Mr. Kelly Ann Conway

George Conway is my hero!

How odd is that--a deeply conservative lawyer is my hero?

But he has so stirred up He Who Will Not Be Named so much that the twitter storm the president has created proves all the thing George Conway says about him!

And I realized today that my insistence not to name the President is not just a Harry Potter reference, it goes along with what the Prime Minister of New Zealand has sworn not to do about the monster who murdered 50 Muslims there.

Could we export her to America and make Jacinda Ardern our President?

I'd write her name all the time.

Jacinda Ardern. Jacinda Ardern. Jacinda Ardern.

I'd use it because she has been so great in this terrible tragedy and because it is a wondrous name.

Jacinda Ardern.

And maybe she could give George's wife, Kelly Ann, some advise on how to deal with White Nationalists like her boss.

Jacidna Ardern, I'm a fan.

(My supervisor at a mental hospital in Maryland when I was doing my summer of Clinical Pastoral Education was The Rev. Don Fergus from New Zealand. If he was telling you he'd be in touch with you he'd say, "I'll knock you up".

I told him he couldn't say that in this country--especially not to Sister Jeremy who was a Sister of Mercy in my group.

Divided by a common language indeed.)

sleeping

I always thought that as you grew older you would sleep less.

Not true, so far, for me.

I could, but seldom do, sleep 12 hours.

I normally go to sleep after 11:30 p.m. and don't wake up, unless I set the clock, at 10 a.m. or so.

And I love sleeping.

Bern gets up between 7 and 8 and has a couple of hours by herself (with Bridget, of course) and drinks lots of coffee and is ready for me when I get up.

I have dreams much of the time--very pleasant and relaxing. Usually I'm working on something--like a puzzle and getting it more or less right. But it's not a puzzle on a page or in a game, but something very meaningful, though I never know what the meaning is.

Stuff like that.

I could, but seldom do, take a nap as well. But I don't unless I have to get up at 7 a.m. or so.

I love napping too.

I sleep with a C-path machine since I have sleep apnea (however you spell it, my spell check suggested weird replacements.)

I even love my mask and the 14 pounds of pressure it gives me. I never have sinus congestion at night though I often do in the day. Maybe I should figure out how to wear the mask all the time--it would take a miles and miles long extension cord though.

Any way, have a nice sleep and pleasant, puzzle solving dreams.

Good night. Sleep tight. And don't let the bed bugs bite.

country preacher

(Here's something I wrote about one of the priests who were instrumental in the churches I serve.)

          Years ago, an Episcopal priest friend told me he had spent 30 years praying for God to speak to him, out loud and in English, and tell him ‘what to do’. We were having lunch the week he was retiring and moving to an island off of Maine and he told me his prayer had been answered.

          After I picked my folk out of my salad and had a long drink of wine, I said, “what did God tell you to do?”

          He shook his head and smiled. “God told me in an exasperated voice, ‘David, do whatever comes next!’”

          Forty Years a Country Preacher are the sometimes humorous, sometimes somber but always insightful musing of George B. Gilbert, an Episcopal priest who spent his career in rural Connecticut parishes. Gilbert grew up in Vermont but came to New Haven to Berkeley Divinity School and stayed on in the Diocese of Connecticut.

          To call Gilbert ‘a parish priest’ doesn’t do him justice. During his time in the hills of south-eastern Connecticut he was sometimes a farmer, sometimes a barber, often a cook and always a community organizer—even before that term came into vogue. For the first four decades of the 20^th century, he did whatever was needed by those he served and those in the communities where he lived that had nothing to do with the Episcopal Church. He doesn’t spend a lot of time in his book ‘doing theology’ but he spent all of his ministry meeting the personal and spiritual and basic needs of those around him. His theology was just what God had told my friend David: George Gilbert ‘did whatever came next’ for his 40 years as a country preacher….

          He estimated he had given 5000 haircuts to the rural poor he encountered. He rode his horse and later drove his oversized Nash over countless country miles to visit the many people he knew in his sprawling parishes. He helped cook and ate dinner (our ‘lunch’, this is in the country, remember) almost every Sunday of his long pastorate. He cut wood for the stoves to cook the dinners and keep the churches warm. He repaired whatever was broken in his church buildings and whatever was broken in the people he served. He steadfastly believed that ‘feeding the body’ of those he met needed to precede ‘feeding the soul’. And for all that he was a passionate preacher, a devout keeper of the sacraments, a man of prayerfulness, if not prayer and one who did all he did with a sense of calling and purpose.

          I’ve been an Episcopal priest since 1976—forty-one years and counting—and deeply admire Gilbert’s attitude toward ministry. I think the ‘doing’ of ministry comes out of the ‘being’ of the minister, and George Gilbert fully embodied his priesthood. He was a ‘priest’ incarnate—occasionally disappointed and frustrated that he couldn’t do more for people, but thorough it all joyful and enlivened to be of service. His stories remind me of the response of Mother Teresa when asked by a cynical reported how she thought she could save India. “One person at a time,” she replied. Gilbert, in his time, lived out that commitment. His presence and energy seemed always totally focused on whoever was in front of him at the moment.

