Good news and bad news

My wife told my granddaughter, Morgan, on the phone yesterday, "I have good news and bad news, which do you want first?"

I knew immediately that Morgan would ask for the bad news (one of the buildings in the Fairy village was ruined by the rain) instead of the good news (the rest of the village was fine).

I thought I was thinking the way Morgan thinks: bad news first, then the good to overcome it.

I mentioned all that to Bern today and she said she thought almost everyone would ask for the 'bad news' first to get it out of the way and hope the 'good news' would make up for it.

I'm not sure about that. I think I would ask for the 'good news' first, delaying the pain.

And I know for sure, if Bern were right, one of my favorite jokes would be destroyed.

The phone rings in the Vatican and a bishop answers it.

"Oh my," he says. And then he says, "Oh,no!"

The Pope asks what's going on.

"Your Holiness," the bishop says, "there's good news and bad news. Which do you want first?"

"The good news," the Pope says.

"Jesus has come back to earth!" the bishop tells him.

"The Second Coming?" the Pope responds with ultimate joy. "What could the bad news be?"

The bishop replies, "he's calling collect from Salt Lake City...."

I've often wanted to change the punch line of that joke to say, "he's calling collect from Canterbury", just because I'm an Anglican--but it wouldn't be as funny.

Which do you ask for first--the good news or bad news? Ponder what that is telling you about yourself. Ponder that, I invite you.

I've lived in this house

I've lived in this house for 28 years. Long enough, one would think, to know everything about it.

There are two light switches by the door to the back porch. One turns on and off the overhead kitchen light and one turns on and off the light on the porch.

Just now, coming off the porch, I tried to turn the porch light off (it's dark in CT and 9:37 p.m.--my blog is on Pacific time and I can't find out how to change it...so it says it's 6:37 p.m. plus how long it takes me to write this.) And, trying to turn the porch light off, I turned off the kitchen light instead.

28 years and I hit the wrong switch, whatever I'm trying to do, about 65% of the time. Go figure.

It may just be light switches that confound me. I was Rector of St. John's in Waterbury for 21 years and never quite mastered turning on the lights in the chapel for the Wednesday Eucharist or daily noon day prayers.

Once Mary, who was blind, was sitting in the chapel and I was fooling endlessly with the complicated light panel for the church. I called out to her, "Mary, is that enough light in the chapel?"

"I couldn't tell you, Father," she replied without a moments pause, "but thanks for asking."

I used to tell people who wanted lights turned on in the church that I purposely never learned 'so people wouldn't ask me to turn the lights on'....

Truth is, I couldn't, for some reason figure it out and that was a couple of dozen switches.

You'd think I'd be able to be 50/50 on two switches, but no...it's more like 65% of the time wrong switch, no matter what.

Go figure. One more thing I seem terminally inept at, out of many.

Why is this embarrassing?

I took a long poll on my cell phone today. Bern won't take polls, but I like them. This one was very long and though I can't remember what group was doing it, it seemed to be about how satisfied you were with life.

Yolanda, who was my pollster, answered all my questions about why and where and who. It was a poll of CT folks about how they liked their life.

Questions about  where you lived--I love Cheshire and wouldn't want to live anywhere else, so I was extra positive.

Questions about your neighborhood--nothing wrong at all about my neighborhood, so I was extra positive.

Questions about income and if I was comfortable financially--I've never been more so and so I was extra positive.

Then questions about how I felt, how happy and fulfilled I was: at some point I apologized to Yolanda because I was so happy, fulfilled, un-anxious, content.

Since when should you apologize about being happy, fulfilled, un-anxious, content?

What's that about?

When I ponder it I notice that I am about as joyful and content as anyone on the planet can be--and as financially comfortable and live in a beyond great town and neighborhood.

So, I must feel guilty about all that when most of the people in the world don't have that.

I didn't 'earn' it, by any means. It is a combination of work and luck, dumb luck. And I'm embarrassed, I realize, for being happy, joyful, safe, taken care of, fulfilled.

How odd that that is embarrassing. I am living the life most people on the planet want to live and am embarrassed for living it.

Go figure.

Go ponder.

I truly wish everyone on the planet had what I have. I truly wish that and would like to work for that being possible. But I have what everyone wants and I'm embarrassed to have it.

Astounding. Humbling. Full of Pondering.....

The summer of 'Odd'...

There's only one night so far that's not been in the 60's or 50's--that alone makes this summer weird, strange, passing odd.

And the day time temperatures have seldom yet passed 80.

Tonight in July 9 and we'll sleep without AC. Go figure.

Now, if I were a climate change skeptic, I could argue, "things aren't getting 'hotter' at all...look at this summer so far...."

Truth is, a summer like it's been so far in Connecticut, is a minor 'climate change'. Unlike the mountains of southern West Virginia where I grew up with 4 months of Spring, 2 months of Summer, 4 months of Autumn and 2 months of winter, Connecticut, in the 35 years I've been here has been more like 2 months of Spring, 4 months of Summer, 2 months of Autumn and 4 bitter months of Winter.

So, climate change is real. Summer with sweltering heat should have begun mid-May and lasted through the first week or so of September. But not this year.

Warm (not hot) days and really pleasant nights. Not normal. In the past we've had AC going all day. This year, only the AC in my office with the door to t he rest of the upstairs closed so the cold air will go down to the first floor.

I noticed today in mid-afternoon that the thermometer in the dining room was at 68 though it was 80 outside. Just one AC did that, along with the trees all around us.

I'm by no means complaining, but just in 30 years, things have changed weather wise.

Just me talkin' (or, more precisely, 'just me writin').

Chapter 12 of "Tend the Fire, Tell the Story, Pass the Wine"

2. Some People (iii) and a dog....

Luke, a dog

Luke was a beautiful Golden Retriever with the deepest, loveliest brown eyes ever. He was Michael's dog before he was Jo-Ann's dog. Michael was Jo-Ann's son and had lost both legs while still a young man. Luke was a trained companion dog who was Mike's legs. But he was more than that. Once, while asleep, an IV in Mike's arm slipped out and he began to bleed. When the blood was pooling on the floor, Luke started barking and pulling at him and woke him up. I don't know how long it would take to bleed to death from an open IV vein, but Mike was not healthy and I think he could have. After Mike stopped the bleeding, he must have washed the blood off Luke's fur and thanked God for such a brown-eyed angel of mercy.

Luke came to church with Mike and when Mike had his final illness, someone with enough sense to break rules that need to be broken let Luke be in Intensive Care with Mike. Mike's missing legs made room for Luke to lay where Mike's legs should have been had life been kinder to him. And he laid there until Mike died. The medical personnel who initially had been horrified by a dog's presence in ICU melted when they looked into Luke's eyes. “I'm just laying here where I'm supposed to be,” he eyes said, “next to my human.”Anyone would have melted. So the nurses and orderlies took turns taking Luke out when he needed to go out. Luke could go to the bathroom on command. Would that we could train young children to do that....

After Mike died, the companion dog people were about to take him back when Jo-Ann, who was most of the time in a wheel-chair herself, convinced them to let her keep him and be a therapy dog. She took him to the hospital where Mike died and to nursing homes around the area. I saw him do it. It came naturally to him. He was never assertive, always patient, always waiting for the human to make the first move. And he was as gentle as a spring breeze, as sweet as the smell of honeysuckle, as healing as magic chicken soup. I can't imagine how many people Luke touched in those years with Jo-Ann. But I know he touched me profoundly.

Jo-Ann always came to the adult forum on Sundays. When she and Luke got to the church library, she let him come and greet me, putting his short leash in his mouth so he could guide himself. He'd come and give me a nuzzle and a lick (though he was also interested in rolling on his back on the rug in the library!) That greeting and lick was always one of the highlights of my week.

When I was in seminary, I had a course in 'creating liturgy'. Since I came into the church via a 'house church', I wanted to replicate that experience for my class. We met in our apartment in Alexandria and Robert Estill, the professor, was the celebrant. My dog Finney was standing next to Bob as we stood around the table. Bob broke the bread I'd baked and passed it around. But before he passed it, he broke a piece off and gave it to our Puli. Finney didn't leave Bob's side until he left for the evening.

I asked him about giving communion to a dog and he told me a story from his first parish church. They used home-baked bread, like we did that night, and since the loaf was always more than the little congregation could consume, Bob would take it to the back door and throw it on the grass for the birds. After a while, the birds would start gathering half way through the Eucharist and sing as they waited to be fed. Bob told me it was a wonderful addition to the music of the little church.

However, one day the bishop visited and was horrified when he saw Bob feed the consecrated loaf to the birds. The bishop forbade him from ever doing it. As someone once described me, Bob was 'reluctantly obedient' and stopped feeding the birds.

“They kept coming for weeks, months,” he told me. “Long after the bread was withheld from them, they kept singing for us. But finally, half-a-year later, they stopped showing up to sing the communion hymn.”

I think that's a metaphor for how the church misses the point of 'being the church'. We let rules and regulations and canon law and dogma come between the sacraments and those who long for them. I've known people that happened to—they were turned away, rejected, shut out by the church and the church lost them, finally.

So, when Luke came to the communion rail with Jo-Ann, I always gave him a wafer or a hunk of bread if we were using home-baked that Sunday. Since I was seldom the only one administering the bread, I kept an eye out if someone else was giving communion on Luke's side of the rail. If they passed him by, I'd rush over with several wafers or an especially big hunk of bread for him. I didn't want him to feel left out. (I always gave him communion with my left hand in case anyone objected to dog mouth. But I drew the line at the cup!)

One seminarian who worked with me was horrified at first. She even took it to her field work support group but most everyone thought it was decent and in good order. I'm sure there were people who found fault with it, but I never asked permission. It was simply right.

