Today is the feast day of St. Peter and St. Paul. Two men who probably never met and were polar opposites.
When I was at Virginia Seminary I wrote an article for 'The Ambo' (if you don't know what an 'ambo' is you're not an Episcopalian--it's the stand where the readings take place) the student newsletter about how the front door to Aspenwall Hall, the main building, was "Pauline" not "Petrine"
I meant it was rigid, hard to open, difficult to maneuver around. Paul was like that. Paul knew what was 'right' and what was 'wrong'. Peter, God bless him, could never figure out what to do. He was the one who denied Jesus and yet was the 'Rock' ("Petros" in Greek) the church is built upon.
Peter was all over the place--not knowing the right answers at the end of John's Gospel (Jesus asks, "Peter, do you 'agape' me?" And Peter answers twice, "Lord, you know I 'philios' you.") Agape is love with no bounds and Philios is, like Philadelphia, love between friends. It takes 3 askings for Peter to get it right.
I got over my dislike of Paul when the one woman on the faculty let me do a directed study of his letters by reading them in the order they were written, not the order they are in the New Testament. Dr. Mariann Mix saved me from my Pauline hatred--but I still like Peter much better.
I'm much more a Peter than a Paul. Lurching around looking for answers rather than 'knowing' the answers.
So why did they give these two a shared saints' day?
They wouldn't have gotten along. Believe me (as a 'Peter'-type) I don't play well with 'Paul'-types. Just doesn't happen.
Happy both ends of the spectrum Holy Day!
Thursday, June 29, 2017
Tuesday, June 27, 2017
memory (and reality) not all it's cracked up to be
Yesterday I mentioned the Anglican priest,"Sydney" and made a point about my uncle being "Sidney" with an 'i'. I also called the name of the TV series about "Sydney" Grandchester.
Well, it's "Grantchester" I realized and on page 222 of the book I noticed "Sidney" and thought--like any good English major--"aha, a typo!" But when I paged back I realized it was always spelled with an 'i' and not a 'y'!!!
I swear to you that until page 222, I saw "Sydney" everything I looked at "Sidney".
I could just claim that I was using 'alternative facts', but the truth is I actually saw the 'd' in Grantchester and the 'y' in Sidney.
Reality isn't all it's cracked up to be. Like the story of the blind men describing an elephant and the different stories of eye-witnesses to the same accident, our senses can't be trusted absolutely.
I once asked a friend who is 'color blind' to describe the colors he does see. He looked at me like I had two heads. "That's why it's called 'color blind," he said, "I can't tell you what what I see would be called by you."
That may apply to all sorts of things. I know Bern and I have very different memories of the same events and people often quote my sermon to me in words I never spoke.
Objective Reality seems to be 'subjective' instead. That's certainly true when I listen to Trump detractors and Trump supporters tell what they truly believe to be 'the truth' about the President.
Maybe Kelly Ann Conway's 'alternative facts' isn't so crazy as it sounds.
We in America these days seem to have difficulty discerning 'facts' from their alternative versions.
Sometimes you can see things that aren't there for 222 pages: like the first 'y' in Sidney. Pretty unnerving, I'd say.
Something to ponder long and hard because it really, really matters, this stuff about 'truth' and 'facts' and 'objective reality'. Really.
Well, it's "Grantchester" I realized and on page 222 of the book I noticed "Sidney" and thought--like any good English major--"aha, a typo!" But when I paged back I realized it was always spelled with an 'i' and not a 'y'!!!
I swear to you that until page 222, I saw "Sydney" everything I looked at "Sidney".
I could just claim that I was using 'alternative facts', but the truth is I actually saw the 'd' in Grantchester and the 'y' in Sidney.
Reality isn't all it's cracked up to be. Like the story of the blind men describing an elephant and the different stories of eye-witnesses to the same accident, our senses can't be trusted absolutely.
I once asked a friend who is 'color blind' to describe the colors he does see. He looked at me like I had two heads. "That's why it's called 'color blind," he said, "I can't tell you what what I see would be called by you."
That may apply to all sorts of things. I know Bern and I have very different memories of the same events and people often quote my sermon to me in words I never spoke.
Objective Reality seems to be 'subjective' instead. That's certainly true when I listen to Trump detractors and Trump supporters tell what they truly believe to be 'the truth' about the President.
Maybe Kelly Ann Conway's 'alternative facts' isn't so crazy as it sounds.
We in America these days seem to have difficulty discerning 'facts' from their alternative versions.
