my attention span

I have the attention span (or is that 'spand'? I'm an English major and should know!) of a baby chipmunk. Someone told me the other day that I hadn't posted a blog for over a month. "Nonsense," I said, "it was just the other day...or last week...or the week before that...or, oh, I guess, over a month...."

Well, as I was saying....

I have a new granddaughter since I last wrote. Her name is Tegan Hoyt Bradley. She is the sister of Morgan and Emma and we'll be going to Baltimore to meet her on Sunday. Since the twins were tiny, it is a new thing for Josh and Cathy to have a 7lb plus baby. I can't wait to see her and hold her. Josh is now living with four women. Even the dog is female! Lord have mercy upon him....

Hoyt is my father's middle name. It goes well, I think, with Tegan and I'm not sure Josh and Cathy realized what they were doing. Whether they realized it or not, I am eternally grateful. My father was a melancholy and somewhat haunted man. I love him more each day, which is sad, since I didn't love him enough when he was physically with me. I was embarrassed by him much of the time--thinking I was smarter and better educated than he was. Which might be true in some respects but is a horrible reason to be embarrassed by the bone of your bone. But, as Mark Twain observed, one's parents get smarter the older we get. He, at least, met Josh and Mimi but missed his grandchildren by years. My mother missed them all. Sometime I might write about my mother. I haven't started loving her more the older I get yet. I loved her fiercely when she was alive but as the years pass I think less and less of her. She died when I was 25, so I've had a lot of years to have her memory fade. I'm not sure I can remember her voice or her smile--a sad thing since she had a beautiful smile. She was very, very smart and well educated. Mother had a master's degree and was a school teacher. Dad finished 8th grade and worked at lots of jobs from coal miner to insurance salesman. God bless him. He worked hard his whole life and worried like a wort. The worry gene jumped me to my son, I think. Seems that way, at any rate.

I spent 8 hours today in a room full of lawyers. I've spent lots of time with lawyers recently, which may be why my chipmunk brain has forgotten to write here. The church is being sued by one of our former curates. (A 'curate' is the assisting priest but since Episcopalians have to have un-understandable names for everything, we call them 'curates'. Like we call the front hall of the sanctuary the 'narthex' and the basement of the church the 'undercroft'. Go figure....) The church's lawyer would probably have a stroke if he knew I was writing about this, but since it has consumed me so long and my deposition isn't until All Souls' Day (what Episcopalians call November 2nd) I can't hold it in any longer.

It's just a mess. I will, with greater self-control than I imagined I had, withhold any details. But it is just a mess and has caused enormous pain and confusion and anger for me and many members of the parish. (By the way--the lawsuit is not about anything sexual...take a deep breath, ok?) It's a long story I'd like to tell, but being a good 'do-be' won't right now....

Lots of things have happened since I last wrote. Jack Parker's memorial service, my 'roast' after 20 years as Rector, Tegan's birth, the Yankees in the playoffs, West Virginia University's football team climbing into the top 25, the parakeets' arrival, my annual physical, the blessing of the animals...I'm still thinking...lots of stuff. I'll try to be a good chipmunk and write more often if anyone is still reading.

Right now, I have to take the dog out and go to bed. Be well and stay well....

About the 'best' man

My dear friend Jack died while I was away. He and I both knew he was dying, so when I left I asked him to think about living until I got back. He said he would consider that. But then he got to go home and I knew once he did that, having spent all his energy on getting to the point of 'going home to die' he wouldn't waste any time moving on.
I talked to him on the phone from North Carolina the day before he died. He told me he was so joyous to be 'home' and also told me he didn't think he could keep his promise to wait for me before he went 'home' in a different way. I was in a motel in Fredricksburg VA, watching college football when Jack's daughter called me to let me know her father had died. It was 10 p.m. on a Saturday. I was back in CT by 2:30 the next day. All he needed to do was live another 16 1/2 hours and I could have seen him again. Not much to ask--think about how short a time 16 1/2 hours is in the scheme of things....
But all that is about 'me'. Jack was on a different schedule. God bless him and I know how God has blessed me by knowing him. Lordy, lordy he was about the best man ever...
Through his dying I got to mourn my father--which I never did properly over 20 years ago.
I was with my father in the hospital--St. Raphel's in New Haven--just before he died. We'd had a wonderful conversation...his dementia had lifted like the fog is burned away on winter mornings...and we spoke in hushed and profound ways. Then I told him I needed to go home and he said, I swear this is true, "I'm going home too...." I only lived about a 10 minute drive from the hospital and I was half-way home when I realized that what he said wasn't a false and mind clouded statement, but the truth. I almost turned around to go back but didn't.
When I walked in our house the phone was ringing. It was the hospital to let me know my father had died. My daughter, 8 or 9 years old, came over and hugged me and said, 'you are an orphan now....' Out of the mouths of babes...
I went back to sit with him until the funeral directors came. He had been being shaved by a black nurse when, she told me, he sat up, almost being cut by the razor and said, "I have to get out of here", and laid down dead. Not bad 'last words', I'd say.
While I sat with him a Roman priest came by to ask if I'd like last rites. I told him I would like that.
My father was a racist and a virulent anti-Catholic. When JFK was running for president, my father asked me if I knew what would happen if Kennedy was elected. I didn't know, so he told me, 'they'll freeze holy water and make Pope-cycles', he said, laughing. I didn't get the joke.
So, he died being shaved by a black woman and was given the last rites of the Roman Church. Don't tell me there's no such thing as irony.
And I never mourned him in the way he deserved--the man who raised me and gave me life and taught me many things. Jack has let me do that important work.
And I mourn Jack--my mentor and friend and ally and priestly guru. And knowing he was one of the best men ever, I have come to realize my father was that too.
God bless them both.
Orphaned again.

