From paper to possibility

So, I preached the sermon I posted yesterday today. I wasn't sure I would, but on the way there (having brought the text) I decided.

One good thing about being a priest in 3 churches that are all 20 minutes and more away is you get time to think on Sunday morning!

There were less than 20 people there and at least half of them thanked me for the sermon--above average--and several of the thanks involved hugs....

I never intended to be an Episcopal priest--not by a long shot. And I've often thought over the years that 'if I had it to do again' I'd do what I intended, gotten a Ph.D. in American Literature and taught in some small, private college and written the Great American Novel.

But when half the people who hear a sermon thank you for it--five with hugs and one saying, "you gave me back my faith"--then I know why I do this.

And, given another chance, I would love to take another path, have a different career, on days like today I realize that maybe, just maybe, this is what I was 'meant' to do in some way larger than myself.

I'm not sure. But it felt like that today. I didn't move the multitudes, but I was told I gave someone 'back their faith". What matters as much as that?

I wish I had that Nobel Prize for Literature though....

The Readings for tomorrow

Emmanuel Church/August 7, 2016

The lessons for today deserve something written down--which I often don't do. I've been preaching since 1975, most every Sunday, and since the Episcopal lectionary is on a three year cycle, that means I've been through it about 13 times. I've heard these lessons over and again over 40 years of ordination. I usually read the lessons early in the week and sit with them until Sunday. Sometimes I check and see if I have a sermon in my document folder for those lessons and sometimes I find several. So I read those sermons and ponder them and then get up on Sunday and just talk.

Sometimes it is brilliant and sometimes not so much.

But I grow and change and the lessons show up in a new and transformed way and I need to write something down about them.

This Sunday--Pentecost 12--is one of those.

The readings are Genesis 15.1-6: where Yahweh promises Abram that his descendants shall be as many as the stars in the sky, though Abram (not yet Abraham!) is old and childless. Abram believes the Lord and 'the Lord reckoned it to him as righteousness'.

Then Hebrews 11:1-3, 8-16: and epistle to Jewish Christians that remembers the story of Abram/Abraham and says God's promise is till to be fulfilled for the Jews.

Finally, Luke 12.32-40: the parable of the faithful slaves ('slaves', not 'servants') who wait for their master to return from a wedding banquet and because of their faithfulness the Master makes them sit and prepares a meal for them.

Since recently I discovered I am a 'non-creedal Christian', these lessons spoke to me in a new way.

The reading from Hebrews begins, "Now FAITH is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen."

I really accept that definition of 'Faith'. Faith is, for me, "the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen."

My problem is that many, if not most Christians mean something else by 'faith'. They take Faith to mean believing in the truthfulness of articles of a Creed or 'knowing for sure' some things about God. For me, 'knowing for sure' doesn't enter into 'faith' and 'believing in the truthfulness' of a Creed is almost the opposite of 'my faith'.

Leaning into things 'hoped for' and embracing 'things not seen'. OK, for me, that's "Faith".

Abram leaned into and embraced the hoped for and unseen promise that his descendants should fill the earth even though he and his wife, Sarah, were far beyond the age of conception. And Abrams' leaning and embracing was, Genesis said, "RECKONED" as 'righteousness'.

Now I come from a part of the world, Appalachia, where people actually used the word "reckoned".

Someone would say, "want to play basketball, Jimmy?" and I would reply, "I reckon so."

It meant, "I believe I do, now that you mention it."

I worked for my Uncle Russell in his grocery store. People back then and there only had money around the first of the month, so Uncle Russel let them buy groceries on credit. Around the first few days of the month, lots of folks came into the H & S Market and said to me, "Jimmy, I need to 'reckon' my account."

That meant I'd figure up what they owed and they'd pay it.

So, in Appalachian, God in Genesis 'believed' Abrams faithfulness made him righteous. God "figured up" what Abram owed him and Abram 'trust in God's promise' paid the bill.