After all, Luke was as good a Christian as any dog could be—bringing joy and healing and comfort to so many. He actually was a better 'Christian' in his works of charity than most people. He'd earned his place at the Table.

The kids of the parish adored Luke. They would flock around him at the peace in ways that most dogs would have reacted negatively to. But not Luke—ever humble, ever hospitable, he took whatever the kids dished out with equanimity and generosity and doggy Love. One of the kids was moderately autistic but the parish had made a deal with his parents to treat him like any other kid. I don't think Luke did 'treat him like any other kid'. I think Luke, so used to being around the frail and helpless and confused, treated Twyla with special gentleness and love. Twyla grew better and better, more interactive, more social. I'd give Luke a lot of the credit.

At the General Convention in 2009, a resolution was passed authorizing the Liturgical Committee to prepare services for the death of an animal companion. Several people at St. John's were really excited about that. It spurred the creation of a Book of Animal Remembrances along with a statue of St. Francis that was placed in the collumbarium are in the back of the sanctuary. Dave, one of the guys who helps out around the parish, installed the statue. “Stations of the Cross and now a statue,” he said, “are we going back to Rome?”

“Wait 'til you see the racks of votive candles I've ordered,” I told him.

He laughed and shook his head. “Least we could make some money on that....If people didn't steal it.”

My Grandmother Jones, God bless her soul, used to divide the world into “church people” and those who weren't. She'd always say things like, “those boys I saw you with yesterday, they aren't 'church people' are they?” And she referred to a family down the mountain from where she lived by saying, “they're poor and not too clean, but at least they're 'church people'.”

I tend to divide the world into 'dog people'--those who love dogs—and those who don't. I like to be around 'dog people'. And besides, there is that oddity that 'Dog' is 'God' spelled backward. Luke could make a dog person out of almost anyone. He'd look at them, lower his head and wag his tail a bit. Those eyes, I've told you, make anyone besides a dogmatic hater of dogs just melt.

I heard part of a local PBS radio show the other day that was wrestling with the question: 'do dogs have souls?' The whole concept of eternity is a little vague to me—but if there are no dogs in the Kingdom it won't nearly be as blessed and happy as it's been cracked up to be. I personally am holding out for a heaven where every dog I've ever had as a companion will come frolicking across the streets of gold to great me at the Pearly Gates. “Where've you been?” they'll be barking.

Just before I retired, someone said in the Adult Forum, “What's Luke going to do without Jim?”

Jo-Ann shook her head and frowned. “He'll be looking for him everywhere....”

Good Lord, I thought, I feel bad enough about leaving all the people, how am I supposed to cope with leaving Lukie?

But he didn't have long to look after me. Luke, who'd had trouble standing and moving around for a month of so, was diagnosed as having untreatable cancer. So, a week or so after I left, Luke died in Jo-Ann's arms, as was only right.

(In the past year or so I've known ten or so people, in and out of the parish, who have lost dogs. Somehow, it seems to me, the initial pain we feel when a pet dies is deeper and sharper than when a person we love dies. But it is a cleaner cut because when a beloved animal dies, their aren't mixed emotions on our part. There is no 'unfinished business' with a dog. There is no lingering resentment or words that needed to be said that are left unspoken. The relationship with a dog is so clear, so uncomplicated, so immediate and in the moment that our pain is 'in the moment' as well. But it is so acute. With a person, we almost always the question of how much they really loved us. With a dog such wondering is vain and pointless. Dogs love us as much as they possibly can...and then a little more.)

When Jo-Ann called about Luke, I told her—after we cried together—that she had to ask the Senior Warden if I could come do the service since retired priests are supposed to make themselves scarce from their former parish.

Of course he agreed. He called me to let me know it was alright. “Besides,” he said, “Luke wouldn't want it any other way....” All Senior Wardens should be 'dog people'.

We interred Luke's ashes out in the Close, as near to Mike's resting place as we could estimate. We did that first and then went in the church for hymns, a power point slide show a talented woman had put together about Luke. Then Jo-Ann spoke and made everyone cry. There were about 200 people there, a good number of them brought their dogs and the dogs didn't make a sound during the whole thing.

At the reception people in the parish provided, a man came up to me and introduced himself as the Intensive Care Physician that had made it possible for Luke to be in the room with Michael. I told him I considered him a medical saint. He told me there was no way around it--”I looked into those sweet brown eyes and just melted,” he said.

I told him I knew...I knew....

The strange and wondrous Mrs. Baggs

When I arrived at St. Paul's in New Haven, the search committee had briefed me in great detail about most things. But they hadn't mentioned the pilgrimage I would have to make to visit Mrs. Baggs.

Mrs. Baggs was the last 'rich person' in the parish. Like many city churches, St. Paul's had been founded by the wealthy. Standing on the steps of the church, it was possible to see the property of Trinity Church on the Green, three blocks away. St. Paul's had been founded as a 'chapel of ease' for the wealthy who lived in the Wooster Square area. Back in the day, the Episcopal Church was the church of the privileged and well-born. That was true when St. John's was founded 275 years ago in Waterbury—the names on the plaques around the building were the names of streets and buildings as well. It was like that to a lesser degree at St. Paul's in New Haven. Over the years and the migration out of the city by the well-to-do, the rich folks who built grand edifices to their own distinguished importance either moved away or died off. Mrs. Baggs was the last of her kind.

I was never sure where the Baggs money came from, but it was 'old money' indeed, going back to the early days of the city. Manufacturing of some kind was involved as well as importing and other ways of making lots of money. Gun running to the Tories wouldn't surprise me—but what do I know. But I'm just being bitter about what I was asked to do and that I agreed.

The deal was this—Mrs. Baggs and her two daughters, both unmarried and living together in the house next to the old family home—didn't pledge to the support of the parish even though they were the richest three members ('old money' has a way of spreading out over generations). The two daughters did come to church on occasion, but they were quiet shy and left after receiving communion. But the three of them had a deal with the parish. At the end of the year the Rector would call on Mrs. Baggs and she would write a check for the annual deficit. Not a bad deal if you weren't the one to go, hat in hand, to ask for the money. It was all worked out—I was to slide a piece of paper across to Mrs. Baggs at the end of our visit and she would have her housekeeper bring her a check, make it out for the amount, and then Mrs. Baggs would sign it. Very civilized in some ways.

Over my 30+ years of parish ministry, I have encountered this phenomena over and over again in different guises. People are remarkably generous when they know exactly where their money is going. But very few folks feel comfortable pledging to the parish budget to the extent they are able. A few are comfortable with that and 'do' give to the extent they are able. And those folks usually object to fund raising projects. They are quite clear that if everyone simply gave what they could give, there would be no need for bake sales. And they are right—that's the frustrating thing about dealing with people who truly tithe: they're 'walking the walk' and have no patience with those who merely 'talk the talk'. That tiny minority of folks are dogmatic about pledging and very generous. The generosity of most folks, however, is tied to 'tell me what I'm paying for and I'll pay it' thinking. Because they are generous to a fault themselves, they have no patience with those who tithe, give proportionately. Why is anyone surprised that Stewardship is so difficult?

So I arranged my visit to Mrs. Baggs—much against my better judgment—with her housekeeper and showed up at the appointed time. She welcomed me into a rather modest home, considering the Baggs' fortune. Usually, it seems to me in my limited understanding, that 'old money' is seldom ostentatious. It is the newly rich who lust after square footage and 'obviously' expensive things. I'm sure the furniture I passed, led by Mrs. Grant, the middle-aged, very patient, black housekeeper, was mostly antique and quite valuable, but it didn't scream out “Money!”

Mrs. Baggs was waiting on a little room that was most likely an office at some point in time. There were two easy chairs, a fireplace not burning, a table between the chairs and not much else in the room besides a large portrait of Abraham Lincoln. The painting was in oil and I wondered if it were from Lincoln's time. She was a tall woman for someone her age, with piercing blue eyes, thick white hair pulled back and dressed in black slacks and a white blouse and inexplicable Keds red tennis shoes.

Doris, Mrs. Baggs housekeeper, brought us Ritz crackers with slices of Velveta cheese and some extremely dry, extremely cheap sherry. I knew the sherry was cheap because the price tag hadn't been removed but it took a sip to tell me it was really bad. I wondered if one of the richest people in the city didn't want to waste the good stuff on the Rector. Doris must have read my mind.

“This is Mrs. Baggs favorite snack,” she said, “she insists on it for guests.”

Mrs. Baggs asked about my education and when she found out I had an MTS from Harvard, she pursed her face.

“All the Baggs men were Yale men,” she said, “but I suppose Harvard isn't bad if you can't get into Yale.” She made no comment at all about West Virginia University or Virginia Seminary. Which I guess actually was a comment of sorts.

Then she asked about a couple of people at the church. One she called a gossip and the other an asshole. I almost gagged on my bad sherry when she said 'asshole' but decided people who have lived to great ages deserve to speak their mind. She told me of her admiration of my predecessor, who had been elected bishop. I imagined he was more at ease asking for money than I was and nodded in agreement with her praise of him.

The weather, which was mild for late November came up and she asked me if I knew her daughters. I told her I did and commented that they didn't stay around long enough on Sundays to have a real conversation with.

“They're not much for talking,” she said, “Beth and Ruth are very interior people.”

I nodded some more, wondering when the slide the piece of paper with a figure on it across the table. To pass the time I commented on the painting of Lincoln.

“You must admire President Lincoln,” I said.

She went on a while about Lincoln's attributes and accomplishments. Then she leaned forward and, in a whisper, said, “They killed him you know....”

I was nodding. I did remember that President Lincoln has been assassinated.

“It was John Wil....” I began.

