stereotype

I was having lunch today with Bryan and Nathan, the two priests who work with me in the Middlesex Cluster ministry, and telling them a story about how Armando Gonzalez, who was the priest for the Hispanic congregation at St. John's in Waterbury, had told me how wrong the 'stereotypes' of Hispanics were. Except I couldn't remember the word "stereotype" and it drove me crazy, thinking my mind was slipping away from me....

(Gracefully, no matter how I explained it: "what people say about a racial group that is generally accepted but vague and untrue", stuff like that, neither Bryan, a few years my junior, or Nathan, a couple of decades younger, couldn't come up with 'stereotype' either. Made me feel a tad better that they didn't have the word on the tip of their tongue either.)

My father had a form of dementia in his later life and I am constantly worried about it coming to me though I am 12 years younger than when his appeared.

I constantly remind myself that not knowing where my car keys are isn't a problem (though I always know exactly where they are) it's when you don't know what a car key if 'for' that the problems begin.

Names are a nightmare for me. But, when I'm calm and collected, I realize they were a nightmare for me when I was 25!

I asked my friend, Brendan, who is my age, "do you have trouble remembering names?"

He responded, "not me, George...."

What prompted my memory at 6:30 p.m. to remember "stereotype" was while I was reading a novel on the deck, I came across the term "deja vu". How odd that would be the trigger to remember "stereotype". So, when I can't remember a word from now on, I'm going to say, in my head, over and over, "deja vu". Maybe it's magic....We'll see.

Plus, the end of the story of Armando and Hispanic stereotypes. After he'd told me a dozen stereotypes about Latinos that had no basis (and I'm convinced he was correct) I said, "what about the thing about time--like showing up at the appointed hour?"

He smiled. "Oh, that's true", he said, "but only gringos worry about that in all the world.

That too, I know, is true....

Lee's sermon

I mentioned Lee's death a couple of posts ago. His funeral was Saturday. It took an hour and 45 minutes! Baptists have funerals that long, not Episcopalians!

It was the music. Lee, the musician and all his family musicians and musicians he knew...The music was glorious and plenteous.

I thought, so you could know Lee better, I'd share my homily from his funeral.

Lee’s Sermon (September 3, 2016) St. Paul’s/St. James, New Haven

          I chose the gospel today—the discussion between Thomas and Jesus about where Jesus is going and how the disciples know where he is going—because of all the Biblical characters, Lee reminded me most of Thomas. Lee, like Thomas, would be the one raising his hand and saying, “Hold on, Jesus! We don’t know where you are going. How can we know the way?”

          Lee was a Thomas kind of guy….

          A sense of urgency.

          That’s what I remember from my first ever encounter with Lee Howard—a sense of urgency.

          Since he was a Southerner, I had expected him to be slow moving, slow talking, laid back. But not Lee….

          Whenever I was in his presence, I felt a ‘buzz’, a kinetic energy. Eating lunch with him in his apartment, which I often did, I would feel like I was in a bubble while Lee was in motion, talking non-stop, having more to say than time to say it, bringing out plates and glasses, food and drink from the jumble of his living space. Urgency.

          Until the last years of his life, when thoughts and speech and movement slowed down on him—until then there was this…”urgency” about him.

          But now that I think about it, maybe the right word is “passion”. That’s more accurate I think. My experience of Lee was on his ‘passion’—for music, for people, for ideas, for life.

          That sounds right. The Lee Howard I knew was a person of ‘passion’.

          I would watch him work with the choir. It was like he was juggling one more ball than he should have been but he kept them all going through his strength of will.

          I know he was passionate about music…no question there.

          And he was also passionate about people—about his family, his children, his friends, his fellow musicians, his ex-wife.

          In my 41 years of ordained ministry I’ve seen lots of divorces. And in my experience, one of the things involved in the divorce agreement—besides money and property—was ‘the church’.

          In every divorce I’ve known about, one of the couple got “the church”.

          Not so for Lee and Hanne.

          I’ve thought about that a lot over the years. How both of them held on to St. Paul’s. I don’t imagine I’ll ever figure it out, but it gives me hope.

          Lee was passionate about his children. Helen, Lee Jay and John came up in most every conversation we ever had—even if we were supposedly talking about the music for Lent!

          It has been a couple of decades or more since I had a close relationship with Lee. We were on different journeys. But we did share the road for over 5 years. And when I look back on that time, what I remember about Lee was his ‘passion’.

          Lee’s journey is over now. But I know his passion lives on in those he loved. And his passion lives on in the music we hear this day, played in his honor.

