It's been five Sundays

I haven't been inside a church for five Sundays.

I really don't know if I've gone that long without being in a church on Sunday before.

When I was a child, my mother and I went to my grandma's Pilgrim Holiness Church and then, after that, to Anawalt Methodist Church. My father went there too. He had been a free-will Baptist (whatever that is) but wouldn't endure the Pilgrim Holiness Church. But when my mother and I left there, after the preacher prayed for my sinner father, sitting in the car outside, reading the Bluefield Daily Telegraphy's Sunday edition and 'smoking cigarettes', my father joined us in the Methodist church, claiming "Methodism can't hurt anybody".

I didn't go to church in college until I met the Episcopal chaplain and started going to his 'house church' services.

But, from that point on, I've never not gone to church for 5 Sundays in a row.

Yesterday seemed to stretch out to 72 hours. On and on it went.

I did virtual church, but that is finally not quite 'church'.

I tell people I became a priest because it meant I'd have to go to church.

Now, I'm not sure.

Maybe I would go to church even if I wasn't ordained.

I sure miss it. The hymns, the peace, the people.

Most of all the people and their hugs at the peace.

No hugs these days except from Bern and our dog, Brigit.

ok, 3 sermons

(These are the three sermons I gave in 2005 on Easter: Easter Eve, 8 a.m., and 10:15 a.m. I don't know why they were all as one....but remembering what I did 15 years ago is pretty hard! The parts about the 'feminine' in us all and 'fear' seem relevant to today.)

EASTER EVE 2005

          So we have sat in near darkness and heard the stories of salvation.

          Tonight is much like sitting around the campfire with the tribe and hearing the stories that tell us who we are and whose we are and who we belong to. Sharing the tribe’s tales.

          We have heard the myth of creation and the tale of the passage through the Red Sea. We have been to the Valley of Dry Bones and beyond to the calling of all people to the Kingdom.

          These stories, and the songs we have sung with them and the shadow silence we have shared—all that is enough.

          We should, by now, know who we are and whose we are and who we belong to.

          We belong to God. We are God’s children and God’s own beloved.

          The campfire is dying out. Night has come with earnestness.

          We long for something more—we lean toward new light, the dawn, new life.

          Once more and for always.

          Enough words have been spoken. It is time to be renewed, time to experience the resurrection, time to move on to Easter.

          Now we pass from darkness into light, from night to morning, from death to life. Just like that.

          Now we pass over into God’s joy and hope and wonder.

          Let there be Light! Let there be joy! Let there be wonder! Let there be Life!

Let the words stop and let us pass over to the celebration of the Feast of the Kingdom, the Heavenly Banquet, Easter.

          Easter.

          Easter.

          Alleluia, he is risen. (3 times)

8 a.m.

          It was women who met him after his resurrection. Go search the scriptures, go look at the gospels—women, always women.

          Always there is Mary Magdalene, she is always there in the gospel accounts. Sometimes she is with “the other Mary”—the mother of James, and Salome. But it is always and only women.

          Only women greet the risen lord first.

          Women are, after all, the givers of life—the mothers of us all. There is that. But I think there is more, much more that we must recognize and know.

          I think—and it’s just me thinking—that it is only the “feminine” that can initially recognize the risen lord.

          I don’t mean to leave you men out—oh, no—but I do mean to ask you to consider the “feminine” side of yourself.

          Carl Jung, the great psycho-analyst and philosopher in the first part of the 20^th century, believed that all human beings had within them a masculine side and a feminine side. He wasn’t talking about “gender” at all, no not at all. He was talking about the two sides of every human being’s personality.

          The “masculine” in each of us, according to Jung, was the rational, thinking, rough and ready, active part of our personality.

          The “feminine” within each of us, was the irrational, feeling, compassionate and caring, passive side of who each of us are.

          Given Jung’s understanding of masculine and feminine—both of which are in all of us—it is little wonder that it was the women who met the risen lord.

           

 

Easter, 10:15, 2005

          Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death,

          I will fear no evil, for thou art with me.

          So, the women show up at the tomb—it is always the women, we need to notice and dwell on that, who see the resurrected Lord—and the angel tells them “do not be afraid.”

          Then, just after that, they meet Jesus, all alive again, and he tells them, “do not be afraid.”

          That is what Easter is about—not being afraid, fearing not, living in hope instead of anxiety, embracing the love of life rather than the fear of death.

          We are so afraid.

          We are so full of fear.

          And Easter is here to tell us, “do not be afraid”, live in hope.

          That poor woman in Florida, Terri Schiavo, longing to die…longing to die. And the whole nation is in an upset about her, the Congress and the President and all the Right to Life folks.

