another reason I've lived too long...

As I was about to turn off my blog spot...which, by the way, I have trouble getting to, I know not why....I saw a message to the right. Here is what it said:

Browse and blog in side by side windows by dragging a tab to one side.


Maybe in the end this is several reasons why I have lived to long.

1. I have no idea what that message means.
2. Even if I did know what that message means, why would I want to do that, whatever it is.
3. I couldn't figure out how to turn off the 'bold' while writing #2.
4. I don't know how I turned it off the write #2.
5. the 'b' that means bold is still a different color than the 'i' that means italics but what I'm writing isn't bold and I simply pray that when I post this all will be well when I go back to my blog--which, did I mention, is difficult sometimes, I don't know why?

All that I don't know confounds me and tells me that perhaps I have lived too long.

I hope not.....

winged hope flies

I know I've worn you out with the adventures and misadventures of the robin nest on our front porch. This may be the last chapter of the story, bear with me....

To recap: after we thought there were no eggs, Mama Robin--or some Robin came back (who can tell one from another, after all?)

At first I thought she was having an hysterical pregnancy (or whatever you would call thinking she had laid eggs and she hadn't...). Then we saw little heads poking up, mouths open, and everytime I saw her she was carrying a worm or bug or something icky.

Then, just a day or so ago, I saw a robin sitting on the top of the nest and another with his/her head above the nest's edge. These were miniature robins--all feathered and colored and looking like they were ready to fly.

Today, I walked out on our back deck and one of them was under the stand where bern has a big pot with a strawberry plant in it. I was as startled and the bird was and she/he flew across the deck to the bench. I ran to get bern but when we came back (s)he was gone, though we heard the Mama yelling her head off....

"Will they come back to sleep in the nest?" Bern asked.

I have no idea. This may be it. Maybe, once they fly, they leave the nest for good. Perhaps even the mother will be gone now. Who knows about robins...? Not me.

We've fretted so much about them and just like human children, they won't call, they won't come back, they'll just go live their own lives....

But it has been wondrous to fret about them...and to have seen one of them fly. (s)he also defecated on our porch before he/she flew. Maybe shit comes before freedom....

If they are gone, I will miss them terribly and yet look at every robin I see with love and joy....It was so profound to share in their lives....though they didn't share in ours....

Life and flight and wonder and joy. Hope flies, after all this time....Hope flies....

Rule of the Universe #137

Never try to clean your glasses with the paper towel you just blew your nose on.

The backyard zoo

So, there is this multitude of birds in our back yard and a family of chipmunks and, most recently, a momma bunny and at least one baby bunny. Bunnies are so so cute....And nevermind our front porch robin and her two babies--always mouths open and she is running back and forth (flying actually) to bring them worms and bugs. On the way back to the porch there is always something icky in her mouth....

I sit on the deck with my binoculars and watch it all. We have a little bird bath and a dozen or so birds a day bathe there, amazing to watch.

I had begun to think this was always so and it is only now that I'm not gone most all day most all days that I've just never noticed before. So I asked Bern and she answered:
no outdoor cats.

Until last summer we always had an outdoor cat. Before that both Catherine and Millie were on the hunt and kill day after day. What a menagerie of creatures they left by the door--moles, baby squirrels, birds half eaten, lots of creatures. But they're both gone so the yard has become a cat-free-zone and the creatures are everywhere.

I truly love it, watching all this life....the zoo is open....

work comes along...

The Diocese has asked me to go do supply work at St. James' in Fair Haven next Sunday and the Sunday after. It's very flattering that they thought of me. I've lined up 4 other Sundays in July and August as well. However, the thing is, the Diocese isn't real sure where the Eucharist will be or if anyone will be there...They're paying me nevertheless so why would I complain?

The Rector left the Episcopal Church this week. It wasn't so much a surprise as it was sudden. So the Diocese is trying to find out what's going on with the congregation and who has a key and stuff like that. They might be meeting in a local school.

The Rector who left did so because the Episcopal Church is damaging his faith in God, or something like that. He's one of the ones who has been shaken up in the past decade by how horribly 'liberal' the EC is. (Point of view is everything: I think the EC is to the right of moderate!) So it is a bit ironic that they're asking me to go there. Geoff and I are as far apart theologically as Barney Frank and Rush Limbaugh are politically.

So, I'll keep you updated unless I'm held hostage until Gene Robinson resigns.

Washington is burning...

I was in DC last week and so today's heat is nothing to compare to the Nation's Capitol.

Built on a bog in the middle of a swamp, the whole city is perpetually damp and when the heat comes sweat sheets on your body on the dash from an air conditioned building to an air conditioned car. You sort of steam in that kind of heat.

I was there to lead a Making a Difference Workshop at Howard University School of Divinity. We've gotten in the door at Howard and the next step is to get credit for the workshop. It now gives continuing Education credits. I happen to think every seminarian in the country should do the workshop--course I would, wouldn't I???

I committed to have a MAD in Ct in 2011. Sign up now and sign up early....

lightening bugs

I saw lightening bugs tonight in our back yard. You might call them fireflies, but you know what they are. I see them rarely in Connecticut but when I was a child in West Virginia, they were as thick as a plague. They were everywhere.

When I was a child we would catch them in my Uncle Russel's front yard by the mayonnaise jar full. I regret to tell you that we would tear off their tails and make bracelets on our sweaty wrists and the girls would make necklaces of firefly tails in the moisture around their necks.

And did we ever let them out of the jars before we fell, exhausted and damp into our beds?

What I don't remember is how we scraped the tails off our skin after the glow finally left....Probably I don't want to know that.

I was in a restaurant in Washington, DC about a year ago. It was the night of the terrible train wreck that injured a lot of people. The restaurant was only on stop from where the accident happened. Buses were lining up to take people around the wreck area so they could get home. It was terrible. Everyone eating knew about it and we were all horrified.

When we came outside, across the street from the restaurant there was a little patch of grass, filled with lightening bugs. They blinked and blinked and we all stood in silence watching the wonder of that display.

Then life interfered. We had to go where we were sleeping. We had all had too much wine and, I remember distinctly, I had chicken livers...something you don't find too much...to eat.

And people were on there way to hospitals and some of them would die and two wars were raging and the economy was in the toilet and the world as we know it was about to implode.

But there was this: those lightening bugs took our minds away from all that for a long moment and we simply watched them flicker in the night.