Today is my birthday

I was born 73 years ago today at Welch Memorial Hospital in Welch, WV, about 20 miles from Anawalt, where I grew up.

When I was born, the population of McDowell County--where Welch and Anawalt are, was over 98,000. Coal mining was booming and miners were paid well. Today, with all the deep mines closed, the population of McDowell--the southernmost county in West Virginia--is barely over 18,000. Imagine that, over 80% of the population is gone from a county about the size of Rhode Island!

About 20 years ago, some folks and I took a dozen kids from St. John's in Waterbury to Keystone, also in McDowell County, to do a work camp, working on houses of poorer people.

Back then the population of the county was 35,000. I took some of the kids across the mountain--any place in West Virginia is 'across the mountain' from where you are--to look at Anawalt. Even then, my heart broke in pieces. The place I remember from my youth no longer existed. The apartment where I grew up was gone, as was my Uncle Russel's house behind it. Nothing was the same. I was horrified.

When I grew up McDowell County (MAC-dowell to the natives) had 8 high schools. Now there are only two so some students ride a bus over an hour to and from school. Only 33% of students are proficient in reading and only 9% proficient in mathematics.

I have 4 degrees--BA, MTS, M.Div., D.Min--and I got my start in schools there.

Anyway, enough whining about my home county.

I was the only child of a father who was 40 and a mother who was 38. In those days, that was not the norm. My parents were friends with my classmates' grandparents.

We lived in a two bed-room apartment above one of the three grocery stores in town. No central heat and a bathroom that was outside the coal stove warmth of the apartment. I slept in "Pat's room" because before I was born a much older first cousin named Pat lived with my parents for several years.

But I knew nothing else and didn't mind.

When I was in high school I thought I wanted to go to Shimmer College in Chicago. (Now it's a part of the University of Chicago.) It was a 'great books' school and I was fascinated. But it required a year of a foreign language and the only language at Gary High was Latin. Students usually took Latin I and II in the 9th and 10th grade. So, there I was, a senior with kids 3 years younger than me.

I never went to Shimmer, but I thank God for them, because in Latin I I met Bernadine Pisano, love of my life and my wife for 50 years in September. What luck that was.

I've had a series of names. As a child I was Jimmy Gordon because I had a cousin named  'big Jim' and that distinguished me. In high school I was 'J. Gordon' as an affectation. My college friends know me as 'Brad', and now I'm just 'Jim'.

(By the way, my parents and I didn't live in a non-central heat apartment because they had no money. My mother was a school teacher and my father drove a laundry truck and sold insurance--Nationwide, which Bern and I have today.)

The year I left for West Virginia University, my parents paid cash for a house in Princeton, WV--in the county to the east, Mercer County. When I came home from college the first time I wondered if I had interrupted their lives and now they were back on track.

Much more to tell--12 years of higher education, marriage, two kids, ordination to the priesthood, 2 wondrous children and 4 incredible granddaughters, serving three remarkable churches in 30 years,
my 7 years of part time work since retiring, the books I read, the things I write here on this blog, my political beliefs that make Bernie Sanders look like a moderate, what I love to eat, how I sleep at least 9 hours a night, how precious Bern is, how much I love my life....

But that's enough for one birthday.

"Happy birthday to me, Happy birthday to me, Happy birthday, dear Jimmy, Happy birthday to me."

I do sing that washing my hands.

phone call

I am part of a group of people who enroll people and lead the "Making A Difference Workshop".

It's for people in ministry--lay and ordained, of all faiths.

We had a workshop scheduled in mid-May at Holy Cross Monastery, an Episcopal monastery, in West Park, NY,. on the Hudson (beautiful place!) but that's not going to happen. We connect by phone on 'free conference call' every two weeks and then every week as we get closer to the workshop. Eight people on the line from all over the east coast and beyond.

We talked today about possibly September for the workshop but decided 'no'.

But what was great was the connection question. We start each call and each in person meeting with a 'connection question' to get us all in the same place before we start.

Today's question call from Pittsburgh: "what quality have you discovered about yourself in these difficult times that gives you and others strength?"

What I realized is that I discovered my being an 'only child' has helped me through this crisis.

Only children know how to entertain themselves. W don't need other people around.

I've never been 'bored'. When people say they are 'bored', I'm not sure what they mean or what it might feel like.

