Birds as a theme

I got back from Ireland today. Wonderful time and great workshop in a beautiful place called Larne, about 20 miles north of Belfast on the North Sea.

I'll have lots to write in the coming days about my time in Ireland, but what I want to ponder is how birds were a theme of it all.

Waiting to take off from my airport in Hartford (BRADLEY airport, get it?) a pigeon got it's foot caught on the outside of the walkway down to the plane. You could see it from the waiting area, laying backwards and upside down and struggling. And it's mate never left it alone. I was impressed with how many people were concerned. Dozens of us told the gate attendants and they promised to alert the ground crew to try to release the bird after we boarded. I only pray they did. I am haunted by the sight and the constant presence of the mate, fretting above the bird.

Then at Trish's house, a Presbyterian Minister and co-leader of Making a Difference, her cat Duffy killed two birds in the short time I was there in Trish's manse's extensive 'garden'--'back yard' to us.

I went to church with Trish Sunday morning--the first time I've even been in a Presbyterian church in my life, but low and behold, the preacher on a special ecumenical day for an Irish charity, was the former Archbishop (Church of Ireland, Anglican) of the Diocese of Armaugh. So my only time in a Presbyterian church I heard an Anglican preach!

But in the narthex (we Episcopalians would call it) the entry hall of the church, two swallows had gotten in and couldn't figure out how to get out! Large and beautiful birds, they were frantic before the service began but sitting on the rafters when it ended. Trish told me they left the doors open in hope that the birds would follow the outside lights when it became dark and find their way out.

At Larne there were hundreds of Magpies. I love Ireland for the Magpies. Remember Heckle and Jeckle, the cartoon magpies and their British accents? Almost as large as crows here but with brilliant patches of white on their chests and wings. Lovely and energetic birds. The resident cat at the retreat center had a magpie down when I came out a back door and the cat ran. The bird was gravely injured and I tried to catch it to end its suffering, but I couldn't catch it (though it couldn't fly) and am not sure I could have done what needed to be done had I caught it.

Then driving home from the airport today I saw two golden eagles (I'm almost sure they were) soaring over I-91 South. Imagine that.

(I told some of the Irish folk that we don't have magpies here, at least on the East Coast and they offered to send some home with me...familiarity does breed contempt, I guess. But I told them the gift of Starlings hadn't worked out too well, so I'd pass on bringing magpies home....)

God, I love birds. And God does too. God knows if even a sparrow falls to the ground, I'm told....

See you in a week

I leave tomorrow for Ireland, so this will be my last post until next Thursday or Friday when I'll tell you about my time in the Emerald Isle.

I'm one of the last people on the planet that only has a desk-top computer. No tablet or lap-top or smart phone. So I'll be out of touch with the Castor Oil Tree for that time. My phone won't work in Ireland so I'm dependent on  what I hope are flawless plans for pick up and everything else.

Be well while I'm away. And stay well, my friends.

There are just short of 1900 posts here, so if you want, go back and sample a few....

Going to Ireland

Day after tomorrow I'm flying to Dublin and then going to Belfast for a Making A Difference Workshop.

I hate to fly, but joyfully Are Lingus now flies out of Hartford so I don't have to go to a NYC airport.

But I'm such a homebody, being away from my blog, my dog and the love of my life, Bern, for nearly a week is making me crazy already.

I'll be fine when I get there at 5:15 a.m. Ireland time (just past midnight for me). A six hour flight (seven back because of the Gulf Stream eastward air current) where I lose a bunch of hours--five I guess. Coming back I get those hours back.

And Ireland is beauty to behold. Makes me gasp from time to time. The place in Belfast, I remember, has Heckle and Jeckle birds we don't have here--magpies.

And the people of Ireland are wondrous too.

But I hate to fly and hate to be away from home.

What a crotchety old man I'm becoming.....

I'm an English major for God's sake...

But I'm not a good typist.

However, a post a few days ago about an risque content, I put in the title "at you're own risk".

Shame on me. Naughty, naughty English major.

Of course and always it should be "your own risk".

My apologies to you all and to every English teacher I ever had and to the English language itself.

I try not to be the grammar police except for myself.

Mea culpa. Mea culpa. Mea maxima culpa.

And sorry on top of all that Latin....

The road to Emmaus

Luke 24:13-35
24:13 Now on that same day two of them were going to a village called Emmaus, about seven miles from Jerusalem,

24:14 and talking with each other about all these things that had happened.

