What comes next?

Last night the 9 members of the Middlesex Area Cluster Council met with the bishop and his 'deployment' leader--though her official title is much longer and includes the words 'transitional ministry'--what she does is try to find priests to 'deploy' in jobs that are open.

It is by no means the first--may be the 4th meeting with one or the other or both--but I think the Council finally 'got it'. I won't be there forever. I've been the "Interim" missioner for 5 or 6 years (one of those--me and linear time you know) and even if I stayed two more years I'd have to retire finally and hold no positions. I could be a supply priest--one Sunday here and one there--but I couldn't have a title.

So, now things get serious. "What comes next?" is the question. What happens after Jim Bradley?

I've been in this position 3 times before, when I left churches I served. Two of them I did 'leaving well' as the church puts it. One, not so well.

A funny thing--all the three churches I've left have not done well after my departure.

Part of that is I've only served marginal urban parishes. Part of it is, I believe, I'm not a good act to follow.

My friend Jorge, another retired priest, told me the secret to successful ministry is to always 'follow an asshole'. I did that twice out of the three and Jorge has a point.

I'm not the best priest ever, by any means, but I'm not an asshole either.

I have no doubt though, that the Cluster will do well once I 'leave well'. It is a remarkable gathering of three remarkable (but very different) congregation. And they know what they're doing.

The hardest thing about replacing me is that there are so few priests interested in such a part-time job. Young priests want a full time job--which are disappearing markedly. Retired priests who are still young usually want a half-time job and I'm one-fourth time. They may have to go to half-time (though I don't think they need it) to attract someone.

But I'm glad they are now ready to get serious about transitioning. It's been a great ride, but it has to end.

It's a great gig. I hope someone really good recognizes that....

And fast....

Watching time pass

I've outlived my mother by 35 years. I was only 25 when she died at 63, My father died at 83, when I was 43, with two children. I'm 13 years younger than he was when he died.

Watching time pass makes me realize these things.

Being the only child of older (in those days 'much older') parents means that I've lived 37 years without parents.

My mother never knew her grandchildren. My father met them both.

Now I have grand-daughters--four wondrous girls--who will all be with us for Easter. Joy! Wonder! Grace!

All my Aunts and Uncles, a whole host of them--18 in all--are dead too, like Mommy and Daddy (what I always called my parents). Aunt Elsie (my mother's youngest sister) died last year at 90, I think. She came into my mother's hospital room when I was feeding my mother vanilla ice-cream with a wooden spoon and told me "Happy Birthday, Jimmy" (the only name my family ever called me!)

I remembered that as I stood by Elsie's grave.

Time passes.

Those little babies we brought home to Hazelwood Avenue in Charleston West Virginia are 41 and 38 now, both with summer birthdays. And I have Morgan and Emma (11), Tegan (8) and Ellie (8 months and counting) in my family.

We were at the hospital with Morgan and Emma were born. A nurse stopped the elevator at the visiting floor and showed Bern and Cathy's mom and me  them all new and tiny.

Time passes. Inexorably.

But here's something I know and know fair well--there are 'two' futures available as time passes...the one that will happen if you just wait and the one you create for yourselves.

So, as time passes, choose the latter and 'create' your future.

That may just be the only real choice we have in life--to live the future that will happen anyway as time passes or to have a hand in what that future is.

Create your future, as time passes (it always will), by speaking the future you create into being.

Only shot we have to making a difference, making the future matter as more than just 'watching time pass'.....

No Spring again?

After gray, cold, wet days with temperatures in the 40's and 30's at night, today was in the 60's and tomorrow Connecticut might reach 80.

So, no Spring again. Straight from late winter to summer. Bummer.

I've probably told you this before, but Anawalt, West Virginia, where I grew up, had the perfect weather. Anawalt is farther south than Richmond, Virginia, but at an altitude just under 2000 feet above sea level, we had two months of winter, two months of summer, four months of spring and four months of autumn.

Lots of snow in January and February--much of which melted in a day or two before the next fall. Temperatures in the high 80's (seldom 90+) in July and August and March-June a long, mountain spring--cool at night and warm in the day--and an Autumn that started in September and went until Christmas or so.

Not a bad climate to live in, believe me.

Spring often skips Connecticut. I've lived here since 1980 and we generally go from snow on Palm Sunday to 80 degrees on Easter. And winter is a bear in New England.

I miss a 4 month spring more every year.

Video sermon (maybe...)

At Emmanuel, Killingworth, my fried Ted Dinsmore sometimes videos my sermons for Facebook Live.

I'm sending you the link.

I'm not on Facebook and don't want to be (not with a ten foot pole!) so I wasn't able to open it.

Since I think people who read this blog are more 'tuned in' to the strange and barren desert (as I see it) of the tech world, maybe some of you can watch it.

Good luck and best wishes.

https://www.facebook.com/helen.brady.5688/posts/10211210977288934 

I kind of liked the sermon about Palm Sunday. Hope you do too.

