Lunatics

All day today I felt a little crazy.

I had weird thoughts and odd fantasies.

Then tonight I went out on the deck and realized why. The moon is nearly full or full--I could find out online but it doesn't matter.

Lunatic is not an accidental word.

The full 'luna'--the full moon--has some kind of effect on us all.

Having been the Rector of urban churches, I know this is true--especially at St. John's, Waterbury.

We had a soup kitchen where lots of homeless folks, some of whom should have been in mental hospitals if we were not a society that rejected mental hospitals years ago. Barbara Dublin, who ran the kitchen and her workers and the folks on the staff of St. John's always knew when the moon was turning full.

Things would get a little dicey as the moon moved toward full.

I am convinced all of us are affected by a full moon--but 300 people, many of whom had mental issues....well, things would get weird.

On the day before, the day of and the day after a full moon, Barbara would have to throw out more folks than on the 28 days before and after.

Some got more aggressive. Some got more subdued--almost to catatonic. And everyone, even Barbra and her staff and I, felt a bit off line.

I truly believe the full moon brings out more than werewolves. It brings out the off kilter and strange and a tad crazy stuff in all of us.

Notice it for yourself.

How have you been doing the last few days?

It will be a while now, but notice how you feel the next time a full moon shows up.

Just notice if you feel more lunatic than normal.

Just notice.

I really believe it.

What next?

So, He Who Will Not Be Named has pulled out of the Paris Climate Accord, NAFTA, and started a trade war is now taking the US out of a nuclear treaty.Plus the nonsense about the needy folks moving toward our boarder who are in need of protection and welcome.

An arms race on top of a planet in need of great and industrious work and a trade war that will end in economic problems for mostly consumers but producers as well.

Is nothing sacred? Well, of course not--a man who is obviously a racist, womanizer and Islam phobic--holds nothing sacred except himself.

Things are literally melting around us--not just the polar ice caps, but civility and democracy and hope and the incremental advances we've made as a country over the last few decades.

Not to mention Saudi Arabia and the dead journalist and all the weapons we sell them to attack Yemen. And millions with pre-existing conditions that could lose health care.

If there isn't a "blue wave" in November, I may be start looking for property in Montreal.

I have never been so confused and alarmed about where my country is as now.

I just want some sanity and some reasonableness. I just want us to listen to the scientists and academics and people who actually 'know something'.

Which makes me a left-wing 'mob member', I guess.

So be it.

Sanity.

All I want is that.

SANITY.

Is that too much to ask?

Robert Galbrailth

Robert Galbraith is the pen name for J. K. Rolling of Harry Potter renown.

She wrote the first of four novels about the war hero, amputee, detective Comoran Strike and his side-kick, secretary, eventual partner Robin. She is at least as interesting as Strike and he is interesting beyond belief.

I read all four of the books last week--and they are, like the Harry Potter books--doorstop size.

She wrote the first one and it was a best seller so she decided she could let it be known that Robert was her alter--ego.

They are complex, moving and riveting. I never figured out any of the endings before they happened to my delight.

Start with the first one--The Cookco's Calling--and read them all,  in order, since Strike and Robin develop and their lives change in each novel.

It's probably accurate to say I've read all the Harry Potter stuff and now all these Strike novels.

This woman is more prolific than anyone I've ever read.

Trust me: read them and you'll thank me.

Elanor

Our two year old granddaughter, Eleanor Reed McCarthy, has been with us over 24 hours now.

She and Tim, her dad, spent the night last night and Tim left for Providence and then Boston on business. Mimi, her mother and our daughter, is in LA on business. So we have Eleanor.

Tim will be back tomorrow afternoon and hopefully they'll spend another night to miss the Friday traffic to Brooklyn.

She is amazing. Hasn't cried once. Full of energy and joy--inside the house and out in the yard. She's won over our dog, Brigit, and is making Bern's life so wondrous I can't describe it.

Bern is putting her to sleep now and will sleep with her in a spare bedroom while Brigit and I share our bed.

But let me tell you this--there is a reason you have children early in life!