She shook her head vigorously and touched my hand. “No, no,” she said, “that Booth rumor was a cover-up. It was the Gerry's who killed him.” She sat back, smiling and looking pleased.

“The Ger...Gerry's....You mean the German's killed him?” I asked, astonished.

She nodded. “A dozen of them,” she said, “all came running into the box seat and filled him with holes.”

I was nodding like a madman, trying to keep up.

She motioned for me to lean toward her and whispered in my ear, “I was there, you know....”

“When...when the Germans killed Lincoln? You were there?”

She smiled again. She had a lovely, old-lady smile,

“Mr. Lincoln, himself, invited me to the theater that night,” she told me. “That Mary Todd wasn't pleased. If you ask me, she was in on it.”

I took a deep breath and a large slug of bad sherry. “Mrs. Lincoln was part of the plot to kill her husband?”

Mrs. Baggs nodded and then said, “she was a German herself, you know.”

About that time, Doris reappeared.

“We don't want to tire Mrs. Baggs too much,” she said softly, “I think you should leave.”

My head still spinning from the German plot to kill Lincoln, I started to rise. Doris cleared her throat loudly.

“I think you have something I must see,” she said.

She waited until I understood and found the piece of paper with a figure on it in my pocket. Doris took it from me and said, “just say your goodbyes.”

I shook hands with Mrs. Baggs and kissed her cheek. Her skin was surprising soft for someone in their 80's. Doris came back with a check she had filled out and a pen.

“Put your name here, darlin',” she said to Mrs. Baggs, pointing to where to sign.

On the way out, Doris gave me the check. It was for several thousand dollars more than my note had said. She saw my reaction and said, “don't worry, the girls know about this and approve.”

“Mrs. Baggs...,” I started and then didn't know what to say.

“I was listening from the hallway,” Doris said, “and when you got started on Lincoln, I knew it was time I came in.”

“The Lincoln thing....” I began.

She smiled and helped me on with my winter coat. “No one understands it. The girls certainly don't.” She laughed softly, “once Mrs. Baggs told me she was there when the President made me free. That's how she said it: 'Doris, I was there when he signed the proclamation that made you free'. I swear I think she thinks she was....”

“So what will...,” I started.

“Happen to her?” Doris was faster than me. “Oh, until her body goes, I'll be here. The girls like me and I actually love Mrs. Baggs. She's a load of laughter.”

At the door she touched my arm. “Come back and see her please. But not like this, have someone call me with the total each year. Just come and visit and have some bad wine with her.”

“And talk about Lincoln?” I asked.

She laughed, “most likely,” she said and shut the door behind me.

I was astonished by the strange and wondrous Mrs. Baggs, by Doris calling two women at least in their 50's 'the girls', and by Doris herself. Mrs. Baggs was in good hands.

After I left St. Paul's, there was a need for a lot of repair to the building. The Baggs family was, I was told, extremely generous.

But by then, I knew Doris wrote the checks.

REMITHA

Remitha may be the most remarkable parishioner I've ever served...and one of a handful of the most remarkable people ever in my life.

She had a story (doesn't everyone) that made her remarkable enough. But how she chose to live out her life, post story, was astonishing.

Physically, she was unimposing. Five foot six or so and thin with a coffee Au let skin coloring. Her hair was turning the least bit gray when I came to St. James in Charleston but I don't know how old she was. Age wasn't something you tended to note about Remitha. She was most likely in her sixties back then, but there would have been no way to tell. She had more energy that any two people and moved rapidly.

It was her movement that gave her past away. She moved with a grace and economy of motion uncommon and rare. She moved like a dancer—which is what she was. Remitha had danced with Cab Calloway during the last years of the Harlem Renaissance. She knew all the notables of that remarkable artistic time and place. The only thing she ever did to let on that she could have been famous is refer to the figures of the Renaissance by first name. When Remitha said “Duke”, she didn't mean 'Snider'.

But when her parents were having health problems, Remitha left New York and came back to Institute, West Virginia to watch out for them. She had a married sister but since Remitha was single, it was her duty to care for parents. Both her parents were associated some way or another with West Virginia State College. She stayed with them until they both died and then, too old to take up her career again, stayed in Institute as a teacher. She had just retired when I arrived. To keep herself busy, she took on the care of other elderly folks. There were dozens of them that she looked out for—doing shopping, taking them to the doctors, bringing them food, just spending time.

Remitha could be irritable from time to time, though not nearly as much as someone who spent many hours a week with needy and demanding elders had ever right to be. Oh, she was never anything but patient and kind to the people she ministered to (and it was a real 'ministry') but she would come by my office every week or so, flop down on a chair gracefully (Remitha could actually make a 'flop' look 'graceful'!) and give me a litany of the woes of 'her folks'. But as soon as she got started complaining, she would begin to see the humor of the old people's eccentricities and we'd end up almost whooping in laughter. After a while, she sigh and smile, 'well thanks for listening' she would say and head back out to do dear, kind things for her folks.

“They drive me crazy,” she would say from time to time, “but being crazy keeps me going....”

Due to some strange demographic blip, the largest single group at St. James was teenage girls—only three teens who were boys, but over a dozen teenage girls. This was long before the curse of smart phones fell upon the land, but most of those girls could find something inane to do anyway. Remitha thought them lazy and spoiled.

“Look at them,” she said one day, “do-less, junk-food addicts and turning fleshy. Someone should do something.”

I remained a deacon for nearly a year, doing deacon's masses (which are like sacramental take-out blessed by a priest at another church) and with the help of Father Dodge. But my ordination had been scheduled—the first ordination at St. James in the church's 90+ year history. It was a Saturday and the next day I'd celebrate my first real Eucharist. Remitha came by one day a few months before my ordination and caught me at the church.

“What do you think about liturgical dance?” she asked me.

“I like it,” I said, “if it's done well.”

“Oh, it will be well done,” she told me, “you can trust me on that....”

Before I could ask what she meant, she was headed toward the door. “I've got Miss Bessie's two sisters in the car. I've got to get back before they get into mischief.”

Before I knew it, all those teenage girls were showing up after school at the church and Remitha was teaching them to dance. Some of them were reluctant, but Remitha had gone to their parents first. It didn't take much convincing to have the parents ordering the girls to do whatever Remitha told them to do. And Remitha could still dance—she'd had ballet for years before Harlem. The girl could really dance!

So, the St. James dancers came into being. She had them sewing their own costumes—simple, full colorful skirts to wear below black leotard tops with a scarf matching each skirt for their heads. They danced in bare feet. Some of them were naturals and some tried Remitha's patience. But they all learned to dance. My first mass as a priest was their debut. They used the whole church—all three aisles and the front. They performed four numbers all to Duke Ellington's “Sacred Concert”. Remitha danced with them—some times doing things they couldn't yet do, but often just as one of the ensemble. Her grave and graceful demeanor gave the girls more confidence and they ended up being better than even Remitha had imagined. It was most definitely 'done well'.

At the reception following the first Dance Eucharist at St. James, Remitha received the praise and deflected it to the girls. They had grown to love her though she was very strict with them and demanding of their bodies. They worked hard and when anything went wrong in rehearsals Remitha would first look sternly at them and then burst into her infectious laughter. Sometimes at the end of a rehearsal they were be exhausted, strewn around the church on their backs laughing with joy and amazement at themselves.

After that first service, Remitha gathered the girls in my office for a moment. I was with them. She smiled broadly at them. “The Duke would have been proud of you,” is all she said. They knew that was the highest of praise.

They went on for several years, dancing at St. James to a widening repertoire of music: Benstein's “Mass”, “Jesus Christ Superstar” and most lovely of all, old Negro Spirituals. Their reputation spread and they would often dance at other churches or at Diocesan Conventions or, because it was part of Remitha's passion, nursing homes.

“When do we get to see you again?” I asked her one day before a trip to Huntington to dance at the largest parish in the diocese.

“Lord these girls run me ragged,” she said, shaking her head. “I sometimes wonder if it's worth it....”

I started to tell her that of course it was worth it when she went on, “but these girls ARE worth it....”

Remitha wasn't satisfied simply to do her 'good work'--she drug me into it at every possible moment. I sometimes believed she double booked trips for her folks on purpose so I'd have to drive people places and drive them home. She also was very active in working with the retarded and crippled. (I know neither term is politically correct today but it was the 1970's and that's what we called the 'mentally and physically challenged' in those days.) She would drag me off to help her do exercises at group homes and special schools. It was impossible for her to imagine that the 'challenged' population couldn't do more if you only asked them to. So we would do calisthenics and run races and do silly dances with folks all over the county. Her network was seemingly limitless and everyone who knew her fell under her spell. But then, it's hard not to love someone who treats you like you are more capable and smarter than you think you are and is constantly reminding you how proud she is of you.

It was the same for me, but with an ironic bite to it.

Once after church she told me, “You certainly are a great preacher.” I walked around coffee hour about a foot off the ground. Just before she went home she came over and whispered, “...for a white man.” I could hear her laughing all the way out the front door.

Something she taught me that every priest needs to learn is simply how to be with people different from you or someway impaired or old or dying. That's a lesson for us all, but especially for a priest. It seems to me that most of my long ministry has been spent with a large number of those folks. Since I was always in urban settings, Remitha's teaching was acutely important. And I love her for it.

Another teaching was that the world is, in the end, a tad bizarre and usually inscrutable. Weird, odd and strange things happen all the time. Remitha taught me that bemusement and pondering were two tools of Life's trade. She'd shake her head often and say, “God works in mischievous ways....”