24:15 While they were talking and discussing, Jesus himself came near and went with them,

24:16 but their eyes were kept from recognizing him.

24:17 And he said to them, "What are you discussing with each other while you walk along?" They stood still, looking sad.

24:18 Then one of them, whose name was Cleopas, answered him, "Are you the only stranger in Jerusalem who does not know the things that have taken place there in these days?"

24:19 He asked them, "What things?" They replied, "The things about Jesus of Nazareth, who was a prophet mighty in deed and word before God and all the people,

24:20 and how our chief priests and leaders handed him over to be condemned to death and crucified him.

24:21 But we had hoped that he was the one to redeem Israel. Yes, and besides all this, it is now the third day since these things took place.

24:22 Moreover, some women of our group astounded us. They were at the tomb early this morning,

24:23 and when they did not find his body there, they came back and told us that they had indeed seen a vision of angels who said that he was alive.

24:24 Some of those who were with us went to the tomb and found it just as the women had said; but they did not see him."

24:25 Then he said to them, "Oh, how foolish you are, and how slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have declared!

24:26 Was it not necessary that the Messiah should suffer these things and then enter into his glory?"

24:27 Then beginning with Moses and all the prophets, he interpreted to them the things about himself in all the scriptures.

24:28 As they came near the village to which they were going, he walked ahead as if he were going on.

24:29 But they urged him strongly, saying, "Stay with us, because it is almost evening and the day is now nearly over." So he went in to stay with them.

24:30 When he was at the table with them, he took bread, blessed and broke it, and gave it to them.

24:31 Then their eyes were opened, and they recognized him; and he vanished from their sight.

24:32 They said to each other, "Were not our hearts burning within us while he was talking to us on the road, while he was opening the scriptures to us?"

24:33 That same hour they got up and returned to Jerusalem; and they found the eleven and their companions gathered together.

24:34 They were saying, "The Lord has risen indeed, and he has appeared to Simon!"

24:35 Then they told what had happened on the road, and how he had been made known to them in the breaking of the bread.

This is my favorite passage from the Gospels. I love the story and what it tells us. I got to preach about it today at St. Andrew's in Northford.

I preached without notes so I can't recreate the sermon, but I can write about Emmaus.

Nobody knows where first century Emmaus was. Or if the '7 miles' is an accurate measurement. But it was a good hike from Jerusalem at any rate.

And we can't be sure why Cleopas and his companion (whoever that was) are going to Emmaus. Was it their home? Did they have business there? Were they just getting out of Jerusalem?

But here's the thing: a stranger joined them on their journey. Sure, we know it was Jesus, but they didn't. He was just a 'stranger' to them, a stranger who asked them what they were discussing and then, after they told him, the stranger told them about the scriptures.

Seven miles later, the stranger was going on but the two disciples asked him to stay with them. And when he blessed and broke the bread for their dinner, they recognized him and 'poof', he disappeared.

The most important thing about the whole story is how they realized that their 'hearts burned' when he was talking with them. Their hearts burned from the words of a stranger.

Scripture, both Hebrew and Christian, urge us  to 'welcome the stranger' and show hospitality to the one we do not know.

In today's culture, we are taught that the stranger is to be shunned, kept out, avoided, mistrusted.

That is upside down and inside out to what our Faith proclaims. It is the stranger that can warm our hearts and teach us something new, lead us to lean into a new possibility.

As I told you yesterday, God leads us to the edge and asks us to step off, trusting that either our foot will find something solid or God will teach us to fly.

Today, more than ever, we need to tread near that edge into the unknown and step off. That is the faith we are called to show--to embrace the stranger in our midst.

There is a story I've shared before but fits so well here I will share it once more.

A holy rabbi has taught his followers all night on the bank of a river. As dawn is breaking, he asks them, "When is there enough light to see?"

One replies, "when we can tell the palm trees from the date trees on the other side of the river--that is enough light to see."

The rabbi ponders and then says, "no, that is not enough light to see."

Another follower says, "there is enough light to see when we can tell the young sheep from the young goats on the other side of the river."

After a while, the rabbi says, "no that is not enough light to see."

They all fall silent and wait. Finally the rabbi says, "there is enough light to see when we can look into the face of any human being and see the Face of God."

May the light of this Easter season give us new eyes and enough light to see....

Jeez, I missed the anniversary...

Bern would tell you how 'unfocused' I am. I need lists and a calendar to keep me afloat in what you call 'reality'. Otherwise, I'm in my head, somewhere, wondering or pondering or just relaxing. I had a poster once of a rocking chair and the words said, "Sometimes, I sits and thinks. And sometimes, I just sits...."

