It's time again

...to share my first post again so you'll know where this blog comes from.

Sunday, March 8, 2009

My first post

Sitting under the Castor Oil Tree (March 7, 2009)

The character in the Bible I have always been drawn to is 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 called "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.

 

 

Some quotes to ponder...

 "Daring ideas are like chessmen moved forward;/They may be beaten,/ but they may start a winning game."  --Goethe

"Happiness,/ Not in another place.../ Nor for another hour,/ But this hour."    --Walt Whitman

"Ever tried.

Ever failed

No matter.

Try again.

Fail again.

Fail better."   --Samuel Beckett

"Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover."    --Mark Twain

"There is no need for temples, no need for complicated philosophies, my brain and my heart are my temples; my philosophy is kindness."

                                                            --Dalai Lama

"Strive for that greatness of spirit that measures life not by it disappointments but by its possibilities."  --W.E.B. Du Bois

"A word ought to be tested before it is spoken." --St. Ambrose

"The only way to get it together is together."  --Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi

"It takes a life to realize what life is all about. And life is all about this moment."  --John Wallowitch

"Love is not an emotion. It is a policy."  --Hugh Bishop

(Thanks to the Mastery Foundation for my box of quotes. Shalom. Jim)

Broken-hearted

The Yankees lost last night. Their season is over. I'm not even going to say, "wait 'til next year!"

I've been a Yankee fan all my life.

When my father was in NYC ready to ship out to Europe for WW II, someone gave him tickets to a World Series Game--Yankees and Dodgers (still in Brooklyn).

He and his friends went to the game and he decided whoever won would be his 'team'. Not many to choose from in Southern WV! The Reds, I guess, or what was then the Washington Nationals.

Needless to say, the Yankees won and my dad infected me with Yankee love.

When I was a kid they were head and shoulders over everyone but the affor-mentioned Dodgers.

The sports reporter on Channel 6 in Bluefield (one of only three channels we got) would start his report by saying, "Let's see who the Yankees clobbered."

Nothing like that time for Yankee fans.

But I hoped against hope for this year.

Heart-broken again.

 

 

 

 

How I've changed

I haven't been nearly as controversial on my blog since "he who will not be named" left office.

So, I'm ready for a rant!

Joe Manchin is an A-hole!

He's from my home state of WV and has a D. after his name, but he's not a Democrat with a capital D--his is a small d for dumb-a**.

From one of the poorest states in the country, he is blocking the passage of the Build Back Better bill that would provide West Virginians with more help than most states.

But at least he's said what he wants: to cut the price tag from 3.5 trillion over ten years to more like a single trillion.

Arizona's Kyrsten Sinema, democrat in name only is joining him but she won't say what she wants!!!

These two so-called Democrats could undo the whole Biden agenda and hurt many millions of people around the nation.

(Course Manchin gets lots of coal money and Sinema lots of pharmacy $--both of which would be affected by the environmental and drug pricing parts of the bill!!!)

What Idiots!

And that's the polite word....

 

 

 

Why?

Why do baseball players spit so much?

I've been watching baseball on TV for a week now.

The season is too long and games are too long and, let's face it, compared to football and basketball and even tennis, baseball is boring.

But I've been watching because my Yankees might make the wild-card game.

And I've noticed, not for the first time, how much baseball players spit.

If they were chewing tobacco, as many used to, it would make some sense. I chewed tobacco in my teen years and loved it. My teeth didn't.

But they're blowing bubbles from bubble gum, or eating nuts, but they spit all the time.

Basketball players never spit.

Nor to tennis players.

Football players might but their helmets keep you from knowing.

But baseball players--spit, spit and spit some more.

How come?

I just can't figure it out.

Spit, spit, spit.

Why?

Let me know if you know.

 

Sunday's sermon

 

Sunday, 10-3-2021

       A preacher should know who their speaking to.

       I think I know you well enough now to imagine that today’s gospel is somewhat unsettling to many of you.

