How Great Is This?

I went to the Cluster Council Meeting tonight--representatives from all 3 of the Middlesex Area Cluster Ministry where I've served for 5 years or so (me and linear time again, who knows how long it's been???)

Two of the 9 were absent but with the Cluster Administrator and me there were still 9 folks.

The meeting was full of joy and wonder and sharing and seriousness and commitment and good humor and stories and hard work and fun.

How great is that?

I don't know when meetings, in my life, were so life-giving.

Remarkable people, ideas and groundedness and a real commitment to who we are and how we serve.

"Better than that," as Yoda would say, "it does not get."

How blessed and privileged I am, here, later in life, to be able to serve and be served by the folks at Emmanuel, Killingworth, St. James, Higganum and St. Andrew's, Northford.

Thank you POWERS THAT BE (and Episcopal priest should probably say 'Thank you God', but I'm not a traditional priest anymore than the Cluster is a 'traditional Episcopal Church'. 'Powers that Be' works for me and I think for that group of people around the table with me eating remarkable desserts and finger food St. Andrew's provided. (By the way, St. Andrew's does food way beyond the other two. They just do.)

I never eat breakfast when I go to celebrate at St. Andrew's--coffee hour will be 'brunch', I know.

I simply can't imagine what I'd rather be doing as a priest at 70 that would be better than this.

Lucky me. Blessed. Full of joy. Wonder. Love.

2017--that's it....

When I decided I needed to decide when to retire as Rector of St. John's in Waterbury, CT, I finally came up with the idea of retiring the month I had 30 years in the Church Pension Fund.

I could have stayed on--I was only 63, after all--but., because I was going to be 63, I could get early Social Security. I know, I know, people tell you to wait to take SS benefits. I think the Social Security Administration is who does that. I did the math and taking SS at 63 vs 70 means that until I'm 82 I'll get more money taking it at 63. Go figure that.

So, anyway, that  story is about my wondering when I'll stop writing my blog.

I've written 1904 posts. I don't post every day, but most days, except when I'm away and since I can only post from my desk top computer--having no other web devices--I don't post when traveling.

I decided I'll stop at 2017 posts. That's 113 more posts and since it's only June 5, I'll get it done before the end of 2017.

I could hang on, just like I could still be at St. John's since I'm two years from mandatory retirement in the Diocese of CT. But I needed a stopping place so I would stop and it would be over.

So, 2017 posts will be the end--the stopping place--for "Under the Castor Oil Tree". I'm sure I'll miss these musings and ponderings, just as I missed being Rector of St. John's. But I got over that and I'll get over this.

I like 'clean breaks', so I'm delighted I've made the decision of what the 'end' of this is.

113 to go. Lots of pondering and musing left. But at least I know now when I can stop.

That feels good for me. It really does.

Stay with me until the end, OK?

memes

I read an article on line about how Harvard had taken back some offers to be in the class of 2021 because of the racist and otherwise unacceptable 'memes' some of those who had been accepted posted on a group created by those accepted to Harvard.

I realized I really didn't have any idea what a 'meme' is.

So, I went on line for an hour or so--read Wikipedia (the article  was more complicated than an article about 'String Theory' or "Black Holes") and got on a site that had a collection of 'memes'.

I looked at that for a long time.

A 'meme', unless I'm really missing something (which is totally possible) is a picture with words on it that make it either ironic or funny or something else.

There was a picture of a man mowing a lawn with a tornado in the background. I found dozens of variations on that picture with different messages on them.

Is that a 'Meme'?

And how do they get offensive? I must have looked at a couple of hundred on that web site and none of them offended me though lots of them made no sense to me.

You know, as the last flip-phone, only a desk-top computer person I know--there are lots of times I feel pleased to be that 'out of it'.

And this is one of them.

I don't need to know what a 'meme' is, which is lucky since after a lot of research, I still don't know what a 'meme' is.....

Bern's owls

Bern ordered two owls from Amazon. Amazon has everything!

They're not real owls--fake ones that are supposed to scare away creatures.

