A sermon for David

Friday at 10 a.m. I'll be preaching at the funeral of David Gurinak, a priest of the church.

It's the fourth time I've preached at the funeral of another priest--and two others, much older than me (though I'm old!) have told me they want me to preach at their funerals.

This is not an avocation I ever looked for or imagined: preaching for my colleagues at their farewell service.

On the one hand, I am humbled and honored that others of my ilk trust me with this sad task.

On the other hand, it's a tad too much momento mori for me.

And who will preach at my memorial service? I know who I want but don't believe she'll agree. I've even put it in my 'open after my death' letter to Bern. But I don't think she will. So should I put in a 'second choice' and a 'third'? Or is that too embarrassing, to be second or third string at a funeral?

Here's one of the sermons for my friends and mentors and priests:

Sermon for Bill

          You've got the cool, clear eyes of a Seeker of Wisdom and Truth.

          And that up-turned chin and grin of impetuous Youth.

          I believe in you....I believe in you....

          This is a bit embarrassing.

          When Meredith called to tell me of the death of my dear friend, one of my mentors, one of my guides in the mystery of priest-craft, I didn't think of some passage of Scripture or some noble hymn verse or some profound thought from the Christian Mystics.

          What I thought of were the opening lines of a song from How to Succeed in Business without really Trying!

          You've got the cool clear eyes of a Seeker of Wisdom and Truth.

       And that up-turned chin and grin of impetuous Youth.

       I believe in you....I believe in you....

       One would hope that the word of the death of a dear, dear friend, a valued mentor, an extraordinary guide, would prompt thoughts a bit more substantial, a tad more remarkable, something less cliched and banal.

          Yet, there is a certain logic to it.

          Bill Penfield WAS one of the most dedicated 'seekers of wisdom and truth' I've ever known.

          And Bill Penfield, for all his commitment and activism, all his idealism, all his faithfulness to standing with the dispossessed and oppressed, for all that, even into his final years, his grin revealed a marrow deep 'youthfulness'--an openness, an acceptance of differences, a sense of adventure and wonder in the world about him.

          All that and more.

          For almost a quarter of a century now, I have been privileged to be a part of the Waterbury Clericus. We meet every Tuesday morning—most of those years at St. John's in Waterbury and recently at St. Peter's in Cheshire.

          The remarkable thing about that Clericus is that most of its members, most of the time, have been retired priests. Only Armando Gonzalez and Andy Zeeman and I, were consistantly members as 'active priests'—and both Andy and I have now joined the ranks of the retired. So, the beat goes on.....

          In those years I have figuratively 'sat at the knee' of remarkable priests. A great Cloud of Witnesses. Week after week I absorbed the karma of “priestness” from them and learned from them and heard their stories and gloried in their wisdom and experience. I've laughed with them, wept with them, come close to the bone of what 'being a priest' means with them. You could not possibly pay for such wisdom, such truth, such impetuous youth.

          Bill was the Buddha among us. He spoke little, but when he spoke, everyone moved to the edge of their seat, leaning in to listen (because he spoke softly) and leaning into his wisdom and his truth.

          Bill, for all his outward guise of 'respectablilty', was a Radical of the first order. With him dead now, I wonder if I'm the only person left who glories in the description of “Liberal”. I hope there are more, but one of us is gone.

         

          The only time I ever had cross words with Bill Penfield was after I told a story about how I was disappointed in Bishop Paul Moore during the time when the Yale University pink collar and blue collar unions were trying to form.

          Bill didn't forgive Bishop Moore's lack of support for those efforts, but he gave me an impassioned lecture on the character and boldness and intellegence and generosity of his friend and Mentor, Paul Moore.

          Now it is my turn to be passionate about the character and boldness and fierce intellegence, great generosity of spirit and boundless good humor of my friend and mentor, Bill Penfield.

          Bill was profoundly committed to Incarnational Theology.

          If the Holy had taken on Flesh, Bill believed deeply, then all Flesh is Holy.

