paid by the Democrats to the 'higher calling' and 'better nature' of human beings was salvation language to me.

I am 'frightened'. I am frightened that all my trust in the basic kindness and compassion of human beings might not be enough to defeat Trump in November. But I will not and cannot give up on humanity the way Trump has.

(Mike Pence criticized Obama for using the word 'demagogue' in his speech. Obama said, "Whoever threatens our values, be they fascists, communists, Jihadists or homegrown demagogues, they will fail." Pence assumed the President was referring to his running mate. He said "name-calling" had no place in politics.

Has he listened to Trump? "Little Marco", "lazy Jeb", "Lying Ted", "Crooked Hillary", on and on....

Pence should resign from the ticket if he objects to name-calling in politics. You know he should.)

Wednesday night

So, I've been trying to write something while listening to the DNC on radio while I type. Then Joe Biden came on and I had to go watch him (incredible) and then watched Mike Bloomberg, an Independent, unleashed the most bitter attack on Donald Trump of the Convention.

Soon, Tim Kaine and the President--so I'm not getting much written.

I probably shouldn't even try.

So, I won't.

"I'm with HER!"

Living inside God

I was with three of my Tuesday morning friends today--Charles, Michael and Armando--and though we seem to disagree a lot recently, today's conversation (since it wasn't about politics) was invigorating.

We talked about prayer--which I preached about Sunday. I have lots of issues with the 'normal' understanding of prayer. In fact, I don't think 'prayer' is something we 'do' so much as it is a way we 'be' in the world. I don't want to pray a lot--I want to 'be' prayerful. I want to have my eyes wide open and my heart wide open and my life wide open to the presence of the 'divine' that, I assert, surrounds and envelopes us. If we only look, watch and listen.

I don't have what I said about prayer on Sunday written down in any way that would make sense if I put it here. But I did find a sermon from 3 years ago on my computer that addresses some of my concerns and begins to flesh out some of my thinking on prayer.

I'll  share it with you (it's on the same lessons from last Sunday--thank God for a three year lectionary!) and come back to prayer another time.

Prayer revisited…

          Today I want to talk about prayer and say some things that the church usually doesn’t teach about prayer. Two quick stories—decades and time zones apart—that will help me get started in the right direction.

          First story:When my father was stationed in England just before the invasion of Europe, he had bad problems with his teeth. Against the rules of both the Army and the English government, he went into London and found a civilian dentist. The dentist knew the rules and told my father he couldn’t possibly work on his teeth. As my father was leaving, the dentist shook his hand and gave him the Masonic hand-shake which, my father, being a Mason, returned. “Ok,” the British dentist told Dad, “sit down and I’ll  see what we can do….”

          Second story: When I was a new priest in Charleston, West Virginia, I rushed to the hospital because John Weaver, a teenage member of St. James Church, had been hit by a truck as he walked along the highway. John died shortly after I got to the hospital and when I was holding his mother, Bea, she said to me through her great, global grief—“Did God let John die because I didn’t pray well enough?”

          That is the most painful and disturbing question anyone has ever asked me about God. Bea Weaver, mourning her son, imagined God was waiting for the “secret handshake”, the right words, the correct formula, prayer devout and impassioned enough to let her son live instead of die.

          What kind of God would that be? That would be a monstrous, fickle, irresponsible, crazy God. No God worth our worship, no God who truly loves us, would make prayer into some kind of parlor game where we have to somehow “solve the puzzle” before our prayers are answered.

          Yet that is the way the church, more often than not, teaches people to pray. The church tends to teach people that there is a “right way” to pray, that there is some skill to be learned, some practice to become facile and adroit with, some formula that “works” when dealing with God.

          Today’s lessons, I want to suggest, are not helpful at all in wrestling with how to pray. In fact, and this is just me talking—it isn’t the Truth—today’s lessons teach us something wrong and misleading about prayer.

          The lesson from Genesis leads us to believe that God can be “bargained” with and manipulated. On first glance, its rather interesting—even amusing—to see how Abraham is able to convince God to “lower the ante” on destroying Sodom down to 10 righteous people that can save the city from God’s wrath.

          Theologically, though, that kind of God is as disturbing as a God who would let John Weaver die because his mother didn’t pray quite right.

          No better is the God in Jesus’ parable about the inopportune neighbor. The message, it seems to me, is this: “annoy God enough and just to shut you up God will give you what you ask for….”

          That’s a deeply troubling thought to me. The rest of it is better—the ask and search and knock part, how God will give and find and open—and the part about God knowing what to give us—a fish rather than a snake, an egg rather than a scorpion. At least these thoughts reveal a God who deeply and profoundly “cares” for us and wishes us wholeness and wellness.