I must admit, since they came I have seen a squirrel or chipmunk anywhere near our deck, though I didn't believe the hype.

One is sitting up and it's head moves. I'm not sure what the mechanism is but it won't be looking at you when you go out on the deck and when you glace up, it is. Creeps me out a bit.

The other is flying on plastic wings and will be down by the strawberry patch or next to the tomatoes to keep birds and squirrels away.

She moves the head turning one around and it always startles me when its been moved.

I'm not sure, but I may be more weirded-out by the owl than by squirrels and chipmunks....

Letter to my granddaughters

Dear Morgan, Emma, Tegan and Ellie,

Today your President--well, no one you voted for, thank God--but the guy who is sorta 'running our country' chose fossil fuels over your future.

Not exactly, it's much more complicated than what I just said--but he made us one of three countries (the other two are Syria and Nicaragua) not part of the Paris Climate Control Accord.

It is a sad day for us all and for the world, that the country that contributes almost a third of the greenhouse gases with only 6% of the world's population (do your fractions and percentages girls!) is no longer a part of a world wide effort to save the planet for you.

Oh, the planet will be fine for the rest of my lifetime...but yours, I'm not so sure. Baltimore and Brooklyn, where you live will start having sea rise issues before you're half my age.

I just hope I live long enough to vote for someone for President who will run on fixing all the nightmares He Who Will Not Be Named is creating.

That's my hope for me--but more so, for you.

I love you so much. You are, along with your grandma and Josh and Mimi (your dad, M/E/T and your mom Ellie) my life.

You just all.

Live long enough to have grandchildren to worry about and live more than life.

Love you, Granpa

Wearing a clerical collar....

(I just noticed someone read this 2009 post, so I read it and thought I'd share it again for all the people who notice I never wear a clerical collar but are too polite to ask 'why not?')

Wednesday, April 8, 2009

wearing a collar

Several months ago I bumped into a member of St. John's, the parish I serve, in a grocery store. I gave her a hug and she said, "I don't think I've ever seen you without a clerical collar."

That's one reason for not wearing clerical garb--the black shirt and wide, circular band of white collar--you don't have to...people see you in it anyway. The truth is I haven't worn a collar for five or six years now but there was no way I could convince that devoted member of the parish. "You wear one every Sunday," she said. And I believed that's what she saw every Sunday.

I didn't stop all at once. It was more like attrition. I lost all my collar buttons at some point and being naturally abscent minded, forgot to order more. Collar buttons come in several styles--most of which don't work. I always used the ones that went through the little holes in the black shirt and opened like a toggle switch to hold the collar in place. All the other styles--in my experience--find a way to edge through the hole in the shirt on the front or back or slip out of the "Clericool" collar. That's what the kind of collar I wore was called, believe it or not, since it was made of some material that doesn't exist in nature and probably never decomposes and had little holes in it to circulate air next to your skin. I kept wearing collars after I lost all my buttons by attaching them to my shirt with small paper clips, bobby pins or twist ties I'd take from loaves of bread. The twist ties worked best, but like they do when holding bread wrappers shut, they tended to get twisted the wrong way and I'd have to seek help getting them undone.

So, a second reason not to wear a collar is how hard it is to keep up with the buttons. When dropped on the floor they were designed to be invisible until you stepped on them with your bare feet, bruising the soles of your feet and making you walk funny for a day or two. I once was holding the button I was going to attach to the back--you have to attach the front one first unless you wear a collar 4 or 5 inches too large...which some priests do, I've noticed--and swallowed it by accident. Well, it was like an accident--certainly not on purpose--I laughed at something when I had it in my mouth and down it went. Since collar buttons are not cheap, I watched for it for a few days but decided that was sick. I hope it came out and isn't discovered in my next colonoscopy. That would be really embarrassing, it seems to me.

Finally, one of the twist ties I was using broke the hole in the collar because I had worn all the paper off it and the twist tie was like a scalpel at that point. That was my last collar and since I hadn't gotten around to ordering buttons I was equally negligent in ordering collars. After that I wore black shirts without collars for a while, pretending I had on a collar, but people would say, "did you forget your collar?" a lot and I got tired of making up humorous responses.

