Shimer College and my life

As a junior in high school, I became enamored of Shimer College in Chicago. It was a 'great books' school, like St. John's College in Annapolis, Maryland, which was Mimi's second choice to the school she chose, Bennington College in Vermont. Shimer is now a part of North Central College in Naperville, IL.

Here was the problem--Shimer required at least one year of a foreign  language for admission. Gary High School was very small--99 people in my graduating class--and only offered two foreign language classes. My senior year it was French 2, which I obviously couldn't do, and Latin 1.

Latin 1 was mostly 9th and 10th grade students, except for me. Miss Sargent, a stern woman, was the teacher.

But here's the thing--if I hadn't had that class I would have never met 9th grader Bernadine Pisano, who became my girlfriend and then my wife when we were 23 and 20 and first lived together in Cambridge for my second year at Harvard Divinity School.

I didn't go to Shimer College, I went to WVU instead and Bern came for my senior year as a freshman. But without Shimer I wouldn't have taken Latin 1 and wouldn't have met her.

And our two children and four grand-daughters would have never been born.

Ponder, if you want to, the decisions that have shaped your lives.

If you hadn't done 'a', the 'b' and 'c' and 'd' and all through the alphabet wouldn't have happened.

Amazing how one decision can completely change and enhance your life.

Amazing how undoing 'a' would have made your life a totally different journey.

Amazing.

Truly amazing.

Thank God for Shimer College and Latin 1 all those years ago.

Really, thank God. My whole life rolled out from taking that Latin class for a college I never attended!

New Impeachment news

Stuff is coming out about e-mails about Ukraine's funds (approved by Congress) being withheld by the President and about the infamous Trump Tower meeting with Russians.

The President has been tweeting and talking about a 'Kangaroo Court' and if the Republican leadership doesn't allow witnesses and documents on the 'trial' in the Senate, then the whole definition of a 'Kangaroo Court will be fulfilled.

The s*** gets deeper and deeper.

Who has a shovel?

I know a lot of people support the President, but it becomes clearer and clearer that crimes were committed and must be addressed.

This horribly and deeply divided country is held hostage by a man who is, at best, a sociopath and narcissist.

Something has to happen.

My biggest fear is how to get him out of the White House if he is convicted and removed from office.

There are people who would take up arms to prevent that.

This  is as scared as I've ever been--and I'm one of those kids who were taught to hide under desks in the classroom (as if that would help!) in case of a nuclear attack.

That's how scared I am for our democracy and this country I so love.

Hoppin' John

As always, we had Hoppin' John for dinner tonight on New Year's Day. It's for good luck and propriety in the year to come.

Hoppin' John is black eyed peas, rice, pork and cooked greens of some kind.

The tradition began in the South in the 1800's.

Black eyed peas were brought to this country from Africa with the slaves. They symbolize coins and prosperity.

Pork symbolizes good luck and the greens also point to money.

Rice is just to hold everything together.

So, whether you had Hoppin' John or not, may you're new year bring you good luck and prosperity.

(One legend around the dish is that an ex-slave nicknamed Hoppin' John, sold peas and rice in the streets of Charleston, South Carolina. No proof of that.)

Happy New Year!

May 2020 bring us a new President!!!!

Happy New Year!

Good friends in New Haven have a New Year's Eve party we used to go to every year.

We don't any more.

We don't do New Year's Eve.

I don't want to drive with lots of folks with more than enough drink on the road.

Besides, Bern goes to be at 9 most nights and I go before 11.

We never watch the ball drop.

We're in bed--maybe reading instead of being asleep, but in bed none-the-less.

But Happy New Year to you, however you observe it.

2020.

Hope for the best....

Great Day for sports--for me!

West Virginia University, my undergraduate school, was ranked 22nd in the nation (not shabby!) going into Cleveland to play Ohio State #2 to Gonzaga. WVU won 67-59, holding OS to 22 points in the second half after trailing by 9.

Then the Chicago Bears (my favorite NFL team) beat arch-rival, Minnesota Vikings. I've loved the Bears since childhood, greatly admiring their uniforms. Minnesota is going to the playoffs and the Bears aren't, but the Vikings are going on with a black eye from the Bears.

