Something lovely for Easter

(I may have posted this before, but it deserves being re-read and is, in it's way, an Easter story of 'new life' and 'possibility".)

Maggie

        Most people call her Margaret but, over the years, I came to shorten it first to Maggie and then to 'Mags'. She is one of the true Wonders of the World—a lovely and dear woman with, as Tennessee Ernie Ford said of 'Big John', “one first or iron and the other of steel. If the right one don't get you then the left one will.” Energetic, overly scrupulous, bright and sometimes verging on 'perky', Mags can charm people out of remarkable donations to the Soup Kitchen she runs, make each volunteer feel like the most important person in Margaret's world or any other and stare down a 250 pound, drunk rowdy in two seconds flat. I've seen her do all that and more—much more. She is a marvel. If she didn't exist, the Greater Waterbury Interfaith Ministry would have to invent her—she's that vital to the serving of 300 people lunch each day and handing out shopping bags of food to another 200 a week.

        When Mags came, the whole thing was in doubt. The previous Soup Kitchen Coordinator was in jail. He had been arrested in Danbury—40 miles away or so—for beating up his girlfriend on the street. Then the Danbury police discovered he was selling whole chickens out of the back of the Soup Kitchen Van. He was a bad dude—came in, when he was out on parole—and confronted the Verger and me in the sanctuary of St. John's with his finger (I pray it was his finger!) in the pocket of his jacket and told me he knew where I lived. I never figured out why he thought it was me that had caused him to lose his job. Mostly it was assault and robbery that did that. I did go tell the police in the town where I lived and in Waterbury that I had been threatened. It's the only time I'd ever done that, though I had been threatened before. I just believed Amos more than I believed anyone else.

        (An aside: after Amos was sent to jail, two detectives from the Waterbury Police Department visited me. They told me that Amos, during the questioning, had told them I had tried to sexually proposition him.

        “What did he say I did?” I asked.

        The Italian detective, very embarrassed to be talking to a priest—even an Episcopal priest—about such a thing said, “he said he was in his van in the parking lot and you asked him for oral sex for money.”

        I thought for a moment about that. Then I asked, “did he say I wanted him to perform oral sex on me or that I wanted to pay him to let me perform oral sex on him?”

        The Irish detective—most all police detectives in Waterbury are Irish or Italian—turned a bright red and replied: “He said you wanted to perform oral sex on him....”

        I smiled. “Then it isn't true,” I said.

        One of them, Italian or Irish, said, “Father, this isn't a joking matter....” And I suddenly realized it wasn't, not at all. My problem is, most everything is initially a 'joking matter' until it isn't.)

        I helped interview the applicants for the Soup Kitchen job—someone who would rid us of the stench of Amos and put us on the right track of feeding people. Since the Soup Kitchen was at St. John's, I was obviously involved. We needed someone I could get along with.

        Certainly, I could get along with Mags. She was charming and witty and self-effacing and smart...most of the things I like in another person. But I knew something none of the others on the committee—smitten with her charm, wit and intellegence—I knew she could not be...not ever...supervised. This was a woman who was so at home in her own skin and so clever and charming that there would be no way to rein her in. She would do whatever the hell she wanted to do and either charm you into thinking it was your idea or back you down with force of will to agree.

        “Margret,” I told her in the interview, “I don't believe you can be supervised.”

        She objected with all her charm, with, self-effacement and guile.

        I held up my hand and stopped her. I knew she would do a remarkable job but simply would not, could not be supervised.

        “You know I'm right about that,” I said.

        She wrinkled her nose and smiled her remarkable smile and said, softly, “yes, you're right....”

        She was unanimously hired—I didn't vote, thinking that supervising her was the Director's problem, not mine. Little did I know that for most of the next decade I would mostly be the one who couldn't supervise her, that little wrinkled nose and smile would convince me a hundred times that she was right and I was wrong and she should do whatever she wanted to do.

        Unsupervisable. That for sure. And a marvel, a wonder, someone to write home about, the best—very best and more—person to do that job and do it just the way she wanted.