I could, I suppose, have worn those clergy shirts that have what's called a "Roman collar" or a "tab collar"--a little piece of plastic that looks like a tongue depressor--but I've noticed most priests who wear those carry the tab in their chest pocket, like a fountain pen, rather than wearing it. The collars I always wore are called "Anglican collars" and I really didn't want to be mistaken for a Roman Catholic priest. It was bad enough being mistaken for an Episcopal priest.

Another reason for not wearing a collar is that it is a 'fun stopper'. You can walk into a really great bar at Friday happy hour in a collar and practically close the place down. Everyone is suddenly siezed by childhood infused guilt, stops cursing, takes their hands off people they aren't married to and decides they've had enough to drink. I was once at a picnic on a hot August day and an acquaintence of mine who is also an Episcopal priest, showed up in a summer weight black suit and a collar. I said to him, "did you have a funeral this morning?" He seemed confused and went on to tell me he and his family were going horseback riding after the picnic. I'd never ride a horse with someone in a collar and I really didn't enjoy the picnic with him slinking around looking clerical.

I only rode an airplane once in a collar. Airplanes and collars do not mix since whoever you are sitting with either wants to confess sins you don't want to hear or turns out to be a religious nut. A friend of mine who I suspects has PJ's with a collar on them told me that he flew from LA to Chicago in his collar and had a sensible conversation with the stranger beside him until they were landing at O'Hare. Then the man said, "what do you Do?" My friend looked down at his black shirt and felt to make sure he still had on his collar (the buttons could have slipped out over Idaho and disappeared on the floor of the plane, after all). "I'm a priest," my friend said. The man replied, "oh, I know what you Are. I want to know what you Do...."

I've used that story in several sermons at ordination services. I use it to tell the person being ordained that 'being a priest' is more about 'being' than 'doing' and you don't need a uniform.

Just last week I told the wife of a priest that I didn't own any clericals. She was somewhere between shocked and outraged. "But don't you ever want to 'be in uniform'?" she asked. I probably said I preferred being a 'plain clothes' priest, sort of an ecclesiastical detective. And the truth is, I've never much liked uniforms of any kind. People in uniform are proclaiming that they 'do' something--direct traffic, drive buses, conduct trains, fight wars, put out fires, etc. Uniforms are designed to separate out the people wearing them from everybody else. They announce for all the world to know, "I am DOING something here--give me room to do it". A priest, unless a religious service is going on--and we have these really hot 'uniforms' for those--isn't 'doing' much of anything that needs space and room to perform. So, no, I don't want to be in uniform.

Back when I was 'in uniform' I noticed that I could wander around hospitals with great impunity. I once found myself one door away from an operating theatre in what was surely a sterile area because I was lost and not one of the dozen hospital employees I'd passed since breaking through into a place I shouldn't have been had called me to account about why I didn't have on a mask and gloves and those neat little booties people wear in such places. That's really nuts, to have a guy soaked in germs wandering free in a supposedly germ free space because he had on a collar. I don't like the deference people give me when I'm 'in uniform'. I AM, after all, a priest and can inform anyone of that if they ask. But wearing the uniform forms a shield of invulnerability and provides a cloak of invisibility to a priest that I'm not sure is a good idea, especially not a step away from open heart surgery, or most anything.

(This next paragraph contains graphic language that most people thing people who wear...or could wear...collars should never write. I didn't say them, but I will write them. The faint of heart should scroll down quickly lest they be offended....)

I was coming back from lunch at a downtown restaurant a few years ago with a priest friend. He was in clericals and I had on jeans and a second-hand sports coat. I noticed how people separated to let us pass--good people, bad people, people of all shapes and sizes and colors...all except the little old Italian ladies who wanted to kiss his hand. (Not having strangers kiss my hand is another reason I don't wear a collar!) Then we met up with this crazy guy who I knew who always asked me for money. He knew I was a priest in my tee-shirt and said, drugged half-out of his mind, "Fa-der, give me two dol-lers." I said 'no', quietly and firmly and kept walking. Then he started yelling at me: "Fa-der, ya are a muther-fucker! Fad-er, Ya don't care if I go ta hell...." And kept yelling it louder and louder. I stepped a step or two away from my friend and all the people on the street looked at him like he was spitting on the cross for not helping that poor man. One of the little old Italian ladies screwed up her courage and said to my friend, "you're shameful..." I just walked along, smiling, out of uniform.