Plus, the Patriots (my most hated NFL team) lost to the lowly Miami Dolphins. New England is going to the play-offs but not before being beaten by a team that ended the season 5-ll!

Why do I hate the Patriots so?

Bill Belichek, their coach, was supposed to coach the New York Giants but broke his contract to go to New England.

Plus, Tom Brady, the Patriots quarterback is just too arrogant and successful and good looking and married to a model to like at all....

A very good day for me, football and basketball wise.

Went to Brooklyn and back today

Went down to Brooklyn to see Mimi and Tim and Eleanor and 'give them their presents.

Josh, Cathy and the three Bradley girls were with us in Cheshire for the Eve and Day and Day After.

For the first time ever, I hit 60 mph on the New York Expressways to Brooklyn. The traffic in CT was worse!

It was great to see them--we love them so!

They live in a neighborhood of Brooklyn that boarders on Williamsburg so you see lots of Hasidic Jews with their fur hats and black clothes as you make your way back to the expressways.

On one block we saw several scantily dressed blond women (it wasn't very cold today) jogging past families of Jews all dressed in heavy black clothes. Quite a contrast of cultures.

The drive, back and forth in one day, tightens up my knees.

But it was worth it. Mimi and Tim and Eleanor live on the 13th floor of a lovely high-rise. The building doesn't even try to hide the unlucky 13th floor by calling it 14th.

Eleanor is a little over 3 !/2 and is into Barbie's. A little early, but she is exceptional.

Last year I gave everyone red Make America Great Again hats (JUST KIDDING! I gave them blue WE'RE STILL HERE hats designed by Michael Moore and Bill Mahar.

This year I gave Tee-shirts.

Josh's said: I'M NOT ARGUING, I'M EXPLAINING WHY I'M RIGHT. So Josh.

Mimi's said: I'VE TURNED PARENTING INTO A SCIENCE: EVERY DAY IS AN EXPERIMENT.

Hope you had a great Christmas with those you love, as we did.

Christmas sermon past

Just a sermon from the past for your Christmas present.

CHRISTMAS EVE 2001

          Do you know what “Beth-le-hem” means?

          The literal translation of that word from Hebrew into English is House of Bread.  Bethlehem means “HOUSE OF BREAD.”

          So Jesus was born in the house of bread.

          The Child of Bethlehem—the House of Bread—grew into the Man of Jerusalem. And “Je-ru-salem” means, literally, “The City of Peace”. So, the Child of the House of Bread became the Man of the City of Peace.

          That’s the problem with Christmas: we know how the story ends. We cannot linger long by the stable because we know that the story of that little child born in Bethlehem will end, years later on a cross in Jerusalem.

          We are the People who don’t want to know “how the story ends.”

          We want to find out for ourselves about the ending. We want to be surprised. We want the pleasure of hearing or reading or seeing the story without knowing how it ends. “Don’t ruin the ending for me,” I’ve said to people countless times. I don’t want to “be told” how the story ends. I want to discover “the ending” for myself….”spoiler alert!” has become part of our culture's 'familiar sayings'.

          But we know this story all too well. We have all heard the Angel’s song before. We have all known the shepherds’ wonder before. We have all gone to Bethlehem before to see this thing that has happened before. There’s the mother and her newborn babe, and Joseph in the background. And, more importantly, we know the end of the story that began in Bethlehem. The story ends on a bleak and brutal hillside in Jerusalem—that Baby, grown to manhood—hangs from a cross between two thieves, suffering, bleeding, dying.

          We’ve heard it all before. Old news. No better than reruns late at night.

          So where’s the wonder, where’s the magic, where’s the mystery of it all?

          Imagine this—you don’t know what’s going to happen next, you don’t know about Jerusalem and the Cross. Imagine you don’t know the story. Imagine it’s all happening right now, for the first time. Imagine this…and LISTEN.