So, I haven't fretted about all this the way many have. I entertain myself. I don't get bored.

And that helps others, I think. They see my calm and self-satisfaction in my words and thoughts and way of being and it helps them cope: on line, on the phone, across the back yard fence.

Many times in my life, I've regretted being an 'only child' (until I speak with someone about their siblings!!!) but in these times I don't.

I'm fine, mentally and emotionally. I'm not lonely. I'm not bored.

I'm an aging 'only child'.

What a joy!

I got a birthday card and letter from C. today. The card had a lion on the front and the envelope--she sent it UPS--had her rendering of the lion with "Jim" on his crown. She remembered I loved Aslan--I've got a dozen stuffed lions in our dining room.

She was a young woman when I met her 30 years ago. I officiated at her wedding and baptized both her children. Her mother was one of my favorite parishioners. She even remembered the patchwork coat and bunny ears I wore at Easter.

Her letter moved me deeply. It was about what I'd meant in her life.

It made me think I did the right thing by becoming an Episcopal priest instead of a college professor.

I appreciated that knowledge more than I can say.

I wrote her back and hope to talk with her on the phone or to email.

I also sent her my blog name. I hope she sees this post and knows how much I appreciated what she wrote.

Stuff like that is so much more than joy--it is what heaven must be like, if there is one.

I know a priest should be sure there is a heaven, but I just withhold judgement and leave all that stuff when we shuffle off this mortal coil to One greater than me.

The idea of Heaven is great. But forever???

Not sure about that.

At some point, it seems to me, life should be still and over.

Just me talkin'...or more accurately, writin'....

Thank you so much C. Love to you.

Not so bad

Hope you're doing well.

We've been home now a month and it's not so bad.

But then, except for a couple of trips a week--to my group in Waterbury and to Church twice--I'm not out and about much.

Bern's women's group meets on Zoom a couple of times a week.

Neither of us were out in the world much before this started. I read a book a day before this--I read a book a day now. We used to go to the grocery store every day, now we go every three days or so. The Consignment Shop, that Bern frequented, is closed. I buy enough wine at a time to last 3 or 4 days, used to buy it almost daily.

Bern watches TV, I'm on line a lot.

But we were before the virus.

We've always talked to our neighbors at a distance and we still do.

So, we aren't as freaked out as some folks are by all this. Not so different as before.

I really feel for people who are at home with kids. The kids are the ones' whose routines have been smashed.

Bern talks to Eleanor or face time every day for an hour to give Tim and Mimi a break.

The Bradley girls in Baltimore told us on Zoom on Easter that they 'love' this. They do school work on line but also bake and cook and talk to their friends on line.

But I'm sure it's a very trying time for many, many people. Pray for them and reach out to the single people you know.

At least Bern and I can have social time with each other. I worry about those isolated and alone.

As a Buddhist would say, "this too shall pass". But the cost to some is enormous.

Wash your hands. Wear a mask when you go out. Shalom.

Easter Sermon

(Not the one I gave this year, just one I had from 2008)

EASTER

          Dying is an astonishing thing.

          And, as far as I know or can tell, the only living creatures on this planet who “know” they are going to die are human beings, like you and me. My dog, God bless him, has no idea he is going to die someday.

          But you do know, don’t you…I know you do…somewhere in the back of your mind…that you’re going to die? You do know that, don’t you? Sooner or later, in one way or another, you will say your last words, take your last breath and shuffle off this mortal coil….

          Just like that….Here today, gone tomorrow.

          Each of us will, some day or another, ‘kick the bucket’, ‘buy the farm’, ‘pass away’, ‘exit the stage’,  die.

          I’m sixty years old—older than I ever imagined being, by the way—and it was just a few months ago when I finally admitted to myself that I am mortal, that I will die.

          When I turned onto exit 3 of Interstate 91, going to the Episcopal Church at Yale to celebrate a Eucharist and realized that the rain back up on the Interstate was black ice on the exit, I knew, in my heart, I was about to die. It was a moment I will never forget. The car started sliding out of control as soon as I hit the ice, and as I was spinning around in a 360 degree arc, I had two thoughts:

          The first thought was, much more calmly than I ever imagined it would be, simply this: I AM ABOUT TO DIE.

          The second thought followed hard on the first one, because things were happening very quickly…that thought was this: I’M ABOUT TO MESS UP CHRISTMAS FOR A LOT OF PEOPLE THIS YEAR….

