The trip and visit

We got back from visiting Mimi, Tim and Eleanor in North Branch, New York this afternoon.

It's a house they bought last fall, long before the virus hit, and they've been there since NYC shut down, safe and isolated. North Branch is basically no where. They found the house because friends of their from Brooklyn/Manhattan owned the house next-door. By next door, I mean 200 yards down a two lane highway with mountains on both sides.

When we were getting close, our first visit, Bern said, 'this is West Virginia'.

And it was--narrow valleys between towering mountains, tiny roads, rural as hell.

Their back yard is literally a mountain. There is only a few feet between the back of their house and a steep, heavily wooded mountain. They own a good deal of the mountain, but it is almost impossible to climb and full of ticks.

Eleanor has had a bunch of ticks since they've been there and is on antibiotics for her latest bite.

But it is a lovey 1890's farm house with little strange details and sliding barn doors as the doors to some of the rooms. And it is safe and isolated in this time of pandemic.

Mimi and Tim are working mostly from home. Tim works for Linked-In and probably would never have to go to his office in the Empire State Building. Mimi works for an Architectural Magazine and has to go the NYC for a day or so every week. It's a 2 to 4 hour drive, but only occasionally.

They are both so bright and wondrous I couldn't explain more than that.

Eleanor, who will be 4 in August, is so smart and funny an entertaining and happy.

It's that last word that gives me joy to fill my heart. She is so happy!

Tim and Mimi are raising a happy girl, God bless them.

I was watching the news on MSNBC on Friday early evening and Eleanor came to ask me why. I told her I wanted to know what was happening, it was important to me. She said the news was boring. We had a 20 minute conversation about news being important and boring as she asked question after question about Arie Melbourne and Joy Reed. Amazing for a not yet 4 year old.

It took us longer to go than to come back. Why is GPS not consistent? Going we got off 4 lanes about 30 miles from their house and followed Rt 52 through White Sulfur Springs (2 other reasons it fell like West Virginia: Rt. 52 is a main drag in WV and White Sulfur Springs in the Resort FDR made famous.)

Coming back, we got on 17 E., a four lane road  five miles from their house, that went all the way to I-84, which brought us to Cheshire in just over 2 hours. It rained every mile of the trip.

The only time is drizzled, we stopped at a rest stop to pee. Other times it rained so hard I would have pulled over if I could have seen the shoulder!

A great time, in spite of that.

We love them so....

gasoline

My uncle Del, my father's brother, owned the Esso station in Anawalt, where I grew up.

His full name was Adelbert. Go figure. His three brothers were my dad, Virgil, Russel and Sidney. Not names on the top 100 lists these days

I used to work in Russel's H&S grocery store, next to the H&S dry goods store. Uncle Del's Esso (not Exxon, not then) was just across the road.

The office of the Esso station was always full of men of both races, sitting around a revolving fan in the summer and a pot belly stove in the winter, gossiping, telling jokes, laughing about being together.

I remember when the gas price went above a dollar. People whined and complained and threatened to go to Flake Martin's Gulf station instead.

Gasoline above a dollar was a shock!

Today, I went to get gas at the Stop and Shop Service Station. I had a credit of $1 a gallon on my Stop and Shop card and got to fill up, for the first time in a month, for $1.03 a gallon!

It made me think about Uncle Del.

The Bradley's did not reproduce a lot. Del's daughter was an only child, as I was. Sid had a boy and a girl. Russell had no children. There sister, who died when I was a child, had two boys.

I was the only only child on my mother's side. Aunt Georgie had two, Aunt Juanette had four and Uncle Graham had 8.

Two very different families, in every way.

Amazing.

I haven't done this for a while...

The Mastery Foundation, for which I lead workshops in normal times, gave, several years ago a plastic box full of hundreds of quotes. I sometimes share them here to give you things to ponder and wonder about.

Pondering and wondering, I think, defines who we are.

So here we go. Just ponder and wonder.