Get this

Kentucky Coal Mining Museum converts to solar power

Charles Wm. Dimmick to youshow detailsshow image slideshow

From	Charles Wm. Dimmick cdimmick@snet.nethide details
To	Jim G. Bradley padrejgb@aol.com
Cc
Bcc
show image slideshow

Jim,  I thought this might interest you.

charles

Kentucky Coal Mining Museum converts to solar power

Click on the above underlined and I think you'll be able to get to the web site.

A coal mining museum converting to solar. How cool.

How much smarter they are to our President.

Could have told you mountain people had some smarts....

Mary, full of grace

Just finished tonight a five week book study about Mary, the mother of Jesus. Reed (last name only comes to mind) the author, is an Anglican priest who teaches in a School of Theology in Canada.

What was remarkable about the time together is how diverse our groups thoughts, beliefs, feelings, reflections about Mary were.

A couple of former Roman Catholics (I sometimes call Episcopalians who grew up RC "recovering Roman Catholics, like the Episcopal Church is a spiritual AA group, but I won't this time) a former Eastern Orthodox, a few life-long Episcopalians and several main-line Protestants (like me) who found the Episcopal Church in adulthood--it made for an interesting group and some discussion worth pondering long and hard.

Mary is such an enigma, in many senses.

Graced by God and then made a slave to God and then her heart was broken and filled to overflowing by the child she birthed.

Each gospel handles her differently, which makes it difficult to get a clear picture.

She is the absolute star of Luke's early chapters. And then disappears until she loses Jesus in the Temple (every mother's nightmare) and can't get in to see him because of the crowds and he doesn't come out to her.

She's always by the cross.

In John's gospel (never called by name!) she is at the first miracle--water to wine--which Jesus seems to do just because he's a good Jewish son and his mother asked him to. And at the cross Jesus gives her to his disciple John--'behold your son....behold your mother'. But she shows up nowhere else in that gospel.

Most Protestant Christians think of Mary as 'merely Jesus' mother', not much else.

Catholics and some Anglicans adore her.

(I was with the vestry of St. John's at a retreat at Holy Cross Monastery, an Episcopal Benedictine group of brothers in upstate New York, when after Vespers, the monks went to an Icon of Mary and began to say the rosary. The guy I was sitting next to, who grew up Congregational and married into the Episcopal Church, said, aloud, "Oh, my God!" And I replied to him, "No, His Mother...."

Something worth pondering this last week of Lent and into Holy Week, is how does Mary figure into your Spirituality. And how might that change as you ponder it.

An illiterate, teenage, first century Jewish girl who meets an Angel and become, literally, the Mother of God.

Reflect on that for a time.

Well worth the reflection and the time....

Holy Week is coming....

Good grief, it's Holy Week again!

Funny how it sneaks up on me, even though passing through Lent should alert me. For your Holy Week I want to share something I wrote many holy weeks ago.

Holy Week 2017 (1984)

Back in 1984, I was asked to write the February to April Forward Day by Day , the Episcopal 'meditation for each day' that I'm sure some of you are familiar with. Looking for something else (isn't that always how it happens?) I found a copy of that publication.

So, for my sharings with you for Holy Week, I am going to copy those musings and ponderings by a much younger man. I've read them over and still stand by them after all these years.

May your week be truly holy....

Shalom, jim

PALM SUNDAY

Luke 19.28-38 “Blessings on the King who comes in the name of the Lord.”

Are you waiting for the parade? It's coming, you know. God is going to pass by.

I wonder how God will come—like a victor returning from war with armies and tanks and drums and cheers?

I wonder how God will come—what will God's parade be like? Maybe like a circus parade with strange beasts and exotic costumes and clowns to make us laugh.

I wonder how God will come? Will God's parade be like the World Series' heroes, waving to the crowds from the back of a huge flatbed truck, brushing the ticker tape away?

Maybe it will be a solemn parade, like the funeral of some great person—slow and stately, with much respect and the uncovering of heads. Do you think that will be it?

However God decides to come, it will be a glorious thing. God's parade witll be grand and spectacular. Something we'll never forget!

….Wonder what's happened? Do you suppose there was a mistake? We've been waiting so very long and no one has come by yet except for that sad man on a donkey and those silly people waving branches.

I'm sure it was suppose to be today. Where is God's parade?

HOLY MONDAY

Mark 11.12-25 “So they reached Jerusalem and he went into the temple....”

Jesus walked into the Temple as if he owned it. He walked right in and threw the merchants out. They must have been dumb struck at it all; they had a right to be there; their wares were necessary to the sacrifices of the faithful. Then a stranger upset the tables, scattering doves and coins. They must have been too astounded to protest, too surprised to fight back. From all Mark tells us, they did not resist their eviction.

Even the officials—the chief priests and scribes—did not oppose him. He must have seemed like a man possessed, aflame with holy passions, acting as one would act on coming home to find robbers in his house.