          But the whole “prayer” deal is problematic to me. I can’t believe God operates on the Gallup Poll—though the church seems to teach us that both persistence and quantity of prayers are important and may just result in answered prayer.

          I want to suggest—just as a suggestion, not the Truth—that maybe prayer is not so much a skill to be learned as it is a possibility to be embraced. What if “prayer” is not so much something we “do” as it is something we seek to “be”?  What if “learning to pray” is not so much learning what to say to God as it is realizing how to be with God?

          I’m not suggesting that we don’t DO “prayer”. In fact, that’s why we gather here each time we gather—we gather to “do the work” of Prayer. That is as it should be. What I am suggesting is that “doing” prayer—repeating words hoping we’ll find the right ones, looking for the secret handshake, trying to influence God—isn’t “prayer” at it’s most profound and significant level.

          What I am suggesting, just as a possibility, is that living “prayerfully” is the key to “learning to pray”.

          What I am suggesting is that the deepest kind of prayer is something we soak up on an almost cellular level, in the deepest part of us, in our souls. This understanding of “prayer” makes it accessible to all of us all the time. It is more akin to listening than to talking. It is more akin to breathing than to thinking. “Prayer”, it seems to me, might just be a kind of awareness, a kind of “being awake” to God, a kind of dance we dance with the Lover of souls.

                                                ****

          To bring all that near, let’s look at Luke’s version of the Lord’s Prayer.

          First of all, when Jesus tells his disciples “how to pray” he begins with God: “Father, hallowed be your name. Your Kingdom come.”

          Prayer—deep prayer, soaking prayer, prayer from the soul—begins and ends with God. Hopefully, praying “gives” us something, “shows the way”, “opens the door”—but prayer is about God, about being present to God, about being open to God’s holiness and God’s will and God’s unfathomable love.

          “Give us each day our daily bread.” Prayer is about what we “need”, not what we “want”. Just enough bread to fill us today; just enough courage to inspire us today; just enough patience to relax us today; just enough love to let us love everyone we need to today. Learning to expect what we “need” rather than what we “want” answers countless prayers we haven’t even prayed yet.

          “Forgive us our sins, for we ourselves forgive everyone indebted to us,”  Wow, that’s pretty “bad news” for me and I suspect for you! If the disciples had had their wits about them, they wouldn’t have asked Jesus how to “pray”, they would have asked him to teach them how to “forgive”…. Prayer, it seems to me, is as much about “our forgiving” as “God’s forgiving”—the deepest prayer is forgiveness, forgiveness, forgiveness….

          “And do not bring us to the time of trial….”

       Lots of people tell me they don’t know how to pray. And, if I were a betting man, I’d bet my house that everyone here has, in a moment of trial, said something like “O God…” or “Help me…” or “What now?”

          If you’ve ever done that, you know how to pray. It’s really that simple, just offering up whatever pain or fear or anxiety or loss is with you in the moment. That’s Prayer. That’s how Jesus tells us to pray….

          Many people love the Lord's Prayer from the New Zealand Prayerbook that expands and enriches what Jesus told us to pray. I prefer the minimalist method. This is my Lord's Prayer.

       “You are holy; your Will, not mine; give me what I need each day; teach me to forgive and forgive me; keep me safe from myself and save me from 'me'; you are holy. Amen.”

Emmanuel, Killingworth/July 28, 2013/jim bradley

First night

In the next few days I'll have lots to write about the Democratic Convention--it's late tonight so I will be brief.

Started rocky with lots of Bernie discontent--not unexpected by any means.

But my God--Al Franken and Sarah Silverstein--tell me two comics at the Republican Convention (besides Trump and Pence, who don't mean to be....) they were great.

Michelle for President! Lordy, Lordy the girl can move a crowd. The turn started there.

Then Elizabeth and Bernie: the twin darlings of Progressives like me (when did we accept the P word rather than the L word--whether L means Liberal or Left-Wing) who made the case that Bernie's 'revolution' created the most liberal platform in history and will live on through Hillary's presidency.

What a contrast to the gloom and doom and zombie apocalypse of the GOP.

Makes me prouder than ever to be a Yellow Dog Democrat.

More when I'm more awake.

Looking for meaning

It's something we all do, all of us,
look for the meaning of things,
seek out the 'truth', delve for 'purpose'.

And come up, from all that,
more often than not,
empty-handed and disappointed.

I have a book from college,
decades and decades ago now,
by John Ciardi, a literary critic,
entitled
How does a poem mean?

It's the only book I still have
from those idyllic, innocent
years of my late teens
and early twenties.
The only one I kept,
though I had a multitude
of books those days.

I was looking at it earlier tonight.
It does have some of my favorite
poetry between its covers--
but what drew me to it this day
was that remarkable title.

Not "What does a poem mean?"
But "How", not "what".

Maybe I am looking in all
the wrong places
for the very wrong thing.