Just like that.

Luke's story tells us what 'Faith' as 'leaning into' and 'embracing'--NOT as 'Knowing it is True'--requires of us.

It requires action and patience and waiting and staying awake.

FAITH, to me, is much more about what you do and how patient you are and how awake you are than it does in giving assent to some articles in a Creed. Much more. Much, much more.

No 'sleeping on the job', beloved. What 'faith' calls for is awareness, watchfulness, willingness to do what God requires, not some allegiance to some words in a Creed.

"Righteousness" is a term of 'relationship'. To be 'righteous' is to be in relationship with God--leaning into God's promise, embracing God's promise and living out of that in this world.

If you drive through the South, you'll see barns here and there where someone has painted GET RIGHT WITH GOD.

I used to think that was too pious, but I now believe they're onto something.

Being in a 'right relationship' with God is what 'faith' and 'belief' are all about. Leaning into God and embracing God will send us out each day ready to demonstrate the love and compassion and justice and inclusion that IS God.

That's what makes us 'righteous', beloved. Not some words we say we 'believe'....

Stay awake! Be God's love in the world! Be Christ's Body every day! Be 'righteous' in relationship with God and those around you.

That's all that the Promise of God requires....

White Trash

Bern and I lived in a trailer for a year or so when I left Harvard and found out I couldn't teach school in Morgantown, WV because of my long hair and beard. We were on foodstamps for a year or so too. My grandmother and aunt lived in trailers for years. Grandmaw got commodity cheese and other things from the Welfare Department. But it was in my aunt Georgie's trailer that my cousin Mejol locked me in her room with a Bob Dylan album and a copy of Catcher in the Rye and wouldn't let me out until I'd absorbed them both.

When I was at Harvard Divinity School (paid for by the Rockerfellow foundation) I discovered that the more "Appalachian hick" I sounded, the more people thought I was brilliant.

I am, for the most part, 'white trash'. My mother and two of her sisters had college degrees. My Aunt Elsie even, God bless her, had a Ph.D. before she was finished. But I was in the first generation of my father's family to go to college.

Hard working people on the Jones and Bradley side. Decent and kind. But what would be called, today, 'white trash'.

There's a new book out about my social class. It even has the words "white trash" in the sub-title. I hope to get it and read it soon.

I live in Connecticut, for Christ's sake, but I still know my roots. I know my blood comes from Appalachia, deep in the mountains, far from the main-stream, for from the madding crowds, far from the elite.

I come from that strata of America that Donald Trump has found and fueled their anger.

And I don't understand because I left West Virginia before "Coal as King" was no more and heroin was nothing more than a female hero.

I got out. Many didn't.

I've been back to see how tragically life has left so many behind.

They are Trump People.

They have no hope. They weren't one of the lucky ones like me.

"White trash" isn't a negative term to me. I embrace it. And I long to embrace my brothers and sisters left behind whose anger drive them to Trump.

I want to give them another path. And I don't know how.

I know their anger and despair. It is not mine.

And my greatest pain is not knowing how to welcome them into the America I know.

They are not there. And Trump will not lead them there. And they should, ought to be, deserve to be there with me.

They do.

OK, OK...

So, I got some comments on yesterday's post wondering why I didn't get comments and several emails telling me that they found it difficult, for various reasons, to comment on my blog.

OK, I get it.

One wonderful email said they saw my blog like a collection of short stories. You read one and think about it and later read another.

So, no one much writes to short story writers. Short stories aren't a conversation. Maybe my blog isn't either.

OK, I get it.

And that's fine.

I won't worry myself about it any more.

And I appreciate anything that makes me not worry myself about something.

I don't like to 'worry myself'.

So, I'm pleased with the whole thing. Thank you guys.

I'll keep writing and not ponder the lack of comments.

How's that?

And I might have some things to say about Donald Trump, if you don't mind....

Just wondering about conversation

My blog is getting many more page visits than it used to. I've mentioned the number of Russian views.