          Consider the lessons and music Bill picked for us to hear and sing on this day we remember and celebrate his life....

          Isaiah proclaims that God will make for ALL people a 'feast of rich food, a feast of well aged wines, of rich food filled with marrow, of well aged wines strained clear....”

          Our boy did enjoy a good meal and fine wine....

          Psalm 139 tells us that God is always with us, loving and caring. “You hem me in,” the Psalmist sings, “behind and before and lay your hand upon me. Such knowledge is too wonderful for me....”

          Bill shared with everyone he met, the abiding notion of God's presence.

          The theology of Psalm 16 is pure Bill Penfield: “Gracious is the Lord and Righteous, our Lord is Merciful. The Lord protects the simple....”

          Bill spent his life and ministry standing with the oppressed, the marginal, the simple folk of life.

          “See what love the father has given,” I John tells us, “that we should be called children of God.....” John's gospels echos God's care for us: “Anyone who comes to me, I will never turn away....”

          The inclusiveness of God, the incarnational nature of living, the wonder of song, the joy of knowing the nearness of God, the irrepressible optimism that God cares—those are things Bill offered us, shared with us, endowed us with.

          “Father like, he tends and spares us; well our feeble frame he knows; in his hand he gently bears us, rescues us from all our foes. Alleluia! Alleluia! Widely yet his mercy flows.”

          That's Bill Penfield's God were singing about. The God he loved and served and shared with us as a man, a husband, a father, a friend, a priest.....

          When Bill was Chaplain to the Clergy, he would simply 'drop in' from time to time, genuinely interested in what we were doing,  even more genuinely concerned about how we were being. The only agenda he had when he dropped in was what the concerns of the priests he cared for were. That is a rare thing, a person who is genuinely interested, genuinely concerned, willing to listen, willing to love.

          I probably shouldn't tell you this in front of bishops....But I loved to sit with Bill at clergy meetings and diocesan conventions. I could be as ironic and sardonic and, sometimes, as disrespectful as I wanted to be. He would give me a stern look and then break into laughter.

          Lord, I'm going to miss that laughter. Lord, I'm going to miss that man.

          I know Meredith and Bill's children will miss him most completely. But we will miss him profoundly, wondrously. We were all “Bill's family” in a special way.

          Here are words of the timeless poet, George Herbert: “Where with my utmost art, I will sing thee./ And the cream of all my heart, I will bring thee.”

          Those of us here and many, many others all around, were privileged to hear the song that was Bill's life and blessed to taste the cream of his heart....

          “Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of his faithful ones.”

          “Precious” is the best word to end with. “Precious....”

         

         

 

When will the madness end?

In the last few days Donald Trump has:

a) criticized the Republican Governor of New Mexico (the only Hispanic woman Republican Governor) probably because she hasn't endorsed him;

b) called the judge in the class action suit against Trump University for fraud, a Trump Hater and a Mexican. The judge was born in Indiana and is just doing his job;

c) castigated members of the press for asking him to reveal how the money he raised for vet's organizations has been distributed (until the Washington Post pointed out none of the money had been sent to any group--none of it had been!)

d) been endorsed by the state controlled newspaper in North Korea;

e) called William Kristol, much respected colemnist and writer, a 'loser';

f) continued to refuse to release his tax returns;

g) and on and on......

There was a cover story in this month's Atlantic Monthly called "Trump's Brain" by a deeply admired psychiatrist. Read it and weep.

Will the madness end....???

Memorial Day

The Cheshire Memorial Day Parade passed two houses down from us. We didn't go watch it. Nothing about Memorial Day, just Bern and I 'don't' love a parade.

Lots of folks do. As I headed to church at 8 a.m. people were already putting lawn chairs and blankets out for miles along the route. The parade didn't start until 1 p.m.!!! Some people start early to get a prime spot for parade watching.

