from years ago

quite a while ago--over 4 years, I posted this. Worth a re-post.

litter boxes

For those of you who don't have cat companions on your journey through this life, the ONE things that you are blessed by whatever gods there be is this: you never have to clean a litter box.

Cleaning litter boxes is roughly equivalent to mucking out the horses' stalls each day, though I realize there is less to muck out, though it is no less odious. And where horse poop, since they only eat grain, is useful in a couple of ways, the poop of cats, full of animal protein, is useless and smells bad.

One of my few regular jobs is to clean the litter box for our 'last cat' (as Bern calls him) Lukie.

We used to have four cats (one cat short of  'excentric' I'd say) so my regular job was even more demanding since they all used the same litter box, just at the bottom of the back staircase. But as Luke has grown older (just like me) he seems to relieve himself in both ways more often.

Another of my jobs in our household is to take out the garbage and recycling each week.

I'm the garbage man in our home.

I don't mind it at all, really. It is a very rewarding avocation. I get to 'clean up' the messes of our lives. And that, in its own way, a noble pursuit.

In fact (I think I've pondered it before but it worth a new pondering) I think the three highest paying jobs in our culture should be the 'cleaning up' jobs: Day Care workers, trash collectors and nursing home workers.

It's remarkable to me how we don't honor and actually actively degrade the folks who clean up our messes. A trash collector in a union does ok, but they should be paid what partners in law firms make. If they didn't come every week and take the flotsam and jetsam of our lives away we'd soon be swimming in the filth of our own making. But the folks we entrust our children and our elders to are grossly underpaid as well. How our culture works is that we express the 'value' of work through dollars. Yet the people we trust with the beginnings and endings of our lives are not compensated in any way according to the 'value' they give us.

Those three groups of workers clean the litter boxes of our lives. We should honor, celebrate and reward them.

Yet, they do the jobs we don't want to do and are ignored. Too bad for them--and ultimately, too bad for us. You do, in some way, get what you pay for....

birdsong

Where we live there are multitudes of birds.

They usually wake me up calling to the dawn but I go back to sleep.

Late this afternoon, as I was grilling dinner--grilled asparagus and onion, steak and a salad if you care--the rain had stopped and the birds were catching up with each other big time.

I even love the caw of the crows. The occasional yip of the neighborhood hawks is a gift.

I fancy I can whistle and imitate some of the calls. Not always, but sometimes I carry on a short conversation with a a bird. Cardinals I'm pretty good at.

Some house wrens nest in the exhaust line from our downstairs bathroom. You can hear them as you brush your teeth (and do other things one does in a bathroom as well!) It's a long exhaust so the fan doesn't bother them, I don't guess, or they wouldn't come back year after year.

A robin used to nest on the unused alarm on our front porch--since we don't have an alarm system (shouldn't put that on line, probably)--but after several years of young robins, the last time we painted the porch they never came back.

More blue jays this year than normal. Bern doesn't like them--they're bossy.

A sparrow sat on the other chair as I was reading on the deck a few mornings ago. He/she hopped around for a long time and tweeted at me. It was great.

In September we'll make our annual pilgrimage to Oak Island, NC where there is the largest nesting place of brown pelicans on the east coast and lots of birds that don't come to Connecticut.

We used to have birds in our house, but I much prefer them outside--though the parakeets constant songs were soothing.

Birds need to soar as they sing.

At least I think so.

In case you haven't noticed--I love birds.

Sometimes on Route 9 going to Higganum, I see lots of hawks and the occasional eagle. I'm lucky I don't wreck watching them.

Which reminds me, I need to go to Hamden soon to see the swans.

Take some time to listen to the birds around you.

Something or other like Glory....

I'm not an economist

I'm not an economist.

And I am 'a globalist'. The world is too small now for the US to 'go it alone'. Everything is connected. And part of our call (from God, I'd say, but you can say 'from reality') is to make the world better for everyone we can, not just ourselves.