          The words of the Burial Office and the Eucharist are full of hope and life and possibility. I give thanks for that. And the priest, at a funeral, wears white—the color of Easter, not the color of mourning. We Christians are called to believe that Death is not ‘the last word’. Death is the ‘penultimate’ word (I believe Lee would appreciate having “penultimate” being part of his funeral sermon! He had a passion for words). The LAST WORD we say today in prayer and music and liturgy is HOPE and PROMISE and LIFE.

          St. Francis of Assisi once wrote, “Death is not a door that closes, but a door that opens and we walk in all new”.

          That is our hope and prayer for Lee this day. Even though Death seems to be a closed door that keeps us from those we love—our prayer and hope for Lee is that the door of Death opened and he walked in ‘all new’ into the presence of the One who loved him best of all. All new. All new. All new and full of passion. (I'm sure he and God will have some words about the heavenly choir....)

Amen.

         

Things on the refrigerator

Time was, growing up in southern West Virginia, I would have titled this post "Things on the Frigidaire". That's what I called a 'refrigerator' until I went to college and learned there were other brands of refrigerators. Amazing, stuff like that.

I went downstairs a few minutes to put a photo I printed out on my computer of Tim McCarthy and his daughter Ellie, asleep on his chest. You can see leaves outside the window and lots of shadows since I don't have a color printer. And the look on Tim's face, my son-in-law's face, the father of my fourth granddaughter's face, is one of pure joy an wonder.

(I like black and white photo's better than color ones. I should call the refrigerator a Frigidaire! I have become one of those people I used to hate who liked 'the old way' better. Just not Trump. Please. Just not Trump!)

And Bern, watching me do that--put Tim and Ellie on the fridge with a magnet, said, "you know I'm going to move all those soon. I hate things on the refrigerator."

Those things, are other pictures: one of Ellie in her car seat to finally leave NYU hospital and one with her on Mimi's shoulder, soon after birth with a look on Mimi's face that could be called 'beatific' without doing damage to that word.

That moment was as close as Bern and I come to a fight these days.

I was about to defend pictures of our daughter and son-in-law and granddaughter. But I realized it wasn't about that at all.

I simply 'don't mind' stuff on the refrigerator and Bern doesn't like--hates--stuff on the refrigerator. Which is why our refrigerator hasn't had stuff on it with magnets until I put up those three pictures. It's not about Mimi, Tim and Ellie's pictures--Bern loves that as much as I do, if not more. It's about 'hating' stuff on the refrigerator for her versus my 'not minding' stuff on the refrigerator.

Here's a guide to relationships. If it is a question of what one person doesn't mind versus what the other person hates--"hates" outweighs "doesn't mind" every time.

The two photos have been on the refrigerator for almost a month before the one I just put there. "Nothing" has been on the refrigerator that long before. Bern likes the photos as much as I do. She just likes a clean refrigerator front.

There are photos of Emma and Morgan with baby Tegan on the side of the refrigerator that faces the counter. They've been there for years. And a picture of Luke, our late Cat, in my suitcase wanting to go with me. Those photos are ok for Bern, they aren't on the front of the refrigerator.

There was a time in our marriage we might have gotten into an argument about all this. But no more.

Why argue about the front of a refrigerator? What sense would that make? The photos will be somewhere we see them and the refrigerator front will be clear and our marriage of 46 years come Monday will go on and everything is fine.

Sometimes people think they're fighting about something that isn't what they're fighting about at all.

And most of the time, the fight never needed to happen.

Something to ponder about the fights you have....

Rest in Peace, Lee

Lee Howard was the organist and choir director at St. Paul's in New Haven when I arrived there in 1980 (Lordy, Lordy, how long ago!)

Lee died several months ago and in this day of people being scattered and delayed funerals, he's being memorialized tomorrow. I'll be the celebrant and preacher, at St. Paul's/St. James as it now is, having merged since I was there. I've been back a few times for funerals, but it will feel a little odd, I think, to celebrate there after all these years (31, since I left there in 1985).

Lee was a guy from North Carolina who never lost his accent in 50 years in New England.

Since I don't know zilch about music, I'm not sure how good a musician he was--but he was passionate and unlike most people from the south, fast moving and fast talking--kinetic, you might say.

There have been a host of priests at St. Paul's since I was there, so I'm not sure why the family asked me to do the service. Perhaps it's because we've stayed in touch with Hanna Howard (a German who never lost her accent) who was divorced from Lee before I met them. But unlike a lot of divorces I've known over the years, neither of them 'got the church' in the settlement. Hanna even sang in the choir under Lee's direction. Sort of Amazing to me.