I am worn out and ready for bed and it's only 8:30 p.m.!

People 68 and 71 couldn't do this full time--believe you me....

But she is a gift to us. Truly.

Emoji?????

I just noticed an article on my news feed that the 'bagel emoji' has been fixed by Apple to be 'more doughy and have 'cream cheese'.

And people on line are happy about that. The emoji is new and improved. The on line community is delighted. Apple is delighted. Obviously, God Almighty must be delighted too.

OK, let me be honest. I have no idea what Emojis are.

Let me be clearer--I know the word and I've seen 'emoji' images--sure--but I never want to send one and never ever want to receive one, whatever the hell they are.

Do not, under threat of bodily harm send me an emoji though I have no idea what kind of communications you could send me one.

And I don't even, not for a moment, want to know 'how' you could send me an emoji.

And definitely not a bagel with cream cheese emoji.

And I have no interest if the 'bagel emoji' has cream cheese or not.

In fact, I may never eat a bagel again because it's been associated with whatever in God's green earth 'emojis' are.

And, from this day forward I will never type e m o j and i in a row.

I can't think of a word when I would have to--and if I do think of one I will never type it or say it or even think it.

That's me and ....those things that I neither understand or want to and which should be consigned, whatever they are, to the inner-most ring of Dante's hell.

Enough said about all that.

Of Apple Trees

(I'm still going through my filing cabinet of stuff I've written and found this. It's on yellowish paper and typed on what doesn't look like a Selectric typewriter. I have no idea when I wrote it. It is me (Richard) and my step-grandmother, Clevie Bradley. I don't think it ever happened but it fits us both.)

OF APPLE TREES

"If they're apple trees," the small boy said, leaning his blond head to one side and squinting his eyes, "why aren't there any apples?"
 
Beside him on the porch, his grandmother rocked slowly, staring across the rolling fields  that stretched out in front of the house. She could feel his hazel eyes on her face--tracing the wrinkles there, waiting, questioning. The orange sun just above the horizon was slowing burning away the light haze of dawn. Across the distant fields she could sense the coming July heat--the heat that would send her time and again to the bucket sitting on her kitchen cabinet, send her to life the dipper and drink the cool well-water that would only momentarily soothe her burning thirst.

"Daddy said they were apple trees", the boy said, impatient with her silence. "Daddy said...."

"They are apple trees, Richard," she whispered through her thin lips, accenting his name deliberately.  She turned toward him and he caught her eye with his, fixing her gaze until he glanced away to search for the source of a soft rustling of wings she could not hear.

Freed from his stare, she looked again at the fields, noticing for the first time some whispy patches of fog just above the ground. Somewhere over there--she thought--we would stand and look back at the house as the sun rose behind us...and we'd hold hands and talk about all we were going to do. And through the low lying fog, she fancied she saw two shadows, hand in hand, looking toward her.

"What kind of birds are those, Grandma?" the boy asked, pointing to the sky. He touched her arm softly with his brown hand, He stood silently beside her rocking chair and watched two birds soaring in the distance, piercing the morning mist with their song as they rose.

She strained to see, looking in the direction he had pointed, but the rising sun stung her eyes and she couldn't distinguish the birds against the sky.

"What kind?" he asked again, pressing her thin arm gently, demanding that she answer. She lifted his hand from her arm with long, thin fingers. Impatiently, he looked around, pursing his lips and frowning in displeasure. She held his hand in hers and whispered softly, "you were hurting Grandma's arm."

He pulled away and walked to the edge of the porch, searching in the distance for the birds.

The shadows moved across the field, blending into the scattered ground fog. And as we'd come back he'd take out an old blue handkerchief and wipe his face and I'd laugh, 'you act like an old man', and he'd lean on my shoulder and limp home chuckling, 'carry me! Oh, I'm an old man!"

The boy walked heavily across the porch, sighing to attract her attention. Then he sat down on the porch steps, dropped his head and waiting for the dew to dry. It was still early in the day. The boy's father would come and get him in the afternoon, after the boy's mother was out of the hospital , missing her appendix.

