you think you should be a priest...think again!

I would have been a writer and a professor of American Literature today if I hadn't let God get all enmeshed in my life. I was following a 'call' I tried valiantly to resist. I wanted to write, if not the 'great american novel', at least some stuff that would make lots of money!

If you think you should be a priest, run and hide from God.

You know why? It is the enmeshing part.

We had a staff member or two who thought 'becoming enmeshed' with the parish was a not too good a thing. Yet, I never figured out how to do what I do or be who I be without that. In fact, it seems to me that 'what I do and be' is precisely that--becoming entangled in the community, caught in the net we are all caught in, wrapped up in the complex of feelings, connections, wonderments, pains, sufferings, etc. of those who I work with and serve and minister with.

Kurt Vonnegut--my favorite novelist, the one I would have striven to be like had I not become a priest--once told the story of the only ordained person he ever admired. It was, bless him, an Episcopal priest on Martha's Vineyard who, Vonnegut said, would 'fall apart' every time someone in the parish died and the congregation would have to heal him and nurse him back to wholeness. "There is something creative," Vonnegut said, "in having to put a man of God back together...."

I know 'all will be well', but tomorrow is the first day of the last month I will be Rector of St. John's in Waterbury. The webs and nets and strings of entanglements and enmeshing are wearing my soul raw right now.

And, I think that is as it should be. Perhaps that is even what God had in mind when the Holy One somehow tugged me toward the priesthood. And, it is the only way I would know to do it...this thing I do...this way 'I be'.

I'd run from it if I were you--but let me tell you this, there is no sweeter pain, no more redemptive suffering, no more joy of connection available than doing what I do and being who I am....Just don't do it lightly....

spring

I know others who look to the crocus or daffodils, but not me.

I never been accused of being terribly attentive, yet I notice it. But there is this--it seems to me that one day it isn't there and the next day it is.

I saw it today in the Close and on the way home and in Cheshire--which might be the New England capitol of it. Banks of it, fields of it, walls of it--exploding and wondrous.

Forsythia.

Suddenly it spilled out, when I wasn't paying attention--waves of it, oceans of it....

It is when the Forsythia comes that I begin to believe there might be a spring this year after all. When the Forsythia appears I know for certain that Life itself is overcoming the darkness and the death.

It is back....Alleluia....

Laughter

Laughter....

That's what is overwhelming around St. John's--we laugh about almost everything...well, 'everything' and stuff we shouldn't laugh about.

Nothing is sacred there. We laugh and laugh.

And that doesn't mean we aren't committed and competent and 'doing our jobs'.

It's just that in a place like St. John's, if you can't laugh and laugh a lot, you'd shrivel up, wither and blow away in the next breeze.

Things are different in a place like St. John's. We see more pain and suffering and irrational stuff than you'd see most places. And we 'deal' with it.

Then we laugh.

Not to laugh would be to die.

Plus, laughing is found fair and wondrous in the heart of God. Believe me....

Grief

My dear friend Malinda is coming to my last service at St. John's on April 25. I told her to vest, because she is much loved, having been a priest at St. John's for 5 years or so, but when I told her I told her I'd be doing the whole service, all by myself, my last dance....

Now I suddenly realize I asked her to come because I might not be able to make it through the prayer of consecration. I may have to be taken away by EMTs after that service.

People ask me, "how are you doing about retiring?" and being an Appalachian in my core, after nearly 30 years in New England, I say, "I'm doing 'fine'....or 'fair to middlin'' or 'passing fair'--all the things people from where I come would say. Truth is, I am already in deep and profound and almost paralysing grief.

Every day I have tears in my eyes. Today after the staff meeting--all of which are raucous, hysterical and full of laughter--I thought, "how can I leave this? what could replace it?"

I work with people who are so wondrous and funny and competent that 'being their leader' is a misnomer. I just stay out of their way and let them do their magic....

The one thing I promise them and don't believe I've ever, ever failed them about is this: "I'll take the blame for anything that goes wrong or gets criticism". When things 'work', as they almost always do, I give the staff the credit. And, I do believe I have kept my promise. Anything that goes wrong is always and ever "my fault". (There aren't many of those I assure you, I picked them well....)

After tomorrow I have a months to go being Rector of St. John's, being with this remarkable group of people who I work with and for. We have an understanding--the only one that would make sense to me when surrounded by such a Cloud of Witnesses.