A few years after leaving Charleston, I was in West Virginia for a while, visiting relatives. My friend John had called me when Remitha went into the nursing home. She had developed rapidly progressing Alzheimer's Disease. It took her quickly, almost before she knew what was happening. She went in rapid succession from not remembering where she put her car keys (as we all do sometimes) to finding them and wondering what on earth they were, those oddly shaped metal things. I drove a couple of hours to visit her. It was a homey place, not the institution I expected. The Director had known Remitha before she got ill and treated her with the respect Remitha deserved. I went into her room. She had fallen and was tranquilized but awake. The first thing I noticed was the ironic, mischievous, good humored spark that had always been in her eyes had gone out. She seemed so frightened about something—perhaps the fear of staring into the world and seeing nothing that made sense. When I touched her, she jumped a little and turned her head away.

The Director was still with me. “She does that with everyone,” she told me, softening the blow of the rejection I felt so acutely.

I sat with Remitha for 45 minutes and helped feed her some apple sauce which she ate reluctantly and staring at me without recognition.

I talked to her about our times together but those times seemed so long ago when I saw her like that. I couldn't stay any longer because it hurt too much.

I stopped at the Director's office on the way out.

“Did she say anything?” she asked me. I told her no and she shook her head sadly, “she's pretty much quit talking. And Lord she was a talker in her day....”

I admitted Remitha could really talk and started to apologize for not staying longer.

That same sad head shake. “Don't apologize,” the Director said, “it's just too hard, I know it is....”

Remitha's sister let me know when Remitha died. She told me how proud Remitha had been of me and what a good priest she always said I was. I thanked her for calling and was sad. But I realized the woman I loved had died a year or two before her wondrous, expansive heart stopped beating.

SEMINARIANS

I've 'supervised' (so to speak) 30 people preparing for ordination in the Episcopal Church. All of them, except the first and last one, are now priests. Dana (who became a well-known novelist), the first seminarian I worked with, was ordained a Deacon in the church, but then, as a protest of sorts because of her fierce commitment to social justice, refused to become a priest. The last one, Frank, is still in the process and will be ordained in a year or so, I pray. He will be a wonderful priest, though he has run into some difficulty—a side effect of the ordination process that badly needs fixing. But don't let me get started on that....

Twenty-eight priests, a deacon and a priest in waiting, have worked with me over the years. I've gotten to preach at a half-dozen ordinations and have followed the lives of many of them to this day. Thinking about that is similar to thinking about the hundreds of funerals, weddings and baptisms I've been a part of in my 35 years as a priest. It is something that I have only started to ponder since retiring some nine months ago at 63. What a privilege and honor it has been to touch so many people in some way during my being a priest. And, in the case of the seminarians, having touched second-hand all the people they have touched in their ordained ministry. It takes my breath away and humbles me mightily.

I've always sought to be a 'boss' in a counter-cultural way. I've tried to surround myself with people smarter and more talented than I am and then give them their head to do what they do. The only agreement I've had, at least for the last 25 years, with people who work 'for' me, is this: They can have the applause for their accomplishments and I will take any grief for when things go wrong. The buck has always stopped with me. I am constitutionally and genetically designed to be able to accept criticism gracefully and, in many cases, use it to make things better. I have somehow developed the ability to 'roll with the punches' and not take them personally. I wish I could take credit for that stand, but the truth is, it is just the way I am. (One caveat, this ability does not extend to my immediate family—like most everyone, I imagine, my daughter or son or wife can cut me to the quick with a critical word.) And, it seems to me at any rate, that's the way it should be. The person in charge should take the blunt of any attack and let their employees 'shine' when things go well. And, it also appears to me, that strategy results in lots more 'shining' than 'whining'. Just me talkin....

The metaphor I've used over the years with people who, technically, at any rate, “work for me” is that of Crabbing Buddies.

Here's how that goes: over 35 years ago, I learned how to catch blue crab in little inlets of North Carolina. There is simply no way to explain how to do it in words, it is fraught with too many quirks and nooks an crannies. The only way to learn to crab is to put your feet in the water and learn from someone who knows how to do it. Crabbing involves a lot of variables.

In the first place, there is the bait. I recommend chicken backs, either ones you get from the butcher or carve out of a chicken yourself. The first thing you do is tie some twine around the chicken back and lay it out on a banister in the sun for a day or two. You need to get it really rotting. You tie it with twine first because you won't want to touch it with your fingers after the morbidity sets in. When the chicken is ripe, you slide a sinker down the twine and tie it off about three inches above the stinky chicken. Do two or more backs at a time, especially if you're being someone's crabbing buddy. Everyone needs bait.

You need a net on a pole about four feet long and a cooler or two full of ice covering at least two six packs of beer—I'd recommend three six packs. You can always run to the convenience store to get more. It depends on how many people are expecting a meal from your crabbing. Six crabs barely feed a person. Eight each is better. And you get to drink a beer only when you catch a crab. I recommend cans rather than bottles since you don't want to be bothered with a bottle opener. Then put the bait on top of the ice and either walk or drive to an inlet. You need to get there as the tide it turning. The crabs float with the tide and you want them moving. I've always thought that the tide turning to high is better than the tide turning to low. But the point is, have the tide turning.

You need to wear old sneakers since you'll never want to wear them again. You need sun block at the maximum strength allowed by law and a hat that shields your face from the sun. Also, the brim of the hat lets you look into the water to seek the crabs. Sun glasses too, the ones that cut glare so you can actually peer into the water about a foot.

You throw the rotten chicken out as far as your line allows...four feet of line would be enough in most cases. Then you hold the twine and try to distinguish between the pull of the tide and the bite of a crab. There is no way to know the difference without doing it for an hour or so and feeling foolish pulling in the twine when it is just water moving the bait. Eventually, through trial and error, you begin to get the sense in your fingers of what is tide and what is crab.

When you have that sense and feel a crab feeding, you have to start pulling in, slowly enough to let the creature keep eating and fast enough to get it into water shallow enough to net it. It is more poetry than prose, more intuition than knowledge, more 'touch' than 'knowing'. It takes a while to get your finger tips to react in a consistent and accurate way to the feel of a crab feeding. But once you get it, you know it always. Much like the 'balance' of riding a bicycle. Once you find it, you have it. You never forget how to ride a bike or how to know it is a crab on your line.

Patience is then required. You have to keep the tension, which isn't difficult since crabs are ferocious feeders. But if you pull in too fast or lean too far over the water so the crab's stilted eyes see your shadow, then the crab will back away. If that happens, you wait. They are greedy creatures and might just come back to the food if you are patient enough.

There is a whole other set of skills needed to net the crab you've tempted in far enough to see. They move backwards, mostly, so you have to come from far behind them because once the net hits the water they are in 'escape mode' and coming straight down will give you a net full of rotten chicken. Again, it is a matter of 'touch' and instinct, not knowledge and knowing. So, the only way to learn to do this—to crab successfully, is to be calf deep in water with someone who already knows how. And you have to be willing to be sun-burned, in spite of all your precautions, and have your ankles bitten by baby shrimp—yes, Virginia, shrimp can bite—and have three things...patience, patience and patience...and three skills...intuition, balance and 'touch'. That and only that will fill the coolers with crab as the beer is pulled from beneath the ice (always bring a bag for the cans, be environmentally responsible, after all). And, when you put a new blue crab into the cooler and dig down for a beer, remember this, people smarter and more skilled than you have been pinched by a crab claw. Just part of the learning....

So that is how I supervised all those wondrous people. I invited them into the water with me. I showed them, initially, how to do certain things and then I invited them to throw the chicken out, feel for the crab bite, learn to pull it in—not too fast, not to slow—take the net and see if they could do it. Always, I asked them to bring emotional sun block, intellectual sun-glasses and some old clothes. And I also told them what was best for shrimp bites—witchhazel and then baking powder.

Lots of work, sunburn, sweat and too many beers. But the feast is worth it. Nothing like boiled blue crab, poured out on the Charlotte Observer with corn from a road side stand, boiled shrimp from the same stand, lots of butter and beer or really cold white wine. Nothing like that at all.

Parish ministry can be that fulfilling, that wonderful that tasty. It really can be, if you're willing to ruin your sneakers and tend to the shrimp bites—metaphorical, of course. I never imagined I was “supervising” these remarkable young people. I was just trying to keep up. It's like the story of a man riding his horse through a town as fast as he could. “Those are my soldiers up ahead,” he said. “I am their leader and must catch up.”

Some of my relationships remain over time. I got a call years ago when Bern and I owned a house on Oak Island, NC. The gentleman introduced himself as Casper Higgenbottom, or something as unlikely. He told me he was a Fire Marshall serving Brunswick County. He asked if I were the owner of a house on Dolphin Lane. I told him I was, beginning to feel a bit uneasy.

“Well, Mr. Bradley, the damage can be repaired,” he said.

“Damage?” I said, my heart sinking, “what damage?”

“A gas line exploded near your house and scorched the who east wall,” he told me, “but there is good news....”

“What could be good about that?” I asked, sorrowing.

“Well the burn marks look like a profile of our blessed Lord Jesus,” he said, “and several people are interested in buying the property from you or you could use it as a tourist attraction. Lots of Christians in this area....”

After a long pause, I said, “who is this really?”

It was K., one of the first seminarians that worked with me in New Haven. He was in a church in North Carolina and was going to rent a house during July on Topsail Island and wondered if we'd be down that month. We saw K. and his family that summer and a couple of summers afterward until he got a job in another diocese.

B. was a young man from the upper Mid-West who worked with me and K. It is always exciting to have more than one seminarian around. It creates a usually friendly competition and they have someone to complain about me with! Plus, many hands make light work and I have found over the years that seminarians accomplish a great deal of parish ministry in their 10-12 hours a week during the academic year. Besides, one of the joys of having seminarians around is that they see with 'fresh eyes' and usually have bold and innovative theologies. It always kept me on my toes to engage seminarians in conversation about 'what they would do' if they were me and about the 'theological context' of practically anything. Many priests, it seems to me, get bogged down in the 'doing' of ministry and don't attend to staying reflective theologically. That's impossible with seminarians around.