          Obviously, I didn’t die. And, beyond the two plates in my left arm that gave me some impressive scars, I’m pretty much back to ‘normal’—though more people that you might think have commented that what is ‘normal’ to me is up for grabs….

          Herbert Hoover, the only president we’ve ever had who was known for not ‘saying much’, was stopped as he came out of church one Sunday by a reporter who asked, “Mr. President, what did the preacher talk about today?”

          Hoover said, simply, “Sin.”

          The reporter asked what the preacher said about sin and the President replied, “He’s agin’ it….”

          That’s what I have to say about dying. “I’m agin’ it.”

          I’ve lost some dear, lovely friends in the past year because they died. And “I’m agin’ it.”

          But there it is, waiting for us somewhere down the road—death.

          Jesus died.

          He died a horrible death—suffocation is what killed people who were crucified. The loss of blood and the nails and even the beating before that wasn’t what killed him. He died because, hanging on a cross, his diaphragm could no longer push air out of his lungs and he suffocated to death. Sometimes the executioners would break the legs of those being crucified to make sure death would come more quickly since the victim couldn’t hold himself up and make his diaphragm work.

          This is obviously not the Easter Sermon you came to hear. I’ve said nothing cheery yet.

          But there is this—after Jesus died…died as all of us will…--after that and after he was sealed in a tomb, he simply wasn’t dead anymore. In an instant that must have rocked the universe, he was alive again…and forever.

          That’s the Easter message: Life conquers Death.

          That’s what we should all carry in our hearts—today and always.

          LIFE CONQUERS DEATH.

          No matter what befalls us—life conquers death.

          No matter how dark the day is—life conquers death.

          No matter how things fall apart—life conquers death.

          Now and forever and forever—life conquers death.

          That is my Easter message: Life Conquers Death.

          Alleluia, he is risen! He is risen indeed, Alleluia.

          Amen and Amen.

          Joyful Easter to you all.

Every once in a while

I like to re-post my first post, the one that started this off over a decade ago and 2600+ posts ago. Here it is.

Sunday, March 8, 2009

My first post

Sitting under the Castor Oil Tree (March 7, 2009)

The character in the Bible I have always been drawn to in Jonah. I identify with his story. Like Jonah, I have experienced being taken where I didn't want to go by God and I've been disgruntled with the way things went. The belly of a big old fish isn't a pleasant means of travel either!

The story ends (in case you don't know it) with Jonah upset and complaining on a hillside over the city of Nineveh, which God has saved through Jonah. Jonah didn't want to go there to start with--hence the ride in the fish stomach--and predicted that God would save the city though it should have been destroyed for its wickedness. "You dragged me half way around the world," he tells God, "and didn't destroy the city....I knew it would turn out this way. I'm angry, so angry I could die!"

God causes a tree to grow to shade Jonah from the sun (scholars think it might have been a castor oil tree--the implications are astonishing!). Then God sends a worm to kill the tree. Well, that sets Jonah off! "How dare you kill my tree?" he challenges the creator. "I'm so angry I could die...."

God simply reminds him that he is upset at the death of a tree he didn't plant or nurture and yet he doesn't see the value of saving all the people of the great city Nineveh...along with their cattle and beasts.

And the story ends. No resolution. Jonah simply left to ponder all that. There's no sequel either--no "Jonah II" or "Jonah: the next chapter", nothing like that. It's just Jonah, sitting under the bare branches of the dead tree, pondering.

What I want to do is use this blog to do simply that, ponder about things. I've been an Episcopal priest for over 30 years. I'm approaching a time to retire and I've got a lot of pondering left to do--about God, about the church, about religion, about life and death and everything involved in that. Before the big fish swallowed me up and carried me to my own Nineva (ordination in the Episcopal Church) I had intended a vastly different life. I was going to write "The Great American Novel" for starters and get a Ph.D. in American Literature and disappear into some small liberal arts college, most likely in the Mid-Atlantic states and teach people like me--rural people, Appalachians and southerners, simple people, deep thinkers though slow talkers...lovely for all that--to love words and write words themselves.