Four more staff meetings. Four more Sundays. One more Vestry meeting. Four more Wedsday Eucharists....Jesus, I used to be writing about 13 more weeks....the days dwindle down to a precious few.....

I am almost choked with grief.

A friend of mine told me I needed to "disengage". OK. Right. Roger and out.

Easier said that done.....

Maybe I asked Malinda to vest so she could push my sobbing body aside and finish the Eucharist for me.....Oh, I'm sure she'd do that gladly.....God bless her....

Rainy

My daughter found a parakeet on the streets of Manhattan one morning a couple of years ago. She was green and drenched by rain. So Mimi caught her and put her in her pocket and since you can buy anything at any time in Manhattan, found a cage and food and took her to her office.

She named her Rainy.

Eventually, as folks sometimes inherit things from their kids before the kids ever inherit things from their parents--good luck to Josh and Mimi finding anything we leave behind...we mean to burn the candle at both ends and leave this world with about as little as we joined it with....--we got Rainy and another bird Mimi bought to keep Rainy company.

Rainy and Maggie now live in our kitchen and sing/chatter/scream most of the time. You get used to it after a while and can still hear NPR above the din. The radio is by their cage and their cage is so high the bottom of it is at eye level because we have Luke the Cat.

I love their noise. How wonderful.

And it has rained for two days.

I wonder if Rainy, hearing the rain through the window, remembers when she was lost and then was found?

It really doesn't matter in the long run, but I wonder.

Then there was Stinky, the rat Mimi brought us from Indiana, for goodness sake, after a summer intern job....Another story all together.....

But bless her for bringing us creatures to love.....

slacking off....

Someone reminded me today that I haven't been blogging for a while. Truth is, I forget about it and need someone to remind me. So, I'm going to catch up with a series of really short blogs--very few words each.

Here's the first:

Life is so beautiful, it sometimes aches.
Take the deepest breath you can...really deep, until it almost hurts....
Then let it out as slowly as you can.
That is Life, flowing in and out each time we breathe.
Beautiful....sometimes it aches....keep breathing....

Time to go....

I heard on the radio and read in a newspaper about a guy in Texas who killed his neighbor's buffalo herd. The buffaloes, 41 of them as I remember, broke through a fence and went onto another person's property. He shot them. Each of them and all of them. 41 of them. Shot them dead. Dead as 41 furry doornails.

Under Texas state law, as I understand it, the guy who slaughtered the buffaloes may have been within his rights in the so-called state of Texas.

I don't know about you, but I somehow think such an egregious act of violence against innocent animals deserves some legal punishment. Maybe I'm just a buffalo lover, I don't know--but it doesn't seem right to me that Texas would allow people to do such things. What if kids wander onto his property--41 kids on a field trip to see the buffaloes and discovered them dead--does he have the right to shoot the kids?

Well, it is Texas. Who knows?

I've decided it is time to expel Texas from the union. It was bad enough that Texas gave us George W. and cowboy hats, but allowing the massacre of buffaloes is the last straw.

I almost wish they'd lost that war with Mexico and none of us remembered the Alamo. Then they wouldn't have been around in the US to stink things up.

(I would have missed LBJ though....)

During the health care bill debate, a congressman from Texas yelled out "Baby Killer" to another congressman supporting the bill. He later apologized and said he meant "the bill" was a baby killer, not his colleague in the House of Representatives. Yeah, right....

Plus the Texas Board of Education is re-writing the history taught in Texas public schools. It is the only reason I can think of to support private schools exclusively.

Plus the governor of Texas actually suggested that Texas succeed from the Union. (You can look it up on Google...it is true....)

So I say, let them go and God bless them. 49 states are enough. Everyone I know who 'used to live in Texas' hates it. I was only there for a few days and I hated it. I had to rent a car to go somewhere from the Houston airport and the only models available were pick-up trucks and Cadillacs. I took a truck. Where is Santa Anna when we need him?

Besides, the Dallas Cowboys would be a soccer team and the San Antonio Spurs (the most hated sports team in my life--even more than Virginia Tech or Notre Dame!) wouldn't exist.

Phil Graham, a former US Senator from Texas, once said, on the floor of the Senate in a gun control debate, "I have more guns than I need, but not as many guns as I want...." Something in that makes me know Phil and I have very little in common.

So, though LBJ would be a loss, along with Molly Imus, let's let Texas go and either become a sovereign nation or surrender to Mexico as they should have at the Alamo. Either way, I'll be happy....