          It gets cold in the Judean desert. Not like the cold of Connecticut—the cold there is surprising and sharper, more distinct, because the days are so much warmer than here in mid-winter. So, imagine that kind of cold—the cold that suddenly chills you to the bone and leaves you weak, vulnerable, helpless.

          Imagine the desert’s cold. Then imagine this, a baby is being born.

          That is miracle and magic enough. A baby born in the cold on nearly the darkest day of the year. A baby born hungry and chilled, wrapped hurriedly in rough blankets and handed to his mother. The mother is almost a child herself—a young, unsophisticated teenager—and she takes the child and holds it to her breast.

          Miracle and magic.  But not the whole story.

          That child, in most ways, is just like any other baby—vulnerable, helpless, totally dependent—but in one way, that Child is different, unlike any other baby ever born.

          That child, mother’s milk running down his cheek, cold and hungry—that Child is God.

          Here’s where the story of that magic, miraculous baby—as magic and miraculous as every baby—turns weird.  That Baby is God.

          This is the part of the story we miss and don’t hear and don’t fully appreciate because we know it so well: THAT BABY IS GOD.     

          This is the Eve of the Incarnation. What we celebrate this night is not just the magic and miracle of birth and new life and joy—we celebrate something hopelessly profound, utterly mysterious, totally irrational.

          Tonight we celebrate that God—the great God Almighty, the Creator of all that was or is or ever can be, the one who flung the stars into infinite space and formed this earth, our island home and made us from imagination and hopefulness—that God…the Holy Otherness…the “Being-ness” that brought all else into “being”…that God took on flesh, the Divine and Ineffable and Eternal ONE took on Humanity and Carnality and Mortality.

          If we didn’t know how the story ends, we would stop believing the story right here, right now. It’s too much to bear, too fantastic, too unbelievable, too irrational….And yet, in spite of all that, it is TRUE.

          And when God took on human flesh and became one of us, all humanity—each and every human being who ever lived or lives now or will someday live—each human being became a little HOLY. The magic and miracle runs both ways. When the HOLY ONE became HUMAN, all HUMANITY became a little HOLY.

          We tend to say that God is “omnipotent”—all knowing. But there WAS ONE THING God—who is Eternal Spirit—did not know. God did not know what it felt like to be mortal and have flesh. So God became a human child—to know hunger, know cold, know pain, know suffering, know death—just like we human beings know those things.

          But when God took on flesh and became a human being, God learned some other things from us. God learned how humans experience wonder and joy and excitement and hopefulness and love. From the flesh God took on, God learned love. God learned about love from Mary, who held him and nursed him and kept him safe. God learned about love from Joseph, who guarded him and cared for him and taught him. God learned about love from Jesus’ disciples love for him and the love of those Jesus taught and healed.

          Jesus—who is God incarnate—learned Love from human beings like us. The true meaning of the Incarnation is contained in what God learned from being human. And what God learned from taking on flesh was this—God learned how to love.

          I know this all sounds backward from the way we’ve been taught about it. In the breathtaking gospel I read from John tonight, it says “God so loved the world that he gave his only son….”  I know that’s the way we’ve been taught—that it was God’s LOVE that caused God to put on flesh in the first place. But the magic and miracle runs both ways. God DID put on human flesh because God LOVES us; and when he became human, God learned about “human love.”

          God loves in a different way that we love. There’s even a different word for God’s love in Greek. God’s love is always AGAPE in Greek. Agape is a pure, ultimate and unmotivated concern for another’s well being. That’s a kind of love human beings are incapable of feeling—and that’s because it’s not a “feeling” or an emotion at all.  Agape is more like a “philosophical position” than it’s like what we human beings would ever call “love”. Until God became a human being in the person of Jesus, God’s love was distant, detached and rather “passionless”.

          And human love is always full of “passion”. Whether it is a mother’s love for her children or a husband’s love for his wife or the erotic love between two lovers or the noble love of one’s companions and community and nation—whatever kind of “human love” we’re talking about—it is full of PASSION and messiness. Somehow, in becoming human, God learned that “passion” that caused  the Child of Bethlehem to grow into the Man of Jerusalem. Amen.