Doing my taxes

...is no fun.

Clergy taxes are different from most other middle class folks.

Clergy don't pay taxes on any money they spend on housing. That means everything--utilities, insurance, property tax, lawn care, repairs, paper towels, laundry soap, toilet paper....on and on and on.

At one time the same rules applied to members of the armed forces and school teachers. It was taken from them.

So, who is more powerful? The Army, the education system or the Church?

One guess is all you need.

But it means going through more data that I'd like to to be able give the accountant an accurate number for all housing costs. Bought a new broom? I can deduct it and you can't.

It's not fair by any means.

But it is what it is. And I take advantage of it.

I'm sure you would if you could.

But it takes several days.

The hard part is over. All that is left is adding numbers.

So, the bad part is over.

Now comes the fun of keeping money the IRS might have gotten.

Happy to be where I am

I meet so many people who are wishing and hoping and longing to 'be somewhere else in their lives', that I am amazed gratified and extremely thankful to be 'just where I am in mine'.

I have a marriage that on September 5 will be 50 years old. We've had rough times in all those years, but now we're happy to be where we are.

I'll be 73 in April and Bern will be 70 15 days before my birthday. And we're happy to be where we are.

We have two remarkable children who are in two wonderful marriages and have given us four amazing granddaughters. They all have productive, important jobs--our children and their spouses--and make more money that I can imagine. I am so happy they are where they are.

Plus, I have this job with the Middlesex Area Cluster Ministry--three churches in unlikely places like Higganum, Killingworth and Northford. I was on the Cluster Council tonight and looked around the table and realized I loved every single one of the nine with me--and Ann, who couldn't be there because she works in the hospital where one of the two corona virus folks in Connecticut works.

Sometimes I pinch myself.

How could I be this blessed, this fortunate, this embraced when so many are missing all that?

I pray for those less fortunate than me and try to support them however I can.

And I am so happy to be where I am.

I hate, hate, hate Daylight Savings Time

Why do we do this every year?

I know some states are protesting about it, mostly in the south.

But even here in New England I'd gladly do without it.

For one thing, it starts on Sunday and unlike most folks, I work on Sunday.

Today was the church the most distance from my home with the earliest start time!

I had to get up at 8 and break every speeding law to get there at 9.

And summer evenings are plenty long anyway.

If we do it at all, it should be in winter when it gets dark by 4 p.m.

I'll be off for days now. I called in a take-out for pizza and fried callimari (sp) but I'm not hungry and won't be until 8. My digestive system is on Standard time.

It makes me crazy. I hate, hate, hate it.

Believe science and don't be traumatized

I just listened on youtube to Neil Degrass Tyson tell Stephen Colbert that the real question about the coronavirus is "will people believe science"?

Wash you hands. Try not to touch your face (I can't do it!). Stay away from big crowds, but don't make yourself a victim of terror about it all.

The deaths in the US are just over 20. The flu kills tens of thousands. Believe science and be careful but don't go to panic mode about this virus.

Time will tell whether this is the non-news the president thinks it is or the pandemic science tells us it could be.

But be careful, beloved.

Believe science.

Don't give in to trauma.

I am surrounded by poetry

                            I AM SURROUNDED BY POETRY

I am surrounded by poetry
I will never write.

The old man down the block
with his droopy mustache
and the dog he used to walk, long dead now.
The particular shade of orange in the morning sky
and the wondrous pink as evening comes.
The down on the neck of a woman I loved once,
who never knew I loved her.
And her eggshell ears.
The bend of her slim elbow.
Her ears--I mentioned that already.
The leafy, illogical pattern of ice on my windshield
one January morning--
like something a chaos physicist
(how about a mixed metaphor!)
woukd have adored.
What smoke feels like in my lungs
after I inhale deeply on a cigarette.
The particular color of the eyes
of the crazy man I talked to and gave two dollars today.
My dreams--coming at me like a tsunami these days--
endless visits with old friends,
walking through amber when I need to run,
conversations with those long dead,
hard work to accomplish in less than no time.
The smell of skunk standing on our deck.
The taste of coffee ice cream.
The feel of the hair of my Puli dog.
The sight of a woman, walking fast,
staying in shape, fending off death,
by walking fast past my house.
Hearing anything by Mozart on the radio.
And just the way it feels to be inside my skin,
how I can count my bones,
if I would stand still long enough and count.
The many ways I think of death.

And there is no time, no time at all,
since I am growing older.
There is no time, no time at all,
to write the poems that surround me.

And what about the dimples my daughter has?
And the strange way new money looks.
And how my wine glass is empty?
And the wear on the 'n' on my keyboard?
And how the ringing in my ears is sometimes a sonata?
And what the night sky resembles?
And the air under my fingernails and the gaps between my teeth?
The sound of rain,, rain's smell, all of raing.

What is unworthy of a poem?
Nothing, so far as I can tell.

And I don't have the time.
Surrounded by poetry, I have no time to write.

1/30/06--jgb

Hold on, beloved

I went to St. John's in Waterbury to meet with my Tuesday group yesterday and their was a huge box--2 feet by 4 feet--with my name on it in the library where we meet.

Cindy--the wondrous parish administrator--is cleaning out the archives and found the box with my name on it.

I took it to Higganum today and cleaned out the stuff I didn't want, but much is left.

Pictures, trinkets, notebooks full of stories I don't remember writing, a whole packet of sermons I preached, letters I wrote and received and lots of other stuff.

I'll be going through it more carefully in the days to come and will have much to share with you here.

You thought I've been sharing too much 'old' stuff lately.

Hold on, beloved, lots more to come!

Plus, here's something else from 2007....

                                WINTER DREAMS

I dream more than most people I talk with about dreams.
My Dream-Maker seems to go full tilt all night,
especially in winter when the wind wails
and whispers of sleet slide against the windows.

My dreams are not earth shattering, no prophecies
from a poet-god, nor are they full of advice .
Mostly, they are mundane--ordinary things:
often I am building something, a gizmo I understand now,
other times I am walking through strange lands,
seeing things I do not comprehend...but never afraid.
I have no nightmares these days.

Sometimes I dream lf sleeping in the bed with you.
I dream of waking up and watching you sleepl
and then dozing off again to dream of sleeping.
I dream of extremely hairy black dogs sitting on my head
and golden cats--like tiny lions--opening the door
to the room and falling asleep at my feet.

Just the other night, I dreamed I woke to your saying:
"can I have a glass of water?" and geting up to run
the water cold before filling the glass. Then I dreamed--
amazing as it is, that  you brought the water and said:
"you won't remember this when you wake up...."

But I did remember and when I woke, I wore a Puli like a hat
the the cat at my feet stirred and leapt from the bed.
I heard you downstairs making coffee.

"Let the day begin," I said, anxious to see you,
just as I slipped back under the winter covers
and slept, hoping to dream of getting up and joining you....

12/21/07--jgb




 

From 2007

(I should stop looking through these old files. But this was from when I was a full time priest with an urban and diverse congregation. I remember how it felt to visit hospitals and nursing homes and homes with care givers as I drove home at the end of the day.)

                     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, 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's 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, on 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 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,
I have been with the Holy Ones.

2007/jgb