He scuffed his feet and she knew he longed to be in the old, barren orchard behind the house, searching the summer fields for signs of life, digging in the soft soil to find slimy brown worms, climbing the apple-less trees to look for birds' nests.

"Meadow Larks," she said at long last, waiting until his lifted his head to look out across the fields before she repeated it--"Meadow Larks, that's what the birds were, Richard."

He smiled, saying the words over and over, "medalark, medalark, medalark," though the birds were long since gone. He jumped up and walked over to her, still smiling, to suddenly kiss her wrinkled face damply.

"The grass must be almost dry...you know," looking at the yard and then at her.

She looked at the glistening yard and said, slowly, "it just might be...."

He leaped from the porch and turned a clumsy somersault in the moist grass. When he stood up he looked down at the wetness of his clothes. She smiled at his surprise and said, "almost."

He smiled again, bending his head to one side, then skipped around the house, singing softly, "al-most...al-most...almost."

She rocked slowly, silently, touching her cheek with the back of her hand to remember Richard's kiss, searching the long field for a trace of the two shadows in the last vestiges of fog.

When we'd get back, he'd run to the orchard and bring back some apples and I'd laugh to see the juice that ran down from his lips as he ate....From around the corner of the house she could almost hear him running to her. She turned to watch him come, breathlessly bringing her a dew-wet apple to eat in the early morning.

"Grandma, Grandma," the boy said as he ran around the house and up the porch to her. She shivered involuntarily as she pushed back a lock of blond hair from his forehead.

"Why aren't there any apples, you didn't tell me?"

Silently, she pushed herself out of the rocking chair and walked to the screen door.

"Grandma?"

"They're all too old," she said sadly, "too old to have apples."

He stood mutely, squinting at the still rocking chair and wondering at her answer until she disappeared into the house. When the screen door shut behind her, he turned and ran, suddenly laughing, toward the orchard. He was barely six years old.

As she stood in the kitchen, drinking slowly from the metallic dipper, she could hear Richard, chanting as he ran toward the apple trees, "too old, too old, too old...."




  

My October 14 sermon

October 14, 2018

         

          The story of the Rich Young Man and Jesus contains some profoundly important wisdom for us—but it is not wisdom that is on the surface. We must dig a little to get to it.

          On the surface, this story has been used over the centuries to proclaim the “righteousness of poverty” in the service of God. St. Francis of Assisi and his female counterpart, St. Clare, we both wealthy young people who took this passage to heart and lived out their short lives in the most abject of poverty, owning nothing, trusting in God for everything. Christian monasticism took root in the “vow of poverty”. Both Buddhism and Hinduism have similar traditions involving monks, nuns and wandering holy men who survive by begging for their food each day.

          Jesus’ advice to “sell all that you have” and follow him is a powerful message. It is a call and vocation for a select few. But that is not the message of this passage for the vast majority of those who seek to follow Jesus. If we stop engaging this story on the surface, it can only serve to make us feel as though we are unable to obey Jesus’ command.

         

          As Jesus was setting out on a journey, a man ran up to him and knelt before Jesus, and asked him, “Good Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life.”

          Jesus said to him, “Why do you call me good? No one is good but God alone.”

          The first thing to realize is that the journey Jesus is beginning isn’t just any journey. In the previous chapter of Mark’s gospel, Jesus has predicted his crucifixion. He has set his face toward Jerusalem and his death. So, in a real way, the ante has been upped. Time is growing short.

          Also, we need to notice that the young man knelt before Jesus—and good Jews did not kneel to anyone but God. Also, the word we translate as “good” is an adjective usually reserved by the devout to refer to God. Even though he’s on his way to Jerusalem and the cross, Jesus is not ready to be identified with God. That helps explain his rather odd response to the young man.

          Jesus said, “You know the commandments”…and the young man replied, “Teacher, I have kept all these since my youth.”

          Jesus, looking at him, loved him and said, “You lack one thing; go, sell what you own, give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me.”

          When he heard this, he was shocked and went away grieving, for he had many possessions.

