Lightening bugs

(this is a post I wanted to share again since I've been watching lightening bugs the last few nights)

Wednesday, June 29, 2011

Yes, Virginia, there are lightening bugs in Connecticut

I've just been watching Lightening Bugs--fire flies--in our neighbor's yard. So I decided to reprise the fourth most viewed post of mine ever.

They are blinking, blinking, blinking.





They're out there tonight--the fireflies--in the mulberry tree just beyond our fence where the groundhogs come in the late summer to eat mulberries that have fermented and make them drunk. A drunk groundhog is a wonder to behold!

And the lightening bugs are in our yard as well. I sat and watched them blink for 20 minutes tonight.

My dear friend, Harriet, wrote me an email about lightening bugs after my blog about them. If I'm more adroit at technology than I think I am, I'm going to put that email here.

Jim, I just read your blog and have my own firefly story. Before we   went to Maine,
before 6/20, one of those nights of powerful   thunderstorms, I was awakened at 10PM
and then again at 2AM by flashes   of lightning followed by cracks of thunder - the
 kind that make me   shoot out of bed - and pounding rain. And then at 4:30AM there
was   just lightning, silent. The silence and light was profound. I kept   waiting
for sound. I couldn't quite believe in heat lightning in June,   so I got out of bed
and looked out the window. There I could see the   sky, filled with silent lightning
 bursts. And under it, our meadow,   filled with lightning bugs (as we call them) or
 fireflies, flashing in   response. I've never seen anything like it. I can't remember
 the last   time I saw a lightning bug. And then your blog. Is this, too, part of
 global warming? Are you and   I being transported back to the warmer climes of
 our youth, West   Virginia and Texas? Well, if it means lightning bugs, the future
 won't   be all bad.
I did do it, by gum....

So the lightening bugs are blinking, as we are, you and I.

Blinking and flashing and living. You and I.

Here's the thing, I've been thinking about a poem I wrote 4 years
ago or so. I used to leave St. John's and go visit folks in the hospital or nursing home or their own home
on my way to my home. Somehow the blinking of the fireflies has reminded me of that. So, I'll try, once more
to be more media savvy than I think I am and share it with you.
 

I DRIVE HOME

I drive home through pain, through suffering,

through death itself.

I drive home through Cat-scans and blood tests

and X-rays and Pet-scans (whatever they are)

and through consultations of surgeons and oncologists

and even more exotic flora with medical degrees.

I drive home through hospitals and houses

and the wondrous work of hospice nurses

and the confusion of dozens more educated than me.

Dressed in green scrubs and Transfiguration white coats,

they discuss the life or death of people I love.

And they hate, more than anything, to lose the hand

to the greatest Poker Player ever, the one with all the chips.

And, here’s the joke, they always lose in the end—

the River Card turns it all bad and Death wins.

So, while they consult and add artificial poison

to the Poison of Death—shots and pills and IV’s

of poison—I drive home and stop in vacant rooms

and wondrous houses full of memories

and dispense my meager, medieval medicine

of bread and wine and oil.

Sometimes I think…sometimes I think…

I should not drive home at all

since I stop in hospitals and houses to bring my pitiful offering

to those one step, one banana peel beneath their foot,

from meeting the Lover of Souls.

I do not hate Death. I hate dying, but not Death.

But it is often too much for me, stopping on the way home

to press the wafer into their quaking hands;

to lift the tiny, pewter cup of bad port wine to their trembling lips;

and to smear their foreheads with fragrant oil

while mumbling much rehearsed words and wishing them

whole and well and eternal.

I believe in God only around the edges.

But when I drive home, visiting the dying,

I’m the best they’ll get of all that.

And when they hold my hand with tears in their eyes

and thank me so profoundly, so solemnly, with such sweet terror

in their voices, then I know.

Driving home and stopping there is what I’m meant to do.

A little bread, a little wine and some sweet smelling oil

may be—if not enough—just what was missing.

I’m driving home, driving home, stopping to touch the hand of Death.

Perhaps that is all I can do.

I tell myself that, driving home, blinded by pain and tears,

having been with Holy Ones.

8/2007 jgb

Someone once told me, "We're all dying, you know. It's just a matter of timing...."

Fireflies, more the pity, live only a fraction of a second to the time that we humans live. They will be gone from the mulberry tree and my back yard in a few weeks, never to be seen again. But the years and years we live are, in a profound way, only a few blinks, a few flares, a few flashes in the economy of the universe. We should live them well and appreciate each moment. Really.

One of the unexpected blessings of having been a priest for so long is the moments, the flashes, I've gotten to spend with 'the holy ones', those about to pass on from this life.