As the richest country in the world, we have an obligation to equal the playing field economically. (Oh, in case you haven't guessed by now, I am a democratic socialist as well.)

John Bohener said today in an interview that the "Republican party was 'napping'" and had become the "Party of Trump". A few years ago, any President who suggested opposing 'free trade' would have been terrorized by the Republicans and Right Wing talk hosts. Not today--though there may be some Republicans in Congress finding their courage when such a violation of their ideals is being threatened.

These tariffs our President (who will not be named!) announced today against our best allies and friends in the world are crazy. (Well, 'crazy' doesn't quite make it crazy enough.)

Not only will Canada and the EU be hurt--we will be hurt. The tariff on aluminum alone, will raise the price of a can of Coke or a can of Miller Light. Plus, all the manufacturers who make things from steel and aluminum will need less workers since they won't have enough raw products to make what they make.

Canada has already put tariffs on American goods today and the EU will follow, so there will be less markets for American goods.

The world in one economic system, no  matter what the President thinks. All will suffer from trade wars. And what if China decides to cash in the billions and billions of dollars of American bonds it holds that enable us to pay our debt?

Seriously, the guy in the Oval Office is a lot like Bruce Holt who I used to play poker with in college. Bruce would up the ante without looking at his cards just to see if he could make some of the players fold their hands. It never worked.

It won't now.

Not only has the President not looked at his cards, he wouldn't understand them if he did.

God help us.

Blessed David

The gang of six are all gone now--The Rev. David Pritchard died on Saturday.

It was David and Jack and 2 Bills and Haig and another David that made up the Gang of Six. (Actually Haig and the second David weren't there a lot, so, to be accurate, it was the Gang of Four plus two.)

A Clericus is a gathering of all the Episcopal Clergy in a geographical area. But the truth is, most of the active clergy don't show up if you meet every week--as we did each Tuesday in Waterbury. Active clergy think they are too busy to spend an hour and a half sharing communion and talking with coffee. But I never was. And from time to time I'd be the only active priest (along with Andy most weeks) with those 6 retired guys.

When they were all present there was 300 years of priestly experience in the room Better than a post-doctorate seminar for me, to sit at their knees and learn.

What I learned most and learned fair well--was not to put up with the church's BS. Those guys were beyond tolerating BS and I learned at their knees. When you're 50 years into something you've nosed your way down to the basics--and that's what they shared with me--the bare-bones-basics of 'being a priest'.

All but David died before I retired from full time ministry. David endured the move of the Clericus meetings to Cheshire from Waterbury after I retired. Most Tuesdays I'd drive him home to the Masonic Home in Wallingford. On those trips he taught me more--everytime.

Now he is gone and I will miss him.

His last months were not great, but Helen, his wife told me he sang along with a visitor or one of his last days and blessed his grandson's wedding rings for the service on Saturday.

He won't be buried until June 17. And I'll be there to know life is still and over for one I love.

Helen told me she was trying to be 'thankful' instead of 'sad'.

Sounds like something my Gang would have told me....

Rest in Peace, dear mentor and friend.

Memorial Day--two I probably told you before

I probably posted abEout both these stories, but it's Memorial Day so I tell them to you again.

HOW I FOUND MY NAME

Every Memorial Day there was a big dinner in Waiteville, where my father grew up, to pay for the upkeep of the local cemetery.  My crazy Aunt Arbana (who was probably my second-cousin once-removed but in my father's family relations weren't clear) would put Confederate flags on family graves and my Uncle Russel and Uncle Sid would go pull them up.

The dinner was amazing--more food than you can imagine. Ham and country ham and ribs and pork roast and chicken in four different ways and turkey and rabbit ans squirrel for those who liked it. Dozens of vegetable dishes and desserts of all kinds. No salads, as I remember, no salads at all unless you consider withered dandelions a salad.