I was talking to a couple of people after church about WW II, which all of our father's fought in. One was saying how the war gave her father an appreciation for beauty and nature he hadn't had before the war. None of our fathers ever spoke of what they had experienced, except in very general and vague ways.

I know what my father did--vaguely and generally--he built bridges for Patten to drive his tanks across and then blew up the bridges. They didn't intend to come back, one way or another. One of the others asked if my father felt bad, destroying what he had built.

"No," I told her. "He was a coal miner. He was familiar with blowing things up and destruction."

My childhood memories of Memorial Days all revolve around the Memorial Day dinners in Waiteville, WV, where my father grew up. I think I wrote about it a couple of years ago. I'll try to find it and attach it here since I'm not as bright as I was a few years ago and it was probably better than I could reproduce.

(Found it! Here it comes....I hope....)

Tuesday, January 15, 2013

The Waiteville of my childhood

I have two 6 foot high bookshelves in my little office at home. One of them is solid and has  lots of the copies of stuff I've written and several volumes of the Interpreter's Bible and my printer and two things that have to do with my computer and Bern's which I don't understand but which blink at me all the time and I know if I disconnected them I'd be thrust immediately into computer hell, so I leave them alone, blinking aimlessly, so far as I can tell. I also have pictures of my children as babies and toddlers and a picture of my Dad and a chalice and several stone lions on that bookshelf.

The other bookshelf is unstable and held straight by a piece of laminated coal that someone gave me because I'm from West Virginia. So, a week or so ago I decided to empty the unstable book shelf and give the books away. I gave the novels to the Cheshire Library and the religious books to St. James in Higganum for their library. I've never been attached to books as books. I go to the library in Cheshire weekly at least and check out books I want to read. And if I ever need any of the religious books, I know where they are. But they were very dusty and made me sneeze, so I can't imagine needing them any time soon.

I did keep some books of poetry and a book called If you meet the Buddha on the Road, Kill him which I've had for 40 years or so, and my copy of Joachim Jeremias' The Parables of Jesus, absolutely the best book about parables ever, and Lamb by Christopher Moore (which everyone should read) and The Hundredth Monkey and The Giving Tree. Everything else is gone to Cheshire Library or St. James. Next week, when I get back from San Francisco, I'll take the rickety bookshelf down and out.


On it, though, I found a plate with a likeness of the New Zion Union Church in Waiteville, West Virgina dated 1863-1966. It was something I took from my parents home. Waiteville is in Monroe County, the most South-east county of the state. Monroe County is where White Sulphur Springs is, which is the only name you might recognize from the whole county unless you're from West Vriginia and realize Lewisburg, the county seat, is where the WV State Fair was held--and may still be.

Zion Union Church is called that because everyone in Waiteville was either a Baptist or a Methodist and there weren't enough people there to have two churches. So a Baptist would preach one week and a Methodist the next. And the graveyard for Waiteville was there where most everyone buried there would be in some way related to me.

We used to go to Waiteville every Memorial Day for the Dinner that raised money for the graveyard's upkeep. The dinners were unbelievable: fried chicken, baked chicken, chicken and dumplings, pork in an endless variety of forms, rare roast beef, green beans cooked into an inch of their life in fatback, mashed potatoes, boiled potatoes, baked potatoes, fried potatoes, potatoes au gratin,  potato salad (lots of Irish folks there, including the Bradley/McCormick clan) sweet potatoes in several iterations, lots of jello salads, carrots and onions, peas and onions, just plain onions, gravy in several forms (gravy is a food group in Southern West Virgina) and desserts beyond imagining all topped with whipped cream or brain-numbing homemade ice cream.

Once, on some Memorial Day (linear time confounds me) I was wandering around the grave yard where countless ancestors were moldering in the grave, and happened upon two grave stones that said: JAMES GORDON BRADLEY and JAMES GORDON BRADLEY, JR. That is my name and I almost fainted away (I was, hard to believe, a delicate child). I'd never known I'd been named for ancestors. Those were my great and great-great grandfathers. My grandfather's name was Filbert and my father's name was Virgil. Go figure. I could have been James Gordon Bradley V but for Filbert and Virgil in between.