Pelicans

I love pelicans about as much as I love anything...well, probably there are a couple of dozen people I love more and oysters on the half-shell and a good Pino Grigio and dogs...most of them, but not the little ones people carry in a bag and who seem so unhappy. But pelicans are up there in my hierarchy of things I love.

Oak Island is one of the most prolific breeding grounds of Brown Pelicans on the face of the earth. There are literally hundreds of them there--flying down the beach, diving into the water, floating like ducks on the ocean. I spend a lot of time on Oak Island watching the pelicans do all that. I really love them. And I spend a lot of time on Oak Island telling the people in the house with me about my insights and speculations and imaginings about pelicans.

I happened to say out loud that I'd like to be a pelican for a day. My wife waited the kind of interval you always wait at the beach just because everything slows down there before saying, 'no, you wouldn't like that....' After about 4 minutes, the normal time for a response when you are facing south on the Atlantic, hardly thinking and drinking a little Pino Grigio and watching another couple of dozen pelicans glide down the beach, I responded, 'you're probably right....' I've sometimes thought I'd like to be my dog for a day, but I know for certain I wouldn't want to be one of our cats for a day, or even a minute. I could, I imagine, extricate myself from my dog's mind with little trouble. Dogs are not deep or profound. But being in a cat would seduce me to stay there because they are so inscrutable and complex.

Another time, when I was waxing eloquent about pelicans--how graceful and also clumsy they are and how much I love them--my friend John said, in a random thought, "they don't know how much you love them...."

Astonishingly, I realized how true--like TRUE--that was. And, since I am given to pondering stuff, I pondered it for a while. Does anyone, any creature--besides your dog, who certainly understands--really KNOW how much you love them?

While we were away, my wife, Bern, and I celebrated our 39th wedding anniversary. I sometimes ponder how much of that time we have truely 'been married'. That's a lot of years and stuff happens and the bond is, from time to time broken. I estimate that we have been 'truly married' for about 30 of those 39 years, give or take a year. But that's a hell of a long time to be loving someone. And I wonder if she really KNOWS how deeply and wonderously I love her.

Probably not.

We are all pelicans gliding down the beach, not aware of how deeply and profoundly we are loved.

You are welcomed to ponder that about yourself and God's love. I invite you to do that. And I would write about it except I am still, in my mind, sitting on that wondrous deck, watching pelicans that I adore and knowing they don't know. I'll leave the God's love thing for you to consider.

The island that wasn't there

So, for several days down on Oak Island--don't tell anyone about it, I don't want more people there....--I'd been looking out at the horizon at an island. I didn't quiet think it could be Bald Head Island since it was so close to Southport, but what do I know? During the day I could see parts of the island sticking up above the long away horizon--you can see for I don't know how far from Oak Island. At night I saw lights, thinking whoever was there was having a great evening--lots of seafood, good alcohol, music and mirth. The third day I pointed the island out to my friend, John, reading his Kendal...some sci-fi novel he downloaded in ways that confound me.

'It's a boat,' he said, glancing up only momentarily.

'But it has been there since we arrived,' I countered, 'it must be an island.'

'A boat,' John said.

"But there are lights at night,' I responded.

'Boats have lights at night,' he said, reading about some alien invasion of a world that doesn't exist.

'So why is it just sitting there if it's a boat?' I asked, thinking that would end the discussion and we'd both look at the island.

'Damned if I know,' he replied, giving me a look that indicated he was tired of wanting to talk about my island and his boat and wanted to read in peace about wierd stuff happening in a Sci-Fi world.

The next day, it was gone, after I'd told everybody it was Bald Head Island. Since islands don't normally simply disappear, except in science fiction, it had obviously been a ship, parked for several days off the coast of Southport for reasons no one I know could explain.

It is much like the dog that wasn't there, the island that wasn't there, except a dog is a creature and an island is a place. Creatures and places are different.