          In my retirement, I have been serving, very part-time, three rural congregation in Connecticut, one of which is Emmanuel Church, Killingworth, where Gilbert became Rector in 1909 and served the rest of his ministry. So, I have some personal experience of the landscape where he rode his horse and drove his car and gave haircuts, and cut wood, and cooked and cooked and brought God to the rural folk. I also admire his attitude toward the institutional church. He was, in many ways, a rebel with a cause. He thought the church was out of touch with the needs of the people he served. And he, in many ways, set his sails against the wind of traditional Christianity.

          Let me demonstrate that by quoting from Gilbert’s own words:

“It is not church form that makes good Christians. The essence of the Christian ministry lies deeper than that and is rooted in human relationships. Too often the theologian doesn’t know how to get along with people. The church cannot fail to be ineffective unless its clergy reach the poor and that can only be done by long and friendly acquaintance in their homes, ripening gradually into mutual affection—a link which brings them finally into the fold.”

          Those are the words of a person who truly understands the nature of priesthood. George Gilbert is that person.

          May his words fill you with wisdom and give you some chuckles along the way!

The Rev. Dr. Jim Bradley (6/16/2017)

happy St. Patrick's Day

I'm sure I've told you that maternal great-grandfather came from Ireland with his two brothers and they got into such a fight on the boat that they all gave false names at Ellis Island so they could never find each other again.

What you can believe about the Irish is that really can get angry.

And my great-grandfather added insult to injury by telling the folks at Ellis Island that his name was "Jones"--a Welsh name.

St. Patrick was either Welsh or Scottish, historians aren't sure.

And the whole 'snake thing' is unclear as well.

But it's a great holiday--hope you had corned beef and cabbage and soda bread like we did.

On St. Paddy's day,. everyone is Irish--even him....

cell phones and me

So,. I was supposed to be on a conference call at 1 p.m. and was reading a book (Tami Hogg's The Boy--read it) and was a little late calling in.

Then, when I dialed the number, my phone told me to switch off 'airplane mode' to make a call.

I don't even know how to get onto 'airplane mode' much less how to switch off. But there was a little airplane at the top of my phone and I hit on that and it took me 10 minutes at least, to turn it off and I couldn't tell you how I did it even now.

So, I was late for the call.

I hate my cell phone. I know nothing about it and have no interest in learning.

I'd just like to take it down to West Haven and see how far out in the Long Island Sound I could throw it.

But I need to have it, I know.

I don't get email on it--don't ask me why, I don't know. But that's a blessing since I only want email on my computer where I can look once a day. Just me and my way of coping.

I have a friend who has the exact same phone and figured out how to talk to it and make it do things for him.

I don't know how to make it do that and really don't care that I don't.

I don't even like to talk to our TV and tell it things.

I was meant for a pre-social media time. I know it.

I was meant to write letters and make phone calls--not email and text.

And taking pictures with my phone--I have lots of pictures with my thumb in them and don't know how to erase them.

Or 'delete them'.

I don't even know the language to use.

Hopeless, I am, with my cell phone.

deep breath, calm down.....can't!

So a day after a white nationalist gunman in New Zealand killed 49 Muslims at worship (with more in the hospital) at two separate mosques nine miles apart, our President, talking about his veto of the bill overturning the 'national emergency' at the southern boarder, used the same term the shooter used to describe immigrants in his posted manifesto---"invasion".

Did no one in the White House tell He Who Will Not Be Named not to use that term on this day?

Maybe they didn't.

Maybe they did and he forgot.

Maybe he wasn't thinking straight, being so upset about having to veto something and about the horrible terrorism in New Zealand.

Or maybe he did it on purpose, knowing white nationalists love him, just to wet their whistle for what comes next--more violence and right-wing terrorism.

"Deep breath, Jim," I tell myself. "Be calm, breathe...."

But I can't.

It seems obvious to me that HWWNBN is stoking the fire of white nationalist, not only here, but around the world.

While people in the middle east and South America and Africa are fleeing for their safety and their lives, 'white nations' are afraid and resisting opening their arms to those in danger.

We all came from somewhere else--unless you are Native American (and truth be know, they came from somewhere else just a long time before most of us).

And except for African Americans, we came to 'get away' from something bad. African Americans were brought here 'to something evil'.

This 'white' stuff has to be broken down, thrown away, punished.

Or else this won't be the country we want to live in.

Deep breath.....

Parents

I turned 25 the week my mother died at 63. I was in my 40's when my father died at 83.

They become more and more distant to me each day. I can no longer remember my mother's voice, though I can remember my father's.

I can see them in pictures but not in my mind--not clearly at any rate.

Parents begin to disappear on us. I actually remember my maternal grandmother more clearly than my mother and my paternal step-grandmother more clearly than my father.

Here's something I wrote about them a couple of years ago that (sadly, to my mind) not many people read.\

Tuesday, April 11, 2017

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'.....