B. was a talented man. More serious and less skeptical than K. They balanced each other well and did a great deal of good work at St. Paul's. St. Paul's was known as, perhaps, 'the most liberal parish in the diocese'. I'm not sure it was, but it was a haven for political and theological liberals. The parish itself did good outreach but, except for one of two activists, most of the dedicated liberals who came there wanted rest from their labors. They were doing the progressive work of God in their lives in many different settings. St. Paul's was a haven for them. A place to take a deep breath and be cared for just as they cared for those they served as teachers, social workers, labor union leaders, medical practitioners and workers in the vineyard of the world's pain and injustice. I've always fretted over the “gas station” image of a parish church—a place to get 'filled up' for the week ahead, for real life. But it is clear to me, looking back, that people who live in 'the real world' need refreshment and nurturing. All churches should seek to do that. Some parishes need to make it a primary ministry.

Anyway, back to B. I preached at his wedding down in Pennsylvania. His bride's parish was in a tony, upper-class suburban community. Her family's Rector did the service and I did the sermon. He was one of what I've always called 'catalog priests'--the kind if you saw their picture flipping through a catalog you would say, “oh, let's get that one!” Tall and intellectual and kind and a charming kind of shy—he was (he was, I thought, talking with him and B. in the back yard of the Rectory because the bride's limo had been delayed by an accident on the Interstate) destined for bigger things. So call me a minor prophet—the priest was later Bishop of Chicago and the Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal church!

So B. was ordained—I was one of his presentors—and he took a job in Connecticut so I would see him at clergy gatherings. Once, a couple of years later, I called him up to get his help on some issue or another—probably having to do with gay folks in some way—and there was a long pause after I told him what I wanted.

“B,” I said. “Are you there?”

“Jim,” he responded, “I'm just not as liberal as you are on these issues....”

I came to find out over the next few years that B and I were on opposite sides of most issues that came before the church. It was truly a revelation to me. For one thing, I must not have listened very well to him in our many conversations. He never hid his opinions, so far as I could remember, but my 'blind side' is that I always think of myself as the 'norm'...from which there is no deviation. This had bitten me many times over the years, thinking whoever I'm talking with must be in agreement with my obviously correct and passionately held opinions. Over and again I've been shown the untruth in my belief, but I continue to make the assumption that everyone supports what I support. Someone once told me when I gave them my “I'm the Norm” explanation that it was curiously naïve of me and not a little charming. Charming or not, I always feel like an idiot. B's final lesson to me was that you don't have to agree with someone to love them and to work with them. That's a lesson I wish I could learn more thoroughly. It's also a lesson that Orthodox Christians and Progressive Christians, Jews and Muslims and Christians, even Democrats and Republicans could learn, much to the benefit of all.

W was a seminarian for two years at St. John's. I got in trouble with the bishop (not the same one) during her ordination sermon. At the very beginning, instead of the usual “In the Name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit,” I said, “In the Name of Yahweh, Jesus and Sophia”. I think I may have told this story earlier, but I'm not sure I said that it was a woman, I am told, who objected and told the bishop, who inhibited me from saying such a thing.

W was a slightly more mature woman, not straight from college to seminary. She was from the spiritual tradition of the Society of Friends when she got bit by the Liturgy bug and became an Episcopalian. I'm not sure we Anglicans understand how powerful the liturgical practice can be to people of a certain makeup. I just read a review the other day of a book called The Accidental Anglican which, apparently, chronicles the journey of a fundamentalist Christian to the Episcopal Church. It was the Liturgy that got him, though our theology still is problematic. The message to all us Episcopalians is clear--”it's the Liturgy, stupid!”

Anyhow, W, who was a candidate from Connecticut, a member of the Cathedral congregation in Hartford, was having problems getting through the ordination process. (Don't get me started on that...I've warned you....) She was a good preacher, a superb pastor, an accomplished teacher and liturgist, plus she had a 'support group' who loved her and were devoted to her. Most seminarians didn't trouble much with their support group—which they selected and led—but W was deeply committed to learning all she could from lay folks (much better teachers in priest-craft than priests or seminary professors, by the way) and made the most of her group. They even had a name for themselves—'The W Pack'--and taught her much more than I ever could have about how to be a priest.

The complaint of the committee blocking her ordination was that she didn't have a full-blown “Anglican Spirituality”, which, as far as I can remember, had something to do with her admitting she didn't say Morning and Evening Prayer from the Prayer Book each day. Well, that ticked me off no end. Against W's wishes, I demanded a meeting with the bishop and the committee. It was a painful time. They were somehow, it seems to me, suspicious of a Quaker/Episcopalian. Hell, I'm a Pilgrim Holiness/Methodist/ Episcopalian. What could be more suspect that that. What frustrated me was that I knew her best of all and knew what a priest she would be and how badly the church needed priests like her and no one would listen to me.

(I've taken an informal poll of priests I've known, asking them if they were not an Episcopalian, what would they be. Over half have said 'a Quaker”. The two forms of piety seem to complete each other—the deep silence and lovely liturgy seem meant for each other. And you couldn't find a more sane way of making decisions. When the whole gay inclusion question came into the forefront, the Quakers, as I understand it, adjourned their national convention and spent the year in discernment and prayer. At the end of the year they simply accepted GLBT folks as fully part of the Society. Episcopalians have been fighting and splitting over the question for well over a decade. I can't imagine why the Episcopal Church shouldn't be more than delighted to have Friends come to join us, bringing their spirituality with them.)

So, in spite of my intervention (or, perhaps, because of it} her ordination was delayed for a year. Alas and alack. It seemed to snap something in her. I don't know, I just may be imagining that, but she hasn't had the success in the church I thought she would and which she richly deserved. The Process somehow 'broke' her. Literally, since she had no job for the year she had to wait for ordination...and, more profoundly, emotionally and spiritually in some way. It was one of the many cases I've seen where the church as “Institution” overruled the church as “Community” and did damage.

But she soldiers on to this day. I hear from her from time to time and she is still committed to her ministry, her priesthood, as much 'in spite of' the church as 'for it'. God bless her. God bless them all. They deserve it. Really. Good people, trust me on this—good people.

Little M was a gift to me. She grew up and will spend her priesthood in churches that are suburban, mostly affluent and traditional. And, when she was in seminary, a commuter student after her children were almost grown, she made a defining choice to come to St. John's, a funky, profoundly diverse, urban parish. She needed to experience it, that's what she told me when I interviewed her. Such a place would not be her fate or her passion, but she truly believed she should experience it and learn from it. And she did, just as I learned from her.

M is almost terminally 'perky', still is in her role as a Rector of a suburban parish outside the See-city of Hartford. She is 'feisty', I would say. A priest friend of her asked me, early on in M's time at St. John's, “how's it going with M?”

Being inappropriate in most ways, I mistakenly said, “we'll crack her open yet...”

Well, her friend told her what I said and so much of the year she spend with us 'in the City', M was trying to resist being 'cracked open'. I didn't really mean it in a negative way. I merely meant, and should have said, “we'll give her an experience she won't forget.”

She was another of the seminarians I presented for ordination in a Fairfield County parish that reeked of money and influence. The kind of place I feel a little too hill-billy and tongue-tied to be in comfortably. For her ordination, I gave her, as is my tradition, something that was mine. I gave her a large print of Christ/Sophia. It depicts a beautiful, dusky skinned woman, wrapped in a red garment with long black hair and a nose ring, holding a wooden carving of the Earth Goddess. It is an edgy kind of icon, full of paradox and challenges. St. Paul called Jesus “the Wisdom of God”, or, in Greek, “the Sophia of God.” Sophia has been associated over the centuries, with both the second and third persons of the Trinity. So, that's what I gave her, 'little M', the proper suburban woman, always well groomed and dressed by Talbots.

A few years later, I called her because I wanted to borrow the print for a retreat I was leading. She told me to come down and get it. I suspected she would have to go get it in her attic, but when I arrived, the picture was hanging prominently on the wall of her office in this well-heeled parish. I was surprised and told her so.

“I put it here so people will ask about it,” she told me. “And they do. Many find it troubling, but that's not a bad thing. Being 'troubled' teaches us something.”

She smiled at my look of surprise.

“Then I tell them about St. John's and the life and ministry of a place so different from this,” she told me. “That too teaches us something.”

Just as B taught me you don't have to agree about issues to be loving and kind and accepting of each other, 'little M' taught me what I already knew and often forgot, which made it a doubly special teaching.

'Folks are just folks' in the end.

We live in different cultures, different contexts, but in the end, 'folks are just folks' and we theologically trained people should know that, really know it, appreciate it and ponder it and figure out how to make it work.

'Little M', I believe, has figured all that out. She spends her life and ministry in a context and culture I've never known, and in that space, she creates the Truth that 'folks are just folks' for the folks she ministers to.

God bless her, like all the others.

E was the first person I 'supervised'. She was a seminarian from West Virginia who, at the end of her second year of study, was required to spend the summer working somewhere in West Virginia. Since she wanted to minister 'on the margins', coming to an African-American parish in an overwhelmingly white diocese made sense. She also wanted to be near Charleston both because her spiritual mentor—the Rector of St. John's, the big church downtown—was there but also because of her passionately felt need to do advocacy work. E is the only person I ever worked with that made me feel 'conservative'! Her theology was expansive, liberationist and activist. She went far further into social action than I ever did, though many would consider me a model of 'the activist priest' from Paul Simon's Me and Julio, down by the School Yard. E's particular zeal was for saving the mountains from the greed of the coal industry.