Sometimes you can see things that aren't there for 222 pages: like the first 'y' in Sidney. Pretty unnerving, I'd say.
Something to ponder long and hard because it really, really matters, this stuff about 'truth' and 'facts' and 'objective reality'. Really.
Monday, June 26, 2017
photos--black and white
When my last aunt died last year--Aunt Elsie (I had two of those), my mother's youngest sister, at 92--my cousin Gayle Pugh Keller was given all Elsie's photos and she sent them to the rest of the Jones/Pugh/Bradley/Perkins cousins. I got a hundred or so.
I've look at them off and on and in the last couple of days have looked harder, looking with different eyes.
I'm reading a collection of British short stories about an Anglican Priest, Sydney (I had an uncle, my father's brother, named that, except with the American I rather than the British y) who is featured in a BBC TV show I love called "Grandchester". In that collection, Sydney is on his way to London from his rural parish and on the train is wondering to himself, "how much can a person's life change?" He thinks it's a basic question of Christianity, but he also thinks people, most people, stay pretty much the same their whole lives.
Looking at these pictures, I realize how much I have changed. I hardly recognize the life they portray. It's all from my mother's side--but I think if I had photos from my father's side, I'd probably recognize them even less.
My mother's family were all some shade of evangelical Christian. My father's family were sturdy agnostics who grew up Baptist. I'm an Episcopalian.
All these photos are from southern West Virginia. I'm a New England-er for 37 years (the first 50 are the hardest, the saying goes!) with a slight accent I can emphasis on cue into something mountain-born.
My father--a brilliant man--only finished 8th grade. My mother had a teaching degree and only two of her sisters went to college and only one of the women my father's brothers married did--all were school teachers, but I have three post graduate degrees and could call myself 'Dr. Bradley' if I wanted to.
Most of the people in those pictures would have been conservative Democrats or moderate Republicans. I am a left-wing, socialist leaning Democrat.
Everyone in both my families married people like them. I married a Italian/Hungarian/Roman Catholic. My uncle Sid even married my mother's cousin so that Sid and Callie's two children, Greg and Sarita, were my 'double first cousins' as we called it, though it's more complex than that. My mother's family was very precise about relationships. I grew up calling members of my father's family 'aunt' and 'uncle' who were second cousins at best! Because of the Appalachian Diaspora and the fact that I'm an only child and Bern's two older siblings never married or had children, our kids grew up bereft of cousins. Bern and I had dozens.
There I am, in someone's yard, 2 and a half or so, leaning slightly over, my left hand by my mouth, smiling, almost laughing, like I'm telling a secret. My hair is blond and I'm dressed all in white, down to the shoes.
There I am, on the back porch of our apartmentment where I grew up with a 40 foot drop to the ground--which is the reason for my fear of heights to this day--sitting on a bench with Susan Creasy, the granddaughter of my parents' friends (I was born when Dad was 41 and Mom 38, so my friends' grandparents were my parents' ages). Susan is snarling. I'm smiling up a storm (we're probably between 3 and 4). Everyone probably thought Susan and I would marry--but we didn't much like each other.
There I am, in the yard between our apartment and my Uncle Russel and Aunt Gladys' house, holding my 4th birthday cake. The grass needs cutting badly. I'm still blonde as I can be and, as always, smiling like only children do when you point a camera at them.
Then, there I am, my first or second grad picture, finally with glasses--thank God! I couldn't see worth a damn! and my teeth all different lengths and only the top of my hair blonde, in a wildly striped tea shirt and smiling less than in the other.
I could do this a hundred times--me in diapers feeding the chickens, me on the tire swing, me on the steps of my Grandma Jones' house, on and on and on.
But here's the point--I know that's me...I really KNOW it...but I feel very little connection to the 'me' in those photos. Sydney the Anglican Priest is right. Some of us change a lot during life. I did.
I love the photos, but the 'love' is more intellectual love than emotional love.
I don't know how else to say it.
And I'm still pondering what all I've just written means or matters....
There I am
I've look at them off and on and in the last couple of days have looked harder, looking with different eyes.
I'm reading a collection of British short stories about an Anglican Priest, Sydney (I had an uncle, my father's brother, named that, except with the American I rather than the British y) who is featured in a BBC TV show I love called "Grandchester". In that collection, Sydney is on his way to London from his rural parish and on the train is wondering to himself, "how much can a person's life change?" He thinks it's a basic question of Christianity, but he also thinks people, most people, stay pretty much the same their whole lives.