        Over the years, full of more drama than I need to tell you or you need to know, Mags went from being the Soup Kitchen Coordinator to being the Director of the whole agency and its over a quarter of a million dollar budget. She battled directors, refused to be supervised, did the right thing over and over until, having exhausted the Board and everyone around her—did I mention her 'energy', charm, commitment?--we finally just did the right thing, the thing she knew was right all along, and put her in charge of everything. Good for us, we did the right thing. (It was all Mag's idea all along....)

        It was with the guests that she shined most brightly. It was her idea to call them 'guests' rather than 'clients'--the social worker vernacular for people who came for services and food. Over the years, Mags developed a treasure trove of 'connections'--medical personnel, social workers, housing specialists, businesses and groups who brought in food and services just to see Mags smile at them and tell them they were the best, the very best. Most often she would tell them they were 'Awesome, simply awesome!' And through the alchemy of her enthusiasm they were turned from flesh and blood, full of uncertainties and self-doubt into, that's right, 'simply awesome' heroes. So people went out of their way and beyond what was expected to make sure Mags' 'guests' had flu shots, health tests, alcohol and drug counseling, job training, help with housing issues, legal advice, guest chefs (everyone from church youth groups to political figures) and respect from the larger society than they expected or perhaps deserved. Mags' people were loved by all, sometimes against their better judgment, because she loved them.

        An urban soup kitchen, open to everyone and anyone, is not always a calm and peaceful place. Sometimes, under other coordinators, it was not a safe place to be. Street people and the urban poor are just like every other group of people, which means some of them are rough and angry and violent. Before Mags, there were a couple of 911 calls a week for drunk and drugged up folks and for fights. Once she arrived it took only a while before the only 911 calls were when she was genuinely concerned about the health and welfare of a guest. It didn't hurt that she was married to a policeman and the beat cop for the Green area was her cousin. Nothing calms things down so quickly as having someone with a huge gun and a stick you could destroy a skull with hanging around. Behavior and temperaments improve greatly when cops are around. But mostly it was Mags. She is short and petite and has long blond hair and dresses very well. She is usually soft spoken and a bit shy. But more than once I've seen her step between to brutes about the throttle each other and, waving her arms, say something like, “Beautiful people, this can't happen at our lovely Soup Kitchen....”

        It's not just 'music' that soothes the savage beast—Mags could do that too.

        She also had just the right touch with volunteers. I heard someone describe the volunteers as 'do-gooders and criminals'. Which was accurate since roughly half the people who worked for her were doing court ordered community service. They never wanted to be there but she would somehow cajole and persuade and baffle them into working hard and halfway enjoying it. Something about her appealed to everyone's better angel. And in all that, she didn't suffer fools lightly.

        Over time I came to refer more and more of the people who 'dropped in' to ask for help from the church to Mags. First of all, she was usually better able to actually 'help' them than I was. Secondly, she had an unerring bull-sh*t detector and could ferret out those who were pulling a con in a few sentences. She actually would take me to task when I gave people money without asking her. She would shake her blond head and 'tisk' and tell me I just threw that money into the Naugatuck River.

       

 

 

convincing people to contribute

the Christmas parties and care for children

how calm it became—cops involved

her commitment, her love

 

Matt Gatz

It couldn't happen to a better person....

Matt Gatz, who has had only two people in his own party stand up for him--Jim Jordan (who has his own sexual background to deal with) and Marjorie Taylor Green (Miss Q-Anon).

Matt is accused of sex with a minor an several drug and money charges. The investigation continues.

It couldn't have happened...well, I said that already.

I can't wait to say good-bye to him in the House.

 

Some Wisdom

I have a whole box of index cards with quotes on them from the Mastery Foundation. From time to time, I like to share some of them here.

