Abide with me

Today is the feast of St. Bernard, Abbot of Clairvaux (1153) and the gospel is this:

John 15:7-11

⁷If you abide in me, and my words abide in you, ask for whatever you wish, and it will be done for you. ⁸My Father is glorified by this, that you bear much fruit and become my disciples. ⁹As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you; abide in my love. ¹⁰If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commandments and abide in his love. ¹¹I have said these things to you so that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be complete.

"Abide" was a word often used in Appalachia when I grew up there.

You'd be walking down the street and people up on their porch would say, "Jimmy, come up and 'bide a spell." And I would.

Often there was no conversation at all, just 'abiding', being with, being close to.

And I think that's what Jesus is talking about in John 15--just 'being with him', without agenda or purpose. Just 'biding a spell'.

Just that.

And it is enough.

Enough and more than enough.

Abiding is enough and more than enough.

 

Josh

Six days ago, our son Josh turned 44.

Lordy, lordy am I that old!!!

Yes, of course I am.

He was sometimes tough as a teen. I sometimes tell people Josh spent his Junior year of high school abroad but forgot to leave the country.

But he was a wondrous little boy and became wondrous after his freshman year of college. He went to U. Mass., the only school he applied to and graduated with a 3.3 average after a disastrous Freshman year.

He spent a year in England, after college, on a special visa he earned, working in a pub most of that time near the Chelsey soccer stadium and became, as he does about anything he is interested in, a educated soccer fan. He's taught me so much about the game I watched every game the US played in the woman's World Cup. After Chelsey he spent a couple of months backpacking around Europe.

For a year after that, he lived with us and worked at the Benieke Rare Book Library at Yale where he became beloved by catching a guy stealing pages out of rare books.

Then he went to Brooklyn Law School and met Cathy Chen, who he married later and the two of them gave us three wondrous granddaughters--Emma, Morgan and Tegan.

He's now the youngest partner in one of the largest law firms in Baltimore and Cathy is a judge of the First Circuit of Maryland--Baltimore City--after spending a few years defending victims of sexual abuse and then being a prosecutor in Baltimore.

What a joy Josh and his family are to us.

He's much more like Bern than me, though he's an extrovert and Bern is a real introvert.

They share the same mindset, like Mimi and I do.

And it almost makes me faint with joy when I think about what Josh has meant to me and to so many.

Our children are our greatest joy--and greatest amazement.

What did we do to deserve them???

But I'm glad they are with us. So glad. Delirious, really.

Happy, Happy Birthday and Life, my dear son Joshua Dylan Bradley (after Bob Dylan, of course!)

Gillum vs. Santorum--no contest!

On CNN's 'State of the Nation', two of the people on the panel were former Senator Rick Santorum and former mayor and close in race for Governor of Florida, Andrew Gillum.

Santorum gave the NRA's stock in trade answer to the gun crisis: 'guns don't kill people, people kill people.'

Gillum immediately responded, "that's like saying opioids  don't kill people, the people who take opioids kill people."

Brilliant. So brilliant I wish I had thought of it. So brilliant I'll be using it over and again.

As I've said before and will doubtless have to say again, if the guy in Sante Fe and the guy in Ohio--or Vas Vegas or Sandy Hook or Parkland...on and on--hadn't had a gun they would have been lucky to kill one person before they were subdued by the crowd.

People may 'want to kill people', but without guns they wouldn't be very successful.

Guns and opioids kill people.

Well done Mayor Gillum!

Well done!!!

Coming up on 49

While we're on Oak Island in September with Mimi, Tim, Eleanor, Jack, Sherry and John, Bern and I will celebrate our 49th anniversary.

One short of 50.

But we've known each other longer than that.

We met in introductory Latin class in high school (Amo, Amas, Amat). I was a Senior and she was a Freshman. I was 18 and she was 15. I was taking Latin because I had applied to Shimmer College (now part of the University of Chicago) and they required a year of foreign language. The only language taught at Gary High School was Latin.

I didn't go to Shimmer and I didn't learn much Latin. I need to remind you I grew up in a very rural part of southern West Virginia. There were 99 people in my graduating class. I rode a bus 13 miles, twice a day, to get to high school. These were the coal fields. Both our fathers were coal miners--Bern's until he retired, mine until after WWII when his lungs wouldn't let him go back inside the mountains.

We dated that year and whenever I was home for three years of college. Then in 1964, she joined me at West Virginia University and we were again senior and freshman. I went to Cambridge to Harvard Divinity School the next year and then in September of 1970 we were married and went back to Cambridge together.

I was 23 and she was 20.

And here we are, together and settled and joyful, 54 years after we met. We have spent all those years--not always easily--together.

Together.

I can't imagine a life I could have lived without Bern. I really can't.

I've spent 3/4 of my life with her.

She is my life.

She really is.

What a joy!!!

Now, baseball...

How about them Yankees!!!

They are 40 games over .500, 1/2 game better than the Dodgers for the best record in baseball, 10 games ahead of the Rays and an amazing 17.5 games ahead of the Red Sox with 40 games left to go.

Go, Yankees!

All of that with two first basemen out, Aaron Hicks out, Elsberry  out for the season, Stanton--their power hitter---only playing 6 games, two pitchers out and one just coming back....

More injuries than an a nursing home.

Still--best record in baseball, 40 games over .500, and best of all 17.5 games ahead of the Red Sox with 40 games to play.

I shake my head when I watch them because so many of the names of the starters are new to me.

Amazing.

When I was growing up, the sport's commentator on channel 6 in Bluefield would begin his show with, "Let's see who the Yankees clobbered...."

This year feels like those years of Berra, Mantle, Maris, Whitey Ford, Bobby Richardson and on and on.

Great for me.

Not for Sox fans.....

OK, back to Politics

House member Steve King (R-Iowa) yesterday said that if all the human beings in each of our ancestry who were the results of rape or incest were removed from our family trees, there would be no human race today.

He said that to oppose a proposed Iowa state law that would allow abortion in the cases of rape and incest.

Even conservative, pro-life Republicans are calling for his resignation.

He has already been removed from his leadership on some House committees for racist statements earlier in the year.

He defends his statements by talking about Genghis Khan and how the rape and pillaging of that horrible invader increased the human population.

Genghis Khan?

How has this guy been elected every two years time after time by the people of Iowa?

With Genghis Khan as a hero, it actually, as hard as it is to believe, makes the President look not so bad.

Well....Not really.

Very good news

My optometrist referred me to an opthamologist with dire warnings--probably because a different eye doctor referred me last year and I didn't go. (It was in my records.)

Dr. Ryan's dire warnings--pointing the book I had with me (I always have a book with me) and said, "You'd better go or forget about those!"

So, I went.

She was a tiny woman. After one person put drops in my eyes and 10 minutes later another person took pictures of my eyes in some weird machine, she saw me and told me my macular  degeneration was very, very minor. She actually said 'very' twice! and put me on some vitamins but said there was 'nothing to treat now'.

Bless her little heart!

This is a huge place in Waterbury that doesn't have optometrists--only people who deal with more than basic eye exams.

I whispered to Bern while we were there (she went because I didn't know if I'd be able to see to drive after the exam) "I feel really young in this waiting room."

It was true. Most people there had aides and canes and wheelchairs.

It's good to feel Young and to know I can have books in my life.

Many thanks, God.