Looking at these pictures, I realize how much I have changed. I hardly recognize the life they portray. It's all from my mother's side--but I think if I had photos from my father's side, I'd probably recognize them even less.
My mother's family were all some shade of evangelical Christian. My father's family were sturdy agnostics who grew up Baptist. I'm an Episcopalian.
All these photos are from southern West Virginia. I'm a New England-er for 37 years (the first 50 are the hardest, the saying goes!) with a slight accent I can emphasis on cue into something mountain-born.
My father--a brilliant man--only finished 8th grade. My mother had a teaching degree and only two of her sisters went to college and only one of the women my father's brothers married did--all were school teachers, but I have three post graduate degrees and could call myself 'Dr. Bradley' if I wanted to.
Most of the people in those pictures would have been conservative Democrats or moderate Republicans. I am a left-wing, socialist leaning Democrat.
Everyone in both my families married people like them. I married a Italian/Hungarian/Roman Catholic. My uncle Sid even married my mother's cousin so that Sid and Callie's two children, Greg and Sarita, were my 'double first cousins' as we called it, though it's more complex than that. My mother's family was very precise about relationships. I grew up calling members of my father's family 'aunt' and 'uncle' who were second cousins at best! Because of the Appalachian Diaspora and the fact that I'm an only child and Bern's two older siblings never married or had children, our kids grew up bereft of cousins. Bern and I had dozens.
There I am, in someone's yard, 2 and a half or so, leaning slightly over, my left hand by my mouth, smiling, almost laughing, like I'm telling a secret. My hair is blond and I'm dressed all in white, down to the shoes.
There I am, on the back porch of our apartmentment where I grew up with a 40 foot drop to the ground--which is the reason for my fear of heights to this day--sitting on a bench with Susan Creasy, the granddaughter of my parents' friends (I was born when Dad was 41 and Mom 38, so my friends' grandparents were my parents' ages). Susan is snarling. I'm smiling up a storm (we're probably between 3 and 4). Everyone probably thought Susan and I would marry--but we didn't much like each other.
There I am, in the yard between our apartment and my Uncle Russel and Aunt Gladys' house, holding my 4th birthday cake. The grass needs cutting badly. I'm still blonde as I can be and, as always, smiling like only children do when you point a camera at them.
Then, there I am, my first or second grad picture, finally with glasses--thank God! I couldn't see worth a damn! and my teeth all different lengths and only the top of my hair blonde, in a wildly striped tea shirt and smiling less than in the other.
I could do this a hundred times--me in diapers feeding the chickens, me on the tire swing, me on the steps of my Grandma Jones' house, on and on and on.
But here's the point--I know that's me...I really KNOW it...but I feel very little connection to the 'me' in those photos. Sydney the Anglican Priest is right. Some of us change a lot during life. I did.
I love the photos, but the 'love' is more intellectual love than emotional love.
I don't know how else to say it.
And I'm still pondering what all I've just written means or matters....
There I am
Friday, June 23, 2017
Saturday Baptism revisited
Once, years ago--a decade if not more--I was at St. John's on a Saturday by myself doing something or another (or perhaps my unruly God wanted me there!) when someone rang the doorbell. I went to see who it was and encountered 20 or so Hispanic folks. One of them who spoke English told me they just wanted a place to pray for a while. So I let them in.
The same person, who was to be the god-father of the baby who was with the crowd...most of whom were weeping quietly...told me they had been across the Green at Immaculate Conception RC church to have the baby baptized. The priest asked who the god parents were and asked them if they were Roman Catholic. The man talking to me said he was an Evangelical and when the priest found that out he refused to baptize little Louisa. So they came to St. John's to mourn and pray for a while.
I let them be for 10 minutes or so and then went back and found my confidant and asked him if the parents would let me baptize Louisa. They readily agreed and I got the oil and water (some water, if I remember correctly, that I'd brought back from the Jordon River on a trip to Israel).
So, I did the baptism, though about half of the group didn't understand exactly what I was saying and offered the group Communion. They all received! Amazing.
I never saw them again, to my knowledge, but I was sure I had done the least that God expected of me. I couldn't take away the pain of their church rejecting them, but I could offer and bring the sacraments into that day of anguish.
Some, I know, would say I didn't 'do my duty' since I hadn't prepared them with pre-baptismal instruction and required them to come to St. John's in the future. But that's just pious bullsh*t as far as I can tell.
