Two songs

 Two songs I listen to everyday on Youtube are Peter, Paul and Mary singing "Jesus met the woman at the well" and the Beatles singing "We all live on a Yellow Submarine".

They make my day.

Check them out on Youtube.

April Fools' Day

Besides being April Fools' Day, today was my father's birthday. Imagine the grief he must have gotten  from others for being born on this day.

Bern was luckier. She stayed in her mother's womb until tomorrow--April 2nd.

I have tomorrow off from church, so we'll be able to celebrate.

We're going to good friends' house for dinner.

I got her flowers today and gifts for tomorrow.

I would tell you her age, but she wouldn't like that.

Put it this way, she's 3 years younger than me--we met in Latin class in High School when I was a senior thinking I may need a foreign language for college admission and she was a freshman.

And I'll be 76 (I can't believe it!) on April 17th!

 

Bern is very happy

The former President (whose name I refuse to write) was indicted today in New York for using campaign funds to pay Stormy Daniels for her silence about their affair.

It's a historic moment because no former President has ever been indicted. (Though Nixon should have been but Ford pardoned him.)

No way Biden is going to pardon the former President.

And this is just the first of other investigations that could put him in legal jeopardy. 

But at least history was made today.

Bern said she'd still be happy if he's declared innocent by a jury of his peers.

She's just happy this happened.  

We didn't die!

And the guy from Standard Oil came and discovered out hose from the oil tank to the furnace was blocked.

Hence the noise.

He replaced it and we have good and silent heat again.

Good for him and us!

And today was pretty warm.

Thank goodness.

But rain and some snow tonight. We'll see.

On a lighter note, I went to Trinity in Milton today for Bible study. We've been looking at the women of the Bible for several weeks and today we did Mary, the mother of Jesus.

No birth narrative in Mark or John, but some in Matthew and a lot in Luke.

We also read the three passages in Mt., Mk. and Luke about Jesus being in a crowded house and not coming out to greet Mary and his brothers (and sisters in Luke) and calling those who followed him his mother and brothers and sisters.

People in the class didn't like how Jesus seemed to reject his blood relatives.

But in John, on the cross, he tells his mother that the beloved disciple (John) is her son and tells John that Mary is his mother. And John took her into his home from that day forward.

We are never told that Joseph had died, but he must have if Mary needed a man to look after her.

All in all, I very good class. I love the women in the Bible.

 

Furnace anxiety

 Bern smells something when the furnace goes on. She can't describe it but it makes her anxious--carbon monoxide and all that.

The furnace is also making weird noises--I hear that though I can't smell very well.

The furnace guys are coming tomorrow--I don't know any furnace 'gals'.

Bern's turned down the heat and put an electric heater behind me here in my office.

She's going to turn it down more tonight and there is already a big heater by my bed, since, as I've told you more times than you want to hear--I hate the cold.

I have three more layers of covers on my side of the bed than Bern has on hers. 

And I still need a heater.

If we don't die during the night, I'll let you know what happens tomorrow.

Pray that we don't.

Cold with Flowers

 It's cold today in CT.

But standing on our back porch and looking toward Cornwall Avenue there are dozens and dozens of little white flowers coming up.

I'll have to ask Bern what they are.

I know nothing about plants.

But they give me hope that warmth is on the way.

I can't wait for the birds to come north.

I love flowers and the birds.

I hate the cold.

First post (again)

 

March 17, 2023

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.