"Never mistake a clear view for a short distance." --Paul Saffo

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

"Love is a great beautifier."  --Louisa May Alcott

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

"The fish trap exists because of the fish; once you've gotten the fish, you can forget the trap. The rabbit snare exists because of the rabbit; once you've gotten the rabbit, you can forget the snare. Words exist because of meaning; once you've gotten the meaning, you can forget the words. Where can I find a man who has forgotten words so I can have a word with him?" --Chuang Tzu

"Among those whom I like or admire, I can find no common denominator, but among those I love, I can: all of them make me laugh." --W.H.Auden

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

Take a while to ponder each of those....

Shalom.

Random Thoughts

Sitting on our back deck just now, I realized the house behind our back yard isn't visible through all the foliage between us. I can see lights at night, but in the daylight they don't exist--and we don't exist to them.

A little like this strange time we're living in. Others aren't quite there.

The tip of my little finger on my left hand, the one that types a q and z bends away from my other fingers. Arthritis, I suppose.

I wear copper tone braces on my knees--operation on the right one, arthritis on the left one (again). Bern commented the other day that I still had on jeans in spite of the heat. I realized I was embarrassed about my knee coverings (which help enormously). I've worn shorts every day since she said that.

To hell with embarrassment.

I am almost immune to being surprised at the president's lies. But the one about 'testing' being the problem and wanting to test less did me in. All his spokespersons said he was 'kidding' or 'tongue in cheek' but then this morning, leaving for Arizona, he told reporters, "I don't kid".

Yet 4 medical doctors involved in fighting the virus said, to a House Committee, they hadn't been told to 'slow testing' and that more and more testing is the key to controlling the virus.

Alas and alack.

Going to see Mimi, Tim and Eleanor has me a bit anxious. If I admit it, this whole pandemic has me a little anxious. I believe I should admit it and deal with it.

I pray hard that the demonstrations will matter and real change will occur.

But that will only happen if the Democrats win the Senate and the White House. Please Vote in November.

We have curtains over the door to my office and the door to the TV room to keep the cool air from AC in. Brigit will go through them some, but not other times.

She is such a damaged and timid dog. We love her so, so much. Little by little she comes back, but not all at once.

I'm sending you this again

The day after Father's Day I need to tell you that my father was a racist.

Not overt, since he had to be among blacks in our town and county. But racist, none the less.

The first time he visited me in Charleston, where I served a Black Church, he came into St. James and said, "it doesn't smell like I thought it would."

That kind of racist.

Here's a sermon from not that long ago that talks about what we're going through now.

Sunday, July 21, 2019

Sunday's sermon

6^TH SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST—Emmanuel, Killingworth

            Today we heard the story of Mary and Martha. Martha is fretting, doing chores, cooking and worrying while Mary sits at Jesus’ feet and absorbs his wisdom. Martha comes to complain and ask for Mary’s help and Jesus tells her, “Mary has chosen the better part.”

            I won’t ask you to raise your hands, but in the honestly of your heart tell yourself if you are more like Martha or Mary.

            I bet I’m talking to a bunch of Martha’s here today!

            Most of us, most of the time, are fretting like Martha, working on many tasks, not taking time to call out our Mary side and listen quietly to the ‘still, small voice of God.’

            That’s what we need to do, especially in these times: sit and listen for the wisdom of Jesus.

            I’m going to tell you about my upbringing a bit, because it will lead me to what I want to say later.

            I grew up in the southern most county of West Virginia, McDowell County. If you’re from there you say ‘MACK-dowell’ instead of Mac-Dowell. There were about 100,000 people in an area larger than Rhode Island—about half Black and half White.

            Though half the people in my little town were African American, I knew only two of them by name: Gene Kelly, who worked in my uncle’s grocery store and his wife, Delia, who was my uncle’s housekeeper and cook. But many of the Black adults and a good number of the kids knew my name since my two uncles owned a grocery store, a dry goods store and the Esso station and my father sold them insurance.

            I was never in a classroom with an African American until my senior year of high school though it was over a decade after Brown vs. The Board of Education. The next year the two separate school systems were going to merge, so Gary District High sent 6 students to be in my senior class: three talented male athletes and three very smart females to smooth the way. They weren’t allowed at the prom, so I didn’t attend either.

            I was good friends in college with a young man who graduated from Gary District. He would introduce me to his friends by saying, “Jim and I went to different high schools together!”

