...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.