And so it was. Jesus went into the Temple as if he owned it, as if he had come home.

HOLY TUESDAY

Mark 11.27-33 “Jesus said, 'I will ask you a question.'”

When Jesus came again to the Temple, the authorities had collected themselves and confronted him, demanding to know why he was doing the things he was doing. “What authority have you?” they asked.

Jesus was a master of answering a question with another question. He knew what they were up to. He knew they sought to trap him by forcing him to say too much. The rope was available for him to hang himself. So he replied by asking them a question about John the Baptizer. Jesus' question  had a noose in it for their necks....

The people were standing near, straining to hear. The chief priests were stymied. They could not respond for fear of the people.

Jesus won that round. He continued teaching in the Temple. He had come home.

HOLY WEDNESDAY

Mark 12.1-11  The stone rejected....

Jesus had come home, home to Jerusalem, home to the Temple of God's people. But in the parable of the wicked tenants, he revealed that he knew he would not be welcome and that he knew why.

For the time being, the chief priests would leave him alone. But their time would come soon enough and they would have their revenge. The people too, would turn on him and demand his life. Those who had welcomed him home with palms and hosannas would jeer him as he carried his cross.

It must have been with much irony that Jesus spoke of the son murdered, the stone rejected. It must have been with great sadness that he spoke of the wicked tenants. They were his people, the chosen of his Father. With great pain, he must have watched the scribes slip away.

The circle was complete. He had come home to die.

MAUNDY THURSDAY

Mark 14.12-25 “You will meet a man carrying a pitcher of water....”

“My name is Asher of Jerusalem. I have seen strange sights, heard strange words in my time. But none so strange as today. Some Galileans followed me to my master's house from the well. They asked for a room for the Passover. My master is a tight fisted, cautious man, but he showed them the finest room and bargained much too generously. Then, when they were gone, he told me I would wait upon them during their meal.

“While they ate I watched from the shadows. They had a master too. He spoke4 wild, unbelievable words. He called the Passover loaf his body. He called the cup of blessing his blood. Crazy talk! I have never heard such things before.

“And yet...yet, as I listened, his eye caught mine and he smiled a gentle, calming smile that seemed to try to draw me in. He was holding the cup and he lifted it toward me, as if to say, 'for you also, Asher'.”

GOOD FRIDAY

John 19.38-42 “A disciple of Jesus—though a secret one....”

(Nicodemus speaks.) “My heart is broken now. My friend Joseph and I have buried the prophet from Nazareth. We did so at great risk. Neither of us has taken such a chance before. Always, our talks about his teachings have been in secret. We dared not discuss it with the other leaders. They would have turned on us. We urged moderation in the councils. We urged them not to act—but they would not hear of it. Our words were like smoke to them...like the wind that blows.

“I carried the spices myself. I anointed his cold, broken body. And I felt my heart breaking as I touched him.

“What can I do now? It doesn't seem to matter anymore—the rituals will be hollow today. My  heart is not in them. My heart lies broken in the tomb.

“Why did he fail us? Where are his promises now? Where is my rebirth?

“His promises are like wind. His promises are as broken as my heart....”

HOLY SATURDAY

Lamentations 3.37-58 “My eyes weep ceaselessly, without relief....”

Most of us have lived through the day after the burial of one we loved.

Such days are long, pensive and painful. The light of the sun holds no warmth. The air itself seem fragile—as if moving too fast would break it. Food tastes sandy and does not satisfy. Favorite things hold no comfort. Conversation falls helplessly between us. Calls from friends seldom come and when they do they are awkward and strained. There is nothing to do that makes sense.

The day after someone has been buried has the quality of a bird flying into a window on a cold morning. There is no help, no relief to find.

The friends of Jesus could find nothing to do on that first Holy Saturday. They wandered like shadows within the room where they were hiding.

Finally, as darkness came, the women began to gather together spices to take to the tomb at dawn. At least in that they found some crushed comfort—it was something to occupy their time.

EASTER DAY

Luke 24.13-35 “Did our hearts not burn within us?”

Alleluia, Christ is risen!

Imagine the warring emotions in the hearts of those two disciples on the way to Emmaus.

First, the still fresh pain and despair at losing Jesus numbed them. And the fear that they were being sought by the authorities chilled them. They imagined themselves wanted criminals, co-conspirators with an executed man. (Could that be why they journeyed from Jerusalem—to feel safe?) Finally, the women's story of the empty tomb tore them apart with confusion and disbelief.

The stranger on the road hears them out and then, incredibly, lectures them on how the scriptures give meaning to all that has happened. A new emotion to deal with, new feelings smoldering in their much too burdened hearts.

At bread's breaking, all comes clear and bright. They see at last and the burning of their hearts at the stranger's word bursts into flames of hope.

They race back to the road—back to dangerous Jerusalem—back with hearts overflowing with joy and the message: 'The Lord is risen indeed! Alleluia!'