Waiting for Ellie

My fourth granddaughter isn't born yet. She's due on Thursday but Mimi's doctor said, 'probably not' and gave her until August 12th.

It's eerie, waiting for a grandchild.

Waiting for a letter, a return email, a package, a birthday, a holiday--all that is different.

Letters and packages depend on who brings them, a return email depends on who you sent your email to, birthdays and Holidays come when the come and can be depended on.

But Ellie's arrival isn't like any of that.

She will come when she comes.

And I can't wait.

My 'baby' is having a baby.

How sweet is that.

I'll just wait.

Not much else available to do.

I'll be here, Ellie, when you show up....

This is retirement....

I've been 'retired' since April of 2010. I retired when I had 30 years in the Church Pension Fund (one reason to consider being an Episcopal priest that has nothing to do with spirituality or religion, is the Church Pension Fund. Each month I receive over 80% of my total compensation from the 7 years of my highest pay--including housing, pension and medical care. Amazing!)

I still do stuff. I am a long term Interim Missioner for the Middlesex Area Cluster Ministry--three little churches--10-12 hours a week. So, I get paid for that. I also teach at UConn in Waterbury in the Osher Life-long Learning Institute every other semester. I choose to let my stipend go back into the Institute, so I don't get paid. And I'm a leader of the Making a Difference Workshop several times a year. I pay my way for that, except the Mastery Foundation pays when I go to Ireland for the plane ride. So, I stay busy.

But all that is stuff I love to do. What I do the rest of the time is, well, read.

I read 5 books a week--mostly mysteries, though some straight novels and poetry (which I read in a way that doesn't take much time). Almost never non-fiction. I did that in 7 years of post graduate studies (2 at Harvard for my MTS, 2 at Virginia Seminary for my M.Div. and 3 years at Hartford Seminary for my Doctor of Ministry degree) and since I was an undergraduate minor in political science--thinking I might go to law school--I read some non-fiction there for 4 years.

Now I do 'fiction'.

Five books a week. 260 or so books a year.

I spent a lot of time in the 'real world' as a social worker and a priest. And I still have a hand in that world. But I live for fiction.

I think fiction is a way into 'reality'. Fiction creates realities in our heads, places to live for a while knowing we can come back to what is 'real' whenever we need to cook dinner or walk the dog or have a visit with friends or talk to adult children.

But I always have a book with me--no matter what. There's a book on my passenger seat when I go to church, just in case I'm a little early and can steal a few minutes in an alternative world. I don't mind doctors' appointments because I can read while I wait. Plane and train trips are time for reading. I've thought about getting novels on tape (of course, it's not 'tape' anymore--whatever it is) to play while I drive. But I love National Public Radio almost as much as I love reading so I'll never do that.

I've always been a reader--but being retired has made 'a reader' who I am.

And I love it. I went to the library on Wednesday and got 4 books. I'll be starting the last one in bed tonight. And I'll finish it Tuesday if not sooner.

Read, beloved. Read.

Who knew?

For some reason, unknown to me, Bern is watching a 'Sharknato' deal. There are apparently 4 of them, she's on #3.

This is the woman who, for weeks after seeing Jaws couldn't take a shower in comfort!

Apparently the 'Sharknato' movies are comedies of sorts with all manner of unexpected cameos. I saw Penn and Teller in a diner and Teller had no lines!

Anyway, after I found out what the movies were I went downstairs to read. It wasn't until I'd been down there for a while that I realized the 'shark-nato' thing was a play on 'tornado' since sharks came out of the sky.

Up until then I was trying to get my head around what sharks flying through the sky had to do with the North Atlantic Treaty Organization Donald Trump has little interest in even though it has kept the Western world safe since WW II.

"Ah," I said, a light bulb going on, cartoon like over my head, "like a 'tornado', I get it now."

Day by day I creep closer to needing to be in the home....

As low as you can go??? Probably not....

Donald Trump has taken on Khizs Khan, the father of a Muslim soldier killed in the Middle East, for his speech at the Democratic Convention.

Trump said that Mr. Khan seemed like a 'nice man' and then went off on the fact that Mrs. Khan didn't speak. "Maybe she wasn't allowed to," he said, a slam at Muslims if there ever was one.

The truth is, Mrs. Khan didn't speak because she felt emotionally unable to since it was her son's picture that was being shown all over the arena--her 'dead son', who died for his country. She stood with her husband at the podium because, as Khan said, he couldn't have spoken without her by his side because of his emotions.

It was, in my opinion, the most moving moment of the whole moving convention. Khan said Trump doesn't know what their kind of  'sacrifice' is like. Trump replied he 'sacrificed' a lot by working hard.

Hard work (expected of us all) on one hand vs. a dead son, a military hero on the other. Let's just say Khan was correct.

Khan also pulled out a copy of the Constitution and volunteered to give it to Trump.

Amen.

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