Another year, my crazy great aunt Arbana (ever know anyone named 'Arbana'?) had put confederate flags on many of the graves of my ancestors for Memorial Day. Though Monroe County was a boarder county and there are slaves somewhere in there, most of the Bradleys and McCormicks had been true blue Unionists. My Uncle Sid and Uncle Russell went around gathering the Confederate Flags and cursing their Aunt Arbana.

My great uncle Amos was buried from Zion Union Church. I was at his funeral when I was 8 or so. (Linear Time, like I said....) It was February and bone cold and the boys digging the grave were having trouble with the frozen earth and kept sending messages to the Baptist minister to keep preaching, which he did, for an hour or so before the grave was ready.

Great Uncle Amos was a man about 5'4". He was a McCormick. He liked a bit of whiskey from time to time and used to keep it in his barn where my father and uncles would go with him whenever we were in Waiteville.

The story goes like this: there was a revival at Zion Union Church and great-uncle Amos responded to the altar call. He had his head down and the Revivalist came by, laid hands on him and said, 'bless the little boys', though Amos was 24 or so. Afterwards, out in the night, some of his friends were kidding him, being much taller than him.

"God bless the little boys," they said, circling him out on the road.

"Hump," Amos is reported saying, though I don't know if this is true, "I'd rather be a little man like me and go to heaven than a great big son-of-bitch like all you and go to hell." Then, I was told as a child, he hitched up his britches and walked away. That was the night, the apocryphal story goes, that he met my great-aunt Arlene, who had been saved like him. Only her salvation 'took' and she was a teetotaler while Amos had some whiskey in the barn. Arlene was 5'10' and weighed about 200 pounds to Amos' 95. But they had, so far as I knew, a joyful if childless marriage.

New Zion Union Church, founded in the midst of the Civil War, is, so far as I know, still there, though I haven't been to Waiteville for 40 years or so. Maybe I'll go someday before I die, to walk the graveyard and say soft things to those of my blood.

That might be something I should do....




{Back to 2016. By the way, I never took that bookshelf apart. It's still here beside me! So much for good intentions and the road they pave....}

"moral realism"

E. J. Dionne and David Brooks just completed their weekly commentary on the news on National Public Radio. Dionne is a progressive and Brooks an economic (not social) conservative--yet their conversations are enlightening, civil and full of compromise. The way all debate in this country should be--but sadly isn't. If you've never heard them they usually speak on Fridays.

Today, among other things, they talked about Obama's visit to Hiroshima. They were analyzing the President's speech and Dionne mentioned 'moral realism' as taught by the theologian Reinhold Niebuhr. (OK, where else besides NPR do commentator's reference theologians?!!!)

One of my professors at Harvard Divinity School was Richard Reinhold Niebuhr--nephew of Reinhold and son of another well respected theologian, Richard Niebuhr.

The students always thought being saddled with the name of such well-known brothers much have been hard on R.R. Niebuhr. How to live up to that?

R.R. Niebuhr did, however, did give me the most intriguing moment I ever spent in a classroom.

One lovely spring day he came in, weighed down by books, as usual. The birds were serenading Cambridge as he unpacked. The huge, angled lecture room held 80 or so students.

Without prelude, he went to the blackboard and drew a stick figure. "Homo religiosis" he said, stepping back to admire his drawing. He figured we were Harvard students so he didn't have to translate the Latin to 'religious man(sic)'.

After several minutes of silence except for the bird songs, he went back to the board and drew a flurry of lines around and through the stick figure, nearly obscuring it.

Then the stepped back and said 'the Chaos'--and we knew it must be capitalized.

He stared at the board for what must have been five minutes, though it seemed longer.

Then he moved his head, listening to the birds for a moment, gathered his books and left without another word.