 

"It is now the answer that enlightens, but the question."--Eugene Ionesco

 

"If you want to build a ship, don't drum up the men to gather wood, divide the tasks and give orders. Instead, teach them to yearn for the vast and endless sea."--Antoine de Saint--Exupery

 

"If you try to take a cat apart to see how it works, the first thing you have on your hands is a nonworking cat."--Douglas Adams

 

"To me, every hour of the day and night is an unspeakably perfect miracle."--Walt Whitman

 

"Always remember that you are absolutely unique. Just like everyone else.--Margaret Mead

 

"Let me fall if I must. The one I become will catch me."--Baal Shem Tov

 

"Speech is our second possession, after the soul--and perhaps we have no other possessions in the world."--Gabriela Mistral

 

"The best way to predict the future is to invent it."--Alan Kay

 

"Every day people are staying away from the church and going back to God."--Lenny Bruce

 

"We never become spiritual by sitting down and wishing to become so. You must undertake something so great that you cannot accomplish it unaided."--Phillips Brooks

 

HAPPY PONDERING ALL THAT!

 

 

I haven't said much

I haven't written much about national events since you know who (who will not be named here) left the Oval Office.

Biden/Harris have been like Spring coming after four years of Winter of lies and denials of lying. 

But the trial of former police officer Chauvin has changed that.

I would not have been allowed on the jury since I sincerely believe he is guilty.

The trial so far has pointed that out. Eye-witnesses breaking down in tears on the stand, video never seen before, astonishing evidence of Chauvin being unconcerned about what he did.

This trial will be a turning point--in one way or another--in our nation's history--either we will hold the police accountable or we won't.

The defense lawyer's claim about George Floyd passing a fake $20 bill is stupid. I tried to pay for wine one day and the clerk told me the $20 bill I gave her was false. She took it, but didn't call the police and I used my credit card to pay.

Who knows where that bill came from--not me and maybe not George Floyd.

Seriously, this trial will determine how 'race' in this country matters right now.

 

April cometh

 Tomorrow is the last day of March.

April cometh.

April is full of things--Bern's birthday is the 2nd and mine is the 17th.

And Easter. I'll be celebrating and preaching at Trinity, Milton at an 'in person' service in-doors.

Coffee hour will be under a tent outside the church.

We will have Mimi, Tim and Eleanor along with Jack, Sherry and Robby and John for Easter dinner. All but two of us will be fully vaccinated or had the first shot. We may eat outside if the weather permits.

And Spring is edging in, too slowly for me, but edging in none the less.

Not 'normal' by any means, but edging slowly toward 'normal'.

Even if you've got the vaccine, wear a mask, social distance, wash and wash your hands.

Happy April!

Glorious Easter!!!

A long time ago

 (This is something I wrote when my twin granddaughters--now almost 15--were still babies. Mimi wasn't married yet and Tegan and Eleanor weren't born. I don't think I've posted it before. If I have, forgive me.)

May 5 and 6

                   VISITING THE TWINS AND THE KIDS

 

          Even though I’ve lived in Connecticut since 1980, I am incapable of driving to New York City and back without getting horribly lost. The problem is the Long Island Expressway (I-495). On the way down, knowing I have to find the BQE (Brooklyn-Queens Expressway) I am always semi-convinced that getting on the LIE would take me out to some village on that accurately named “long” island rather than to Lafayette Street in Brooklyn. So I take some exit or another after the Whitestone Bridge that leads me far astray. Often I end up at JFK airport, but this time I ended up on the Jackie Robinson Parkway (cars only) which promised I’d end up in Brooklyn, just like Jackie did to play for the Dodgers. God bless him.

          But the part of Brooklyn I ended up in was not a part of Brooklyn I’ve ever seen. (Don’t get me wrong, there’s lots of Brooklyn I’ve never seen—and this was part of that.) I drove like a fool, thinking I’d see something familiar, which I finally did—Atlantic Avenue. Atlantic Avenue is the subway stop I get off to be near where Mimi and Josh and Cathy all live, so that looked promising. Surely I’d see something familiar, something I could relate to, some landmark that would guide me to Lafayette Street and Josh and Cathy’s condo. And it did, once I stopped at a Mobil station and asked a gentleman from the Indian sub-continent which way I needed to go on Atlantic Avenue to find the Brooklyn Bridge. (I despaired in asking him if he knew the way to Lafayette Street) and was told in that lilting accent that I was going, oh, in the exactly wrong way. The whole mess added an hour to the trip, but I arrived, feeling buoyant and brilliant at having made my way through all those missed turns to my destination. I am, after all, a remarkably optimistic person.