Maybe I shouldn't be asking,
over and over, non-stop,
ad infinitum, "What?"
"What?" "What?" "What?"
"What does it mean???"

Thank you Professor Ciardi,
for the question I need:
not "what?" but "How?"
is meaning found.

"How?" is easier to sit with,
because you can sit with it.
"What?" sends you coursing off
down dead-ends,
blind alleys,
labyrinths of confusion.

"How does it mean?"

Now there's a place to sit and think,
and wonder and ponder,
and invite being perplexed.

Where is obvious.
When can be placed in time.
Who is often undeniable.
What, as always, is difficult.
How, though, there's something
to sit with and wonder about
and ponder till the cows come home,
whenever cows come home.

How does life mean?

Well worth a ponder or two....

"Back in the USSR"

I really don't know who reads these semi-meaningless ramblings I write (you'll see in a moment "why" I don't really know) so from time to time I'm astonished when I check the statistics about 'Under the Castor Oil Tree'.

(By the way, I wonder how many of you remember that Beatles song, 'Back in the USSR'?)

So, yesterday I had over 160 views of my blog.

I almost always have 50+ and sometimes, for reasons I sometimes understand--someone reads something and emails all their friends to read it too, for example--it's several hundred, but 160+ is a good day.

Here's the weird thing about that: yesterday 105 of those views were from Russia!

I get views from lots of places, but never before have that number of views been from anywhere except the USA.

My stats show me a map in various shades of Green to indicate where the views are from. Yesterday, Russia was the deep green I've never seen before for any country but my own.

Is Putin reading my Blog?

Should I be worried about the KGB (do they still exist? how could we know?).

One thing my statistics don't tell me is 'who' is reading 'what', so unless I want to go back and look at the page views for over 1700 posts, I don't know what is trending that day.

Hello. If you are back in the USSR and reading my blog, put a comment on this post to let me know why you're dropping in. (Unless, of course, you are the KGB and would have to kill me if you told me---in that case, please, please don't comment.....)!!!

Hey, by the way, I'm an almost socialist...communists don't offend me. OK?

OK???

Please....

Get scared. Get very, very scared.

I sat through the whole 75 or so minute acceptance speech by Donald Trump.

Why? You might ask, knowing me as a left-wing, semi-socialist Democrat.

Here's why: I wanted to get scared. I wanted to get very, very scared.

Trump is making late night comedians wealthy--but it is time to stop making fun of him and to begin being terrified by him.

This is a man that Facts Check constantly labels as 'pants on fire'! This is a man that described an America for over an hour that hovers between the zombie apocalypse and an alien invasion--an America that I do not and cannot recognize. This is a man for whom "the other"--whether Mexican judges or Muslim Americans or Black Lives Matter--are a deadly threat to 'the Real America' (another concept of his that I do not and cannot recognize).

And he is one day in November away from being President of the United States.

Know what was missing entirely from his too long speech? Humor.

Read or watch Hillary's campaign speeches and there are lots of laugh lines. President Obama is full of good humor. For Donald and his supporters there is nothing to laugh at unless it is the offensive nicknames he gives anyone who opposes him: "Little Marco", "lying Ted", "crooked Hillary" and, already, "corrupt Kaine".

I don't know about you, but for my whole life, the only people who felt they had to give ugly nicknames to others were school playground bullies....Well, that fits.

Is Hillary Clinton a perfect candidate? Of course not. There aren't any of those. But she has been America's First Lady, the Senator of one of the largest states in the country and Secretary of State. What is Donald's resume? Chapter 11 expert, failed football league leader, failed Trump University creator, thrice married, Reality show Bully.

Some of my best friends have this Hillary-thing. They just have to get over that and get scared...very, very scared.

OK, the emails. Two of George W. Bush's Secretaries of State did exactly the same thing. Colin Powell, who I profoundly respect as a good and decent man, even deleted thousands of his government email. Condeleesa Rice, who got an undeserved reputation, did exactly what Powell before her and Hillary after her did. Was there a grunt or a whimper from Republicans about Powell and Rice? Well, no. Why not? They weren't Hillary!!!

The hatred of Hillary is almost as blatant as the Hatred of President Obama, and nearly as despicable. According to their enemies, if Jesus came again and embraced either Hillary or Barack, those folks would become atheists.

I don't hate Trump, I fear him.

And you should to.

I don't usually get so blunt, but here's the choice: a presidential ticket that includes a pathological lying narcissist  and a governor who is so Right Wing he opposed the right to choose for women, equality for the GLBTQ community, Planned Parenthood and would put into law the right for people to discriminate versus a woman uniquely qualified to be President and a Senator who is generally regarded, even by Republicans, as fair, open, flexible and engaging.

Go ponder that choice.

And be very, very scared if the choice isn't obvious.