It took quite a while for us to pull ourselves together and begin to leave by ones and twos. Not one word was spoken as we straggled out. It would take days to process the event, but none of us was ready to sully it with words.

We had witnessed a brilliant man from the most important theological family in American history, struggle with an existential crisis before our eyes. And, like the most critical of existential crises, he left it to echo in silence down through all the years of his students lives.

How does a religious person cope with the Chaos of the world's reality? That is the question Professor Niebuhr left us with.

His uncle's answer, what Dionne and Brooks called 'moral realism', was that the first step was to fully recognize the depth and breath of the Chaos. Fully 'know' it. And live morally into that Chaos. Not romanticizing or sugar coating the world or give simplistic (and wrong)  'religious' answers to the
Chaotic 'reality' around us. The answer is 'to stand for something' in the face of the Chaos. Simply that. Don't dream of defeating it, but neither be defeated by it.

Be who you be in the midst of Chaos and Evil. Stand for 'morality' in a senseless and amoral world.

Pretty good lesson, that....Don't you agree?

Ponder that as a life stance....

Sudden Summer

It was in the 80's today, with low humidity. And it may be 90 tomorrow.

Here in Connecticut, we went from a cool, rainy Spring to a Sudden Summer.

It's going to cool off in a few days, the weather people say, but it's a real shock.

Connecticut is, like Ireland, a place where people say, "don't like the weather? Wait a few minutes."

Also, I read online that, though CT was cool and rainy in April and much of May so far, April was, world wide, the hottest April on record!

121 degrees in parts of India. A remarkable drought in much of Africa and Asia.

OK, if any 'climate change deniers" read this blog. Let me know how you can defend that in face of, what are they called again?--The Facts.

(The sad truth is, 'climate change deniers' probably don't read my blog. The very sad truth is, they read blogs of 'climate change deniers' and nothing else. And folks who read these musings and I, would never read a 'climate change denier' blog....)

This political cycle has proved that we are as divided a nation as we have ever been--and that can't be good in any way. The divide gets wider and deeper by the day.

I wish I could fix climate change only a little less than I wish I could fix the deepening, widening divide between us as a nation. Because climate change and nothing much will be 'fixed' as long as we're this divided.

I have four stickers on the back of my car. I call them, to anyone who asks, my four persons of the Trinity.

One is the state seal of West Virginia. That's where I came from and in many ways, that's who I am. Monti semper libere--is our motto, we West Virginians: "Mountaineers are always free". God love us.

The second is the latitude and longitude for Oak Island, North Carolina, where we have gone for vacation as a couple, a family, a family with friends, and with Tim and Mimi and John and Sherrie--all told well over 30 times. Oak Island matters. In my "do not open until my death" letter, I ask that some of my ashes be left on the waters off Oak Island.

The third is the Episcopal Church seal. Nough said about that.

The last is, from 4 years ago, an "Obama 2012" sticker. He was a very good president, I think, who could have been a 'great president' if it weren't for this 'divide' among us.

I'm not even sure what the 'divide' is any more since both Trump and Bernie (eons apart politically) are tapping into the divide.

I don't think it is as simple as 'the establishment' vs. 'the people'. I think it's more complicated than that, though I don't quite know how.

But, since our planet, which has been around for billions of years, is getting hotter and more unstable than its ever been--we need to turn our attention to finding 'common ground' rather than making what divides us deeper and wider.

It's not just the republic that needs us to do that--find common ground--it is this fragile earth, our island home.

Really.

Ponder that, please, please, please with sugar on it.

It's that vital and important.

Like the life of the Planet.

'nough said.....'

One thing I forgot about my dreams....

(You have to read yesterdays post to understand this one.)

In my anxiety dream about the coffee house in nowhere, I actually said to the woman (Mahala??)

 "Of all the Episcopal Churches in all the towns, in all the world, I walked into yours."

Even in dreams, quotes from Casablanca show up.

Anxiety dreams

I had an anxiety dream both last night and the night before.

