Monday is my favorite day

I love Monday. On Monday, I do nothing. Nothing I don't want to do.

I sleep late. 9:30 today.

And I do nothing.

Oh, I do read. Finished a book today.

I do take the dog out.

I do cook--my turn this Monday--a great salad, assorted vegetables and cod loin baked with Planko and green onions. Very good.

But I do nothing I don't want to do.

I went out to buy some wine--Pinot Grigio--which is all I drink (and my spell check doesn't recognize either word of a world wide known wine.)

I watch a little TV. Mostly CNN and MSNBC--liberal, almost socialist, Democrat as I am.

I talk with Bern and almost no one else all day except to say 'thank you' to people who hold wine store doors for me and 'you're welcome' to people I hold wine store doors for.

Mondays are all about me.

(Most days, if I'm honest) but Mondays for sure.

I love Mondays.

Monday is my favorite day.

Today's sermon

I didn't write it down, but I can tell you about it.

I talked about how 'following Jesus' might be much simpler than we imagine.

In the Book of Common Prayer we have lots of Creeds telling us what to believe. We have a 20 page Catechism telling us what to believe. We have nearly 20 pages of 'historical documents' of the church (including more creeds) telling us what to believe.and 'Articles of Religion', telling us what to believe.

I don't think we need all that 'belief'.

The older I get, the less I need to believe.

Someone asked me recently, 'do you believe in the virgin birth?'

I answered, "I don't really care. If it's true, that's nice and neat. If it isn't, it doesn't bother my faith."

They were horrified that a priest would say that.

Today's 'collect'--what Episcopalians call a 'prayer of the day'--told us to ask God for 'faith, hope and charity'. And today's Gospel was a parable of Jesus about a Pharisee and a tax collector praying in the temple. The Pharisee up front, praying loudly, that he was 'not like other people...including this tax collector."  The tax collector praying softly, with his head bowed, saying "God have mercy on me a sinner."

What Jesus drew from this parable was simple: 'those who exalt themselves shall be humbled and those who humble themselves shall be exalted."

Pretty simple.

So give me 'humility' along with faith, hope and charity (compassion) and that will be all I need in my backpack of being a Christian.

Humility comes from the same root as 'humus'--the earth, the dirt.

And we all know we came from dirt and to dirt we shall return.

Being 'humble' is being honest about who we are as human beings.

Humility, faith, hope and charity/compassion is all I need on my journey from humus to humus....

Diocesan Convention--day of

Today was Diocesan Convention. I kept my word: I got there late--mostly because I had googled directions and was told to get off I 91 at exit 29 A. I got to exit 29 and got off thinking A and B would divide. But no! Exit 29 A was the exit beyond exit 29. Where else but Connecticut are exits like that? Crazy.

I eventually got to the Hartford Convention Center and Hotel. The parking building was massive. Though I remembered what section I was in I didn't think I'd be able to find my car.

And the Convention Center is even more massive. 40 foot ceilings in the entrance, 25 foot ceilings everywhere else. Rooms as big as football fields.

I have a form of agoraphobia--the fear of open spaces. I grew up in the mountains, remember, and am comfortable with things on both sides of me. Where Bern grew up there was a mountain, an alley, a house, a narrow two lane road, a house, an alley and a mountain. Probably less than 40 yards of level ground.

I can't be in Costco or places like that for more than 15 minutes. The Convention Center was a nightmare for me. If I never am in that building again it will be too soon!

Plus I couldn't find a seat in a two football field room full of tables and chairs. And, standing in the back, I couldn't understand a word that was being said on the podium. I am a tad hard of hearing and have tinnitus, so I asked 5 other people standing in the back if they could understand what was being broadcast into this huge space. They all said, "not really".

I hung around out in the hallway, which was much too big for my comfort, and talked to a dozen or more folks out there.

Then I went to see if I 'could' find my car and it took me ten minutes of pushing the lock door button on my keys and listening in a huge echoing space to find it. So I took a route back to the Convention Center that I knew I'd remember and talked to a dozen more people, including three bishops and some people I only knew because we all had on name tags.

I left before lunch and was in my car for 20 minutes before I wasn't agoraphobic any more. Cars are more like the spaces I thrive in.

So, I didn't take part in much and was home before 1 p.m., but was glad I left. Since I don't vote or speak at Convention--being retired from full time ministry--I didn't miss much.

Lord that building should be razed to the ground!