          We need not fear death. That is what Easter means.

          But most of us are so afraid of death that we value the technical definition of “life” more than we value “the quality of living”.

          “Do not be afraid”, live in hope.

          We are so afraid of terrorists that we turn against our fellow human beings because of where they were born or what religion they follow or what they believe.

          I read a story in a book the other day—a true story—about a couple who moved to a gated community in Florida. The complex was surrounded by walls and the gates policed by guards. And the longer they lived there—in this place designed to make the safe and sound—the more fearful they became. They came to fear leaving the compound and pass to the other side of the gates. They came to mistrust those who were allowed through the gates, even those who came to clean the pools and repair appliances and cut the grass. The more secure things became, the more fearful the couple became.

          We have become victims and prisoners of Fear since 9/11.  Fear is the “little death”—it robs us of the joy and spontaneity and wonder and surprise of living. We are locked in tombs of anxiety and fear. But Easter is about leaving our tombs behind. Easter is about Hope that drowns out fear.

          We have made a grave mistake, thinking “courage” and “strength” is the opposite of FEAR. If we can only be brave and courageous and strong and safe enough (we, as a people, we have convinced ourselves) we can overcome our all our fears.

          But that only involves us more deeply into fear and war and aggression.

          The opposite of FEAR, I tell you, is not COURAGE….it is HOPE.

          And HOPE is the message of Easter.

          Daniel Berrigan, the Roman Catholic priest and activist, wrote a poem about a clown mass.

          Clown masses were popular during the 60’s and 70’s. I did a few myself back in those heady days of hopefulness before our culture turned fearful and solemn. What would happen in a clown mass is someone dressed as a clown would shadow the priest—pantomiming the words of the service, acting things out, demonstrating the joy and humor we so often lose because we are so serious about the liturgy.

          It wasn’t everyone’s cup of tea. Here’s how Berrigan’s poem ends:

                             The children ran together

                       At the clown’s sweet antic tune.

                            In wooden pews

                        The moody regents muttered woodenly.

                           At recessional, this was heard:

                     “Could Jesus have seen that, he’d have

                           turned over in his grave.”

          “Could Jesus have seen that, he’d have turned over in his grave….”

          We live in Fear instead of Hope, it seems to me, because we haven’t really believed Jesus got up out of his grave and lived again. We  haven’t really believed, not in a deep-down, bone and marrow level, in the Resurrection.

          I’m here to tell you Resurrection is Real.

          We need not be afraid.

          Life is stronger than death and hope is stronger than fear.

          Just that.

          Because of Easter we need not be afraid—life is stronger than death and hope is stronger than fear.

          That’s why we use Champaign for communion today. That’s why we wear bunny ears and use noise makers. That’s why we have bubbles. All of that is meant to shock us into believing that life is stronger than death and hope is stronger than fear.

          If that’s not true, we have nothing to hold onto—build walls and put up gates and be afraid of everything…..

          But it is true. It is true. It is true.

          Life is stronger than death and hope is stronger than fear.

          Just that.

          Leave your tombs of fear behind. Walk in the sunshine of Hope.

          He is risen….Christ is risen indeed…Alleluia Alleluia Alleluia….

         

Virtual church

We did virtual church again. We had lessons and a psalm and a gospel and I preached and we had prayers and a virtual communion and then a closing. Jeremiah played the organ at Emmanuel for a prelude and postlude and then we had a virtual coffee hour!

It was good to see people's faces on zoom, but I couldn't see the people on face book live or on their phones. But it was good to see people I haven't been together with for over a month.

We'll do this as long as we need to so we can be sure it's safe not to be in the same space together.

The people in the three churches are very hug-prone and I'm not sure when we'll go back to that.

Not the same thing, obviously, but way, way better than nothing.

Sunday is the day I really resent the virus. 'Church' gives a deep meaning to my life.

I miss it terribly.

Who are these people?

I've seen them on TV--protesting the closing of their states. They are almost all white, all angry and many of them are not wearing masks or keeping social distance. And many wear MAGA hats and wave, of all things, Confederate flags!

And the president is encouraging them in tweets to risk their lives and the lives of those they go home to in order to say "Open up, America!"

We can all agree that the closing of our economy because of the virus is a shame. But can't we all also agree that keeping people safe is more important than 'business as usual'? And what, once this pandemic has abated more, will 'business as usual' look like?

Not like it did a few months ago, I assure you.

I am horrified that these people are out there in Michigan and other states.

STAY HOME AND STAY SAFE should be on everyone's lips.

Yet there they are.

Who are these people and what are they thinking?

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.