Hey, if you woke up this morning you're ahead of a lot of folks. Don't waste the moment.

(I told Harriet and she agreed, that we would have been blessed beyond measure to have walked down in that meadow while the silent lightening lit the sky to be with the fire-flies, to have them hover around us, light on our arms, in our hair, on our clothes, be one with them....flashing, blinking, sharing their flares of light. Magic.)

(What isn't here is one of my worst memories from childhood--catching fireflies and putting them in a jar and letting them die.

I regret that more than most anything I've ever done.

My own fault, my most grievous fault. I am profoundly sorry for doing that.)

 

Bridget to the Vet

Not a good day for our dog, Bridget.

She went to the Vet.

Dr. Matz is a great Vet. She is gentle and kind and wonderful.

But Bridget was having none of it.

The assistant who weighed her and took her temp gave her lots of treats she wouldn't eat until the assistant left the room! Then she ate them.

Dr. Matz is very thorough, so she is seldom punctual.

We waited in an exam room for half-an-hour for her.

Bridget would whine and move around.

And eat left over treats.

She got three shots and they took blood.

When they raised the exam table, Bridget laid down on it and the assistant had to hold all her 62 pounds up so the Vet could examine her.

She was glad to get out of there, but held it against us for an hour or so.

But bites of our dinner seemed to make all things right again!

 

Yesterday

 Yesterday was my daughter's birthday.

She is so wondrous and she and Tim have given us a wondrous grand-daughter in Eleanor, who will be 5 next month.

Mimi's name is Jeremy Johanna Bradley.

But when she was a baby she was a screamer.

Our son, Josh, three at the time, would sing to her: "Jeremy, Mimi, Mimi, Mimi...."

It stuck.

I love her so, so much.

I wish I could have hugged her yesterday.

But maybe later next month.

What a wonder she is.

Our Mimi.

Take a deep breath

 It has been a rough 18 months.

Covid is not over and won't be until 80% or so are vaccinated.

But we are in a lull. 

Lulls are good.

It gives us a chance to take a deep breath and, recognizing all we have missed out on, realize we have things we can do now.

All our friends and children and grand-children (except Eleanor who is five) have been vaccinated.

We are able to be together outside and inside if necessary and celebrate being together.

If you have any friends who are not vaccinated, hold a gun to their head and make the get the shots.

But things are better than they were.

We're using a common cup for communion at Trinity, Milton for all who are vaccinated.

Some things are back to normal.

NOT ALL, remember that, but 'some'.

Another sermon

This was July 30, 2006. Just ran across it looking for my sermon for this week.

 

          So, here, in the middle of summer—a time of relaxation and recreation—we are confronted with two powerful, unavoidable images.

 

          Elijah is taken away in the whirlwind, in a chariot of fire pulled by horses of fire.

          And Jesus walks on the water.

 

          You’d think God would leave us be for a while…let us rest and “kick back”. Instead we have whirlwinds and water-walking.

 

          So, what are we to make of this? How are we to lean into the flaming chariot and the water walking? What does it mean to me and you?

 

          God calls us to miraculous moments—events and experiences outside the realm of reason. God calls us to see the chariot and to watch Jesus cross the sea on foot. God calls us to be MORE THAN WE CAN BE….

 

          The disciples had been there for the feeding. They had seen the 5000 full and more on five loaves and two dried fish. They had gathered the remains themselves—7 baskets full some of the accounts tell us, or 12 baskets full in other tellings of the tale.

          They had seen all that and Jesus had sent them ahead while he went up into the lonely places to pray. So, off they went in their little boat to cross the Sea of Galilee.

          That Sea (no more than a large lake, really) is in a strange place. The wet eastern winds off the Mediterranean collide with the Golan Heights on the East side of Galilee and are bounced back to the heat and low pressure around the sea. Sudden and rough storms result.

          That’s what happened to the disciples. Jesus saw it all from the western shore. They were rowing against the wind and waves.

          So he decided to walk.

          As he was passing them by, leaving them to their own resources, they saw him and cried out in fear, already anxious about the sea. They thought it was a ghost and they were terrified.

          Jesus heard their cries and came to them, walking on the sea. He entered the boat and the storm ceased and they were all astonished.

 

          It’s all about “seeing God” around us, when the seas are rough.

          It’s all about calling out to God, even if what we call is wrong.

          It’s all about knowing God will be with us, no matter how fearful or anxious we are.

          I talked about this at a nursing home when I was doing the eucharist last week. And all those people—many in wheel chairs, some in the last stages of life, all of them cut off from what you and I think of as “normal”….all those people nodded and understood.