There had always been strip mines, though the massive scale of mountain top removal of today would have never been imagined. E grew up, as I did, in McDowell County, a part of the world sitting on the largest bituminous coal deposits in the U.S.

(The Rector of St. John's, amazed by E's brilliance, devotion and passion, once said to me, “Jim, can you believe someone like E actually comes from McDowell County?” It was one of those 'what good can come from Nazareth?' statements people who didn't grow up in Appalachia often made. I wanted to shake him and say, “who do you think we are down there, some lesser species of humankind?” Instead, I nodded. “Amazing,” I replied. There's really no point trying to convince people that places like McDowell County are really like all the other rural places around the country. Coal miners are seen as somehow constitutionally inferior—witness the way companies like Massey Energy kill them for their sport...or rather, their profits....)

E and I grew up quite close to each other, in fact. Our parents knew each other. My father had worked in the mines before WWII and E's father was a mine boss of some kind. We both had seen with our own eyes the wanton destruction of some of the most beautiful places on earth. People who find out I'm from West Virginia will often tell me about driving through it on the way to someplace else. And they always comment on the beauty—and the emptiness—of the state. (West Virginia is the size of all of New England, excluding Maine, and has less than 1.5 million citizens. It is a very large, mostly empty place.) And, it is jarringly beautiful. It was a remarkable and humbling privilege to grow up surrounded by the mountains that reached down to the core of life of the planet and up to the vast expanses above. There is something holy about mountains (not a surprise to almost all Faiths since holy places are often on mountain tops).

Strip mining, as it was called in my youth, and what is called 'surface mining' today, abuses, ignores, desecrates all that is subsumed it the Holiness of Mountains. Now, as an old retired guy, I finally resonate with E's outrage and passion and anger. I finally get what drove her, motivated her and consumed her, body and soul.

Here was E's Achilles's heal when I knew her—she was in mortal battle with not only the 'only' real industry of West Virginia but with many of the leaders of the Diocese. I remember being at a Diocesan Convention Banquet and seeing E outside, picketing the event because several coal owners would be there. Her mentor and I talked to her and tried to convince her to come in and eat with the sinners, but she was adamant and disappointed at us for going inside.

“Do you think we should stay outside with her?” I remember asking K, her mentor.

“Let's see what's on the menu,” he said, “then we'll decide.”

E and K were both to the left of me which meant they were on the left wing so far over they might just fall off. But E's purity was not ours. We ate with sinners as she stood outside and protested. “How far to go?” is always the question for those who seek social justice. I think perhaps K and I were missing E's point. Perhaps there is no such thing as 'going too far' in issues of justice. I wrestle with that Angel and ponder the possibility that E tried to teach me what I did not learn.

When there was a movement to keep her from being ordained to the priesthood, K and I pulled in whatever chips we had and got her approved. And E refused the ritual! It mattered not what her two Defenders risked and bargained away in her behalf. She had a shining, diamond hard and rainbow pure 'cause'. She would not be ordained into a church that harbored and supported those who destroyed mountains. After all these years, I'm not sure, but she might have been right. Or, at least Righteous, which is what we are all called to be.

(“Righteousness”, by the way, is not a measure of moral purity in any sense. Abraham was 'reckoned righteous' by God, not by virtue of his 'virtue', but because he entered into a 'relationship' with God. Being Righteous is to be in a 'right relationship' with God. It is a term of 'relationship' not behavior. So many Christians have that so, so wrong. When you are 'in relationship' with someone, even God, then you know each others quirks and faults and brokenness, yet you Love each other. Am I making any sense here? I worship a God of 'relationship', not a God of Law and Judgment. I pray you do as well. And I really believe, with the perspective of decades, that E had a 'relationship' with the God who created the mountains that I did not have and will never have., She was “righteous' in that sense instead of the way we saw her and judged her—a radical with an agenda. E held the hand of the Creator and knew the Wonder of God's ways. I really believe that. Righteousness never leads to good endings, but knowing you will be abandoned by even your closest friends while you hold the hand of the Almighty...well, I know why she stayed away from that banquet that night and refused ordination to the priesthood when it was an open offer to her. Sometimes you meet people who walk backwards and speak gibberish and yet are, in the end, Righteous. Sometimes that happens. It just does. Notice that and ponder it.)

E, if recently found out, now participates in the church in and around Charleston. She's also become a author of historic novels, a couple of which I've read. She even teaches at West Virginia State. It's comforting to know she's there, involved I'm sure in making life unpleasant for the coal companies—especially after the horrifying accident of last year. The problem is, as noble as people like E are, the ones they seek to advocate for—the miners and their families—depend on the coal companies for their livelihood. It's a difficult thing to speak up for those who don't want to be spoken up for, fearing loss of their jobs. But if anyone is up to that kind of quandry, it is E....God bless her....

That's enough for now. I may return to the seminarians later and tell you a bit more about some of them and the gifts they gave me. Just reflecting on them, remembering them and pondering all that they taught me has brought me that complex and ironic emotion that merges together pride, gratefulness and humility. Not a bad emotion to hang around with for a while.

TtF,TtS,PtW--chapter 11

11. The Joy of Irrelevancy

So, in the midst of the sermon for his ordination I said, “Michael, never forget, you are being ordained into an almost irrelevant office in an irrelevant institution.”

I said that for two reasons: first, I believe it, and, secondly, it seemed to me it was important for him to hear. He is an astonishing priest and man whose true gifts will shine through most clearly if he can ‘hang loose’ about his role and his relative importance in the scheme of things.

I learned after the service that the bishop didn’t appreciate my insight into what Michael needed to hear and didn’t agree with my analysis of the church. He didn’t appreciate my ‘diminishing’ the church in a sermon to 400 people—most of whom have a vested interest in the relevancy of the church.

I must agree that it was perhaps not the most appropriate setting for pointing out the church’s irrelevancy, but it does need pointed out. The American Heritage Dictionary (2006) defines ‘relevant’ as “pertinent to the matter at hand.” The Merriam Webster Dictionary of Law (1996) clears up for all us Law and Order junkies what is meant when one of the attorneys objects by saying “relevancy, your Honor.” Something is ‘relevant’, according to that dictionary by “having significant and demonstrable bearing on facts or issues.”

I would content, by either of those definitions of ‘relevant’ that the Main Line Churches are woefully irrelevant these days. Not much about the church is ‘pertinent’ to any of the matters at hand in our lives and culture and doesn’t have any ‘significant and demonstrable bearing’ on the issues that consume us. Almost no one I know pauses when considering the matters at hand each day and asks, “wonder what the Episcopal Church has to say that would be pertinent here?” It has not always been so. For 17 centuries or so—from the Council of Nicea until relatively recently—the church was so enmeshed with Western culture that you couldn’t turn around without bumping into both its pertinence and relevancy. I’m not scholarly enough to pinpoint when that began to unravel. Certainly the Renaissance got the ball rolling, but the church wasn’t dislodged from her role all at once. The horrors of two World Wars and the world-wide depression in between them certainly greased the skids. But, if you ask me, the true death knell of Christendom in the US came with the construction of the Interstate Highway System and the explosion of the mass media.

Before you think I’m crazy, let me point out that no less a figure than Stanley Howerwas traces the “end of Christendom” to a particular Sunday evening in his home town of Greenville, South Carolina, when the movie theatre was open for the first time during the hours of evening church services. (Resident Aliens) The explosion of mass media—movies, TV and now the Internet, for God’s sake—replaced most of the entertainment value of Main Line Churches. As late as the early 20th Century, churches were still the center of social life and leisure time (what little of that there was) activities as well as being the formative influence on morals and ideas. The rise of mass media gave the lie to that relevancy. And the Interstates freed people to travel much longer distances to do things than ever before. There are plenty of people still living who remember the time when only a few people on the block…or in the whole town!...had automobiles. (When those people talk about that simpler place and time, they tend to say ‘automobiles’ rather than ‘cars’.) President Eisenhower’s vision of a nation connected together by four lane highways created a booming construction-driven economy, transformed Detroit into the shining city on a hill, put engineers into a whole new class of workers and made possible “the Sunday drive” right past the church and out to the lake.

There were, it seems to me, two models for the church in the height of her relevancy—the village church and the cathedral. Like Orthodox Jews to this day, most everyone used to walk to church…which insured the church they attended was in walking distance. And in a village before radio and, more malignantly, TV, the church was the center of civic, social and political life. And since the village church was so central to life, generation upon generation of heterosexual couples met and married in ‘their’ church. It was a very different world than the one that emmerged after WW II.

The cathedral model was the village church writ large. Commerce tended to flourish on the cathedral grounds. All those European cathedrals aren’t in the center of cities because they bought the land—the cities grew up around them. There are two equivalents to the cathedral model today—shopping malls and Mega-churches. You can spend a day in a shopping mall—do your banking in the branch there, have meals in the many eating establishments, do some shopping, find interactive experiences for your children, get your hair cut and styled as well as a pedicure and manicure, visit the day spa, see the cars that are always on display in the walk areas, get your exercise, see displays by civic groups, get a drink, go to a movie, visit the health care satellite hospitals have established, get a tattoo, buy insurance—there is actually no reason to leave a shopping mall for most any needs. I keep waiting for some evangelical group to put in chapels.