The sacraments belong to God--not the church and certainly not the priest.
Little Louisa was 'marked as Christ's own forever'. And she is. She'd be approaching her teen years now--if ever there is a period to be marked as Christ's own!!!
The same person, who was to be the god-father of the baby who was with the crowd...most of whom were weeping quietly...told me they had been across the Green at Immaculate Conception RC church to have the baby baptized. The priest asked who the god parents were and asked them if they were Roman Catholic. The man talking to me said he was an Evangelical and when the priest found that out he refused to baptize little Louisa. So they came to St. John's to mourn and pray for a while.
I let them be for 10 minutes or so and then went back and found my confidant and asked him if the parents would let me baptize Louisa. They readily agreed and I got the oil and water (some water, if I remember correctly, that I'd brought back from the Jordon River on a trip to Israel).
So, I did the baptism, though about half of the group didn't understand exactly what I was saying and offered the group Communion. They all received! Amazing.
I never saw them again, to my knowledge, but I was sure I had done the least that God expected of me. I couldn't take away the pain of their church rejecting them, but I could offer and bring the sacraments into that day of anguish.
Some, I know, would say I didn't 'do my duty' since I hadn't prepared them with pre-baptismal instruction and required them to come to St. John's in the future. But that's just pious bullsh*t as far as I can tell.
The sacraments belong to God--not the church and certainly not the priest.
Little Louisa was 'marked as Christ's own forever'. And she is. She'd be approaching her teen years now--if ever there is a period to be marked as Christ's own!!!
Saturday Baptism
I'm officiating at a baptism tomorrow. It's against my better judgment to do 'private' baptisms. Baptism should be in the full view of the people of God gathered on the Lord's day. I believe that--I do--but I also know this: any time anyone wants a touch of God in their lives, I'll do whatever I can to let God touch them.
Ceremonially, I'm pretty 'low church'. However, I have a 'high church' view of the sacraments. I truly believe and live as if they are 'real'--just what they claim to be: opportunities for the holy and wild God to dip into our lives for a moment.
So, if another Episcopal priest has some reason not to officiate at your wedding--give me a call!
If you have a god-father who has to fly back to Puerto Rico on Sunday morning, I'll do a Saturday baptism.
I'll bury anyone who wants to be buried. Christian burial should always be available. The morticians in Waterbury still call me from time to time for murdered folks and suicides and people with no discernible religion because they know I'll never deny the sacrament of burial (OK, I 'know' it's not one of the 7 sacraments, but it seems sacramental to me to ask God to take into God's heart this person who is dead....)
Fewer and fewer people these days seem to want to invite God into their lives. One one level, I understand that--given my wild and uncontrollable God who will just stir things up and turn you inside out. However, anyone who is willing to make that risky invitation to a God beyond our understanding...well, I'm willing to assist in the invitation.
I've known lots of Episcopal priests who have turned away couples, either denied baptism or made it too arduous, who turn away the unbaptized from the Lord's Table.
For goodness (and His!) sake--it's the LORD'S TABLE, not the church's or the priest's....
I once gave communion at St. James in Charleston, West Virginia to a man who wandered in wearing a turban and with a dot on his dark forehead. He left immediately after the bread and wine.
The communion minister with the cup asked me afterwards, "how did you know he was a Christian?"
"I didn't," I explained, "but God could have struck him dead or me dead if what I did was wrong....And God didn't...."
That's my theology and I'm sticking with it. The sacraments belong to God, not to the church or to me. So, my job is to hand them out as often and as generously as I can.
That's what I believe, at any rate.
Ceremonially, I'm pretty 'low church'. However, I have a 'high church' view of the sacraments. I truly believe and live as if they are 'real'--just what they claim to be: opportunities for the holy and wild God to dip into our lives for a moment.
So, if another Episcopal priest has some reason not to officiate at your wedding--give me a call!
If you have a god-father who has to fly back to Puerto Rico on Sunday morning, I'll do a Saturday baptism.
I'll bury anyone who wants to be buried. Christian burial should always be available. The morticians in Waterbury still call me from time to time for murdered folks and suicides and people with no discernible religion because they know I'll never deny the sacrament of burial (OK, I 'know' it's not one of the 7 sacraments, but it seems sacramental to me to ask God to take into God's heart this person who is dead....)