          Skipping what happened between then and going back to Connecticut (all of which is the point to this and will come shortly) the trip back ended up in even a greater misadventure of lost-ness. Again, alas, it was the LIE that messed me up. I think it is telling that the initials for the Long Island Expressway spell “lie” in English. I knew I had to take it, but when faced with the choice between ‘eastern Long Island’ and ‘Mid-town Tunnel” I chose the latter and wrong option. So through the Mid-town Tunnel we went and then we took the FDR (is every road in New York reduced to initials?) in the wrong direction, turned around, took it north and then the Tri-boro Bridge to the Bronx and, eventually, New England. Another hour, at least, since a bike ride for breast cancer slowed us down considerably, of my life spent driving on the wrong roads in New York City. It’s why I always want to take the train. But my wife, who is the only person in the Western Hemisphere who can get more lost than me in New York, likes driving since it gives us so much more freedom and saves so much time. Yeah, right!

          Going home she was a good soldier and didn’t abuse me much at all for being such a klutz and almost getting us killed by a New York City bus when I took a sharp right and missed seeing the red light. Thank God for good brakes. And all the way home she kept pointing out cars to me—since I have to get a new car soon, really soon—and asking me how I liked ‘that one’ or ‘this one’. We were driving her Mazda truck, bright red and the survivor of two recent accidents, because my 1995 Volvo has over 300,000 miles on it. My son calls it “the Death Trap” because it is and my daughter calls it “the helicopter’ because it is that loud due to a long past saving muffler. I would as soon drive it into the jaws of Hell as try to go to Brooklyn in it. The number of things that could go wrong on such a trip are mind-numbing. So I need a new car, desperately.

           I also need a new computer. I lost 12 pages of breathless prose about the sacraments two days ago for reasons I cannot, for the life of me, understand or correct. I had to try to recreate them and then print them out lest I lose them again. My printer is out of black ink now and these words I’m writing may never see the light of day unless I save them to a floppy disc, which doesn’t always work on my computer. So I need a new computer, desperately. A computer and a car is what I need and I don’t feel up to the pressure of the process to obtain either. When I think about buying a car or a computer, I feel the way I feel driving around New York City, thinking I know where I’m going and not knowing at all….

 

          That’s the first metaphor I want to address here—the experience of thinking you know where you’re going and not knowing at all. That defines, in large measure, my experience as a priest of the church. I almost always ‘think’ I know what I’m doing and in the end—just as I’m paying the toll for the mid-town tunnel I never intended to enter—I realize how wrong I was, how misguided, how lost. It’s not always a bad thing, by the way—this being lost phenomena, this not-knowing-what-you’re-doing experience. Often, I’ve found a soft landing after the big, long, terrifying fall. Often, it seems to me, flying by the seat of your pants without even looking at the information available on the control panel ends up in a good place. But sometimes not.

          The second metaphor that struck me in my trip to Brooklyn to see my daughter and my son and my daughter-in-law and my remarkably gifted grand-babies is this: How Different The World Would Be If We Always Talked To Each Other The Way We Always Talk To Babies.

          Whenever I see Morgan and Emma (my twin Asian-Anglo grand-daughters) I am struck by the fact that though they are twins (fraternal, since they don’t look at all alike except they both look like my two children) they are so distinct and different and perfectly ‘whole’ though not being at all alike. They keep switching roles, for example. A month ago, at Easter, when they were at our home, Morgan was more out-going and engaging than Emma. Emma would tear up when someone besides her parents held her. Morgan would laugh at anyone. And, on this visit, Morgan had become a “Mommy’s girl” in a big way. She was constantly looking for Cathy and anxious at some level if her mom wasn’t holding her or playing with her. Emma, on the other hand, seemed delighted at the attention of an old, bearded man like me. She would ‘flirt’ with me across the room and play with me almost indefinitely, constantly engaged with my voice and the way I made faces at her and the sounds we shared.