But what I don't get is comments.

My friends, Mike and Rowena do make comments from time to time. Mike about random things and Rowena about church stuff.

Just wondering and pondering if a blog should be a monologue or a conversation.

I don't know.

I guess I don't want to spend my time responding to comments rather than pondering stuff, but it is like a vacuum when I write and write and no one comments.

I do have one dear woman who emails me from time to time about what I write.

But even though more people seem to be reading, nobody much comments.

Maybe my ponderings are so profound and true everyone just thinks "well said" and moves on.

Devoutly to be wished. I don't want to stir up a firestorm, but I simply have no way to know if what I sit here typing provokes much of anything in the readers, who, as I said, seem to be multiplying lately.

So, if you don't mind, comment on this post to tell me why you don't comment on all the hundreds of others.

And I probably won't respond to you comment, just to let you know. I'd just like to know why you don't comment.

Does that seem fair? Let me know.

As the Africans say in parting, "Be well, umfandusi" (good friend). The response is "stay well, umfrandusi."

Back home...

The Republican candidate for Sheriff in Berkeley County, West Virginia was arrested for possession of heroin after an ambulance removed him from his house unresponsive and police found heroin in his bedroom and a needle in his arm.

His name is John Orem. His website promised to address 'recent incidents' soon. He was released on $5000 bail and will be arraigned next week.

Welcome to my home state.

People worry about voter fraud (which is almost non-existent these days) but when I was a teenager more people voted in Logan County, West Virginia than lived there, much less were registered to vote.

I once wrote a short story for a writing class in college in which a West Virginia State Policeman assaulted a drunk guy for dancing with a duck on a string in a bar.

My teacher told me it was too 'outrageous' and no one would believe it. My teacher was from the Midwest, not West Virginia and the story was based on something I witnessed in a bar in Anawalt, WV when I was in high school. It happened. I saw it.

When I retired back in 2010 someone asked me if I would be 'going home' to West Virginia.

It took all my years of training and all my restraint not to laugh in their face.

McDowell County, West Virginia, where I spent the first 18 years of my life was called, by the natives, 'the free state of McDowell' and for good reason.

Not much the state or federal government said or instructed happened there. If heroin had been around back then, our sheriff would have been shooting up.

McDowell County (circa 50's and 60's of the last century) was like the whole country would be if Donald Trump were President. No limits, no rules, no sense of decency and order.

I was young. I didn't realize how crazy things were, how out of whack. Looking back I know.

When I was there McDowell County had nearly 60,000 people living there. Last census there were a little over 28,000. Coal is dead. So is McDowell County. Trump will probably get 40,000 votes there in November!!!

The mind of a Puli

Bela, our Puli dog, won't go down the back stairs anymore. I just don't get it.

For 10 years he's gone down the back stairs just fine. Those stairs are carpeted and have a turn in them and should be much easier to go down than the front stairs--bare wood and straight down. In fact he often slips going down the front stairs but never did on the back ones.

Before our cat, Luke, died, I used the think I'd like to be in Bela's brain for a while but never Lukie's. The brain of a cat, I imagine, is such a complex labyrinth that you could never escape. But a Puli brain, that I thought would be simple--food, pet, bark, poop, pee, sleep. Nothing more complicated than that.

But, I can't for the life of me fathom why he should, all of a sudden, decide he won't go down the back stairs. I've tried to force him several time to no avail. He just won't, for reasons only he knows.

Why would a dog like Bela, a creature entirely dependent on 'habit' and 'routine'--up and out to bathroom/eat/out again to bathroom and walk/sleep/bark/sleep/follow me everywhere/sleep/eat/out to bathroom/sleep and hang out/one last pee/sleep for the night--change his mind about going down stairs which, to my knowledge, have never caused him any problems?

So, I'm no longer sure I'd like to hang out for a while in his brain.

Who knows what I'd stop doing that I have always done?