So, I missed the anniversary of this blog by over a month. But, as I've done before, I'll go back to the beginning. You decide if I'm still doing what I set out to do.

Sunday, March 8, 2009

My first post

Sitting under the Castor Oil Tree (March 7, 2009)

The character in the Bible I have always been drawn to in Jonah. I identify with his story. Like Jonah, I have experienced being taken where I didn't want to go by God and I've been disgruntled with the way things went. The belly of a big old fish isn't a pleasant means of travel either!

The story ends (in case you don't know it) with Jonah upset and complaining on a hillside over the city of Nineva, which God has saved through Jonah. Jonah didn't want to go there to start with--hence the ride in the fish stomach--and predicted that God would save the city though it should have been destroyed for its wickedness. "You dragged me half way around the world," he tells God, "and didn't destroy the city....I knew it would turn out this way. I'm angry, so angry I could die!"

God causes a tree to grow to shade Jonah from the sun (scholars think it might have been a castor oil tree--the impications are astonishing!). Then God sends a worm to kill the tree. Well, that sets Jonah off! "How dare you kill my tree?" he challanges the creator. "I'm so angry I could die...."

God simply reminds him that he is upset at the death of a tree he didn't plant or nurture and yet he doesn't see the value of saving all the people of the great city Ninivah...along with their cattle and beasts.

And the story ends. No resolution. Jonah simply left to ponder all that. There's no sequel either--no "Jonah II" or "Jonah: the next chapter", nothing like that. It's just Jonah, sitting under the bare branches of the dead tree, pondering.

What I want to do is use this blog to do simply that, ponder about things. I've been an Episcopal priest for over 30 years. I'm approaching a time to retire and I've got a lot of pondering left to do--about God, about the church, about religion, about life and death and everything involved in that. Before the big fish swallowed me up and carried me to my own Nineva (ordination in the Episcopal Church) I had intended a vastly different life. I was going to write "The Great American Novel" for starters and get a Ph.D. in American Literature and disappear into some small liberal arts college, most likely in the Mid-Atlantic states and teach people like me--rural people, Appalachians and southerners, simple people, deep thinkers though slow talkers...lovely for all that--to love words and write words themselves.

God (I suppose, though I even ponder that...) had other ideas and I ended up spending the lion's share of my priesthood in the wilds of two cities in Connecticut (of all places) among tribes so foreign to me I scarcly understood their language and whose customs confounded me. And I found myself often among people (The Episcopal Cult) who made me axious by their very being. Which is why I stuck to urban churches, I suppose--being a priest in Greenwich would have sent me into some form of shock...as I would have driven them to hypertension at the least.

I am one who 'ponders' quite a bit and hoped this might be a way to 'ponder in print' for anyone else who might be leaning in that direction to read.

Ever so often, someone calls my bluff when I go into my "I'm just a boy from the mountains of West Virginia" persona. And I know they're right. I've lived too long among the heathens of New England to be able to avoid absorbing some of their alien customs and ways of thinking. Plus, I've been involved in too much education to pretend to be a rube from the hills. But I do, from time to time, miss that boy who grew up in a part of the world as foreign as Albania to most people, where the lush and endless mountains pressed down so majestically that there were few places, where I lived, that were flat in an area wider than a football field. That boy knew secrets I am only beginning, having entered my sixth decade of the journey toward the Lover of Souls, to remember and cherish.

My maternal grandmother, who had as much influence on me as anyone I know, used to say--"Jimmy, don't get above your raisin'". I probably have done that, in more ways that I'm able to recognize, but I ponder that part of me--buried deeply below layer after layer of living (as the mountains were layer after layer of long-ago life).

Sometimes I get a fleeting glimpse of him, running madly into the woods that surrounded him on all sides, spending hours seeking paths through the deep tangles of forest, climbing upward, ever upward until he found a place to sit and look down on the little town where he lived--spread out like a toy village to him--so he could ponder, alone and undisturbed, for a while.

When I was in high school, I wrote a regular colemn for the school newspaper call "The Outsider". As I ponder my life, I realize that has been a constant: I've always felt just beyond the fringe wherever I was. I've watched much more than I've participated. And I've pondered many things.

So, what I've decided to do is sit here on the hillside for a while, beneath the ruins of the castor oil tree and ponder somemore. And, if you wish, share my ponderings with you--whoever you are out there in cyber-Land.