          But that’s not my point. My point is this: adults take on a ‘way of being’ with babies that is drastically, even diametrically opposed, to the ‘way of being’ they have with other adults. The metaphor I want to suggest is this: why don’t we continue to relate to each other the way we relate to babies?

          Imagine this for a moment: the waiter/waitress at the over-priced restaurant you’re eating at comes to your table and says, in a high pitched, excited voice…”Hey you! How are you! You are soooo cute! You’re soooo adorable!” And all the while, s/he is making these exaggerated faces and making noises with his/her lips that sound like “Brrrrrr” and singing silly songs that he/she thinks you will enjoy.

          And what if the car salesperson or computer salesperson stuck out his/her tongue and tickled your chin and said, “I just bet you want the best deal you can find on this car/computer. You are so cute and smart I could just eat you up….Come on, let’s go find just what you want….” And what if the Secretary of State said to the President of Iran, “look at your cheeks! They are so adorable! Let me pick you up and hold you and give you sugar….” And what if the Pope said to the Archbishop of Canterbury: “Oh, you little dumpling, you….Whoo-weee….You want to have some bread and wine with me? That’s just what we both need, come on over here, you sweetie!” And the Archbishop answered: “Look at those precious shoes you have on, you little Pontiff, you…and you’re such a Big, Important Pope…I just love you so….”

          When do we forget that we were all babies—cute, lovable, outlandishly wonderful and perfect the way we are? Walking around Brooklyn with those two cute, lovable, outlandishly beautiful and perfect just-the-way-they are twins, I was amazed how people who might otherwise be stand-offish or wrapped in their own limits or even aggressive and unfriendly just melted when we passed by. Street corner toughs found smiles beneath their fierce demeanors. Bag ladies asked what the babies’ names were and found a way out of their protective shells. Business men in suits with their cell phones to their ears making ‘big deals’ stopped walking and grinned and said ‘hello’ to the babies, if not to us. Teens wired into I-pods, trying to ignore the world about them, would stop dead in their tracks, take out their ear-plugs and come over to “ooo” and “ah”. No one, it seems to me, can be so heart-hardened or distracted or frightened that they don’t simply dissolve into who they were meant to be when confronted with two 7 ½ month old babies in a double stroller. And they didn’t just give nodding attention—they noticed Emma and Morgan didn’t look exactly alike. They paid attention to the details of these two small creatures.

          And I was aware, walking around that part of Brooklyn, over to the park and back, that people were reacting to all the babies—and there were a plethora of babies…all the world, or at least all of that part of Brooklyn, has enough faith in the future to reproduce with abandon. And, beyond the baby thing, I noticed how people reacted to the thousand and one dogs—probably more dogs than babies—that were out walking on a perfectly beautiful May Saturday in that part of a borough of New York. People love dogs and babies—it’s simply True (I suspend my disbelief in Truth for this particular phenomena)—and they revert to a part of them that is pre-Industrial Revolution, pre-French Revolution, pre-almost anything except what it means at the most deep down, most marrow of the bone, most essence of DNA meaning of being a human being.

          What if—just ‘what if’—the church reverted to that level of acceptance and treated every human being as if they were a baby or a puppy? How profoundly would that shift the nature and ‘being’ of the church as an irrelevant institution?

          I’d like to take it Global and imagine world leaders treating each other as if all of them were babies or puppies. But that’s beyond my grasp and purpose—I should stay with the church. But this I know and know fair well, if the church would go back to her roots and think about everyone—I mean that literally, “everyone”—as a child of God, there would be a major shift, rearrangement, incredible ‘altering of the occurring’ for how people experienced the church’s being and purpose and gospel.