Since I have very few thoughts at the beach that aren't 'random thoughts', I had a random thought about the island. Here is what that thought was: "Damn it all, it was a boat...."

I'd lived 64 hours or so looking at an island that was a boat. What senses can I really trust? None, I'd say.

Realizing you can't trust your senses, that what you think is 'real' isn't, that the universe is more subtle and ironic than you can imagine....Well, that might be the beginning of wisdom in some subtle and ironic way....I don't know, but maybe....

the dog that wasn't there

OK, let me be frank...(actually I'm Jim, but never mind...). I think I'm posting something but the stuff that came up on my screen is different than before...I hope it works.

Sitting in the gazebo down at the end of the long walkway from the house we were in on Oak Island, I settled in beside my friend. He was reading on his Kendal--is that how to spell it? And I was looking down the beach.

A couple of hundred yards away I saw a dog that I thought was tethered in the sand near the rising tide. The dog didn't move but his ears blew out in the wind. A big dog--probably a black lab--sitting extremely still as the waves came nearer and nearer.

I said to John--my friend's name--'look at that poor dog, how can anyone do that to a dog?'

John looked for a while and said, 'maybe we should do something, that seems cruel...'

I got up and crossed the dune to the beach and started walking toward the dog, imagining myself liberating him/her and giving his/her owners a stern talking to about how to treat animal companions. I was going to be stern and threaten to call the ASPCA and make a scene on the beach and maybe even take charge of the lab and bring him back to our house.

The setting sun was in my eyes, I must confess, since Oak Island faces south and we were East of the poor dog. But I was building up my indignation, righteous I assure you, having left my dog back in CT, when I realized it was one of those short beach chairs with a towel on it. The edges of the towel were the 'ears' of the dog I saw and the chair itself was his/her body. I turned back, realizing I had become upset and discombobulated by a dog that wasn't there.

Seems to me that is a metaphor for a lot of stuff. We--you and I--become upset and angry and self-righteous, I think, about a lot of 'dogs' that 'aren't there'.

The whole nonsense about the health care reform--people screaming and whining and complaining about dogs that aren't there.

The next time you decide it is ok to yell out, "you Lie" about something, take a walk closer--this is just me talkin'--and see if the dog is really there....I'll do the same. We'll all be better off, I suspect....

more about baseball

If the bases were 89 feet apart there would be a lot more infield hits. There are lots of close calls at first base in most any game. Some of them result in arguments and even ejections by the umpires of those complaining. Just a foot difference would change the game greatly--so how did Abner Doubleday, who created the game, most agree, come up with 90 feet? Divine intervention? Go figure.

More and more, players come up to bat in body armour. They all, by rule, wear helmets, and many wear protective coverings on their shins, elbows and arms. Most everyone wears 'batting gloves'--a borrowing from golf, but on both hands--and many have 'running gloves' once they get on base which they hold in their hands while running the bases to keep them from stubbing or breaking their fingers if they have to slide. All these are accouterments over the last few decades to protect players from injury. For a sport that is 'non-contact', lots of people get hurt. "Playing through pain" is one of the most admired attributes of a baseball player, but most of them are millionaires these days and don't want to and don't want to get hurt and possibly endanger their next contract.

Jorge Posada is one of my favorite players because he is one of a few that doesn't wear batting gloves. Plus, he's a catcher, the most dangerous and physically draining of all positions. But he does wear a shin guard to protect his leg from fouled balls when batting.

Pain is part of the game. That is just one of the many ways that baseball is like life....

Surrounded by life...

This morning I stopped at a store and when I came out, my car was surrounded by 20 or so Canada Geese! They are large creatures and a little frightening and murmured and dropped fecal matter (what they do best) as I made my way between them. When I started my engine they all took flight, finding a pattern in a matter of seconds, and flew away toward the near-by park. Amazing...

Then I came to St. John's and walked into the second day of the Music and Church School Camp who have taken over large expanses of a large, expansive building. They were in the chancel singing with Maria and Angela and her two right hand people--Courtney and Suzy--were in the library. There is a 40 foot long time line hanging in there, around the walls, tracing the time from 2000 BC (BCE for the politically/religiously correct) to the present day. The time line is clothes line rope and events are noted by clothes pins. Everyone's birthday--kids, staff, etc--are included, crowding up a part of the line. Mine is several inches behind those of the kids so I'm feeling a little old.

The 20 some kids are, like every gathering of kids at St. John's, a remarkable mix of Hispanic, African American, kids from the Caribbean, Asian and plain ol' white kids. You can't 'make up' the kind of stuff that happens at St. John's. While they were here a Narcotics Anonomous was on the third floor, the clericus (local priests) were in the Kellogg room and the soup kitchen was, as always, feeding between 250-300 people. It's like being surrounded by Canada Geese....How much life is that? Enough....