Finally, I am so liberated by not wearing a collar because of my neck. Or, more accurately, my 'no neck'. I am a man whose head rests on his shoulders. If I look up, you can see my neck, but it is really a 'no neck'. Clerical collars were designed for people with long, gazelle-like necks. They look fabulous on people with real necks. Angelina Jolee would look great in a collar. In fact she would look very seductive in clericals....Well, let's don't go there. Suffice it to say, collars were made for men and women with necks. They look like a kind of necklace on some people. On me, a collar looks like a hangman's noose and is about that comfortable.

A dear priest friend of mine had spent all morning laboriously boning the Thanksgiving turkey and was planning to come home after he did a noon Eucharist and stuff it in an elaborate way. As luck would have it, he was distracted and didn't get home until 3, after his wife had returned from work. He looked in the refrigerator and found his fully boned turkey (a feat of no mean merit!) gone. When he asked his wife where it was she told him something terrible had happened and the turkey had collapsed so she threw it out. My friend was so distraught (being naturally prone to histrionics) he began, in the good old Old Testament way, to 'rend his clothing'. He tore most all his clothes into shreds, his wife told me later, but his collar wouldn't come undone. He must have had toggle switch buttons or twist ties holding it on. So she left him writhing on the kitchen floor, choking himself with his Anglican collar.

That's a final reason not to wear one--it ruins such dramatics....

There really is no moral to this story. I wore collars faithfully for over 25 years, in spite of the discomfort and how no one really 'looks' at you on the street and how collars make some people nervous and brings out the neurosis in normal folks on airplanes. It was simply fortunate for me that I swallowed that collar button (this is the first time I've revealed that event, by the way) and cut my last collar with a twist tie. I just never got around to ordering new ones and everyone who knows me knows I'm a priest and I am perfectly happy that those who don't know me don't know that about me. And I'm lots more comfortable. Besides, I don't think the woman in the super market is the only one who sees it when it's not there!

(Just so you don't believe I am ultimately frivolous about this, two stories.
Years ago I was at a meeting with a bishop from Africa who came from a nation where Christians were being horribly persecuted. When some asked, "Bishop, what can we give you to help?" he thought a moment and said, "clerical collars so that when the people are being dragged away to prison and torture they can see their priests are being dragged away as well...."
Back after 9/11, I went several times with a group from St. John's to Ground Zero to work at St. Paul's church, serving food, praying with rescue workers, just listening to people. We clergy were asked to wear collars so people could recognize that we were there for more than giving them lunch and a bottle of water. In that case I was humbled to wear a collar.
Should such needs arise, I would put a collar on even if I had to use duct tape to hold it on....)

Memorial Day, long ago

When I was a kid, we used to go to Waiteville, West Virginia, my father's birthplace, every memorial day. There was a huge dinner served to support the town cemetery's upkeep. More food than you could imagine. So much food you'd be sick if you could imagine it. Wondrous country cooking and a time, after eating, to walk around the graveyard.

One year my crazy great-aunt Arbana put confederate flags on on the Bradley graves and my Uncle Russel chased them all down and took them off, cursing as he did.

My father's name was Virgil Hoyt and his father's name was Filbert. And I still remember, as a kid of 8 or so, wandering around the graveyard and coming upon two stones to James Gordon Bradley and James Gordon Bradley, Jr.

That is my full name and I was freaked out and went running, breathless, to my mother who told me she thought I knew I was named after my great-grandfather and great-great-grandfather. But I sure didn't remember being told.

That was a memorial day I remember clearly  over 60 years later.

At least my name isn't Virgil Filbert Bradley--sounds like an ancient poet and a nut.

Well, putting it that way, it wouldn't be so bad....