Diocesan Convention

I'm going tomorrow to our Diocesan Convention--out of duty, I assure you, not joy.

Before I was retired whichever bishop it was dreaded seeing me at a microphone and dreaded hearing what I had to say.

Since retiring from full time ministry, I don't believe I should speak or vote at the Convention.

I really don't. Let the active do the business and call the shots--I've got my pension to keep me warm at night.

I dread the formality and artificiality and Robert's Rules of it all.

I won't go Sunday for the big Eucharist--I'll be at St. Andrew's breaking bread with less than 20 people.

And I won't get there on time or stay until the end.

My minor infractions about having to be there at all.

Pray for me tomorrow.

I'll need it to stay calm and sane.

Diocesan Convention--an invitation to upset and madness.

poem

 (I posted this over 5 years ago. Thought I'd give it another go.)

 

 The only time I was ever in Germany

It was on the way to Israel in December of 1999. We landed in Frankfort in the wee hours of the morning. I had forgotten all about it (but at my age 'forgetting' is normal....) But I was reading from the notebook I took on that trip and found this poem.

Watching dawn come at Frankfort Airport

Staring out on a school of
     planes
(neatly arranged like huge
  patients in a ward
  attached with feeding tubes
  of walkways to the
  terminal)
dawn creeps in.

It comes as a lightening
    of the sky
      from black
      to indigo
      to navy blue
      to steely gray.

Somewhere on the flight
somewhere over the north Atlantic
somewhere at 37,000 feet
I lost six hours.
Dawn comes late in Frankfort
   in December
but my watch is still at
   10 'til 2 in the tiny
   hours of Eastern Standard Time.

Who owes me these six hours?
How do I get them back?
All around me members of
my group are sprawled
  on black, comfortable
   seats,
dreaming that in sleeping they
  can steal back the time.
But those six hours are
   simply gone, I tell you!
Poof! Disappeared! Lost....

Now a monorail passes outside the window,
   people lit up inside, heading for airplanes.

I can see planes dropping to earth
and leaping away on faraway
runways.

People are trapped inside
each of them, headed toward
Budapest, Singapore,
New York, Moscow,
New Dehlia. Losing
or finding hours as they
go.

I hope someone nice finds
 the six hours I lost
 and uses them well.

Is decorum dead?

Decorum is a noun and defined by "Behavior in keeping with good taste and propriety" by the Oxford English Dictionary.

Dozens of Republican House members invaded a secure meeting taking a deposition from a witness and held up the meeting for five hours. You don't do that. There were already Republican members of the committee in the room.

Decorum is dead.

The President called members of his own party who oppose him, "human scum".

Nobody, any where, is 'human scum'.

They are human beings.

Decorum is dead.

I knew in grade school that negative nicknames were against good taste and propriety. And yet, our President calls people "Pocahontas" and "Sleepy Joe" and "Shifty Shiff", on and on.

Decorum is dead.

Never before, in my memory, have White Power groups, Nazis and Hate Groups been so active.

Decorum is dead.

Can we recover from this three year fit of  'anti-decorum'? I don't know.

I pray so.

But this president--by impeachment or election--must, must, must GO!!!

Decorum must live and be a part of our every day life.

It must.

Some words to ponder

I dipped into my Mastery Foundation quote box and found some I wanted to share. Happy Pondering!


"If one does not have wild dreams of achievement, there is no spur even to get the dishes washed. One must think like a hero to behave like a merely decent human being."
                                                                       --May Sarton

"It would solve a lot of problems if we enjoyed what we are doing."
                                                                 --Sister Margaret Rose McSparren

"To achieve the impossible, it is precisely the unthinkable that must be thought."
                                                                 --Tom Robbins

"We may encounter many defeats but we must not be defeated."
                                                                  --Maya Angelou

"Poetry is a way of taking life by the throat."
                                                                   --Robert Frost

"Love, all alike, no season knows, nor clime
            Nor hours. days, months,
            which are the rags of time."
                                                                      --John Donne

"Not a shred of evidence exists in favor of the idea that life is serious."
                                                                     --Brandon Gill

                                    "It ain't what you don't know
                                       that gets you in trouble.
                                      It's what you know for sure
                                       that just ain't so."
                                                                      --Mark Twain

"For myself I am an optimist---
it does not seem to be much use
           being anything else."
                                              --Winston Churchill

"The truth may well be even more difficult to relate than it is to find."
                                                --Albert Murray