 

          Add to that the relief the church would find in going back to my first metaphor. What if the church openly and publicly admitted it couldn’t tell its ass from its elbow, couldn’t find its way from Brooklyn to Cheshire without being confounded by I-495, didn’t know the “Truth” from a tea cup, was as lost and confused and confounded as everyone on the planet? Wouldn’t that make a difference and matter in a surprising and powerful way? Wouldn’t that convince people, with a knowing and wry smile, that the church might have some fucking idea or two about what it meant to be a human being searching for the right exit, driving too fast and missing the turn-off, lost and frightened as we all are?

          I was holding Emma and talking to her when nobody else was around. I said: “you are beautiful and perfect just the way you are.” And she shrieked and smiled and grabbed my nose. “And I have no idea,” I said to her in a voice I would normally only use for a baby or a puppy, “what life has in store for you.” She laughed and made a perfect ‘O’ with her sweet, perfect mouth and  reached for my glasses. “But this I know, O Emma,” I was singing now in a tune I half remembered and half made up, “you are the best girl, the perfect girl, the girl we have all been waiting for….”

 

          That is true of every person on the planet. Really. So, what if the church believed that and proclaimed it?

 

Palm Sunday

(When is the last Palm Sunday I didn't to to church? I have no idea. So here's a Palm Sunday sermon from a few years ago.)

PALM SUNDAY 2017

 

 

          We make it to be much more of a spectacle than it most likely was.

          For us, nearly 2000 years later, Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem is a time of triumph and celebration. Yet, at the time, it was a parade most likely hardly noticed.

          It certainly wasn’t like the kind of parades we know—nothing like the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, or local 4^th of July parades, or the parades last month for St. Patrick. It was most likely a tiny band of marchers—made up of those disciples who had been following him for months or years and the people who lived outside the city walls who had heard of this strange, charismatic teacher from Galilee.

          Most of the people weren’t expecting him and most of the populace of Jerusalem never saw the procession of palms and cloaks and the country rabbi on a colt or a donkey—we’re not even sure which. No dignitaries came to greet him—none of the Pharisees or Saducees or occupying Romans. In fact, the whole thing was probably over so quickly that even if people inside the city walls heard of the rag-tag parade, they wouldn’t have had time to rush to the Gate of the City he entered to see him.

          We don’t even know which of the Gates of the walled city he entered. The Jerusalem that Jesus knew is buried under a half-dozen destructions and rebuildings now. Jerusalem’s gates in the 1^st century are not the ones in today’s city walls.

          Most likely, since he was coming from Bethany, he came up from the Kiddron Valley to whatever gate was on the south side of the city. But we don’t know.

          All we know about the event is what we have in the gospel stories—and even they are not consistent.

 

          So, why is Palm Sunday such an important day in our lives as Christians?

           Maybe it is important, not because what happened as Jesus approached the city of Jerusalem—which direction he came from, which gate he entered, how many people greeted him as the Messiah with Palms and Alleluias. Maybe Palm Sunday is important because of what happened after he got there.

          The rest of the week—even the rest of this service—is not so full of bravado and joy and excitement as the story of the procession. Things go sour right away—and five short days from now, seemingly all of Jerusalem is calling for Jesus’ death. Even his closest friends deny him and go into hiding.

          It is not what happens “outside” the gate of the Holy City that we need to begin to consider, but what happens “inside” the city walls.

          The Palm Sunday account actually leaves us still outside Jerusalem.

          Perhaps the question we need to ask is not “will we welcome Jesus to the City?" Perhaps the question we need to ask is this: ‘WILL WE GO WITH HIM INTO JERUSALEM AND STAY WITH HIM OVER THE NEXT WEEK?’

 

          For me, I guarantee you, the answer to that is not the answer I wish, in my weakness and fear and brokenness, that I could give. My answer falls far short of the one I long to give….

          “YES, LORD,” I long to proclaim, “I’M WITH YOU TO THE END!”

          And I know better. I too will betray and abandon and hide in fear. My answer falls far short.

          But at least I’m asking the right question….