My father would carry me to the car, still asleep, at 5 in the morning and we'd drive for two hours or more, crossing over and back into Virginia several times, and get to my step-grandmother's house for breakfast. Cleve Lafon Bradley (Lafons and Bradleys were mixed up in many ways) would have a platter of fried eggs, a plate of biscuits, bacon and sausage and country ham, sausage gravy and lots of jellies ready for her step-sons and their families when we arrived. Then she would talk non-stop while we all feasted.

Before the dinner we walked around the cemetery. I was eight when I happened on two tombstones far up on a hill. JAMES GORDON BRADLEY one said. The other read JAMES GORDON BRADLEY II.

I was horrified to find my name on not one but two tombstones and that was when I learned I'd been named after my great-grandfather and my great-great grandfather.

My grandfather's name was Filbert Jewel Bradley and my father was Virgil Hoyt Bradley, so when I calmed down I was glad they went that far back for my name!

WHY I'M A YANKEE FAN

My father served in WW II. He was 36 years old and couldn't be drafted but he enlisted. He spent 4 full years in Europe, landing on the second wave at Omaha Beach and finally reaching Berlin. He was in the Corps of Engineers and built bridges for Gen. Patten to drive his tanks across and then blew the bridges up. They weren't planning to come back, you see.

When he was in New York waiting to ship out to England, he and two friends were given tickets to a World Series game by grateful citizens. It was the Dodgers and the Yankees and my father decided which ever tear won would be 'his team'. The Yankees won.

So, I grew up in the mountains of southernmost West Virginia rooting for the Yankees. Those were the days of Maris and Mantle and Skowren and Berra and Whitey Ford and Bob Turley and Elston Howard and Richardson and Kubek. A great time to love the Yankees.

And I have ever since.....

Lucky me.

praying

I don't pray much.

That might seem odd for someone who is an Episcopal priest--but it's true.

Oh, I pray with people who are sick and anoint them with oil blessed by a bishop (a mere priest can't bless oil--I don't know why, I think God would bless oil if an atheist asked He/She to, but that's just me). I pray and say, "I anoint you with this holy oil and ask God to grant you healing of mind, body and spirit and the grant you the peace that only God can give."

I pray that.

And I pray liturgically. I pray God to make the bread and wine in communion be the actual Body and Blood of Christ. And I believe that happens, no matter what a bad pray-er I am.

And I practice Centering Prayer (not as much as I wish) but that is a wordless prayer, a prayer of the heart, a prayer of 'being' instead of 'asking'.

I don't 'ask' much of God. I think God has enough to do without me adding to it all.

But I have been asking lately.

Baby Eleanor, one day last week, stopped breathing as Mimi put her to bed. Tim gave here mouth to mouth and the emergency people were there in 8 minutes or so and Eleanor through up massively on the ambulance ride and was seemingly fine after that. Maybe some food was in her esophagus and she threw it up. But whatever, it was terrifying for Tim and Mimi.

Then the very next night she had a febrile seizure--and she'd had two before. Another ambulance and another complete recovery, charming the ER folks with how wondrous she is.

She's been to Columbia's pediatric neurological doctors and is going to Cornell's. So, if there is something to worry about, they will find it.

But so far, no idea what's going on.

So I pray for her almost with every breath. And for darling Mimi and wondrous Tim and all they're going through.

I love them so and am praying as I seldom do.

If you pray, would you pray for Eleanor and Mimi and Tim a bit.

I'd profoundly appreciate that....

We've lived in this house

We've lived in this house for 31 years. I was 40 and Bern was 37 when we moved the 95 Cornwall Avenue in Cheshire. Young by any measure.

Josh was 12 and Mimi was 9. Over those years we've had 3 dogs, 6 cats, 2 birds, 7 guinea pigs and a rat live with us.

I walk around in this house an it is 'home' to me.

I hope I live long enough to live half my life in this house.

It is as familiar to me as my skin.

The yards are my Garden of Eden.

It is so remarkable to be so centered in a 'place'.

And I am.

A son-in-law and daughter in law and four grand daughers later we're still here.

In this place.

Home. Like no where else ever for me, this is home.