          More than we do, I would imagine. More than we understand.

 

          The sea is so big and our boat is so small.

          Storms come rolling up when least expected.

          Life is hard and confusing and painful and confounding.

          In the storm tossed darkness we often see ghosts.

           And we almost never “truly understand”.

 

Mark is telling us all that is alright, all that is as it simply is.

But Mark is telling us more—much more than that.

No matter what—Jesus is near; no matter what—God is close; no matter what—we are not along; no matter what—help is on the way.

Just that. That and nothing else.

It is all we can understand and all we need to know….

 

My sermon for Sunday

 (I hardly ever have a sermon by Wednesday. If you go to Trinity, Milton, don't read this.)

JULY 25

          I had an assistant Rector once at St. John’s in Waterbury, Mary Ann Logue, older than me, back then, and a dear friend, who preached one Sunday on the feeding of the 5000.

          Her message was that people who had brought food with them to the deserted place were so moved by Jesus’ effort to feed them all with five loaves and two fish that they brought out their food and shared it so that there were 12 baskets full of food left over.

          I couldn’t wait to ask her, after the service, where she got that idea.

          “From Biblical scholars,” Mary Ann told me.

          Well, what was I to do?

          Argue with Biblical scholars?

          But that’s what I’m going to do today—argue with that point of view.

          I want the Feeding of the 5000 to be a miracle caused by God.

          I want the five loaves and two fish to be all the food there was.

          I want Jesus’ ‘thanks’ for the loaves and fishes to have inspired God to multiply them many, many times so that they could feed everyone and have an abundance left over.

          John’s gospel today is about ‘abundance’ and it is good news we need so very much to hear—not just this day, but every day of our lives.

          We live in a time of great ‘scarcity’.

          “There is NOT ENOUGH” everywhere around us.

          There is ‘not enough’ food for people all around the world.

          In our own country, there is ‘not enough’ wages or government support so that millions are below the poverty line.

          There is ‘not enough’ health care and mental health support to keep everyone healthy in body and mind.

          There is ‘not enough’ compassion from those who ‘HAVE’ to reach out and share with those who ‘HAVE NOT’. Two billionaires, you know their names, are building rocket ships to take them and other rich people into space, when that money could do so much good for those in need in our country and around the world.

          There is ‘not enough’ equal educational opportunities for all of our children to be given the education they need to succeed in this country.

          There is “not enough” commitment from many in our country to make sensible rules about guns to cut down on the epidemic of gun violence killing and maiming our fellow citizens.

          With so much ‘scarcity’ around and through us, why do I want to talk about ‘abundance’?

          Talking about ‘abundance’ in a time of such ‘scarcity’ seems out of touch with reality.

          But I’m talking about God.

          Talk about being out of touch with reality!

          God is beyond our reality.

          God is capable of miracles.

          Our God is the God of Abundance—feeding 5000 with five loaves and two fish.

          But I’m not letting US off the hook.

          Where are the five loaves and two fish we can share like that young boy?

          Maybe Mary Ann Logue and the Biblical scholars were right about that—God’s ‘abundance’ comes from our ‘sharing’.

          Five loaves and two fish each—that’s all we’re asked to give. And if we give it, God will make it ‘abundant’.

          Just five loaves and to fish. That’s all. And it may just be enough.

          If we give out of the abundance God has given us, God’s ‘abundance’ will multiply our sharing over and over and over again.

          Just like that.

          Just like that.

          Share into God’s abundance.

Amen and Shalom

 

         

I went to Milton today

I went to Milton today and met with a couple of parishioners.

Next week, and every week after that, I'll go on Wednesday to lead a Bible study group over brought from home lunch and talk with people afterwards.

I'm going to do a study called "Reading the Gospels Side-by-side", which I've done at OLLI at U. Conn./Waterbury several times.

It is challenging since it brings into question what people 'think' about the gospels.

I look forward to it.

They, as far as I've been able to tell, will be up for it.

We'll see.

There is smoke high up in the air from the forest fires on the West Coast. We really are all in the same world.

I'm beginning to look forward to vacation in late August.

I don't look forward to the drive, though we did it many times when we were younger.

But the time on the beach on Oak Island is worth that.

We are going to have serious work done on our house this summer and fall--the foundation needs work, Bern wants two bathrooms gutted, the upstairs and dining room painted, the carpet upstairs pulled up and Lord knows what done and a new deck.

Luckily we have wonderful credit and can get a loan and have a healthy savings account to dip into.

I'm hoping the carpet and painting can be done while we're in North Carolina because that would be a real disruption.

We'll see.

Bern and I aren't on the same page about some of it--but most of it.