Snow and Ice

It snowed an inch or more and then turned to sleet.

Our walkways and driveway and our car were covered in ice.

I put on the heater and defroster in my car for 20 minutes before we left to take Brigit for her check-up and it melted a lot of the ice--but I had to rake off the rest.

Brigit is fine, in good health and had her nails clipped.

I took Bern and Brigit home and then went to the store.

Slick roads for sure.

It's snowed a little more--an inch or so--since then.

And Cornwall Avenue, where we live, hasn't been cleared at 7 p.m.

We live in hope.

I'm supposed to go to Milton tomorrow at noon.

Wish they would cancel.

I hate winter and slick roads.

   

cold

 I told someone at church that a lot of Republicans in Iowa could freeze tomorrow.

He said, "Good."

That's why I love Trinity, Milton--everyone there is liberal.

But it is going to be dangerous to go to the Caucus tomorrow.

Wind chill of under 30 degrees below zero.

We'll see if the chill cuts into Trump's lead.

If you haven't see this week's New Yorker, the cover drawing is of Trump in a blue suit covered by medals, goose stepping like a Nazi in black boots and making a Nazi salute.

It's titled "Back to the Future".

Let's hope and pray not....

This week's sermon

 

GOD IS CALLING US—ARE WE LISTENING?

          The lesson today from 1^st Samuel is a message to us.

          God is calling us—are we listening?

          Samuel is just a boy entrusted to ‘look out for’ and ‘serve’ Eli—an old man losing his sight. They live in the Temple of the Lord.

          One night Samuel is in his room and hears his name called. He knows his job so he runs to Eli and says “Here I am, you called me.”

          Eli tells him he didn’t call for him and tells him to go back and lie down.

          That happens two more times—three in all. Then Eli realized God must be calling Samuel. He tells him to go back and when he is called for again to say, “speak Lord, you servant is listening.”

          Samuel does as Eli asks and God speaks to him.

          But it took four tries.

          God calls for us. Are we listening? Will we recognize it is God calling? How many times will God call before we say, “speak Lord, your servant is listening”?

          Nathnael is quicker to hear the voice of God, even though he said, on the way to meet Jesus, “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?”

          As soon as Jesus tells Nathnael he saw him under a fig tree, Nathnael says, “Rabbi, you are the son of God, you are the King of Israel!”

          And Jesus tells him he will see greater thing. He will even see “the heavens opened and angels of God ascending and descending on the Son of Man.”

          God calls to us.

          Do we hear him?

          I’d say evidence that we do are found in the back of the sanctuary where you bring food and clothing for the ‘least of these in our midst’.

          More evidence is your work at Soup Kitchens and Homeless Shelters.

          Beyond that is your financial support for Trinity and your attendance at services here.

          We may not always recognize the voice of God—but you members and friends of Trinity Church hear it enough to make a difference in the community and the world.

          “Speak, Lord, for your servants listen….”

Shalom and Amen

         

         

The title of this blog

 

My first post

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

The character in the Bible I have always been drawn to in 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 Nineva, 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 impications are astonishing!). Then God sends a worm to kill the tree. Well, that sets Jonah off! "How dare you kill my tree?" he challanges 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 Ninivah...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 scarcly understood their language and whose customs confounded me. And I found myself often among people (The Episcopal Cult) who made me axious 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 collemn for the school newspaper call "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.

Not that bad---but bad

It only snowed a few inches--maybe 4--but there was freezing rain mixed in so this morning it was slick.

Didn't try to go out.

Snowed a little more today, but the roads look clear and de-iced.

I'll go out in the morning to the grocery and see how it is.

Worse other places--like in Milton where the church is.

They got 10-12 inches. 

And it's in the country, so I don't know when they cleared the roads.

 

IT'S SNOWING!

 Just ground cover so far at 7:30 p.m.

But more is on the way.

I take Brigit out at 8:30 and Bern put a towel by the back door.

Church is cancelled tomorrow.

Good call by the Wardens, I think.

Stay warm.

Sunday's sermon

 

The Baptism of Jesus 1-7-24

        We go from Jesus’ birth two weeks ago to John’s reflections on the “word” last week all the way to his baptism by John this week.

        Epiphany was this week—commemorating the visit of the Magi and the manifestation of Jesus to the Gentiles.

Epiphany, along with Christmas and Easter, was one of the first three holy days of the church.

        But back to the baptism.

        Just before today’s gospel lesson in Mark, John was proclaiming the one mightier than him was coming. (Remember, John leaped in his mother’s womb when the Virgin Mary visited their home. John knew who Jesus was.) And when John saw Jesus coming to him, he asked that Jesus baptize him. But Jesus convinces John that he should baptize him.

        And when he comes up out of the water, the heavens opened and the Spirit of God descended on him like a dove and a voice from Heaven said, “This is my son, my Beloved, with whom I am well pleased.”

        Then the Spirit led Jesus into the Wilderness for 40 days to be tempted by the Devil.

        On page 858 of the Book of Common Prayer, the Catechism tells us that the two great sacraments given to the church are Holy Baptism and the Holy Eucharist.

        That seems to make them equal sacraments—but for the most part, the Episcopal church says the Font leads to the Table. Baptism is admission to Communion.

        But I’ve always thought if the Font could lead to the altar, why couldn’t the Altar lead to the Font?

        So, I’ve always invited everyone to receive communion. Over my years as a priest, I’ve baptized several dozen people who wanted it after receiving communion before baptism.

        Some of them choose—and it is their choice—to stop receiving communion until they are baptized, but others don’t want to give up the bread and wine for any time.

        My own baptism was a strange trip.

        I grew up in a Mountain Methodist church—very evangelical. New England Methodists wouldn’t feel at home there.

        An Evangelist came to lead a revival when I was in the eighth grade. He scared me so bad, I went up to the altar to be ‘saved’!

        A few weeks later, Rev. Lafferty, our part time minister and full-time coal miner, took us all to a Baptist church 10 miles away that had an indoor baptismal pool.

There he baptized us by immersion. Thing was, I was the first one to go in and he hadn’t told me he’s dunk me three times—Father, Son and Holy Spirit—so I didn’t hold my breath after the first dunk and he darn near drowned me!

        Then the next day in my Math Class, my teacher, who was married to my father’s brother, announced to the class that “Jimmy has been saved and baptized”.

        It embarrassed me so badly, I dropped my pencil and when I bent over to pick it up, I looked up Donna Comber’s dress.

        Oh, no! I thought. It didn’t take!

        The Episcopal church recognizes the baptism of other churches, so when I joined the Episcopal Church in college, I was not rebaptized. So, I guess it did “TAKE”!

        The English word “baptism” comes from the Greek “Bab-tis-mo”—which means, literally, ‘to dip’.

        It’s the word used to describe ‘dying a fabric’.

        You dip the fabric into the dye until it is the shade you want.

        After baptism, the priest anoints them with holy oil and says, “you are sealed by the holy Spirit in Baptism and ‘marked’ as Christ’s own forever.”

        So, the person has been ‘marked’, dipped and dyed their true color.

        Baptism is the most joyous thing I get to do as a priest.

        I love it when people of all ages come to the font.

        It gives me great satisfaction to cover their heads with water and smear them with oil.

        Spend a few moments with me in silence reflecting on your thoughts about baptism. (silence)

        God says to you, “you are my beloved, in whom I am well pleased”.  Amen and amen.