       Mark’s Jesus is straight forward in his condemnation of divorce.

       Some Christian churches still do not recognize civil divorce, including the largest Christian denomination in the world—the Roman Catholic church.

       (But, as a Catholic, if you ‘know someone’ high enough up or are willing to pay for the service, the Church will provide you with a Papal ‘annulment’ so you may leave your spouse behind and remarry! That seems a tad ‘two-faced’ to me….)

       The Episcopal Church recognizes divorce and re-marriage. It would be ironic if the church, having come from the Church of England which came into being in 1550, breaking from the Roman church so King Henry VIII could divorce his wife Catherine and marry Ann Boleyn, would not have a more open view of divorce and remarriage!

       The re-marriage of a divorced person must come as a request from a parish priest to the Bishop of the Diocese, who makes the final decision.

       I must tell you, in nearly 40 years as a priest, I have never had that request turned down. (However, as some of you know, the most recent marriage I did, permission did not come until the eve of the wedding day!)

       Would I have done it anyway? Most likely I would have and let the Bishop’s ire come on my head.

       In Jesus’ time, women were considered ‘property’ by Jewish law. ‘Property of their father from birth and ‘property’ of their husband after marriage.

       You notice when the Pharisees come to Jesus, they ask, “Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife?” No mention of a woman divorcing her husband since, as Jesus gets out of them when he asks what Moses said, they answer: “Moses allowed a man to write a certificate of dismissal and to divorce her.”

       For his time, Jesus was a great defender of women. We see it over and again.

       But in the gospels, men were described by where they came from: Saul of Tarsus, Jesus of Nazareth, like that.

       But women were described as related to their husbands or their sons: Mary, wife of Joseph or mother of Jesus—in John’s Gospel, on the Cross, Jesus tells his mother that the beloved disciple is now her son. He does that to give her and identity since Joseph is dead and Jesus is dying.

       The only woman in the gospels named for where she comes from is Mary of Magdala.

       (I have a lot to say of Mary of Magdala, but not today!)

       So, we could see Jesus’ rejection of divorce as an act in defense of women.

       At any rate, divorce is not the issue for us.

       For human beings, when something is ‘broken’, we either fix it or get rid of it.

       When my car broke down on Route 8 South, leaving here the third Sunday I was with you, I had it fixed and drive it still. But the day will come when it can’t be fixed and I will trade it in.

       The same of marriages. My first advice for a broken marriage would be to ask the couple to try counseling and re-conciliation to ‘fix’ it. But, if that doesn’t work, the best idea for both people is to move on.

       All of that said, the Gospel ends with Jesus taking children in his arms and declaring, ‘whoever does not receive the kingdom of God as a little child will never enter it.”

       Lord knows, children make mistakes. It’s how they learn and grow.

       It is the same with we adults—we learn and grow from our mistakes.

       Even when the mistake was a marriage.

       Our mistakes teach us humility and makes us like little children again open to the kingdom of God….Amen.

        

Third jab

 Today I got my Covid booster shot by simply walking into Rite-Aid and asking for it.

I feel safer already.

Don't get me started on the anti-vaccination folks....

Get the damn shot!

I saw a school teacher in New York on Youtube today who was going to quit teaching instead of getting the vaccination as her school board mandated.

She was a young Jewish woman who had a "religious exemption".

But when pressed by the CNN reporter. she could not define what the religious belief was that made her avoid the vaccine.

Most religions I understand teach us to respect and protect one another. I can't think of how a religious belief could keep us from taking a shot to protect, in her case, the children she taught.

Most religions also warn us to take care of ourselves and not put ourselves in danger.

Denying the vaccine puts you and those around you in danger.

So quit, young woman, that at least will protect your students, but the part about taking care of yourself is up for grabs.

She was an emotional young woman, torn to bits by having to quit teaching children she loved.

But I felt no sympathy toward her. None at all.

Get the shot and keep teaching, for God's sake....and your own!