            And it wasn’t just race. When I was leaving Anawalt Junior High to go 12 miles down the road to Gary High, our Principal addressed the 9^th graders. (Anawalt was almost completely Anglo Saxon, and Black of course, but almost no people of other ethnic origins.) Principal Ramsey told us (please excuse the language but I want you to hear what he said): “The Hunks and Tallies and Pollacks down at Gary aren’t going to accept you. You will be shunned.”

            A man with a Master’s Degree told 14-year-old kids that!

            It was a dark and racist time for me growing up. Which brings me to another place—today our country seems to be moving back toward those time instead of toward more diversity and more inclusion.

            Attacks against Muslims and Jews are way up from 5 years ago. Hate crimes are increasing. White Nationalists and Neo-Nazi’s are bolder and more public now. Immigrants and even ethnic people born in this country are more fearful than they had been. Human beings fleeing, in most cases, for their lives are separated from they children and held in cages along the southern boarder.

            I’m not talking about policy disagreements. In a democracy, there are always policy disagreements—it is a sign of the strength and health of the democracy. I’m talking about the violation of basis human rights—rights all of God’s children should expect in ‘the land of the free and the home of the brave’.

            Martha work is needed to correct all this—but Mary work is needed more. We need to sit with God and ponder God’s wisdom and wonder how things have gone wrong. Before Martha gets to work, Mary must drown out the rhetoric and the noise and ponder the will of God, seeking guidance for the work to be done to insure ALL PEOPLE a part of the Dream of this great and good land.

            So, let your Mary side ponder our plight so her wisdom can guide the work our Martha side has to do.     Amen.

Father's Day

Both Josh and Mimi called to wish me a happy one.

Josh put his phone on speaker so my Bradley-girl granddaughters could talk with me.

I have trouble hearing on speaker phone and when I told Bern she went into a long explanation about how I need to get hearing aids. It's not a conversation I enjoy and it went on too long.

We're actually going, next Friday and Saturday to see Mimi, Tim and Eleanor. I'm not sure how long it will take to get there and I have to get Sunday church and my sermon squared away before we go.

I think about my father this day.

He was a hero in many ways: landing on Omaha Beach on D-day, fighting across France to Germany with General Patton, caring for my mother and both their families and me.

But, he always doubted himself, wondering if he were good enough or smart enough or worthy enough.

He only finished 8th grade and my mother had a Master's Degree. So he felt deficient there. And mom's teaching made more money than working in his brother's store, or the little bar he ran after that (and left because he had to draw a gun on a drunk men), or his dry cleaning route, or his insurance business, which was his last job.

But he did well in insurance and I clearly remember the night my parents were doing their finances--I was out of high school and home from college--and my father said, with astonishment, "I made more money this month than you!" It was the first time ever.

I wish he hadn't doubted himself so much.

He was a kind and loving and protective father.

I miss him today.

Though my mother never met them, Dad know Mimi and Josh as children. In fact, I brought him to live with  us in New Haven when his dementia began. But he began to wander away and had to go to a home.

I miss him today.

Happy Father's Day to all you fathers and all those who think of your fathers today.

my family owned slaves

At least that is what my uncle Russel, my father's brother, told me as we were driving with my parents to Waiteville, WV, where my father's family comes from,

I was 12 or 13. My uncle said to my father, "Virgil, stop here", on the dirt road that went on for five miles or so to Waiiteville.

"Jimmy," he said to me, "up on that hill are the graves of the slaves your great-great-grandfather owned. There are eight graves there."

My great-great-grandfather's name was, like mine, James Gordon Bradley.

I didn't know how to process that information.

The first James Gordon Bradley had owned slaves. He lived before West Virginia split from Virginia and became part of the union.

I am still ashamed and horrified that the blood in my body once owned slaves.

All these protests touch me personally. I am part of the problem--my family owned slaves. I ponder that truth.

How can I repent for that?

What can I do to make up for that?

What penitence will absolve me?

I have no idea.

I wrestle with it in my soul.

Where can absolution come from?

That is why I am so completely and totally committed to the demands of the protest.

Finally finding 'equality' in this nation might lessen my guilt for the sins of my ancestors.

I pray it would.

And I pray we do all we can--all of us--to find a road to justice and equality in this nation of ours.

Join me in that prayer and in that movement. Please.



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