God (I suppose, though I even ponder that...) had other ideas and I ended up spending the lion's share of my priesthood in the wilds of two cities in Connecticut (of all places) among tribes so foreign to me I scarcely understood their language and whose customs confounded me. And I found myself often among people (The Episcopal Cult) who made me anxious by their very being. Which is why I stuck to urban churches, I suppose--being a priest in Greenwich would have sent me into some form of shock...as I would have driven them to hypertension at the least.

I am one who 'ponders' quite a bit and hoped this might be a way to 'ponder in print' for anyone else who might be leaning in that direction to read.

Ever so often, someone calls my bluff when I go into my "I'm just a boy from the mountains of West Virginia" persona. And I know they're right. I've lived too long among the heathens of New England to be able to avoid absorbing some of their alien customs and ways of thinking. Plus, I've been involved in too much education to pretend to be a rube from the hills. But I do, from time to time, miss that boy who grew up in a part of the world as foreign as Albania to most people, where the lush and endless mountains pressed down so majestically that there were few places, where I lived, that were flat in an area wider than a football field. That boy knew secrets I am only beginning, having entered my sixth decade of the journey toward the Lover of Souls, to remember and cherish.

My maternal grandmother, who had as much influence on me as anyone I know, used to say--"Jimmy, don't get above your raisin'". I probably have done that, in more ways that I'm able to recognize, but I ponder that part of me--buried deeply below layer after layer of living (as the mountains were layer after layer of long-ago life).

Sometimes I get a fleeting glimpse of him, running madly into the woods that surrounded him on all sides, spending hours seeking paths through the deep tangles of forest, climbing upward, ever upward until he found a place to sit and look down on the little town where he lived--spread out like a toy village to him--so he could ponder, alone and undisturbed, for a while.

When I was in high school, I wrote a regular column for the school newspaper call "The Outsider". As I ponder my life, I realize that has been a constant: I've always felt just beyond the fringe wherever I was. I've watched much more than I've participated. And I've pondered many things.

So, what I've decided to do is sit here on the hillside for a while, beneath the ruins of the castor oil tree and ponder some more. And, if you wish, share my ponderings with you--whoever you are out there in cyber-Land.

Two caveates: I'm pretty much a Luddite when it comes to technology--probably smart enough to learn about it but never very interested, so this blog is an adventure for me. My friend Sandy is helping me so it shouldn't be too much of a mess. Secondly, I've realized writing this that there is no 'spell check' on the blog. Either I can get a dictionary or ask your forgiveness for my spelling. I'm a magna cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa ENGLISH major (WVU '69) who never could conquer spelling all the words I longed to write.

I suppose I'll just ask your tolerance.

Alleluia, He is Risen!

Virtual church is a lot better than no church at all on the highest Hoy Day of the year.

We were on both Zoom and Facebook live and had well over 100 viewers. It went great. That's from 3 little churches that average, between them, less than 70 a Sunday. We'll do it again next week (called 'low Sunday' in the Episcopal Church because so many folks are apparently exhausted by Easter and take a week off) then decide whether to be totally virtual or go back to streaming from one of the churches.

We also zoomed with our family: Josh and Mimi, our children, Cathy and Tim, our children's spouses, and our granddaughters--Eleanor, Tegan, Emma and Morgan.

Josh, who is a partner in one of the largest law firms in Baltimore, gave himself a mohawk hair cut and grew a beard. He wondered why his bead was gray. My beard turned gray many years before my hair. I colored it for several years then though, 'what the hell?' and let it grow in. People would look at me and say, "are you feeling alright?" having no idea why I looked different.

It wasn't like being with them for dinner--but it was fun and lively and full of laughter.

I swore off being political for Holy Week, but that's over!

A President's rating go up in a crisis. Bush 2 was over 70% after 9/ll as was Obama during his virus outbreak. The current president who will not be named here, is still short of 50%, though it is his highest approval ratings ever.

This administration has so mangled the response to this virus that we are in much worse of a mess than we could have been. Lack of supplies, lack of tests, delays in isolating us, not making 'staying at home' a national order rather than leaving it up the the governors--all in all a disaster.

Now he wants to reopen for business on May 1. Give us all a break! I'm waiting until our Governor, Ned Lamont, tells us it's ok.

Reports today said that the president suggested 'doing nothing' and letting us build up a 'herd immunity' until the people that really 'know stuff'' told him millions would die and talked him back from that plan.

Thank God that they were there to save us.

The president never would.

Go, Biden!

He is Risen indeed, Alleluia!

Happy wield Easter.