Are you a citizen?

When the Supreme Count says something it's like when you mother said something--that's it, it's over, do what she said. No more questions.

Apparently, our President (He Who Will Not Be Named in this blog) doesn't understand this.

When the Supreme Court speaks, there is no 'next move'.

Yet the President still thinks he can have his citizenship question on the census.

Being in an alternative universe is hard to deal with.

He wants to be 'the Supreme Leader', not the President subject to the Congress and the Court and the Constitution.

Please help me here. Are we losing out collective minds are is our President a mad--man?

Let me take a deep breath and return to sanity. If that's possible....

fourth time

Sunday, May 28, 2017

fourth time....I've seen fireflies the last few nights....

Third time: lightening bugs, fireflies, all that

This is the third time I've posted most of what is below. It's no longer the 4th most viewed post, but the 9th.

And the bugs aren't here yet--it's 48 degrees on our back porch--much too cool. But I've been thinking of them. Waiting for them. Anxious to welcome them.  

 

Wednesday, June 29, 2011

Yes, Virginia, there are lightening bugs in Connecticut

I've just been watching Lightening Bugs--fire flies--in our neighbor's yard. So I decided to reprise the fourth most viewed post of mine ever.

They are blinking, blinking, blinking.





They're out there tonight--the fireflies--in the mulberry tree just beyond our fence where the groundhogs come in the late summer to eat mulberries that have fermented and make them drunk. A drunk groundhog is a wonder to behold!

And the lightening bugs are in our yard as well. I sat and watched them blink for 20 minutes tonight.

My dear friend, Harriet, wrote me an email about lightening bugs after my blog about them. If I'm more adroit at technology than I think I am, I'm going to put that email here.

Jim, I just read your blog and have my own firefly story. Before we   went to Maine,
before 6/20, one of those nights of powerful   thunderstorms, I was awakened at 10PM
and then again at 2AM by flashes   of lightning followed by cracks of thunder - the
 kind that make me   shoot out of bed - and pounding rain. And then at 4:30AM there
was   just lightning, silent. The silence and light was profound. I kept   waiting
for sound. I couldn't quite believe in heat lightning in June,   so I got out of bed
and looked out the window. There I could see the   sky, filled with silent lightning
 bursts. And under it, our meadow,   filled with lightning bugs (as we call them) or
 fireflies, flashing in   response. I've never seen anything like it. I can't remember
 the last   time I saw a lightning bug. And then your blog. Is this, too, part of
 global warming? Are you and   I being transported back to the warmer climes of
 our youth, West   Virginia and Texas? Well, if it means lightning bugs, the future
 won't   be all bad.
I did do it, by gum....

So the lightening bugs are blinking, as we are, you and I.

Blinking and flashing and living. You and I.

Here's the thing, I've been thinking about a poem I wrote 4 years
ago or so. I used to leave St. John's and go visit folks in the hospital or nursing home or their own home
on my way to my home. Somehow the blinking of the fireflies has reminded me of that. So, I'll try, once more
to be more media savvy than I think I am and share it with you.
 

I DRIVE HOME

I drive home through pain, through suffering,

through death itself.

I drive home through Cat-scans and blood tests

and X-rays and Pet-scans (whatever they are)

and through consultations of surgeons and oncologists

and even more exotic flora with medical degrees.

I drive home through hospitals and houses

and the wondrous work of hospice nurses

and the confusion of dozens more educated than me.

Dressed in green scrubs and Transfiguration white coats,

they discuss the life or death of people I love.

And they hate, more than anything, to lose the hand

to the greatest Poker Player ever, the one with all the chips.

And, here’s the joke, they always lose in the end—

the River Card turns it all bad and Death wins.

So, while they consult and add artificial poison

to the Poison of Death—shots and pills and IV’s

of poison—I drive home and stop in vacant rooms

and wondrous houses full of memories

and dispense my meager, medieval medicine

of bread and wine and oil.

Sometimes I think…sometimes I think…

I should not drive home at all

since I stop in hospitals and houses to bring my pitiful offering

to those one step, one banana peel beneath their foot,

from meeting the Lover of Souls.

I do not hate Death. I hate dying, but not Death.

But it is often too much for me, stopping on the way home

to press the wafer into their quaking hands;

to lift the tiny, pewter cup of bad port wine to their trembling lips;

and to smear their foreheads with fragrant oil

while mumbling much rehearsed words and wishing them

whole and well and eternal.

I believe in God only around the edges.

But when I drive home, visiting the dying,

I’m the best they’ll get of all that.

And when they hold my hand with tears in their eyes

and thank me so profoundly, so solemnly, with such sweet terror

in their voices, then I know.

Driving home and stopping there is what I’m meant to do.

A little bread, a little wine and some sweet smelling oil

may be—if not enough—just what was missing.

I’m driving home, driving home, stopping to touch the hand of Death.

Perhaps that is all I can do.

I tell myself that, driving home, blinded by pain and tears,

having been with Holy Ones.

8/2007 jgb

Someone once told me, "We're all dying, you know. It's just a matter of timing...."

Fireflies, more the pity, live only a fraction of a second to the time that we humans live. They will be gone from the mulberry tree and my back yard in a few weeks, never to be seen again. But the years and years we live are, in a profound way, only a few blinks, a few flares, a few flashes in the economy of the universe. We should live them well and appreciate each moment. Really.

