It's rained some today--but tonight a storm is coming.
A storm all the networks are calling really bad.
It's made it's way up from Florida--which got drenched--and now it's here.
So much rain this year.
And so much in the last few months.
Climate change?
I don't know.
But not a typical Connecticut December.
And so it goes....
ADVENT III
This is the 3rd Sunday of Advent. The season of Watchful Waiting.
Advent is the 4 Sundays before Christmas—except this year. Because Christmas falls on Monday this year, the 4th Sunday is Christmas Eve.
Let’s look at today’s readings.
Isaiah’s passage describes ‘the Lord’s anointed’ in astonishing fashion. Listen:
“The spirit of the Lord God is upon me, because the Lord has anointed me; he has sent me to bring good news to the oppressed, to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and release to the prisoners; to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor, the day of vengeance of our God; to comfort all who mourn in Zion—to give them a garland instead of ashes, the oil of gladness instead of mourning, the mantle of praise instead of a faint spirit. They will be called oaks of righteous, the planting of the Lord, to display his glory.”
If we didn’t know those words were written in the 6th Century, B.C., we could imagine they were the words of Jesus.
But Jesus certainly knew those words and drew inspiration from them.
Today’s Psalm could also be heard as the arrival of the Messiah. Listen, again:
“When the Lord restored the fortunes of Zion,* then were we like people who dream.* Then was our mouth filled with laughter,* and our tongue with shouts of joy.* Then they said among the nations,* ‘The Lord has done great things for them.”
But then we get to the Gospel and John the Baptist when priests and Levites came from Jerusalem to ask him, “Who are you?”
The Jewish authorities are already suspicious of John since he is making such a name for himself. They question his right to be baptizing people in God’s name. Their distrust of him with ultimately lead to his death.
John tells them firmly that “I am not the Messiah!”
They ask him if he is Elijah or a prophet and he says ‘no’.
When they demand to know who he is and he says: “I am the voice of one crying out in the wilderness, ‘Make straight the way of the Lord.’”
(Those words are a quote from Isaiah!)
Then he tells them one who they do not know is coming after him and that he is unworthy to untie the thong of his sandal.
John, like us, is waiting and watching for Jesus—testifying to the light that was coming.
The folks who publish Forward Day by Day—always available at Trinity--have been sending me Advent words. There’s always a paragraph about the words, but I want to just share the words with you to given you something to ponder this week as we await Jesus.
“Watch”…”Awake”…”Glory”…”Herald”…Valley…Patience.
Listen and ponder. {repeat words}
Come Lord Jesus, come. Amen.
We got a long needle pine that almost touches the ceiling in our living room.
It's a concolar pine that smells like oranges. Really....
Bern put the lights (all white) up since I am miserable with tree lights and we'll decorate it for the next few days.
We have 4 large containers or ornaments, so we'll see how many we can hang on it.
I like long needle pines and was glad when Bern picked it out.
It should be beautiful unless it collapses from all the ornaments!
I don't have church Sunday. No sermon to write.
I haven't done much this week.
Took out the trash and recycling and brought the empty buckets back.
Bern has been doing Christmas.
We got a tree yesterday. Bern picked out a long-needle pine--which I prefer. I can't remember it's name--a 'something pine'--but Bern tells me it smells like oranges. My spell is mostly gone.
I grow old.
The gifts to our two kid's families have been wrapped and mailed.
I hope we don't decorate the tree until next week.
I like a slow week.
There have been so many mass shootings in our country in the past year--most recently at the University of Nevada Los Vegas--that I would be in favor of taking guns away.
I know, I know, that gun owners fear that and rebel against it--but enough is enough.
The US is almost a war zone.
So many shootings in so many places--something must be done.
Our law enforcement groups can't control it.
So let's outlaw guns.
Hunting rifles, OK, but rifles are often used in mass shootings too.
Too much death.
Too many guns.
It's time, beloved.
It's time.
(I do this ever so often to remind you why my blog is called "Under the Castor Oil Tree.)
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.
I did a funeral for G. yesterday. He had been a member of St. John's on the Green in Waterbury where I was Rector for 21 years.
He was a great guy and I welcomed the chance to bid him farewell.
All the music was recorded and made up his favorite songs--mostly secular.
All I did was the Gospel, the Homily, Communion and the blessing.
All the rest were poems and the songs.
Three members of his family told remarkably funny stories about G.
I've never been at a funeral with so much laughter--but he would have approved and enjoyed that.
I told a story in my homily about when he was at a retreat at Holy Cross Monastery with other members of the church. Holy Cross is an Episcopal monastery where silence is observed from after Evensong--about 7 p.m. until after the Eucharist at 10 a.m. the next day. Even breakfast is eaten in silence.
G. was not a great one with silence!
After communion the second day, he danced down the hallway singing--"The Silence is over, The Silence is over, the Silence is over!!!"
Several people sang it for me as I greeted them at the door after the funeral.
It was a great service. A wondrous way to be remembered and sent on his way to the Lover of Souls....