Two caveates: I'm pretty much a Luddite when it comes to technology--probably smart enough to learn about it but never very interested, so this blog is an adventure for me. My friend Sandy is helping me so it shouldn't be too much of a mess. Secondly, I've realized writing this that there is no 'spell check' on the blog. Either I can get a dictionary or ask your forgiveness for my spelling. I'm a magna cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa ENGLISH major (WVU '69) who never could conquer spelling all the words I longed to write.

I supose I'll just ask your tolerance.

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walking on the edge

Every once in a while I come across something I want to share. This is from the monthly  column I wrote for the St. John's, Waterbury newsletter. The newsletter was called "The Outrider" because in it's early history priests from St. John's would 'ride out' to smaller parishes (on horses first, I'm sure) to do Sunday services. My column was "The View from above the Close" because my office windows looked out on the Close ('enclosure'--Episcopal-speak again!) that was the yard of the church. And beyond that the Waterbury Green. I am a dedicated window gazer and would look out those windows a lot....Any way, just came across this and think it stands the test of time--15 years or so....

THE VIEW FROM ABOVE THE CLOSE

                                    Walking to the edge, then walking off…

            In my sermon on September 9, I used a quote Jennifer Hornbeck, St. John’s seminarian in 2000-2001 wrote to me.  Jen neglected to tell me who said or wrote the quote—though I intend to ask her the next time she calls—but so many people asked me about it I felt I should include it in this month’s VIEW.

                                    “When we walk on the edge

                                        of all the light we have

                                     and step off into the unknown,

                                      we must believe that one

                                        of two things will happen:

                                    There will be something solid

                                         for us to stand on

                                                  or

                                      we will be taught to fly.”

            Walking on the edge is an apt metaphor for the life of faith.  We are called by God out to the margins both to touch and be touched by those ‘on the margins’  of life and to risk walking off into what is unknown.

             I used to have a poster on the wall of my office in my first parish. The poster was a beautiful picture of sailboats at anchor in a harbor surrounded by beautiful hillsides. The water was glassy still. The sailboats were new, well built, shining in the sun.  The words on the poster said: SHIPS IN A HARBOR ARE SAFE, BUT THAT’S NOT WHAT SHIPS ARE FOR….

            The Life of Faith calls us to the open seas, to unknown waters, to encounter storms and risk the wrath of the winds.  But what we want—deep down—is to rest at anchor. What we want is to “be safe….”  Stepping off the edge requires courage and trust and faith.

            I have come more and more lately to believe that God is calling each of us as Christians to "walk on the edge…then walking off” in our lives. To be Jesus People we must live with risk and commitment and adventure. The tricky part of it all is that we aren’t all called to the same edge.  You may be called to a vastly different “edge” of your life than the person sitting beside you on Sunday morning. You may be called to take your moral stand into the political realm—fighting for some noble cause.  Or you may be called to endure with patience and courage some illness in your life or the life of someone you love.  Or you may be called to stand up against racism or discrimination in your workplace. Or you may be called to sacrifice higher pay and a more prestigious job in order to spend enough time with your children. Or you may be called to befriend someone who needs your support even though it is costly to you in terms of time and energy. Or you may be called to make a change in your personal habits in order to enhance the lives of those who love you.  Or you may be called to resist gain that you could achieve by “bending the rules”.  Or you may be called to give more generously—even sacrificially—to help those in need.

            I could go on and on. Each of us must discover the edge God is calling us as a person to walk off of into the unknown. But I know this in a powerful and profound way—each of us is being called, in some important way, to ‘take a risk’ for God.  It is simply the nature of the Christian life.

            Every Tuesday at 9:30 a.m. and Wednesday at noon, the Eucharist is celebrated in the Chapel of St. James next to the north wall of the church.  The readings we use come from a remarkable little book called Lesser Feasts and Fasts. Week after week, year after year, we recall those who are on the Calendar of Saints of the Episcopal Church.  All those folks walked to the edge and then off into the unknown. Many of them gave up their freedom, their security, even their lives for their faith.  Not all of us are called to be martyrs—in fact, only a scant few of all Christians are called to that ultimate risk.  But we are all called to the ‘edge’.  And we must all believe that when we finally accept that call, one of two things will happen. Either there will be “something solid” to stand on or “we will be taught to fly….”

            Listen for God’s call. Seek out the ‘edge’ of life God is calling you to. And have faith—your foot will hit something solid or God will teach you to fly….

                                                                        Shalom,

                                                                                                Jim