One of the unexpected blessings of having been a priest for so long is the moments, the flashes, I've gotten to spend with 'the holy ones', those about to pass on from this life.

Hey, if you woke up this morning you're ahead of a lot of folks. Don't waste the moment.

(I told Harriet and she agreed, that we would have been blessed beyond measure to have walked down in that meadow while the silent lightening lit the sky to be with the fire-flies, to have them hover around us, light on our arms, in our hair, on our clothes, be one with them....flashing, blinking, sharing their flares of light. Magic.)

Oh, my Lord!

I hope you've seen the reports from the members of Congress who visited the ICE 'prisons' along the southern boarder.

I will agree with the President Who Will Not Be Named--there is a crisis...CRISIS!...at the boarder, but it is of his own making.

People packed in cages with no fresh water, no toothbrushes, no soap, no diapers for babies, no feminine hygiene products, too little food.

The Statue of Liberty must be hanging her head and burning herself with her torch.

Congress passed a nearly $5 billion dollar bill for relieving the crisis of mistreated detained immigrants, but some Democrats did not vote for it because it was not specific enough about what the money was for--the detainees--and they feared the administration would mis-use it.

Help us Lord, make the this land of the free and the home of the brave again.

Thousands, millions are not free at the boarder, from poverty and homelessness, from too low wages, from eviction, from racism.

And few Republicans are 'brave' enough to stand up to the tyrant in the White House and do what is true and right and just.

Oh, my Lord, how did we come to this?

Being away

Being away has hurt my readership big time. A three week gap takes a toll. My 150+ readers a day is down under 50.

Short attention span, I suppose.

But I miss those folks, though I don't know who most of them are.

I would write only for myself, I really would, but to have people reading is gratifying. It really is.

So, I'll keep writing. I'm getting back into the groove.

And, if people read, it will make me happy.

(Today was another perfect Connecticut early summer day--warm, but low humidity and lots and lots of birds. Brigit was outside a lot, enjoying rolling in the yard and laying in the sun. She tried to catch a bunny in the yard and luckily didn't!)

A lovely day

When I got to St. James in Higganum today, some people came in with umbrellas. "What are those for?" I asked.

Big rain coming, they told me. Saw it on radar, they said. Be here when church is over, I was told.

So, I went out and rolled up my car windows, that were all the way down.

I had to leave St. James during the closing hymn and drive like a crazy person, still in my alb, to Emmanuel, Killingworth. When I got there, still sunny as all get out, I left my windows up since, surely, the rain was near.

Both times, no rain.

I did hit rain--a little--driving home, but passed some places that looked like it had rained hard.

Bern told me, when I got home, there had been a 10 minute downpour.

But the rest of the day was brilliant and cooler--no air conditioning on--and no humidity to speak of.

I read an Icelandic mystery today--very stark and dark. And watched the birds in the back yard.

Lots of birds this year. At one point this afternoon their were 9 birds on the ground in our back yard, plus a bunny and a groundhog--and this is a suburb, not the country!

A lovely day, just right, perfect.

Hope yours was too.

In spite of that....

In spite of our President at the G 20 cozying up to Putin and Saudi Arabia and hinting at a bromance at the demilitarized zone with the supreme leader of the slave state of North Korea, today was a good day.

Our next door neighbors, Mark and Naomi, gave a party for two of their girls--one who graduated from nursing school and the other from high school (on her way to the University of Alabama...a long way from New England!) at Ives Farm on Cheshire Street about 6 miles away.

Cheshire is a suburb of New Haven, Waterbury, Southington, Middletown and a couple of other larger towns.  But Cheshire is also a farm town. There are dozens of farms around. Cheshire claims to be the 'garden center of CT'. I doubt that, but there are lots of farms.

Johanna and Zoe grew from children to young women under our eyes. Great kids and two more to go--a boy 15 and a girl 12, our granddaughters' Morgan and Emma's age.

Bern and I had a long talk with Naomi's parents, who live outside Boston. Interestingly enough, her father and I went to Harvard Divinity School the same year. He later graduated from the now defunct Episcopal Divinity School in Cambridge and became a librarian at the Harvard Divinity School library. Lots of shared memories though we never met there. Cambridge from 1969 until 1971 was a place of protest and craziness most of the time. But we knew and loved the same teachers.

A very pleasant afternoon in spite of He Who Will Not Be Named in this blog being an, excuse my language, an absolute asshole half-way around the world.

Wish he'd stay there....

2nd debate

OK, just me talkng.

Kamala Harris ruled! Even though she missed a chance to talk about climate change, she took on Biden and Mayor Pete and had the greatest line of the night when lots of people were talking: "We don't want to have a food fight when people want to know how we'll put food on their table."

Sen. Barret was ok, except he seemed a tad lost.

Bernie held up as did Congressman Swallwell, Sen, Gillibrand and Gov. Inslee. But barely.

Andrew Yang said next to nothing. Former Congressman Delany said nothing that mattered and guru to the stars, Marianna Williamson looked like she was in another dimension and sounded like it too.

Joe suffered. Mayor Pete, Gillibrand, Bernie treaded water and Kamala leaped like a dolphin. Though I'll give Mayor Pete this: when asked about why South Bend's police force didn't have more Black officers, he said, "Because I failed." Not many politicians will be that humble and self-critical. I really like him for that.

Unlike the night before, this shifted the field.

Kamala raised the third most money that night than any.

She's on the rise.

Just me talkin'....