The other cathedral clone is the Mega-churches that have sprung up in the suburbs of most all medium sized and large cities. One way Interstates made most Main Line Churches irrelevant is if the church was built before the Interstates were, there is insufficient parking. Mega-churches work “because” of the highways and are islands of holiness in a sea of asphalt. One of the things the folks at places like Willow Creek have done is perfected the art of parking. Sports arenas could learn a lot about how to get cars in and out of a venue efficiently from the Mega-church people. Mega churches also mimic shopping malls by having food courts, gyms, child-care, ‘Christian’ schools, video game rooms and worship that is more like Broadway or Los Vegas than like Canterbury. Mega-churches and sect-like fundamentalist churches are the only ‘churches’ that have figured out how to remain relevant. Mega-churches do it by making themselves indispensable and competing successfully with the larger culture. The Fundamentalists do it by mind control. If I were a betting man I would wager the latter will collapse into irrelevancy before the former.

Mind control—control of any kind—is something that is becoming harder and harder in our culture. Jimmie Carter once said on the PBS show Speaking of Faith that fundamentalism was the creation of what he called ‘dominant males’. My wife would call them ‘male mutants”—a term, not of endearment, which includes all the men (and some women) on the planet. Those dominant males, according to Jimmie Carter, believe that what they think is what God thinks. “That’s a difficult position to argue with,” he said, in his soft, sweet accent.

It seems to me that the church, for most of history—at least from the 4^th century until the Interstates—had that opinion of itself: what they believed is what God believed. Interestingly enough, the Protestant Reformation took that little caveat with them when they left the Whore of Babylon behind. Church has been based on ‘absolute Truth’—something I’ve admitted I don’t believe in—and used that cudgel to batter people into line for century after century.

There are people my age, for example, who were told by their Roman Catholic priests that simply entering a non-Roman church was a mortal sin. I ponder what the percentage of people born since 1977 who believe that there is a whit of difference between different denominations would be. One of the costs of irrelevancy is that the denominations have, for the most part, lost their ‘bite’, their ‘scent’, their particular ‘flavor’. Like politicians and Episcopal bishops, denominations, scrambling to stay ‘relevant’ gave up what made them distinct and real. I went to a Methodist wedding some years ago and watched an altar boy with gloves on, along with a red cassock and snow white surplice, come out to light the candles on the altar. When he finished, he did what we Episcopalians call a ‘profound bow’—from the waist, all the way down until he looked like the number 7. Holy moley! The Methodist Church I knew as an adolescent would have fallen to the ground if 1. there had been an altar boy; 2. he had been wearing gloves; 3. there had been candles on the altar; or 4, anyone had reverenced the ‘table’ in front of the pulpit. What has happened to Methodists? They probably drink now too.

Shortly after I came to St. John’s, I was in the church on a Saturday morning by myself. I was fussing and obsessing about something or other for the Sunday services. Today, I could never find myself alone at St. John’s on a Saturday morning. The ‘Saturday School’ for the Hispanic congregation would be there, the MEEP group (an unfortunate acronym for an adult training program the diocese runs) would be there, Knit One/Purl Two (the Prayer Shawl group) would be there, and any of a dozen or so periodic Saturday meetings and events would be going on. But back then, I could have the whole building to myself.

I had the doors locked but heard the doorbell from the parking lot. When I opened the door I was confronted with twenty or so Hispanic folks, all dressed up, with a baby in an ornate gown. Many of them were weeping, but one young man, who spoke idiomatic English, told me what their story was. They had scheduled the baby’s baptism at the huge Roman Catholic basilica on the other side of the Green and shown up on schedule. The parents had been through six weeks of baptismal training prior to the private baptism. But when the priest arrived, he asked who the god-parents were. Two women and a man raised their hands.

“Are you Roman Catholics?” he asked.

Two were, but one of the god-mothers was a member of an Evangelical Spanish-speaking church. The priest announced he would not do the baptism and turned on his heel and disappeared in the direction of the Rectory.

“We just want somewhere to pray for a while,” the young man told me. “Our hearts are broken.”

I ushered them into the sanctuary, turned on some lights and told them to take as long as they wanted. Then I went back to my fussing and obsessing for a while. Suddenly, something else occurred to me. I went back and found the young man who had been the family’s spokesperson. I asked him if they’d like for me to baptize the baby.

“When?” he asked.

“Right now,” I said.

After a short burst of Spanish among the group, he turned to me and have me the thumbs up sign. I gathered water and oil, wine and bread, lit the Pascal Candle, baptized little Maria and shared the Body and Blood with her family.

I haven’t seen them since, but, to me, that doesn’t matter. That sacrament mattered and made a difference, just don’t ask me what….

A decade or so ago, I was sitting in the nave of St. John’s being interviewed by a local reporter about some issue or another. Her skin was copy paper white, she had red hair and a smattering of freckles across her nose below her blue eyes (I have a real weakness for freckles). She was 20 something and when the interview was over she looked around the church and said to me, “This is different from Jewish, right?”

So, two generations ago—maybe even one—Colleen would have been worrying about the plight of her immortal soul, having spent an hour in a non-Roman church talking to an Episcopal ‘priest’. But all she wanted to know was whether Episcopalians were different from Jews.

I asked her about her family. Her oh-so-Irish father had married at 16 and divorced at 19. When he married Colleen’s mother it had to be by a justice of the peace. His family disowned him and his church excommunicated him (part of the death throes of the church’s relevancy). So, understandably, he was a tad pissed off about things. So Colleen and her brother, Sean (for goodness sake!) had never darkened the door of a church—except when she came to interview me.

Obviously, she’d never been baptized. I asked her if she’d like to be.

“What would it matter?” she asked. “What would it mean?”

I told her I truly believed it would both matter and mean something, I just wasn’t sure what.

After I showed her the astonishing baptismal font with some terribly interesting iconography carved into it’s marble (a pelican piercing her breast to feed her young on her blood and a stag and evergreen tree along with an Agnus Dei and a descending dove) she was interested in the symbol and myth of it all.

“When would we do it?” she asked.

“I’d prefer a Sunday morning,” I told her, “but most any time would work for me—but we need witnesses….”

She left really considering the possibility, but when I didn’t hear from her for a while I called the newspaper and discovered she had taken and job in Arizona and moved there. Oh those Interstate highways….

Which brings us, inexorably, to marriages. This subject has gotten horribly complicated by the longing and demand of gay and lesbian couples to be ‘married’ in the church, just like real people. (That’s the point, isn’t it, that the church doesn’t take GLBT folks seriously, like they’re ‘real’? The church tends to extend, for the most part, a modicum of hospitality to the GLBT community—oh, let’s be honest here, to the GL community—the church no more knows what to extend to bi-sexual and transgendered folks than the church would know what to do with a woodchuck who got elected bishop. Though the wood chuck could chuck wood, what on earth would the BT folks of the GLBT community do? Horrors!) But I’ll save that conversation for later. What I want to write about now is heterosexual marriage and how the church has made itself irrelevant to that particular institution…which isn’t doing so well on the relevancy scale itself! {I have to add an addendum, several years after I wrote this: at the General Convention of the Episcopal Church in late June and early July of 2015, approval was given to changing Canon Law and the language of the Prayer Book to make same-sex marriage perfectly appropriate! God bless the Episcopal Church--relevant on this issue at least!} 

When I was a young priest and feeling relevant, I had a multitude of thoughts about “Christian marriage”. I felt that “Christian marriage” was reserved for people who had proved both their “Christian” commitment and their heart-felt desire to wrap their marriage in Christianity in a way that would guard and protect them until death did them part. Or something like that was what I thought. Since then, since admitting that Christianity is irrelevant, at least so far as the church of Christ is concerned, I’ve moved to a different place about “marrying people”.

That’s what they usually say—mostly the bride though the groom seems to make first contact more often than in the past—they say: “will you ‘marry us’.” And the first time I meet with a couple I assure them that I will NOT be ‘marrying them’. So far as I can see, the church doesn’t ‘marry’ people. If the church did, indeed, ‘marry people’ they wouldn’t need a marriage license from the courthouse. Additionally, so far as I can see, the state doesn’t ‘marry’ people either—the state provides a license for marriage that, once signed by a functionary and processed in the courthouse, provides them with certain specific legal rights. What actually happens, it seems to me, in a marriage is that two people ‘marry’ each other. And by the time they’re sitting in the library of St. John’s talking to me, they’re already, in my mind, ‘married’.

“Nobody,” I tell those, usually nervous couples—nervous because they think the church is going to try to batter them in some way—“wakes up one morning and decides to go see an Episcopal priest about ‘getting’ married.” Long before that happens, I tell them, they have made some decisions and some promises to each other—hopefully not right after especially good sex or a round of bar hopping—that have bonded them together in a way that indicates they fully intend to spend the rest of their natural lives together. What they come to me about is exactly what the good old Book of Common Prayer says it is—‘the Celebration and Blessing of a Marriage’. That implies—and I’m an old English major and understand the language’s nuances quite well—is that the “Marriage” has already occurred and what we’re going to gather to do is celebrate that reality and have me, as the representative of an irrelevant institution, “bless” it.

Then I go on to explain what I think a ‘blessing’ is. I tell them that where I come from, when the family is gathered around the dinner table full of entirely too much food to possibly be consumed at one sitting, someone will say, “Who’d like to say the blessing?” And whatever whoever steps into that breach says is something like this: “Thank you, God, for this food and for those who prepared it and for those we share it with.” And everyone says “Amen” and digs in.

That truly is what I think I do in a marriage ceremony: I say a heart-felt “thank you” to God for the two people, their love, their commitment, their longing, their promises and vows, their dewy-eyed optimism, their ‘good intentions’, their hopes and fears and wonderings. And I ask God to guard them like the apple of his/her eye and hide them under the shadow of her/his wing. Lord knows, given the way things are these days, they need that protection. And since that’s what I do, I assume that is what the sacrament of marriage (excuse me, Episcopal Purists, “sacramental rite”!) is about. That and that only and that—thanksgiving and blessing and prayers for protection—is sacrament enough…more than enough. That’s the outward and visible act—the inward and spiritual grace part is up to God. I’m delighted to divide up the responsibility in that way.

