The worst thing

 (opinions here are mine and mine only)

Of all the things I resent about the lame-duck president's actions (only 40 days left--praise the Lord!) is his desire to carry out as many capital punishments as he can before he leaves office.

There are lots of other things I resent: stripping the pentagon and other agencies of experienced, career workers; the baseless lawsuits about the election that are shaking some people's faith in democracy; continuing to ignore the pandemic that is killing more people each day than died in 9/11; having covid spreading parties in the White House; threatening Republican officials who have agreed the election was fair and fraud-free; not co-operating fully with the Biden team preparing for the next administration; the list goes on and on.

 But the death penalty is the thing that angers me most.

Why does he want to kill people before leaving office? Some of whom committed the crimes they will die for decades ago.

I am pro-choice and anti-death penalty. Both abortion restricts and the death penalty deprive people of control of their bodies.

Some of my more conservative Christian brothers and sisters find that inconsistent.

But I stand by it.

Why kill people who don't deserve to die just because you lost the election?

Answer me that....

 

 

Night Prayer

 (We say this prayer at the end of every Cluster Council meeting. I believe it is from the New Zealand Prayer Book. Try it for yourself--it brings peace and hope close to hand.)

Night Prayer

 

Lord,

it is night.

 

The night is for stillness.

Let us be still in the presence of the Lord.

 

It is night after a long day.

What has been done has been done;

what has not been done has not been done;

let it be.

 

The night is dark.

Let our fears of the darkness of the world and of our own lives

rest in you. 

 

The night is quiet.

Let the quietness of your peace enfold us,

all dear to us,

and all who have no peace.

 

The night heralds the dawn.

Let us look expectantly to a new day,

new joys,

new possibilities.

 

In your name we pray.

Amen.

 

Every once in a while

(Every once in a while I reprint my first post. This is one of those times, just to let you know where I'm coming from in this blog.)

 

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.

 

 

 

USSC

 The Supreme Court today refused to hear (with no dissents) the last ditch effort of the current President to overcome the results of a fair, well-run, no problem election of Joe Biden.

It's really all over now.

With Republican governors in several swing states ignoring the current President's pleas to cancel a fair election, nothing else, I can see, can be done by the administration to cancel the will of the people.

Will the president attend the inauguration of Biden?

Probably not.

He should, but he probably won't.

There's even a scenario where he'll fly to Florida on the inauguration day to try to steal TV coverage from the new President.

Who know?

But this we know, on that day a new president will come into office and have to try to repair the damage this one has done and continues to do to the government of the U.S.

God help him--a lot to do in the midst of a pandemic the current president has ignored while calling 'fraud' about a fair election he lost.

And God help us.

We need it.

(all opinions here are mine and mine only)

 https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLdTebleamxYfCasoyjiXB9Y40J4IesPwU  (link to my youtube blog)

 

 

Rudy has Covid

 The president's personal lawyer, Rudy G. has Covid.

He's been crisscrossing the nation yelling out the bogus contention that the election was rigged, seldom wearing a mask, infecting who knows how many people.

The irony of this time is that Rudy and the President are obsessed with fake claims and seemingly dis-interested in the pandemic sweeping the nation!

Sen. Mitt Romney is one of the few Republicans willing to call the President into account, publicly declaring Biden President-elect and blaming the quarter million Covid dead on the President's ineptitude in dealing with the crisis.

When will more Republicans grow a backbone and state the obvious as Romney did?

(all opinions here are mine and mine alone)

 

 

I talked to my 'sister' today

She's not really my 'sister', she's my first cousin, Mejol. But she was the nearest I ever had to a 'sister', being an only child.

I usually call her once a week, down in Baltimore, just to hear her Appalachian accent and to share news.

But during the pandemic--I don't know about you--but the days just run together for me.

I wake up several times a week and have to take a long look at my memory of the day before to know what day it is!

I hadn't called her for several weeks--since every day is just like the last, and the one to come.

Bern even asked me about it--"When did you talk to Mejol?" And I realized it had been a long, confusing time.

So, I called her.

And it was magic.

We are both liberals--me further left than her--but we agree on most things political.

She's on our zoom church from time to time--being the only Episcopalian, besides me, in our large generation of cousins.

I love her so.

Her voice takes me home and soothes me.

I wish I could go see her in Baltimore, but in these strange times, I can't.

But just talking with her makes things brighter, less stressed, more joyful.

I thank her for that.

 

 

If you had told me....

 you had told me five years ago that we would reach a point in our Republic where the defeated President would be trying to overturn the valid election of his successor, I would have laughed at you.

 "Such things don't happen here," I would have said. "The peaceful transfer of power is a given in our democracy."

Lo and behold, you would have been right to tell me that!

It is an insult to our democracy and our republic that the defeated President is doing that very thing.

And it is a sad day for the Republican party my father was a proud member of all his days.

Republicans must grow a back-bone and stand up to the man who has had the Oval Office for four years and say, "Enough is enough! You lost, get over it!"

And all this before the 'pardons' he will be rolling out and the continued dismantlement of the national defense that he has begun.

"Enough is Enough!!!"

Get out of the White House NOW!

 (All thoughts and opinions here are mine and mine alone.)

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLdTebleamxYfCasoyjiXB9Y40J4IesPwU     (link to my youtube blog)