Hanna comes to our house for Thanksgiving Dinner. She is a wonderful musician herself--a pianist who developed macular degeneration a decade ago (she's 90 now) and can no longer read music. But she plays wonderfully and has little concerts for people in her apartment from time to time.

I've done the funerals of colleagues before--six priests so far. And it's a little spooky. Granted Lee was 22 years older than me, but the space is narrowing....

We'll see him off tomorrow.

OK, here's where I am today about 'belief'

I chose to say "where I am today" since I'm always in flux. Nothing much seems certain to me any more about 'believing'.

Maybe it was different before--earlier, when I was younger. Maybe I had some 'certainty' back then, but I don't think so.

I think I've always been vague about 'belief'. But this I know and know fare well, the older I get the vaguer I get about what is certain and 'true'.

I don't 'believe' much at all--and here I am, a 69 year old white man who is an Episcopal priest.

People generally expect me to 'believe' stuff and be 'certain' about things.

In my experience, they are relieved when I don't and am not.

It validates where they are, day  to day that their priest isn't 'certain' about what he 'believes'.

BLACK and WHITE stuff is pretty much lost on me. The world I live in and experience and ponder about has almost infinite shades of gray.

Theology, back in the Middle Ages, was considered "the Queen of the Sciences". You can look it up or Google it if you wish. Theology was up there with mathematics in those years because Theology was about 'certainty'--the literal interpretation of Scripture, the "Truth" of  'belief'.

What a joke.

Theology, to me, is interesting because there IS NO CERTAINTY. Theology, to me, is engaging and worthy of pondering precisely because it is so 'mysterious'.

Mathematics deals with Truth. Theology deals with uncertainty and confusion and wonder and mystery.

That's what I like--uncertainty, confusion, wonder and mystery.

I don't have to give a fig about TRUTH. I accept the facts of life. Facts are what they are and are helpful in negotiating the intricacies of life.

Theology is about what's left after we know the facts.

Theology is about what is unknown, beyond 'knowing', mysterious, dangerous, lost in shadows, daring us to follow.

"Belief" is about all that--not "TRUTH" or "certainty" or anything hard and real.

So, I wander out in the arena of uncertainty and mystery and wonder. That's where 'belief' and 'faith'
live for me.

So, when you ask me: "what do you believe?" don't expect Truth or Certainty or Facts. What I believe is swirling in the unknown, the dangerous, the mysterious, the never-to-be-understood.

Which is where I feel most comfortable, most free, most 'at home' and grounded. Really.

1970 in review (one event a month)

JANUARY--Mick Jaggar fined 200 pounds for possession of weed.

FEBRUARY--Chicago 7 not guilty of inciting a riot at 1968 Democratic Convention.

MARCH--1st Earth Day proclaimed by Mayor Alioto of San Francisco

APRIL--US invades Cambodia; huge protests at home.

MAY--Kent State Shootings.

JUNE--"Long and Winding Road" is Beatles 20th and last #1 hit single.

JULY--Chet Huntly (NBC anchor) retires from full time broadcasting.

AUGUST--Women's Strike for Equality on Fifth Avenue in New York City.

SEPTEMBER--Bernadine Pisano and Jim Bradley are married at our Lady of Victory RC church in Gary, West Virginia.

OCTOBER--Garry Trudeau's Donnesbury debuts in 2 dozen newspapers.

NOVEMBER--Hafa al-Assad comes to power in Syria through a military coup.

DECEMBER--The north tower of the World Trade Center is completed--at 1368 feet, it is the tallest building in the world.

(Thanks to Wikipedia for  everything besides September. It was a year 'that was' in many ways.)

Gene Wilder, please rest in peace

He was never 'in your face' as either an actor or a comedian--not like Tom Cruise or Jim Carey. He was just around the edges of your life, in quirky little ways, not causing tsunamis--more like a gentle spring rain or the first snow of winter.

Gene Wilder had a gentle way of getting under your skin.

He was one of my favorite actor/comedians. He always said, "I'm an 'actor' not a 'clown'" and that was so true. He didn't 'tell jokes', he just 'acted' in wonderfully funny ways.

I heard an interview with his nephew--he had no children, much the loss of DNA--who revealed that he had been diagnosed with the Alzheimer's that killed him eventually three years ago, when he was 80. Gene, and his family, decided, before his disease had progressed very far, not to let anyone know.

The reason was this: when Gene Wilder went out in public, even a little 'off', children saw Willy Wonka and smiled at him. He didn't want the parents to tell them he was ill or damaged and take away their joy at seeing him.

Even that is gentle and sweet.

He's one of the few celebrities I wish I had known.

Go gently (as you always went) into that Good Night, my friend.

Be well and stay well in whatever it is that comes next after giving so much joy to so many.