Fewer and fewer people these days seem to want to invite God into their lives. One one level, I understand that--given my wild and uncontrollable God who will just stir things up and turn you inside out. However, anyone who is willing to make that risky invitation to a God beyond our understanding...well, I'm willing to assist in the invitation.
I've known lots of Episcopal priests who have turned away couples, either denied baptism or made it too arduous, who turn away the unbaptized from the Lord's Table.
For goodness (and His!) sake--it's the LORD'S TABLE, not the church's or the priest's....
I once gave communion at St. James in Charleston, West Virginia to a man who wandered in wearing a turban and with a dot on his dark forehead. He left immediately after the bread and wine.
The communion minister with the cup asked me afterwards, "how did you know he was a Christian?"
"I didn't," I explained, "but God could have struck him dead or me dead if what I did was wrong....And God didn't...."
That's my theology and I'm sticking with it. The sacraments belong to God, not to the church or to me. So, my job is to hand them out as often and as generously as I can.
That's what I believe, at any rate.
Wednesday, June 21, 2017
knees
Human knees are remarkable architecture. They were designed to help us stand upright and walk without dragging our hands on the ground. All that happened over 200,000 years ago and knees have been working ever since.
Mine aren't. I had surgery in September of last year to reattach my quad muscle to my knee and let the ligaments and all grow back. I walk OK--except for steps--but there are still some issues with my right knee,
And my left knee 'pops', audibly when I stand up from sitting down.
I went to my orthopedic surgeon this week. He told me to give the reconstructed right knee another three months and that my left knee was full of arthritis. All the cartilage that lubricates my knee has been dried up by the arthritis and the 'pop' I hear is just bone against bone. (Pleasant though, huh?)
He told me that the X ray of that knee would usually mean I had a lot of pain. Which I don't. Just popping.
He told me I was lucky.
I'm glad I don't have pain in that knee, but I don't feel lucky. Not by a long shot.
"Pop", "pop", "pop" doesn't feel lucky....
Mine aren't. I had surgery in September of last year to reattach my quad muscle to my knee and let the ligaments and all grow back. I walk OK--except for steps--but there are still some issues with my right knee,
And my left knee 'pops', audibly when I stand up from sitting down.
I went to my orthopedic surgeon this week. He told me to give the reconstructed right knee another three months and that my left knee was full of arthritis. All the cartilage that lubricates my knee has been dried up by the arthritis and the 'pop' I hear is just bone against bone. (Pleasant though, huh?)
He told me that the X ray of that knee would usually mean I had a lot of pain. Which I don't. Just popping.
He told me I was lucky.
I'm glad I don't have pain in that knee, but I don't feel lucky. Not by a long shot.
"Pop", "pop", "pop" doesn't feel lucky....
Tuesday, June 20, 2017
Happy Father's Day (to me)
(I wrote this on Sunday and neglected to hit 'post'. Two days late....)
There are almost no other days that make me as humble and proud and blessed as Father's Day.
There are very few parents I feel comfortable talking about kids with because ours turned out so remarkable...and not everyone's did.
Mimi (38) is the Director of Operations and Special Projects at the Institute of Classical Architecture and Art, a nationwide non-profit organization housed in New York City. Josh (41) is a lawyer at Rosenberg, Martin and Greenberg in Baltimore and three times voted 'rising star' by the Baltimore Legal Association.
He's married to a prosecutor, Cathy Chen, for the Baltimore City Prosecutor's office. They have given us three wondrous grand-daughters.
Mimi is married to Tim McCarthy, who works for Linked-In (his office is in the Empire State Building!) and they gave us baby Eleanor.
I wish I deserved them, I really do.
But, instead, they have blessed me so.
Happy Father's Day to me....
There are almost no other days that make me as humble and proud and blessed as Father's Day.
There are very few parents I feel comfortable talking about kids with because ours turned out so remarkable...and not everyone's did.
Mimi (38) is the Director of Operations and Special Projects at the Institute of Classical Architecture and Art, a nationwide non-profit organization housed in New York City. Josh (41) is a lawyer at Rosenberg, Martin and Greenberg in Baltimore and three times voted 'rising star' by the Baltimore Legal Association.
He's married to a prosecutor, Cathy Chen, for the Baltimore City Prosecutor's office. They have given us three wondrous grand-daughters.
Mimi is married to Tim McCarthy, who works for Linked-In (his office is in the Empire State Building!) and they gave us baby Eleanor.
I wish I deserved them, I really do.
But, instead, they have blessed me so.
Happy Father's Day to me....
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