Amazing....

Yesterday, Bern mailed in our last mortgage payment!

Somehow she (and I mean her and her alone...I don't do checks, I do taxes) paid off our 30 year mortgage in 27 years....

Only thing is, there goes our biggest tax deduction.

If you want to be angry with the government--and who doesn't these days?--consider this: tax policy for ordained ministers.

Any 'housing costs'--mortgage, utilities, taxes, paint, repairs, lawn furniture, a new mattress, toilet paper, on and on--can be deducted from an ordained minister's income and no tax is paid on them....Plus, like everyone else, ministers can also deduct the interest on mortgage, which was already deducted once in the mortgage payments....Go figure. God must be on our side....So, $1900 or so a month can no longer be deducted in tax year 2017. But that will be fine.

But it's nothing considering my father and mother's only house. He had an eighth grade education while my mother had a Master's degree in education. But when they bought their only house, the year I went off to college, they paid cash! Those two knew how to save.

It was on $28,000 but that was 1965 money.

It only took us 27 more years to pay for a house than my Mom and Dad....

And it feels so good.

Impossible?

I'm not keen on my mathematical acumen so when I saw this on line "Can you solve this almost impossible problem?" I almost passed it over. But just by glancing I knew what I thought was the answer, so I went to the site and I was right.

It just seems common sense and intuitive to me. What do you think? Here it is....

1+5=18
2+10=36
3+15=54
4+20=?

What do you think?

(What was harder than the problem was typing it! My computer didn't let me put spaces between the numbers and signs like I wanted. Now that seems impossible....

Short but oh, so sweet...

Mimi, Tim and Ellie came up from Brooklyn on Christmas Eve morning. Josh and Cathy and the three Bradley girls didn't get here until I'd left to do two (4 and a 6) Xmas Eve services. Everyone went to our friend John's Christmas Eve party and got home about half-an-hour after I did. We opened stocking presents and slept until 7 for Christmas day.

It was a wonderful day--full of talk and laughter and joy and a little alcohol....

John came to make 10 for dinner. The girls (all of us really) kept Ellie the center of attention!

Good food and a great family. What else do you need?

Josh and Cathy left early on the 26th--she had court of the 27th--and Tim and Mimi left in mid-afternoon.

Bern did, as always, put the house back in 'just the two of us' shape and we had a quiet evening.

'Bout all I could have wished for....

Yorkshire Pudding

More later about our wondrous Christmas with Josh/Cathy, Mimi/Tim, the three Bradley girls and baby Ellie McCarthy....

But this is about Christmas dinner. I had no idea what Yorkshire Pudding was. I thought it would involve raisins, dates, currants and the like. It's like a pop-over with beef juice! Who knew? Well, millions of people, of course, but not me.

We had a ten pound, bone in, beef rib roast, Yorkshire Pudding, a mixture of 4 mushrooms, scalloped potatoes, spinach salad with pomegranate, and beef broth. With a rich mixture of everything from German Chocolate Cake to ice cream to cream puffs for dessert.

Amazing.

And the Yorkshire Pudding threw me, but in a good way. I've having it crisped up in the over with beef soup for dinner tonight. Right now, in fact.

So, see you....

Tis the season....

Just as Americans do politically, the crowd shopping in Stop and Shop this morning split down the middle: naughty and nice....

I had half-a-dozen harried shoppers cut me off in an aisle with not so much as a fare thee well.

At the same time, more than that backed up to let me pass and smiled.

Most of the aggression wasn't so much 'aggressive' as just pretending they were the only person there.

Half the small kids were listening attentively to their parents and the other half were running amok! I kid had hidden underneath a vegetable display and his father dragged him out. I expected the man to hit the kid and present me with a moral dilemma...but he just picked him up and carried him away.

Lots of people simply seemed like they wanted to be anywhere on the eve of the Eve besides shopping.

And most of the people in really ugly holiday sweaters were the friendliest in the store.

Something about an ugly holiday sweater to bring out the best in folks....

YOU DON'T WANT TO READ THIS!!! PLEASE BELIEVE ME!!!

Two horrible things you don't want to read--PLEASE BELIEVE ME!!!--go watch something on U-Tube, call your sister, read a good book...anything, just don't read this....

OK, I'm not responsible.


The other day I was with a person who makes me totally and absolutely irrational. This person brings out the very worst in me and my 'worst' is pretty bad. I don't know why it is so, but it is. I can't be around this person without being a crazy person.

I could blame their opinions--which do make me homicidal. I could blame their demeanor, which is (to me) smug and superior. I could blame their personality, which totally conflicts with mine: I tend, in my first approach, to joke about almost everything. But when I run into someone who seems devoid of humor as I understand it, I revert to my reptilian personality and strike out.

And all that happened the other day. I was an ass-hole in front of people I genuinely admired and like. I lashed out like a madman and said things I deeply regret--not because I didn't mean them, but because they were so inappropriate in a social setting.

And what I've come to realize is I've met my Samaritan.

Jesus' story of the Good Samaritan drove good Jews over the edge. Samaritans, didn't Jesus know, were 'the other', the 'evil ones', those to be shunned. What right did he have to make them look at a Samaritan that was not only 'good' but better than the three moral Jews in the story?

What I've come to see is that the next time I'm with the person who makes me a maniac, I have to realized God sent them to me to find the nobility in them I am unable, unwilling, reluctant to see.

First, I will apologize to them. Sincerely. And share with them my epiphany that they are God's gift to me to make me a better person, to find the 'noble' and 'good' in them. To 'appreciate' them.

I will do that and apologize to the others who were there.

And, believe this beloved, this is one of the hardest things I've ever written. I told you not to read it and hope you didn't.

I am humiliated by recognizing my 'Samaritan' and acknowledging why God sent them to me--and how much I need, for my own soul, to embrace and welcome them.....

Fog

Yesterday, driving to church in Killingworth, I drove through the worst fog I remember driving through. Coming home was second worst....

And that's from a guy from the fog capitol, Southern West Virginia. Mountains and moisture and rapidly shifting temperature make for a log of fog a lot of the time.

But yesterday was Epic Fog.

Between Durham and Killingworth on Routes 79 and 80, it was ghostly, the whole landscape. Not to mention that part of CT looks more like WV than any other.

I actually like the fog.

You could do worse than pull over to the side of the road and just get out and stand in the fog.

It's an apt metaphor, in many ways, for how I go through life, just feeling myself along, straining to see the right direction, hoping I'm not going to fast.

Being lost in a Cloud is an image from Christian mysticism for seeking God or the Holy.

Not a bad place to be--'the Cloud of Unknowing'.

"Knowing" is well over rated. 'Unknowing'...now, that's getting someplace even if the view isn't clear and directions are difficult and 'seeking' becomes a way of being....

Next good fog, go out and 'be there'....

You'll thank me for it.