When I was a student the dreams were usually about being late for a final and not being able to find the classroom, though I knew all the answers, or moving through amber trying to reach the building.

As a priest they have ranged from being chased by a posse of bishops across an open field to beginning a Eucharist for a huge crowd, opening my Book of Common Prayer to discover it is a picture book and everyone gradually leaves because I can't remember the opening acclamation.

The last two nights have been different.

First, let me assure you, my anxiety dreams are rich with symbolism and depth and I ponder them for days, wishing I were in Jungian analysis  again--several sessions for each! Ultimately they are not terrifying, but point me to consider what it is I might be anxious about subconsciously. They never come when I'm consciously anxious, but only to make me ponder and reflect. (Sounds Jungian enough, right?)

Saturday night, I'm traveling in a strange place (It looks like West Virginia) and go into an Episcopal church for Eucharist (I think it's called St. Peter's) and encounter there a woman from my past. Obviously she is someone I had feeling for. She looks a lot like Mahala Holmes. Mahala and I were both counselors in a summer camp when we were juniors in college. She went to Marshall and I went to WVU. She was a lifeguard and I took kids on nature hikes and played softball with them. She was beautiful and unattainable to me.

Anyway, this dream woman and I reunite and she tells me to follow her to her place of work--which is a fancy coffee/desert place in the middle of nowhere. She has to work and I drink coffee and eat a desert she brings me. Finally I must leave and she walks me to the door. Outside, I can't find my car, so I go back in and ask her where it is. "Right in the front lot," she tells me. I go out a different door and the parking lot in that direction is on fire. I circle around the coffee house and can't find my car.

I can't find a way back in and end up near the burning lot again only to realize somehow I've lost my sports coat and my car keys (for the car I can't find!) are in the coat's pocket.

Then I wake up.

Saturday night, I'm at a board meeting of the Mastery Foundation, which I am a member of. There are people there I know and some I don't. It's at the house of one of the board members--a very nice and spacious house. Some of the members are actually from the real Board, some are other people in my life (which confuses me in my dream) and some are total strangers. For some reason, I go for a walk with 'Margaret' (who looks like a much younger version of Margaret Baranoski--a member of St. John's, Waterbury, who I buried years ago).

On our way back from wherever we went, Margaret is hit by what I think is a big, black Landrover. One of the tires comes off the car and I pick it up and carry it into a Post Office (much more like a British Post Office than ours) and get one of the postal workers to help me get it on a table. We open the tire and 'Margaret's' clothes and possessions are in it, but not her body.

I say to the postal worker, "we have to call the police!"

He (who looks like a British actor, maybe a young Michael O'Toole) says to me in a British/Irish accent, "no, lad, you brought this to me, I have to handle it now."

Suddenly I'm back at the house where the meeting is. I find Ann (who is real and the Executive Director of the Foundation) and tell her what has happened. She touches my arm and says (as she has from time to time) "I'm leaving this to you".

I spend the next however long (it seems like an hour) chasing the members of the board around the spacious house trying to get them into the meeting room so I can tell them what has happened.

All to no avail. Like trying to herd cats, they escape me at every doorway. I finally tell our hostess what has happened and say, 'we'll all have to go to the police station in a while'. And she says (I kid you not!) "But there's so much chocolate left!)

I end up in the meeting room in despair with Ann looking at me with her arms crossed and no one coming to my calls.

Then I wake up.

I'll ponder these for weeks. Any Jungian folks out there who have any insights, let me know.

(My unconscious anxiety is probably that we're leaving for Italy June 10th and I hate to travel--I'm a real home-body, truth be known. Or it may be that I'm 69 and was very ill on Saturday--though I slept through it--and I'm having intimations of mortality. I'll be following both those threads and others, I assure you.)

If dreams are 'whispers from God', these were two odd messages! Jung believed dreams were our unconscious seeking to make us more 'whole'. I believe that. I just don't understand it!