I’m also delighted when people come to ‘get married’ at St. John’s. Again, there are two reasons. I truly believe in the objective reality of sacraments and I think anyone who wants such a reality from an otherwise irrelevant institution deserves to receive it. Inclusion is not a ‘privilege’, it’s a birthright as a child of God. And the folks who come for the sacrament are delighted that it is freely given and not tied up in a Byzantine complexity of rules and canon law and inhospitality. Many of the folks whose marriages I bless are Roman Catholics with a divorce or two in their history. Some of them have gone the long, lonely road of annulment to no fulfillment. Most of them have been insulted in one way or another by the priest who may have baptized them and told they are ‘unworthy’ in some profound way. Then they come to me and I’m delighted to see them and will bend over backwards to provide sacramental support to their relationship. It’s one of the things I do to make an irrelevant institution matter and make a difference in people’s lives.

That’s the thing that I want to leave you with at this point: being ‘irrelevant’ isn’t so bad a thing. It doesn’t mean we can’t ‘matter’ profoundly and make miraculous differences in people’s lives. In fact, being irrelevant might just make it possible for the church to play those roles. What we don’t get to do is control and manipulate people in every part of their lives. What we don’t get to do is to use the Sacraments—which belong, by the way, in my way of thinking, to God and the People of God—as forms of reward and punishment, keeping everyone in their place. The church has a remarkable and wondrous opportunity to ‘get out of the way’ between God and God’s children and contribute to both by bringing instruments of Grace into the lives of those who God loves.

I always ask people who come to St. John’s thinking I’ll “marry” them and then learn what I will truly do—I ask them why they chose to call me. I tell them there is no wrong answer because I know they expect the church to ask trick questions and then assault them when they answer incorrectly. A perfectly good answer is this: “it’s a pretty place”. That answer works for me because St. John’s is a remarkably pretty place and a place such a holy moment should happen in. But the answer I like most is that they attended a wedding at St. John’s in the past and their friends who got married told them that St. John’s was a place of Grace and Hospitality. That’s the answer this old irrelevancy likes to hear.

(A closing shot: one of those crippled couples—beaten up by the Roman Catholic church and denied the sacrament of marriage—had their celebration and blessing at St. John’s about 12 years ago. I expect about 1/3 of that kind of couple to hang around in some way and about 1/3 to come back for the sacrament of baptism and about 1/3 never to be heard from again. I’ll take those odds. The wife lost her job at a RC school for being married in an Episcopal Church after a divorce. God help us! This couple disappeared for several years and then—true to my accounting—came back to have Wyatt baptized. Then they disappeared again. But the husband came back—God know why (well, of course, God knows why…)—and started playing guitar for the 8 a.m. service. He’s served on the vestry and his wife and son came more and more.

Evangelism is a long-range enterprise for an irrelevant institution. We must be this: Inclusive, Open, Hospitable and Patient.

All things, they tell me, come to those who wait—even the church. 

 Michael Spencer’s Ordination Sermon

I am reminded of the wisdom of two women I know and love.

The first piece of wisdom, Michael, is from someone you know and love as well, our colleague here at St. John’s, Malinda Johnson. Malinda once told me Ordinations are like weddings and the Ordinand is like the fretting bride.

Well, Michael, the fretting is over. I, for one, am delighted this day has finally arrived so you can quit fretting and enjoy it!

The next piece of womanly wisdom is from my grandmother, Lina Manona Sadler Jones, who you do not yet know and love but who might just look you up in the Kingdom. Grandmaw Jones once told me, “don’t get above your raisin’.”

Now, lest you think she meant not to get above a dried grape—what she meant was “don’t get above the way you were raised”. Don’t get too full of yourself. Good advice for anyone. Especially good advice for you, Michael, on this day.

So, I always get suspicious when the lectionary leaves out large chunks of the text.

For example today: Numbers 11. 16-17 and 24-25.

“Hold on, a minute”, I say to myself, “why don’t they want me to hear verses 18-23—that’s a nice slice of scripture. What’s the problem there? And what comes after verse 25? Why did they stop there?”

So, of course, I go tearing into my Bible….”Genesis, Exodus, that one that makes people homophobic…ah, here it is: Numbers…”

Ok, let me tell you about what got left out and what we stop before we get to.

Numbers 11 is actually—seriously—my favorite passage from the Hebrew Scriptures. It is a stitch, this chapter, because everyone is whining about something. The Hebrew Children are whining that there’s no meat to eat, just that crummy manna and Moses is whining because he’s got all these whining people in the wilderness and he’s doing the best he can and he really is working too hard and needs some time off….

So Yahweh decides the best thing to do is to shut everybody up so they can trudge on toward the Promised Land. God tells Moses to chose 70 elders and they’ll do a “spirit-ectomy” on Moses and spread the spirit out a bit so he can have a day off once in a while. But then, God says, “Oh, yeal, about those folks who want some meat….You go tell them they’ll get their meat. They’ll get meat like they never imagined. You’ll get meat until (Verse 20, quoted) “it comes out of your nostrils and becomes loathsome to you….”

Well, that’s not a pretty picture. I’m guessing having meat come out of your nose is rather unpleasant and off-putting.

Anyway, Moses, not quite done whining himself, asks Yahweh how that is possible. “Are there enough flocks and herds to slaughter for them? Are there enough fish in the sea to catch for them?”

And Yahweh answers (this is verse 23—one that was left out) “Is the Lord’s power limited?

Pinch me if I’m wrong, but if there is a verse of scripture Michael should hear on this day it might just be that one.

“Michael, is the Lord’s power limited?

That’s a sentiment a person about to get hands laid all over him and prayers solemnly intoned in his name might need to reckon with.

“Michael, is the Lord’s power limited?” Can God make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear? Can God take the brokenness and emptiness and profound longings you feel—that we all feel—and do something new and wondrous and life-giving with them? Is Life ultimately more powerful than Death and Hope finally able to wrestle down Fear?

This is the kind of stuff you should be struggling with today. This is what you should be worrying about.

So, why couldn’t we have gone on a few more verses? Listen:

Two men remained in the camp, one named Eldad, and the other named Medad, and the spirit rested on them; they were among the registered but they had not gone out to the tent, and so they prophesied in the camp. And a young man ran and told Moses, “Eldad and Medad are prophesying in the camp.” And Joshua, son of Nun, the assistant of Moses, one of his chosen men, said, “My lord Moses, stop them!”

So Joshua is going to put an end to this nonsense of people who didn’t follow the rules and go through the ordination process correctly daring to “prophesy” in the camp!

But thank God for Moses—who has decided to quit whining and tell the Truth. Moses says, truthfully, “Are you jealous for my sake? Would that all the Lord’s people were prophets and the Lord would put his spirit on them!”

Don’t get above your rasin’, Michael. There are prophets out in the camp that will humble you for all your learning and for the richness of this ritual. They will teach you much more than seminary professors and bishops and other priests—like me—will ever teach you.

Listen to them well.

Eldad and Medad have the council you should seek, the support you should long for, the wisdom you should covet.

In fact, it seems to me at least, you are the cousin of Eldad and Medad. While some of us priests spend our ministry parading around the tent, the temple, the church…playing dress up…you actually live out your ministry in the “camp”, among those longing for meat instead of manna, those young minds and hearts struggling with becoming real.

Prophesy in the Camp, my dear friend. Prophesy in the Camp.

Then there is the reading from Corinthians: Paul’s sage advice to the church in Corinth was this: “Do not deceive yourselves. If you think that you are wise in this age, you should become fools so that you may become wise.”

The path to wisdom is through foolishness. The path to wholeness is through brokenness. The path to strength is through weakness. The path to wonder is through confusion. The path to maturity is through being child-like. The way to the “profound” is through playfulness. Life in abundance, is all an exercise in irony, it seems to me. I would contend, Michael, that an almost superhuman sense of the ironic would be a valuable thing to carry into priesthood—along with a thorough-going conviction that “becoming a fool” is what might just lead you to wisdom and Truth. And a sense of humor the size of Montana and a sense of the absurd the size of Canada might help as well.

Michael, you are a good, good man. A good man. And it is my privilege to know you and work with you and most of all, to love you.

And you will be a fine and wonderful priest. Just don’t get above your raisin’ and don’t take yourself too seriously or let anyone take you too seriously. As long as you’re around me and Ms. Johnson there beside you, you needn’t worry about that.

You are about to be ordained into an irrelevant office in a church that is by-in-large irrelevant. That, if nothing else, should keep you humble.

I want to tell you a story: a hot air balloonist set off one fine May day, just outside of London. But a sudden squall off the English Channel carried him for almost an hour north in rain and wind. When the balloon deflated, it became entangled in a tree right beside a country Anglican church. The balloonist looked down and saw the parish priest walking from the church over to the vicarage.

“Father,” he called, ready with his cell phone to call friends to come and get him, “can you tell me where I am?”

The priest looked up and said, “yes, my son, you’re stuck in a tree.”

The balloonist muttered to himself: “that’s just like a priest, what a priest says may be TRUE but it is seldom helpful”.

The church is irrelevant because it has given up “seeking Truth” and settled for merely “being helpful”. So seek “Truth”, Michael—and notice that I say “Truth”, not “THE Truth”, because Truth can show up in ways too mysterious and wondrous and foolish to ever stop moving and evolving. Seek Truth, Michael, ponder it in your heart, study it with your mind and speak it with your lips.

God’s speed and Traveling blessings. I love you—we all love you—you are a good, good man and will be a fine, fine priest. No kidding. That’s Truth….