          What I think is most important in this exchange is to notice that, for Jesus, “keeping the law” is not enough. Mark tells us that Jesus “loved” the young man. He must have admired his earnestness, his sincerity and his faithfulness to the commandments. When he heard Jesus’ question about the commandments, the young man’s heart must have leaped up. He must have imagined that “keeping the commandments” was enough to earn eternal life.

          We Christians haven’t escaped that pitfall. We are obsessed with “being right” and “looking good”. There is a great danger in Christianity of becoming “legalistic”—of thinking God is no more than a moral accountant keeping a ledger of our lives. We reduce God to a schoolmarm who gives us good marks and bad marks in deportment and behavior. We turn the Great God Almighty, Creator of Heaven and Earth, our “refuge from one generation to another,” for whom a thousand years are like yesterday in his sight—we turn that God into nothing more than an omnipotent Santa Claus from the Christmas song: “He’s making a list and checking it twice, going to find out whose naughty or nice.”

But for Jesus, “keeping the commandments” simply isn’t enough. Jesus isn’t interested in “naughty or nice”. Jesus wants to invite us into a relationship with him…a relationship with the God who loves us best of all.

         

What is required is that the young man rid himself of what ties him to this world and enter into a relationship with Jesus.

          “Then, come, follow me….” That is the invitation Jesus gives. The young man is too attached to his riches to leave his life behind and journey to Jerusalem with Jesus. It is his “attachment”, not his “riches” that is the problem. He is invited to the adventure of a life time; he is offered a relationship with God that is worth more than all the riches of the earth. But he goes away sorrowing, grieving for what he has rejected.

          Each of us has some “attachment” that we cannot escape. Each of us has something that keeps us from fully embracing the invitation of Jesus into full communion with him. We can—like the rich young man—“keep the law”…we can be “good people”…but each of us has something that ties us to this world.

          And I really believe that what God wants from us is that we simply recognize and acknowledge our attachments. All that is required is that we “notice” what keeps us from embracing God fully and completely. If we could let them go—if we were capable of “detachment”—we wouldn’t need Jesus.

          That’s the key to what he has to say to his disciples. They object to Jesus’ assertion about how hard it will be for the wealthy to enter the Kingdom. They are “perplexed” by his words, Mark tells us.

          So Jesus makes an even harder statement: “Children,” he tells them, “how hard it is to enter the Kingdom of Heaven.” Then he tells them the well-known and oft repeated metaphor of a camel passing through an eye of a needle being easier than entering the Kingdom.

          “Then who can be saved?” the disciples cry. And Jesus tells us the hardest truth, the most difficult and confounding wisdom of this passage: “For mortals it is impossible,” he says, “but not for God; for God, all things are possible.”

          Ironically, this is the best news we could hear—this is the great “good news” of God. “For mortals it is impossible, but not for God; for God all things are possible.”

          We mortals, we human beings, are “attached” to this world. Nothing that we can “do” or accomplish or believe is enough to open the Kingdom to us. The best we can do—the very best—is to become “aware” of our attachments and walk away grieving, knowing God loves us anyway.

         

          The Hindus have a saying worth repeating and remembering. The Hindus call what we call “reality” sleep. Our “reality”, our “attachments” are like being asleep to the Hindus. And the Hindus say: “Lucky is the person who “wakes up” before they die.

          Jesus calls us to “wake up” and notice our attachments, acknowledge what is that prevents us from living fully into the invitation of Christ to “come, follow me….”

          I heard a story once about a Bible thumping Evangelical coming up to a monk in his habit and saying, “Brother, have you been saved?”

          The monk answered, “Yes, my friend, I think I have been saved.”

          The Evangelical, not believing him, said, “When were you saved?”

          The monk took and moment and then said, “at three o’clock in the afternoon on the first Good Friday.”

         

          Jesus did not need to go to Jerusalem if I could save myself.

          I AM the rich young man. And, I suspect, so are you. We cannot save ourselves. We cannot. It is not possible. And Jesus loves us as we walk away.

   And with God—with God, all things are possible….